Hope Rising (3 page)

The sun had already slipped below the serrated horizon. Long shadows melted into inky pools that silently converged in a rising wave of twilight. I glanced at Troy over the gelding’s sagging neck and saw my grief mirrored in his face. We had no words, but our unspoken communication was enough—in such a moment, what truly can be said?

Two and a half days passed, and I felt growing concern
for our sweet gelding. Physically he was progressing, thanks to good nutrition and medical care. But his attitude was still inward and depressed. He had not yet acknowledged my presence or anyone else’s.

I studied him through the fence, thinking,
Somewhere I’m missing the mark. I’m not getting through to him
. He seemed mentally trapped in a downward spiral, still under the weight of imminent death that had threatened him for so long. Even with that threat removed, he had given up hope. His light was going out.

Suddenly, I couldn’t stand to watch this sickening process any longer. I realized that, despite all we had done, this horse was going to die.

I wanted him to know that he was cherished. With measured deliberation, I led him back down to the hitching post. After tying him off, I put together a special tray of all our finest grooming aids. He deserved the best we had. In silence, I massaged a special mix of oil and fragrance into the hair of his black mane. Working carefully, I separated each strand until the once matted and tangled web lay smooth and flat, glistening under the warm rays of the afternoon sun. Then I did the same with his tail.

After that I began brushing his body. His ragged buckskin coat literally peeled back like a rotten carpet. Overwhelming sadness filled my eyes with tears. Instead of revealing a glossy summer coat underneath, his skin was all but naked. The total neglect he had suffered had robbed his body of the ability to grow normal body hair. His black skin was barely supporting the first signs of a golden layer of peach fuzz. Mechanically my arms continued to brush. I wept out loud.

The warm air hung in stillness. Sparrows in a nesting
box overhead sang over their newly hatched family. Horsehair covered the ground in a four-inch layer of gold around my feet. I brushed and cried as our gelding’s hideous body was fully unveiled. Finally I leaned against him with both hands on his shoulder and began to pray. From above angels saw a filthy woman bowing over a skeletal horse on a cloud of golden hair.

Time slipped by. Then very subtly I felt the horse’s weight shift. I looked up to see his large, black nostrils close to my face. He had curved his neck around as far as he could, and for the first time he was looking at me! I held his gaze. It was still sunken, but the unmistakable twinkle of life had triumphantly returned to his once dulled eyes.

I stepped toward his outstretched muzzle and, with both arms, cradled his head against my chest. The spiral of death had stopped, and by the breath of a merciful God had been blown back in the reverse direction. I knew in that moment, he had chosen to live. Gently we held our embrace, my wet cheek pressed against his forehead.

I was lifting my head to kiss his face when I saw it. It was about ten feet wide and rotating slowly across the yard. The whirlwind, with unhurried deliberation, moved toward us until we were completely enveloped. The entire mass of cottony hair rose up around us in a golden column, slowly spiraling up into heaven.

Cradling the gelding’s head, I watched in breathless awe as nearly every wisp of his fallen hair lazily rotated upward and gradually out of sight.

Still gazing skyward, I knew that my simple prayer had been answered. Like Elijah, the faithful Old Testament prophet who was drawn into heaven by a whirlwind so that
he might not experience death, so this equine friend had his hair drawn into the good Lord’s domain. It was a symbolic answer to my prayer, as clear to my heart as a booming voice from the sky. I knew that this horse, “Eli” as I immediately christened him, would not die then or anytime soon.

And the answer had been sent to me in a package that I would immediately recognize. For all heaven knows that the sight of a whirlwind fills my heart with an intensely personal confirmation that my Lord is near.

Metamorphosis
 

I
STOOD ON TOP
of the hill, looking down on all that I was soon to own, and felt as though I were part of a surrealist painting. If I looked straight out, my heart and eyes could barely contain the sweeping, uninterrupted view of the majestic mountains that carry the skyline of Central Oregon. Lifting toward heaven, they rose before me like glistening, snow-covered teeth in a yawning canine jaw, soaring above valley and crevasse, towering ridge and rocky bluff. High above me, billowing clouds cast a leopardlike pattern of light and dark spots that moved across the undulating green canvas far below. It was massive. It would never be changed or obstructed by feeble manmade attempts to tame the horizon. It filled my heart.

I took a deep breath and placed my hands on my hips, trying to summon enough courage to look down. Directly below me and for several acres beyond, lay the obvious reason that my husband, Troy, and I were able to afford such spectacular property—we had just purchased our very own cinder pit.

Sprawling in all its cavernous glory, it looked as though a greedy giant had taken a monstrous three-acre
bite out of the earth, leaving behind a gaping, red encrusted hole. All of the power and promise that the land had previously supported was gone. What had once been a beautiful butte now stood desolate, lifeless, broken beyond hope of repair. All of its intrinsic gifts had been razed away. The property was so hideous that many of our family and friends looked at it and turned away in disgust. Several laughed at our foolhardiness for ever wanting something so useless.

Although the land was completely destroyed, Troy and I saw something else. We didn’t focus on what was, but what could be. With the help of local ranchers, we began to bury the cinder pit floor under organic waste materials—manure, straw, wood shavings—to build up a foundation that could again support life.

Troy, being a landscaper, brought home every bruised, broken, and unwanted tree; and together we planted them, digging holes through the floor of sheer rock. After hundreds of pick, bar, and shovel hours, and nearly as many blisters, our cinder pit was transformed into a remarkably functional and beautiful ranch.

It had become the perfect match. Broken property planted with more than three hundred broken trees and shrubs, filled with a herd of broken horses—all to love back to life thousands of broken children.

What once needed healing now gives healing. What was once broken has now been restored. What was once lost is now found.

Solo Flight
 

T
ODAY WAS THE
day! With all the moxie his nine-year-old heart could muster, Eric had decided it was time to canter. With his helmet firmly strapped in place and giving a little hike to his jeans, he climbed to the center of the mounting block. Pure determination drew his small dark brows together as he prepared to mount.

Once in the saddle, he reviewed his checklist with all the focus of a fighter pilot. Through his little glasses, his intense expression took in every detail of my coaching. After a proper warm-up and many trotting drills, he was ready. His little Adam’s apple dipped with a hard swallow as I gave him his final instructions. His piercing gaze left me and focused down the arena rail in a symbolic gesture that said, “There’s no turning back.”

I told him to trot an entire lap before giving his horse the verbal and physical cues to canter. With a squaring of his small shoulders and a proud lift of his little chin, he set off with the seriousness of a soldier going to war.

His trotting lap was perfect, punctuated neatly by his crisp posting in the saddle seat. His phantom marker to canter was coming up … it was time. When he crossed the imaginary line, his horse took flight with a small leap forward.
Eric’s physical response was remarkably similar to someone who had just been shot out of a cannon! His head whipped back and his hands and feet flew up, flailing in every direction in a desperate attempt to regain his balance. In his head I’m certain that he was hearing the buzzing red-letter warning: EJECT!… EJECT!

The world spun past, but like a highly trained pilot, Eric didn’t panic. One system at a time, he fixed each problem until his horse came to a full and complete stop.

“Yee haw, Cowboy!” I clapped and laughed as I went up to congratulate him. “Way to go, Eric. You did great!”

His little chest released a huge breath that was quickly followed by a nervous giggle. “Whew!” he sighed loudly. “That was really
hard
. Because both of my feet came out of the holsters!”

The Beginning
 

J
ESSICA NEVER
spoke. Her heart, like the ancient city of Jericho, was tightly sealed in by immense walls of stone. In a spiraling chain reaction, she had lost everything a child depends on—attentive parents, a supportive family, a secure home. Now the shining dreams that every teen should have for the future had been shattered, far beyond despair—beyond, it seemed, any hope of rescue. Those destroyed hopes lay in the barren fortress of her heart—a maze of jagged shards scattered around her feet. She didn’t dare take a step in any direction, not wishing to risk further injury by stepping on any of the splintered fragments of what used to be her life. Instead, as if standing in a minefield, she drew everything inside herself. Body, mind, soul, and spirit were gathered to form fragile, concentric circles until finally, a wounded phantom cowered in the center.

Only sixteen, Jessica’s near albino coloring was too weak to cover the signs of stress that darkened the pale skin around her hollow eyes. Her slightly downturned lips were almost transparent, colored by the lightest shade of pale rose. Yet even under her tousle of blond hair, she was still sadly beautiful.

At first I was never certain why Jessica came to the ranch. Troy and I had just bought the property; we had no barn, no shelter, no tack room, no tack. Nothing but a corral, a hitching post—and two horses we had just rescued from starvation and abuse. We were working feverishly to build the most basic necessities to sustain them.

The horses were Jessica’s excuse for making the long trip out to the ranch, and she came as often as she could afford the gas. Each time, as she climbed out of her battered car, her deep cobalt blue eyes briefly found mine. They were all that revealed the life still struggling to communicate from within the prison of her silence. Her gaze rose and fell as she attempted to balance her terror of rejection with pleading for acceptance. I was reminded of the trembling fear of a neglected puppy—needing so desperately to be cuddled, but too fearful to ask. I wanted nothing more than to scoop her into my arms, to hold her next to my heart, until she knew that she had found a haven where she could rest.

Initially, I thought that I needed to fill the long silences between us with words. It was exhausting, trying to carry on a one-sided conversation. But over time a wordless revelation crept into my brain. Jessica didn’t come to listen to my endless chatter. She came for two simple reasons—she needed to feel safe, and she needed to feel loved. Neither took many words at all.