Jake's pony, Lady, is dead. Joe found her in her stall when he went out to feed the horses yesterday. We're not exactly sure what happened, but she got her halter hooked on this bolt on her stall gate and that's the way Joe found her. Not sure if she panicked and had a heart attack, choked herself trying to get loose, or what, but whatever it was, she's gone.

We had prayed for just the right horse for Jake and now she's gone. She was a hard-headed horse though to say the least. During her way too short time with us, she showed us that she was smart enough to go under the chains we had set to keep Billy in the barn, spunky enough to go over the pasture fence, and fast enough to remind us of a mustang running in the wild. Being rookie horse-owners, she was a challenge for us. We tried to use horse psychology to earn her trust, but she was tough. She did not like to be caught. Once you had her on a lead or under a saddle, she was great, but if you were trying to get her to come to you in the pasture, she could frustrate a person to no end.

But through it all, we loved her. We learned from her. We wanted her to trust us so that she wouldn't be so flighty and excitable. We tried our best to keep her safe, but her own desire to try and run wild caused her death. I hate that. Oh how I wish she would have been patient and waited for us to come feed her that day, rather than just trying to push her way out of her stall.

Just a few nights ago, Lady had gotten out of her stall and insisted on going for a nightly run. She probably got out about 7 pm or so. I was gone to a friend's house and when I got home about 9, Tony and Joe had already been out in the pasture for hours trying to catch her. The temperature was dropping and it was raining, but there they were tromping around in a muddy pasture trying every trick they knew to get her to come to them. When I got there, I joined in too, but it was almost 11 o'clock by the time she finally decided that she'd rather be in her stall that night.

I tell you, she tried all of our patience. It wasn't like we could just say, “Oh well, we'll just leave her out for the night.” Since she was such a good little escape artist, we knew that none of us would be able to sleep well for wondering if she'd still be in the pasture in the morning. What if she had gotten out of the fence while grazing and something spooked her, she could have wound up in the next county, or been shot by an early morning hunter, or run in front of someone's car. We just couldn't leave her out like that.

It made me think of the shepherd and the 100 sheep and him going after the wayward one.

"What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should be lost.” Matthew 18: 12 – 14

We were so thankful when we finally caught Lady that night. We had pursued and pursued her and when she finally came took those tentative steps to eat something out of Tony's hand, we were so happy. It felt like such a big step in her gaining trust in us. I mean, here we were out there wanting nothing more than to put her safely in her stall where she would be warm, dry, and safe and yet, we had to spend hours and hours to get her to come to us.

Wow, doesn't that sound like all of us? How Christ pursues us, even when we've gotten ourselves into a mess of our own making, even when we're running from Him, even when we don't deserve it.

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8

Yet, for us the story doesn't have a happy ending. Even though we were able to finally get Lady safely put up that night, it was only days later that her own willful spirit led to her death. She refused to be content where she was safe and ultimately suffered the consequences. And we are suffering too. We wonder if we could have done anything differently. We regret that we couldn't save her. We just plain old miss her. And we're left dealing with the pain of death and loss and our inability to protect either the horse or our children's hearts.

All we can do is to thank God for the time we had with Lady, ask Him what we're supposed to learn from all of this, and give Him our grieving hearts. Yep, my heart's been stomped and my stomach doesn't feel too good either, but I know that we can trust God and that He wants what's best for us. He'll bring healing to the broken-hearted and rest to the weary. He is always worthy to be praised.

“The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised." Job 1:21