The Week and the Weak

I received a book last weekend from my very dear friend Penny, one of inspiration, one from a horses point of view, and I thought, last weekend, I would draw from this book and write here, that didn't happen this past week. The week was, well lets just say slow to start, with a breakdown and then long to the middle where the day didn't end, and then finally an end to an end. The week that just kept going. Those weeks are usually ones that lead up to an event that I have looked forward to for some time but not this past week. All this past week held for me was moment after moment of weakness, not a week I was looking forward to in the least.

So at some point I picked up the book I received and began reading. The beginning, introduction, read like a dance between a person and horse, the interchange or possibilities, the promise of kindness, and the acceptance of a herd. Odd, I know, especially to those of you who are not horse people. As I read the first story Emily's Song,  I was touched by the thought of a little girl who was abused her entire life and then, without warning or understanding, found herself at a petting farm, in the stall of an abused pony who was not so much nice anymore, lying at his feet, singing to him. Ponies, for those of you who do not know, can be some of the meanest little horses around. Mostly by nature and mostly because people find them easy to abuse, mostly because of their size. Most of the ponies I read about always lead me back to Merri-Legs (from Black Beauty), a story of abuse and dislike for ponies because of their size and ultimate temperament, as with the pony in this story. Only this pony, at one point in his life, was loved by a child - and the singing of and abused little girl brought him back to that memory of love, and he stood, tentatively over her, watching and listening to her sing as she lay at his feet. The story does not talk of future encounters between the two, only that Emily asked her foster parents to go back to the farm, it does not talk of the old pony, who stood quietly as a child lay at his feet, it leaves you to imagine what happened.  And so I did. There is a story of a man who gave all his loyalty and heart to a king, a king that was jealous of him and so he decided to have him killed. The man ran and took refuge in the lands of his enemies, in caves alone, and he was allowed many times to kill the king and did not for he loved him at one time. Many times through this story, the man named David, cried out to God to make his broken heart heal, to give him peace in his time of grieving, to change the king's heart. That never happens, not really. But in all his cries, he writes this Psalms 147:3 "He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds." I don't believe that we are ever really healed, not the way that we think or understand. David's healing came in a different way, altho he never really lost his love for Saul his king, not deep down in his soul.  The same is true for the pony in my book, he loved his child, the one he grew up with, the one that loved and cared for him. The one that no matter what would talk to him on sunny days and brush his mane until it was silky. But the child, like most, grew up and went away and all that was left was an adult who didn't love the pony. A human who didn't care for him, a human who broke the pony's heart and the pony in turn became mean. In his mind, there would be no human who could show him love, none that would be nice and not try to hurt him. His heart was broken to humans and there was no healing it, and that's what his owners/rescuers believed. Who knew that a little girl, who didn't speak, who be the one who offered healing to the pony's heart. I imagine that the girl went back as often as she could to sing to the pony, and in those time of lying on the stall floor under his feet, his broken heart was healed. And for Emily, those times of lying on the ground singing to a pony who could with no thought hurt her with his hooves, she found a friend who would listen and her broken heart and life was healed.

I have no doubt that the wounds that these two characters in my story were bound but there were scares left, ones that remained throughout their life, ones that each saw in the other. Horses for me have held the same kind of healing, a healing that forces me to aware and vulnerable at the same time.  "He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. " He has done that for me in a mare that yesterday showed me that I was, without a doubt, hers. He is healing me in ways that I never would have thought, through a horse.

There are ways in this life that healing happens the without us even knowing it happens. One day our heart is so broken that we can't move, can't see the next moment, and we are weak beyond thought. I had five of those days this past week, moments of weakness so great that I didn't think I'd get through them. And every day, I'd go out and feed the horses, and everyday, they, all three of them, would knicker to me. And I know for food that was their calling, but yesterday, I had each call without food being offered, each came to me without being given anything, and each showed me that I am part of their herd. A healing I didn't see or expect.