“You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it.”‭‭

Psalm‬ ‭139‬:‭5‬-‭6‬ ‭ESV‬‬

I arrived at the barn to let the horses out for the day to find Redemption’s Hope laying in her stall (this is not unusual) and when I released the other two she did not get up to join them (this is not usual).

Redemption’s Hope (Hope) is a rescue quarter horse mare I’ve had a few years. She came to me after a hard life and having been returned to rescue twice, then having failed out of being a lesson horse (twice) she had been abandoned to a back pasture at a boarding barn. A good friend knew of her and saw something in her eyes that made her think this little horse needed one more chance. She knew I was looking for a sweet middle aged “shut down” type horse to see if I could learn to help one like that come to a better place. 

I had no idea just what this journey was going to be like.

When Hope finally did rise to her feet and I saw her try to walk I was very concerned. She has postural issues I’m trying to help her work through now that we’ve (I think) cleared an almost 2-year recurring infection. She also had EPM (Equine Protozoal Myloencephalitis), this is caused by a microorganism that crosses the blood/brain barrier and attacks the central nervous system and can cause devastating neurological damage and is often fatal. Symptoms of EPM that she exhibited are: poor balance, incoordination, stiff/stilted movement, abnormal gait and lameness which are worsened when the head is elevated. The good news, she did not die of the EPM, the bad news, she has still not come back to carrying herself in balance with healthy posture. 

Because of this, on her best day, Hope does not look like a graceful creature. She drags her front feet a bit. She walks with her head abnormally low, she has very tight chest muscles and seems quite stiff. On this day she seemed to teeter out of balance trying to make a step before she found a way to organize her body to somehow jerkily move forward. 

How strange, I thought, recently it seemed I’d seen a small but I thought noticeable positive trend beginning. She normally moves with a heavy lumbering walk, but recently she had energetically jogged— one evening even ran — into the barn following the small herd from behind. In fact I reflected, the night before she trotted right on past me to come inside and seemed to be normal or a slight bit better. What could have come to have her looking like this?

Maybe, I thought, she was just stiff from getting up and needed to get the blood flowing. Horses should not lay down TOO long because they will have blood flow issues if they aren’t standing or moving enough. I left to return in a few hours and check back.

When I returned she was back inside the barn (not with the others out grazing) and when I saw her try to walk it was even worse. The Frankenstein movements she went through to move just a few inches I had never seen before. She seemed to drag her left front hoof just behind where it should move on the ground almost like it wasn’t functioning properly from the shoulder. 

Sometimes horses get hoof abscesses that are acutely painful but usually resolve in a day or two on their own (though you can help them if you are aware of it). To me, this didn’t look like a sore foot, it looked like she had dislocated her shoulder.  What was clear: she was in excruciating pain and I couldn’t sort out what to do. I called a neighbor couple who have a lifetime of farm experience, many horses, and professional experience in human medical fields. Considering it is almost impossible to get a vet in any quick timeframe out here in the end of nowhere they are pretty darn handy and have helped with with injuries in many cases over the years. I really needed someone to see her and talk through what to do.

Before my friend arrived I had already been considering… this little sweet mare has been in a compromised state pretty acutely for well over a year. The way back to balance and health- whatever that will look like for her – has been very slow and arduous. Now, if she had injured herself in a way that was going to mean a lengthy recovery of say… a shoulder injury… she was not whole enough to be able to support that kind of set back and healing. She was teetering on the “if one more thing goes wrong for her…” it could be something she just would not have the strength to recover from. It would be too painful on her body, and it would be wrong to put her through it. 

I felt in my heart there was a good chance I was looking at an animal that the humane thing to do would be to help her out of her pain, as quickly as we could.

As my friend who saw the amount of pain this creature was in, looked into my tear brimming eyes he said: if it were my horse, I would do it today. You let me know if you want me to help you. She is suffering something great… 

This is the same neighbor who, after a knee replacement, couldn’t shoe horses for a time when I needed help getting corrective shoes on Hope. She couldn’t balance enough for a “real” horse shoer to agree to take her on- and so he came over and walked me through how to do it myself. His wife had stitched Hope’s gashed eye back together when she somehow cut herself in the stall (and it healed so beautifully I am still amazed). They have come to our aid more than once to help her before, and so I don’t think either of us took the decision lightly to consider the way to help her today might be to end her life.

An hour later as I sorted out my options, with a double pain dose of phenylbutazone, she was not finding any peace. She couldn’t lay down, she couldn’t stand, she couldn’t walk and would turn herself on a kind of pivot circle then lay down again. My heart was broken for her.

So far this story seems to belong on my horsemanship blog (Hope Horsemanship), and as I processed this on the day after, I believe it’s place was actually here. I have seen some amazing deep truths come out of this experience and I do not think I will ever forget the reality of them. I hope that I will never forget. For those sensitive to the brokenness of this earth and the sadness of suffering and unfairness of death, I will give a spoiler so you might have the courage to read on. (I can’t stand the movie where the animal dies in the end.) As I share this story days later… Hope is alive.

Back to the barn.

I could not bear to see her in such pain. Her heart rate was elevated and her breathing shallow even laying down. I could not see a way out. She was already so compromised from the EPM and the long illness I felt deep down, it must be time to let her go. And because I tend toward straight line and decisive thinking, I made the choice. I will have the courage to help her and we will do it soon. I will not leave her to suffer any longer than I must to put the plan in action.

As I began to sort out a plan, I began to talk to my Father. 

Lord, I cried under a pine tree in the front of the barn alone, please help me. Please give me wisdom. I know I can be stubborn, but remember the blue hoof pick that winter day? I thought I heard you speak to my heart that I could have peace because you would heal this little horse. That was over a year ago, the winter before last. I don’t see much evidence of a miracle. Not really. Maybe I was confused what your message was. That’s happened to me before. I want to hold on to your promises, but I don’t want to blindly hold on to something I’m convinced of that you never really said. Especially I don’t want to do it when an innocent creature is suffering because of my obstinance. 

Lord it breaks my heart to make this plan to end this life. It goes against what I have thought we were doing here… and yet I know you are good. I know you are our healer. This day does not change that truth about you. I know you love me and I know you love Hope. I know you only work things together for my good because I am called by you and I love you and I trust you. I will help this horse, and I don’t understand why, probably wouldn’t understand today if you tried to tell me. You don’t have to explain yourself to me, but you are going to have to help me. I will trust you.

And with those prayers I began sending out texts and emails. I first needed to contact the farm property owners. They had to decide if it would be ok to dig a horse sized grave hole in the adjoining field and if not there where would be ok. Everything hinged from that answer. They did not have a say in the decision of what to do with the horse, but where the hole is determines many pieces of the logistics because it’s a large animal that cannot be easily moved once her spirit departs. We would need to have her put to sleep as close to the hole as possible, and my friend let me know, because it’s summer she needed to be covered pretty quickly because decomposition would begin immediately in the heat.

I also sent a note to my “case worker” at the functional vet who had taken so much time last year to help save her life. They had kept Hope over a month at the Dr.’s personal farm in order to help her—  they are a three-hour drive from my barn and when I brought her there she needed a lot of testing, and treatment care initially. They kept updated on her progress over the year and consulted with me on how to help her continue to recover. In grief I let Stephanie know that I believed Hope had injured herself and would not be able to get through a recovery. She was in great pain and I was working on the plan to let her go.

I want to add a kind of “aside” in all this. While this was all going on there was like a very low bass note lingering beneath the surface. It was this question that seemed to ask: are you not being a little hasty? Are you not moving a little too quickly to this decisive action?

I have found over my life that occasionally there are things I look back upon and see they were a truth I knew and yet, in the moment I either wasn’t certain it was true, or in other cases I wanted to ignore the truth because I just didn’t know what to do with it. In this case, I questioned if that voice was the right or the wrong one. Yes, I thought, I am making a quick decisive action, but an innocent creature is in a lot of pain and would you tell me I should not take that into consideration? 

I also heard another bass note that played under all the surface drama of the day. It said this: I thought you believed that God was going to heal this horse? Have you just given up so easily because it looks so bad right now?

To this my doubt kicked in… the but I could be wrong, or could misunderstand what God meant when I thought he said he was going to heal her…  It’s the age old question right: Did God really say…?

So I want to share that all the while these things were transpiring, these nagging deep things chewed at me and I pushed them back, not because I didn’t want them to be true, but in the moment I couldn’t tell which side of the kingdom they were coming from. 

I think another part of this experience for me was a real time lesson about when things get “real” and the pressure is on, what voice to we listen to? What does it sound like? I think it is one thing to practice hearing the voice of God when things are quiet, and when we can sit with coffee and journal, and a cat on the lap, and read scripture. It is a different thing to hear things in the quiet moments when we can put all other distractions out for a time creating a “quiet time.” This situation was not a quiet time. This was a war zone where the life of a creature God has I believe spoken over came into question, and the enemy who is crafty as a serpent knew the one way to get ME to take her out. I was on the battlefield and the land mines and shrapnel were in full flight as I had to sort out what to do when high emotions, confusing and intense information, and a sense of pressing time to do something weighed heavily.

In this case, I made a call. Today I am convinced I made the wrong call. In a life or death situation I got it wrong. And yet, my Father had my back, and he did not allow me to succeed.

The following two things turned out to be key. 

First I could not get through to the farm owners. Everything hinged on their say about the burial location. No matter what I tried to sort out (because once I make a decision, I am hard to stop), I could not get around the fact that this horse was going to have to suffer until we had an answer to the where part of this endeavor.

Second I got an email back from Stephanie at my vet clinic begging me to please send some video of the horse before I made my final decision. She said their team could often diagnose at least to some extent through a video. 

I sent some video, and I waited to hear from the owners. And I sat under the pine tree and I cried for the creature I had tried so hard to help, and had in the end it seemed, completely failed.

I stayed at the barn for hours doing odd things here and there waiting. I cursed the fact that as a boarder on a property not my own I couldn’t even make the decision to end my horse’s suffering until I got permission, it seemed sad and unfair to me. Yet I submitted to that reality and waited on God to give me some breakthrough somewhere. Apparently this was not beyond his ability to manage.

First the email came back. The staff had interrupted their busy day to go over the videos. 

Please, I was implored, this looks like an abscess to us! With some simple soaking and attention it should resolve on its own, probably soon, don’t take her life over something that could pass so easily!

And with a faith they had that I did not possess, because they certainly could be right, I said I would wait. 

I still hadn’t heard back from the owners. By the grace of God.

And so Hope was still in great pain, but a great pain that could resolve in a day is much different from a great pain in which no hope of improvement. I left her laying down in her stall to return again that night. I gave her one more pain pill and let them all outside to graze overnight. 

The next day when I arrived she walked into the barn almost completely normal. All the pain meds that had barely helped her the day before should have well worn off by the time I arrived, but she seemed back to her normally compromised self. 

I had almost killed Hope. I had been convinced in my heart it was right. And yet my decisiveness to end her life was not as great as my Father’s purposes that she would not die, but live for his glory.

In my book (The Jael Finishing School for Ladies), the final chapter is about “Getting it Wrong,” which I promise we are all bound in our humanness to do. I don’t know how much more wrong I could have gotten this situation, and the consequences of such were life or death.

In reflection I saw how convinced I was that I was doing the right thing. I thought I was setting aside my ego of needing to succeed and “fix” this little horse at all costs, and was facing reality that maybe I could not help her except for in this… maybe believing and praying and hoping is just not enough. Maybe sometimes we have to accept what seems like a sad ending. No only is it a good reminder that even when I feel confident and decisive there’s still room for error, but I can look with more grace on people who are convinced they are doing the right thing for the right reason when it looks to me like the very opposite. 

On the flip side- we cannot always me mired in doubt! This renders us completely ineffective to do anything and I think that’s a place the darkness would like us all to get stuck, unable to do anything of great good because we are capable of being wrong and so we always question everything and err on the side of doing nothing that would could have impact because impact goes both ways- it can be for great good or great evil. The higher the stakes it seems the more the impact potential!

In this situation, I saw in action that God blocked the way in front of me effectively enough to intervene on the horse’s behalf and save us both from myself. I now understand in a more personal way that God’s plans and purposes for my good and his glory are not dependent on me, or probably anyone else’s ability to come to the right conclusions and do the right things. God knows my heart was not to rebelliously ignore his guidance in order to do something I was determined to do. I wanted wisdom from him and asked for it, but in all the competing messages I got stuck following the wrong ones. This lesson brings me a lot of peace going forward, but also a boldness to know I can try and I can risk because in the end it is my Father who is leading my steps and his plans are greater than my humanity and weakness. For he knows we are but dust.

The story of Hope is far from over. She is back to hanging stable today, but she is not well. In her eyes she does not seem to be ready to give up. She is eating and going through her routine as a horse the best she can and I am not going to give up on her. Yet I don’t know her story from here yet. My own hope is that she will find a wholeness and her story will be wildly redemptive and hopefilled for others. However, it could be only a matter of time before something takes her to a place she cannot recover. 

Yet deep down I look back on the panic and critical drama of a few days ago and feel like the powers of darkness put out a lot of effort to take her out. I cannot help but wonder if that is because her breakthrough is close! I cannot help but wonder how often it is right before the change that the road gets too much and people give up, just inches from the goal but they never knew. I cannot help but hope that there is something waiting, very close, that will make a difference, and Hope will become strong again. 

At least for today, Hope is alive.