Free Hope Rising by Kim Meeder Page B

placed first, second, third, sixth and seventh! Sarah, on her silver gelding Mighty Mojave, won the Junior Division and the Junior Best Condition Award. She was the overall champion and set a blistering course record that has yet to be beaten.
    I always believed that Mojave would run through fire for Sarah. On that day—he did.

Easy Keeper

 
    M OMMY, IS THAT a cow or a horse?” the little boy asked. He stood only a few feet away from the stocky chestnut gelding.
    Cappy is known as an “easy keeper.” Easy keeping horses are those that eat an ordinary amount of hay and immediately go down the path of “once on the lips, forever on the hips.”
    Even with a restricted feeding program, horses like Cappy are usually chronically obese. Whatever he eats might as well be pasted on his belly because that’s where it all seems to go.
    “Well, honey, what do
you
think?” the mother answered as she returned the question back to the boy. With his little eyebrows knit together in concentration, the child gazed up at the mighty chestnut girth looming above him.
    The young mother prompted, “Do you think that he looks more like a cow or more like a horse?” The child’s visual examination continued with intense scrutiny.
    Too much time had passed. He didn’t seem to like either of his choices. Perhaps he felt that it was a trick question.
    Suddenly, his eyebrows bolted straight up with the apparent resolution of his conflict. Jamming his little hands over his little hips in triumph, he looked back toward his mother wearing an irrepressible grin. With wisdom he declared his final conclusion: “I think he looks more like a PIG!”



Refuge

 
    T HE WOMAN’S voice on the other end of the phone line was somber. “Her mother has died. It’s only been three days.” Instantly my heart traveled back to another time, another place, to one of those memories we have, but try to forget. I vividly remembered that moment in my own life.…
    “Honey, your parents have died.” The words seared into my nine-year-old heart. In the blur of that moment, I knew someone was trying to comfort me, but all I wanted was to get away, to run as far as I could from this hideous truth. Tearing away from the arms that held me, I burst out through the back door of the house and ran. I ran and ran through a small orchard. The short distance felt like miles until finally I fell, face down, into the powdery, dry earth. I could hear screaming, only to realize that it was my own unrecognizable voice—the cry of a child’s heart that was trying to comprehend the incomprehensible.
    I loved both of my parents with all of the passion of a child’s heart, yet divorce was tearing them apart. My dad sought help in many professional directions, but, tragically, help was not to be found. With a decision conceived through blinding despair, he grimly ended my mother’slife and then his own.
    Silence. At long last there was silence. All that was left of my shattered voice whispered the simple words, “Jesus, help me.” A near silent breeze moved through the leafless branches overhead.
    In that moment, looking down through the lifeless trees, angels might have seen deep knee prints forming in the dusty earth next to a small, huddled form. It was there in that barren place that the Lord of all knelt to comfort a broken child. In that instant my life was saved. Not fully understanding all that had happened inside my heart, what I felt, what I knew was that I would never again be alone.
    After the death of my parents, I moved in with my grandparents. It wasn’t long before they had the foresight to buy a small horse for me. Between the love of the Lord and that little horse, Firefly, I found a refuge in my shattered life. Riding became my place of safety and peace. No matter how difficult things were, my troubles could never catch me when I was on Firefly.
    Most days I jumped off the school bus and ran as fast as I could down the road that led to our house. I