It’s already day two of the new year. Winter is not my favorite season, but not my least favorite either. Overnight we had a dusting of snow, enough to put a thin layer of pretty over the sucking mud the rains of December lavished upon us. It looks lovely from the living room, sipping warm cafe au lait, with the cozy fire in the wood stove, and dogs and a cat curled up peacefully. Sadly this is not reality for most people with horses. The serene beauty was broken up early with muck boots leaving mud-prints in the snow as I trudged up to feed and release my horses from their overnight captivity.

There was a time I reveled in the ease of low maintenance horsekeeping- yes there is such a thing, and I lived it for years. I leased large pastures for my small herd. They always had the option of shelter from sun or sleet, and there was always grass- too much grass usually. In the winter I would add hay once or twice a day depending on the circumstances, but for the most part they existed naturally with access to everything they needed and many acres to spread out upon. 

My eyes probably glazed over when people talked about mucking horse stalls in the early mornings before work and all the other chores that came from a more intense management plan. I rarely stalled a healthy horse and mine didn’t usually leave much mess in the shelter.

Today, however, my life is very different. I brought my horses home just over a year ago to a property at under four acres, a little too small for my previous low maintenance lifestyle. We are all happy here for now, I have never had the joy before of making my morning coffee while looking at my horses only ten feet away from the kitchen window. I love having them here, but limited space means much more management.

I rarely enclose my horses directly due to the elements, they can sort out where to go on their own. The reason I’ve chosen to lock them in their large shelter building more often in recent weeks is more indirect. We’ve had a lot of rain. The dry lot which used to be my large grassy backyard is now dirt, and when it rains it is not a dry lot, it’s a mud lot. Last year I learned when thousand pound creatures meander around a mud lot it churns it up and makes it a black hole sucking swamp lot. If I keep them off the mud until the worst of it has drained and dried it saves the conditions to normal mud and eventually it will freeze which is much preferable to muck suck. I also have a large “front yard” that is our little grass pasture. The horses have very limited access to it because they would turn it into a dry lot given the opportunity. I try to tell them self-control is a fruit of the spirit, but they are like locusts when it comes to resources! After a steep learning curve last year, I am beginning to improve my small-farm lot management skills, and it’s not such a bad deal.

I’m reminded of what Paul said in his letter to the Philippians about having learned to be content in whatever situation he finds himself. “I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound…” As I look back, I’m grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to have to manage an abundance of grass- so much my horses were getting sick on it. Now I’m learning how to manage small areas with very different challenges. There is no true ideal I think- every situation has challenges to manage.

As I raked the less than inviting mixture of hay, horse pee, poop, and wood shavings this morning I was reminded of a conversation over Christmas dinner with friends. We were talking about the different kinds of guests at a dinner party. I am the kind that does not feel at home it someone else’s kitchen. I do not want to help with the dishes. There are the other kind who are always trying to be part of the clean up team as if they cannot leave in good conscious if there are still dirty dishes in the sink. I’m glad to come visit, eat wonderful food and cheery wine, have warm conversation, and certainly clear my plate to the kitchen before I scurry on home. 

Before you who have the “Martha” gene judge me harshly, the flip side of this conversation was the agreement that those of us with the “non-Martha” approach love to host people in our own homes for wonderful dinners we prepare with love for our friends. We love to assure people to not worry about a thing, just come, and we mean it. And we love to stack the dishes up out of sight if possible as we move to the living room for coffee and a few more lingering conversations. When I say goodbye to my guests, I never turn to the mountain of dishes in the kitchen sadly and wish someone would have helped me. 

I do not mind the clean up any more than I mind the preparation. I do not mind it alone either, though today I have a husband who is aces at the clean up and I enjoy his company in the process- after all it is his kitchen too now. When I was tackling the clean up alone, I enjoyed thinking back to the evening and enjoying the people I love sharing my home. It was a way to unwind and also to show love in a quiet kind of way. Anyone who has hosted a gathering knows it’s a sacrifice of sorts to open your home.

The conversation was between two “non-Martha” personalities, but I do know those who insist on helping are only operating out of a different viewpoint, not a wrong one. We all have to work together in this great, vibrant and varied circle of friends. I never preferred to have help in the clean up, or felt comfortable cleaning someone else’s kitchen, but I do remember a time in my younger days when I hated the clean up.

Similarly, in the horse shelter, wearing muck boots in the windy sub-freezing morning, raking murky horse waste, I thought of a time I would have considered this the worst part of having horses. The clean up. Yet I was happy on this second day of January just as winter was settling upon us making the more fun parts of owning horses feel out of grasp until the longer, warmer days return. I love my horses. I love my life with horses. Over time, I have gone from loving to ride my horses to actually loving them. There is a difference. 

Maybe that’s what a deep passion develops in someone, I don’t only enjoy the highlights, but I love the quiet work too. Maybe when we fall deeper into a life of passion, love creeps into all the places. The preparation for the meal, the dishes, the poop raking, the hay soaking, the meticulous details of groundwork, just as much as the warm conversation, crossing the finish line of a fifty mile endurance ride, riding a horse at a run across the field in the sunshine. Maybe when true passion sets in, love permeates all of it. 

As I look forward into the days ahead, my prayer is that passion would be my framework. Not only the intensity of passion that takes over a moment, not only the high moments of riding on a summer day, of the performance, of the dinner party, but the love that sinks down into all the cracks and crevices of a life. That I may find love in the dishes, the laundry, the hay soaking, the dog food making, the practicing, the teaching, the grant writing, and all the things that compose a life well lived. May I, like Paul, know contentment in plenty and want, abundance and lack. May I know there is purpose in every moment and be present in those moments, in love.