Tail of a Horse
This is one of my favorite pieces, written by one of my favorite humans:
Angie Archer
Life is a cluster sometimes. For me, in this season of our lives, it feels like organized chaos all the time. I have to take our schedule one day at a time or I will lose it. We are busy. We are not busy with bad things. They are all great things but it’s a lot. A lot of great things. So, when I got the call that 1) my dad was in the hospital (again), 2) the animals needed to be fed at his house that is 30 minutes away until he returned and 3) my horse was in dire shape of grooming, I was mad. I don’t have time for this, I thought. I mentally went through the million other things that need to be done. Not to mention that it was Monday and Monday is literally our ONLY day that we don’t have activities. I look forward to Monday evenings because we don’t have to do anything but just be in our home. Not this particular Monday. Nope. This Monday, we were going to have to pack up as a family with mowers, weed eaters, new horse brushes and LOTS of horse hair detangler. I was bitter and a little resentful to say the least.
As we pulled up to my dad’s house, I felt an array of emotions. I took a look at the property that he can no longer maintain the way he once had. And then I took a look at Magic. He is the horse my dad bought me at age 10 so that I could fulfill my dreams of being a star barrel racer in the rodeo. I named him after a horse I had read about in the book Magician. Magic once was a beautiful young horse whose mane and tail shined. Growing up, he was well taken care of. Well loved. There was time to spend brushing him and grooming him and hugging him. I can’t even remember the last time I had time for such a thing. Now looking at my once prized animal, my heart broke a little. His mane and tail were full of burrs. So many burrs you could hardly see that he had hair at all. He was dirty. He didn’t look like the horse I had grown up loving and adoring.
What happened? Well…life. Life happened. When I reached college, the snowball of life started rolling down that hill of amazing madness that makes up my world today. I met a boy. I got a job. My dad’s health deteriorated. We got married, had kids and as fast as a blink, here we are. There are sporting events, practice, work, friends, family, vacations, weddings, showers, obligations, things we love to do, things we hate to do. It all happens so fast I am not sure I even considered things I had left behind that I once loved deeply. Isn’t that what happens though? One day we have all the time in the world. The next day-BAM-we are adults. Our lives get tangled up in a mess of things, much like my horse’s tail. But who is there to untangle us from our lives? What else is there knotted up inside that we are not dealing with?
That day, as I stood there brushing, detangling, brushing, detangling, I stopped to look around. In the distance I saw my husband doing what he does best. Helping. He mowed as much of my dad’s yard and pasture as he could. And of course, he did it without complaining, even though he is busier than he likes to admit. I stopped to look at my kids and the joy on their faces as they enjoyed this bonus night of family time doing something that we would not normally do. We were outside. We were helping an animal and they were falling in love with the very things I spent my childhood loving. Something that I had earlier felt “burdened” by turned out to be a blessing. And as I pulled each burr out one by one, I felt the burrs of my earlier feelings drop off. I released more that day than my horse’s tail. I am thankful for the reminder that sometimes our lives get neglected and things can get tangled up. There is a time and a place to detangle. All of that from the tail of a horse….
