Squeaky Sneakers

Lord, help me look at my life today and discern what it is I’m looking for.

-          Amy Welborn

Another year has slipped through my fingers. With it, a host of precious memories I hope I remember forty years from now. Activities my kids were involved in, time spent with my husband, conversations I had with close friends. Little bits of time I don’t want to lose sight of. Yet, at the same time, January is one of my favorite times of the year. A new beginning, a fresh start, a line in the sand beyond which can be absolutely anything.

My kids are involved, quite heavily, in theater. I know this sounds odd, ranch kids driving almost an hour multiple times a week to participate in a theater troupe. While that seems a weird fit, I can’t deny what it has given to them; memorization, goal setting, and friends they had no way of getting to know before the theater came along. Again, precious memories. With a list as long as my arm containing the benefits of such participation, I also learned the lesson of sacrifice. My own time. Since April of last year, I’ve spend a goodly amount of time on the road for the rehearsals and performances of several different shows. After months of it, I formed a new way of life and method of doing things. Or, rather, not doing things. 

My house hasn’t been clean, I mean really clean, since last April. 

As part of my new year goals- not resolutions because those are easy to forget, lose sight of, and become unnecessary- I decided to make a cleaning schedule to get a handle on some of the tasks I’ve lost control of. Nothing major, a couple rooms a day, and by the end of the week my house has been gone through twice. Luckily, I don’t have a huge home, so it’s doable for me. You know what? I feel better about myself. I’m not worried one of the neighbors will stop by as I rush kids out the door. In fact, I hope they do. 

A few days after Christmas I was going through the pictures on my phone looking for screenshots of quotes I found to write down. I like to keep journals- lots of them. I like to write uplifting quotes I find, a log of activities my family is involved in, things the kids say, funny stories a friend told. I even go so far as to write Bible verses down and a prayer associated with them. I do feel an enormous amount of pity for the soul who has to go through my desk and office cabinet once I die. The task of sorting all those journals and notebooks will be taxing. 

In doing so, I stumbled on a photograph I took at our fall branding. In the photo was my daughter, Rosie, a close friend and photographer, Nicole Poyo Brennan, and dear friend and fellow ranch wife, Holly Black. The three of them were sitting horseback in a row, waiting for their turn in the branding trap to rope. They were focused on the action, all smiles and perhaps some laughter. Looking at that photograph, I realized I’d captured something special. Not in quotes, but in actual footage. Instead of words by Lou Holtz or Earl Nightingale, I could see my new year goal in action. All I hoped to become or display. 

These are women with a strong faith in God. A firm understanding of who they are, and what they are in pursuit of. They fully embrace the skills bestowed on them by God, and they work daily to become better at those gifts. It made me think of all the women in my life who are working and struggling to grow in faith and themselves. All of them going for whatever it is God has put in their soul to be. No hesitations. Just action. 

So, I’ve decided to go at this new year goal thing differently. I’m going to get up and go to work. I’ve got to stop waiting for chances to come to me, expecting to grow in my faith without any works, and stop living in a messy home. Instead of dreaming of being a good roper, I’ve actively been roping the dummy, because dang it, someday Rosie, Nicole, and Holly are gonna form a ranch rodeo team and I want to be on it! I don’t want there to be any pictures of it on my phone because I’ll be too busy roping to take any. But don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll write all about it in one of many plethora of journals. 

Already I can feel a change taking over me. In accepting my part in changing what needs changed in myself, I’ve let God have a chance to make His adjustments within me. I know, each time I swing a rope off my favorite mare, Donna, God is already squelching much of my apprehensions. A year ago I’d have been too worried to do it. Now I see a confident mare ready to assist me in whatever pursuit I choose that day.

The best part? You know that sound rubber makes on linoleum? That crunching, scrunching noise? The one that requires clean linoleum to make with rubber soled sneakers? Yeah, you can finally hear that in my house again. 

My love and prayers to you all. And may God have a hand in your new year goals as well.

Lyn

Maude’s Promise

They’d been my husband Jake’s dream since I can’t remember when. Jake had been my dream, so somewhere along the way they became my dream, too. When he finally found them, a Belgian team of draft mares, we spent an afternoon as a family watching them harnessed, the kids and I laughing joyfully as Maude and Minnie drug my man around behind them. I felt a part of him come alive. I understood that part, for I’d known it within myself.

We had no harness of our own, no collars, and no sled to pull hay across frozen ground. It was something, however, to witness neighbors come forward and offer bits and pieces, like a commissary wagon belonging to someone’s grandfather, a collar here or there. “Though I doubt it will fit Minnie, she’s such a big girl, but try it, Jake.”

Slowly, it evolved. As the necessaries came together, I felt the excitement of friends and family as a man grasped at the straws offered him. Conversations during brandings, while shipping calves, and between two beat-up ranch pickups was always brimming with the urgency of the very frequently asked question: have you hitched your team yet?

Passersby drove along the highway slower, rolling down the window in the biting cold just to admire them, a certain satisfaction coming from the sight of such massive creatures, though neither mare ever did much by way of acrobatics meant to impress. All they had to do was be alive, to breathe, to exist. The importance of such an action was not lost on anyone who knew Jake, anyone who saw the flash of smile, the brilliance of excitement in his eye each time he spoke of them.

It can’t be likened to a first pickup. No, for as any farm or ranch kids knows, those are necessary tools, and they help the general good. It isn’t like roping off your first custom made saddle, for those who’ve dreamt of one knows they soon wear and weary. This was something found in the spark of the soul. It looks different for everyone, the one thing, essential, you might say, to the fulfillment of a particular life. A calling known only to those who hear it.

A stone-boat was purchased from noticing an advertisement. The saddle barn was slowly over-taken and commandeered by harness, and now saddles took roost in trailers and on the floor of the family room. Bridles hung from the hat rack in the house. All a wife could do was laugh, smell the barn within the house, and think of that flash of smile.

Winter faded and spring came. Jake struggled to find harrowing equipment, a draw bar and harrows that weren’t more than his girls could handle. Now, a fine, bright red fore-cart sported a draw bar ready for work, and Maude, the older of the pair, sported her own surprise for the world to see. She was going to be a mama, though not for the first time. There was no disappointment there, for who could resist the expansion of their dream?

Minnie chose not to contribute to the workforce a little one of her own, though no one knew why. She’d been exposed, but for reasons of her own, she chose not to take. So, she pranced jovially, completely un-hindered by the weight and heaviness of promise, of a future within her. Maudie, however, lacked that jovial prance, but she carried a twinkle in her eye that could out-shine the sun. Breathless we all waited; the swather passing the pasture always had an observant operator, or a stock-truck driver ready to carry the happy news to the wife at home.

I noticed a change one afternoon when I’d stopped to check water. It wasn’t at all what I’d expected, and having once expected myself, I thought I could expect what was coming. Maude was her beautiful self, so patient, so gentle despite her view from so high above me. She waited like a mother would, ever mindful of where I was, where I would be, and where she would place herself. But Minnie, it would seem, had no control of her right-front shoulder. I rubbed her shoulder, no rookie to equine injury, but I found no obvious culprit. I made a mental note to keep Minnie closer in my rounds, make more check-ins. The kids did, too.

I always have found hope in the dawn, so many of my troubles solved before the day truly begun, so I hoped she’d be better with the sun. Minnie looked it. Her eye was bright her body strong. However, as she stepped forward, I found what grasped at her body had only tightened its grip. Now, her right hip was refusing to answer the command given by her brain. Minnie, though, was undisturbed. She grazed, she stood happily to have her itches scratched. I broached the subject with Jake, and he immediately made calls. The vet determined as long as Minnie could stand, she’d weather whatever storm she battled. The sun set, and my last glimpse of her as the light faded was a happy Minnie, grazing peacefully beside Maude.

Jake had to haul cattle early the next morning, off and going before the sun. The place and all that was on it was left to me and our three kids, ranging in age from 9 to 14. We fed the saddle horses, chickens, and entertained the dogs with both. Then we headed to check Minnie.

No panic can seize the heart the way seeing a failing soul can. To see the worst, to acknowledge it has come to exist before you, cannot be expressed in the form of adequate words. Minnie spoke to me in a way only a soul can, and I knew. She had, sometime during the night, gone down. For now, she was her bright and wonderful self. I, and my trio, tried to coax her to rise. We prayed, brought her grain, and bathed her with buckets of cool water. Minnie had to hang on, just so Jake could see her one last time, so he could let her go in his own way.

All day, the neighbors stopped, offering words of hope and help. By late afternoon, the sun was hot, and Minnie was tired of the struggle. Jake went out into the field alone to see her one last time and help her find peace. As he stood trying to accept the end of a dream, Maude interjected her own thoughts on the subject.

Maude presented him on his wobbling legs, slowly coaxing him along. So much turmoil had marred the day of his birth he’d come into the world quietly, unnoticed. He then stood after unknown attempts and worked to his mother’s side and warmth. As Jake gazed over what had passed, he held in his sight the future, what Maude promised of a new and better day. Maybe it’s not for us to ask why, just to trust in something better ahead.

The Velvet Couch

Ah, the comfort zone. My personal hangout. The place where I kick my shoes off and lounge in my jammie pants. A place in my mind where I used to drink a glass of red wine and dream of the days when I wouldn’t drink red wine anymore because I’d be too busy living out my dreams in style. Oh, yes, a place of plush carpet and velvet couches….

I recently submitted Unconquered Horses to a nationally recognized writing contest for inspirational fiction. Now, before you get excited and think this blog is about my sweeping the contest and clasping without effort the win in my category, just stop right there. You’ve entered my comfort zone and you’re lounging on my velvet couch beside me. No, that’s not where this is going. The winners for the contest aren’t announced until sometime in June or July. I don’t lose sleep wondering if I’ll place well, or at all, and in fact, I don’t give it a thought.

Why? Well, that’s simple. I didn’t have to watch the competition roll in and unload their submissions. I didn’t have to see them open the door to their thirty-some-odd foot living quarters horse trailer and unload the machine they intent to use to bludgeon me with. Nope. No idea if they used a Mac or an HP to type it on. No clue if they’re self-published or backed by a world-renowned publishing house. Heck, I don’t even know if they submitted into my category or if they’re all dog-piling into the murder/mystery/WWII genre with eighteen sequels attached. The submissions might even be- horrors of horrors- ghost written. Isn’t that what everyone loves to read- sequels penned by broke college students over spring break?

Where was I before my silly rant… ah, yes. My velvet couch with my imaginary glass of red wine. Occasionally I rise from my plush protective cover and venture into the unknown. I get used to doing things my way with no gauge as to my effectiveness. So, I like to load my submissions, or horses, as the case may be, and trek into the world and see how I stack up. Usually, I end up crying and longing for my velvet couch once more. But this time, I decided I’d take the beating like a real woman and learn from it. I attended a clinic for young barrel horses. Literally, I got to watch everyone unload their machines that someday, they intended to bludgeon me with. And fine machines they were, all bred to do exactly that; bludgeon the competition.

My poor ranch horses had never traveled through Salt Lake traffic before, slept few nights away from their happy sagebrush home, never spent an exorbitant amount of time in a box stall. They arrived at the clinic location in the dark in a re-enactment of Noah’s flood, Ma Nature having lapsed in her psychiatric prescriptions again. Us being made of entirely sugar, we nearly melted. Unaccustomed to not having visual on each other, both horses were pretty sure I’d separated them for life. Once my little mare figured out the gelding was just on the other side of the wall, she quit fussing.

We survived the night.

The next morning we saddled up and made runs for the trainer serving as clinician. Now, we all know when we run we’re being watched. But, in the case of clinic scenarios, we are paying a professional to watch us run and tell us where we lack. While our dream is to immediately be excused from the class and reimbursed our fee because the clinician just can’t seem to come up with a single thing to correct us on, I’ve yet to have that happen. They are there to make students better. I personally find no matter how much yoga and stretching I’ve done in preparation for class, it’s never enough. Perhaps that’s got something to do with the fact I out aged the rest of the participants by a good ten years or more.

As my youngest son always says, “You’re not old, Mom. Just really crinkly.”

Note his easing the blow by using crinkly in place of wrinkly. Funny, the mirror in my comfort zone doesn’t show crinkly skin…

One thing these crinkles have given me is a pretty good perspective on encouragement. Many is a time I have felt as low as any scabby-kneed dipshit might, and like as not, somebody came along and said just one thing that helped me climb out of my self-induced pit. Being at the crinkle stage, I can see just when someone needs those same ladder rungs. Especially that little gal riding a hot-head fire dragon who just wants her horse to make a circle without spooking. Yeah, this too shall pass. And what an incredible ride that horse’ll be. That gal who wants to run against the big dogs but doesn’t feel like she’s the right caliber. Guess what? Those NFR runners get bucked down, too, sometimes. Just enter one big one. No matter what, you’ll learn something important you can use later.

So, what did I learn at this clinic? That velvet couch and that imaginary glass of wine aren’t making me into who I want to be. If I intend to do something, I better do it like I want it to be successful. The horse I’m riding is always handier and more athletic than I give them credit for, and I can help people feel good about themselves. The only time I’ve ever truly lost at something, was when I said the word can’t to myself and meant it. I can ride horses that granddaddies would’ve frowned at back in their younger years. By golly, I can make a horse, and I’m good at it. I just need a little polishing.

What’s holding you back? That cushy couch that shapes around your backside real nice? A past crash n’ burn that just won’t let you breathe easy? Fear that tells you you’re gonna fail? Or, perhaps, you need a rung on your ladder to climb out of the pit of despair. Whatever it is, don’t be afraid to get it. Don’t be afraid to let somebody with know-how watch you and help you. And more than anything, don’t be afraid to lift somebody up as you go.

And I promise I’ll let you know how the writing contest plays out.

God bless.

Lyn

Leaving Ordinary

Truthfully, I don’t even know how to describe it. I’ve been asked again and again in the last few weeks to impart what I saw, what it was like, and I find the words shift character each day. My mind digests a little more of the experience with time, and with each processing my opinion alters just a bit.

In August, my husband, Jake, and I celebrated our twentieth anniversary. At the time, despite the milestone, we didn’t do much to mark the occasion. Life is hectic in August. Sweet corn was ready to pick and sell, we had our fall-calving mama cows in Nevada getting closer to the start of calving season. I was preparing for a new school year. There were just so many good reasons to not to bother with celebrating at the time.

However, being a man of details, Jake took to heart a comment I made once about having a wish to see the sunset on the beaches of Hawaii. So, he made plans. When he told me I thought he was crazy. I’d meant it as a thing we would do when we were older. Our lives more steady and predictable. Of course, he commented he wasn’t sure what decade in life that happened, and I agreed it was an unrealistic ideal I’d been keeping since young motherhood. Surely there is a time for Hawaii and vacations. When the cows are settled and the house in order. I’d be a millionaire capable of paying someone for full-care of the horses and dogs.

But then I realized something important. Someday, my kids would be settled, too. No, not in the next grade or a freshly painted bedroom. I mean in their own life’s path. In their own purpose. Maybe even with babies of their own. Certainly with a schedule as wierd as mine. So, when Jake asked if we’d celebrate in Hawaii just the two of us, I said no. One thing I do know, is the years will come when the house is quiet and the laundry is strangely done. The chaos of kids and mini-Aussies trekking nonstop across the living room will fade. It’ll just be me waiting for Jake to get home from the farm.

The silence will be deafening.

Going to Hawaii I had just two things I wanted to do. Watch the sunrise, then later watch it set, over the ocean. It didn’t disappoint. At first it was hard to adjust to a life and schedule that was so drastically different from what I know. I think we all felt it. And, crazy as I am, one of the first delights I took on the island of Oahu was simply listening to the free-roaming roosters crow with the sunrise. Watching them scurry across the grass lawns below our hotel balcony.

Then, with awe, I got to watch my kids interact with an ocean for the very first time. I say interact, which seems different, but truly, it was an interaction. Like they met a life-long friend for the very first time. Without thought or reservation, they ran open-armed into the sea like they live next to a massive body of water instead of an ocean of sagebrush. No hesitation, no reservation. Just the complete appreciation of enjoying a once-in-a-lifetime chance, open-armed and ready.

I guess, maybe, when people ask what I thought about Hawaii, perhaps it isn’t that I can’t convey the magnitude of island life and pace. Maybe it isn’t even that I can’t express emotion for the beauty of the tropical ocean and terrain. Maybe, truly, it’s that I can’t express accurately what it felt like to sit on a glorious beach in the golden light of God and sunset, and watch my children in a time and moment that will never come again. To hold my husband’s hand and appreciate the enormity of creation, and our life.

So, when people ask me about Hawaii, I simply say, everyone deserves to see Hawaii. Just once.

Life Lessons Horseback

Horses have always kept me out of trouble. If anything has ever made me walk down the straight and narrow, it’s a horse. They’ve taught me some valuable life lessons, not the least of which is to know your posse. Know who you’re riding with. You can’t lie to someone who knows the shadows and scars of your heart. And perhaps above all, just when you think you’ve got your secrets covered and guarded, that’s just when they’re the most obvious.

The times when I’ve battled fear, uncertainty, negativity, and self-consciousness, I’ve gone to the horse to look deeper at myself. I read once that a horse is the reflection of the human soul. If you want to know who you are, bond with a horse. Just like a mirror, they will project back at you your truest self, good or bad. It is true. When I’ve accepted what I see in my horses and used it to better myself, I watched as the horses also got better.

If you love and trust someone, don’t give up on them over one bad day. Be willing to try and start over. Jesus taught this. Forgive your brother seven times seventy. I don’t know how many times I’ve wrecked the proverbial cart with a horse, come back the next day determined to do better as a horseman, and found them ready and willing to make amends. The number of times I’ve been forgiven on my journey to better my own skills is a mystery to me.

Don’t be something you’re not. If you’re thirteen hands and twelve-hundred pounds, don’t bother trying to fit in at the steeple chase. God made us to be something specific. If you’re passionate about toting kids around at the junior rodeo, don’t let anyone convince you to try for the NFR. When we find our purpose, no amount of earthly accolades will replace that feeling you get when you do what you’re created for.

I’ve been miles from home before and fallen off. For one reason or another, I’ve lost my seat and hit the dirt. You’ll know who your friends are when that happens. They’ll be the ones still standing there while you get up and dust yourself off. Sure, they might have a little twinkle in their eye you’ll swear is amusement, but they’ll wait for you to get back on again.

Most importantly, I think, is gratitude. If you want to accomplish anything, you better be grateful to those who help you get there. I want to be a better horseman. I have lots of horses that help me get closer to that goal daily. Oh, the mistakes they put up with. The iniquities they overlook. I know these things about myself, and I always do my best to offer the horse gratitude. They know where I need work and it’ll be miserable bringing up baby to get me there. But they do it anyway because they know that’s where I want to go.

Just like my loved ones. My husband, my kids. Especially God. I’m not perfect, but thankfully, they support me in saddling up each day and trying anyway.

Saddle up, friend. Keep going even though I know it’s a struggle. I’m struggling, too. You’re in good company.

Lyn