Horse Therapy

Remember that non-romance-related breakdown that I had in class on Valentines Day?  Well, as one of the after-effects of that event, one of my classmates, named Pam, invited me out to her farm in McKinney for some horse therapy.  McKinney is about 20 miles or so north of Dallas, and factoring in traffic, construction, and getting lost on the way, it took me a good hour and a half to get all the way out there.  It was worth it though; it was a much-needed day of soul-healing.

Pam had prepared a tasty lunch of chicken, rice, and vegetables with soy sauce, and after eating and talking for a bit, we headed out to the horse pasture.  She has five: "T", Cooper, Tony, Ranger, and Ace.  They're all quarter horses, I believe, and they're all beautiful - even Tony, who's old and looks rather like one of those ponies that kids ride on at carnivals.  The first horse I encountered, though, was T.  People.  That horse is ENORMOUS.  He's 17 hands tall...Secretariat was only 16 hands (and Secretariat was a massive horse).  I was a little bit weary of the horses at first, since I'm rarely that close to animals that big, and suddenly I was standing backed against a wall and roughly 4 inches from his head.  I got more used to them though, and Pam had me groom Cooper: brushing his coat and combing his tail.  There's something really soothing about taking care of an animal that big.  And Cooper's really sweet, and was really easy to handle.  He kept turning his head and looking at me with his big pretty eyes.

As I was brushing Cooper, I was thinking about Pride and Prejudice, with Darcy and Bingley riding to Meryton on their horses, and I thought about The Three Musketeers, and all the horses that the Duke of Buckingham gave D'Artagnan for himself, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, and how D'Artagnan managed to lose all of them before they reached their intended owners.  I thought about how horses were so important in the past; pulling ornate Victorian carriages or blazing through the forest so that their rider could deliver an important message.  I thought about how men groomed Louis XIV's horses so carefully so that they would be perfect for the king's eyes, and I thought about Kentucky, and how Secretariat's grooms must have felt before his races, and I thought about the races I went to at Keeneland.  Horses have a history all their own, intricately intertwined with human history.

After the horses were well-brushed, I helped clean out the stalls, and we sat around on the porch and talked for a bit.  Eventually, we went out and fed the horses; I liked that part, because they all got all excited, especially Ranger and Ace who are both 3 years old and not broken yet, so they were jumping all around crazily and trying to steal the other's food.  Then we went back inside and got ourselves some food - wafer crackers with cream cheese, capers, smoked salmon, and red onion: aka, pretty much my new favorite thing to eat.  After some more good conversation about God and vocation and Six Flags and calling, Pam showed me the horse trailer that she took out west last summer, complete with a double bed and shower and food/clothes storage, in addition to all the room for the horses and their equipment, and we refilled bird feeders, petted Wompus the barn cat, and let the horses back out to pasture.  And then Pam sent me on my way back to Dallas, with two bars of dark chocolate in hand.

On the drive back, I listened to my CD of Stephane Query, a French Christian artist who sings popular American praise songs in French.  Driving through the dark, dusty from working in the stables, and singing along to French worship songs, it was a very peaceful moment; a quiet verification of a call to French ministry, as ambiguous and disconcerting as that may be.  A verification of an individual call, for an individual person.

It was a good day.