God does answer prayers!

I remember waaaay back (Ok so maybe it wasn't that long ago) when I was ten years old, every night I would pray and ask God to please let me have a horse. But at the time we lived in town so my parents had to constantly remind me that I couldn't have one; although I was positive that it would fit in our backyard and sleep in our garage. LOL. The Lord did hear my prayer and allowed me to take riding lessons for three years at a Christian friend's stable. I still remember during one lesson when I finally reached the stage where I could ride bareback on a 17 hand horse while loping.. I also remember mom keeping her eyes closed during that lesson. :D

I continued that prayer up until I was about 13 or 14 because I figured that if it was the Lord's will then it would happen.

Skip forward 2 years.

I am now 16 years old; I still dreamed about having my own horse and then one day the ball began to roll....

About two weeks ago we were working outside in the evening when a total stranger stopped by and asked us if we would be willing to board her horse till spring! Of course we told her yes!

As it turns out, there's a guy up the road from us who told Miss Jennifer (that's the horse lady's name) that we had some empty stalls and that she should ask us about boarding. The horse's name is Peaches and she actually belongs to Miss Jennifer's sister but she is in the military and was stationed in Arizona and wouldn't be able to have the horse shipped down till spring. For the last 8 years Peaches has been staying with a 4-H girl but the girl is now going to college and can't take a horse with her. We were all soooooooo excited, actually, make that ecstatic! "At last!" we thought, "a horse!" But then a couple of days later Miss Jennifer called us and said that the 4-H girl wanted to see where "her" horse was going. She took a look at our barn and said "Nope, not here." She even went as far as finding another stable to keep Peaches at! I could almost hear God chuckling and saying to me "wait child, it gets better." Miss Jennifer called three days later and said she still wanted to keep Peaches here. HURRAY!!

A couple of days later we got another phone call. Dad told B#4 and I to sit down. We looked at each other wondering what what he was going to say. "Girls" he said, "Miss Jennifer just called and She said that her sister is being stationed somewheres else." Our spirits plummeted. "Let me guess, I moaned, She's coming back to Oregon and now we can't board Peaches."

Dad tried valiantly to suppress the laugh that was coming but didn't quite make it. "No actually she might be stationed to Italy and would be staying there for three years!" B#4 and I were more than ecstatic this time. Three years!!! Okay God, are there any other surprises?

Peaches came last night and she finally settled down this evening. She's a full-blooded Quarter horse but she honestly looks like an Arabian. She is 14.1 hands tall and weighs 800 lbs and is a gorgeous Sorrel color with a stripe and two white socks on her hind legs. This morning when we let her out into the pasture she trotted around the perimeter of it for hours. in all that circling she lost a shoe. She only has shoes on her front hooves and while she was trotting she went to close to the fence, got her shoe caught on it and since she was going so fast she tore it off. Her hoof it pretty banged up now but thankfully she isn't limping and isn't in any pain.

She's trained for western riding which is what I learned in my lessons. And even better, she is trained for barrel racing, pole bending and a whole bunch of other things. She's very sweet tempered and her gaits are great, nice and smooth. We didn't have a saddle so us girls just rode her bareback today. Personally I prefer bareback over using a saddle; I just find it a bit more fun I guess.

Well, God certainly did hear my prayers from 6 years ago and I have been having so much fun watching him work through out all of this. One thought that came to mind was the perfect timing. Had Miss Jennifer come about a month ago we would have had to say no to keeping peaches because we didn't have the spring hooked up yet.

I love this verse in Psalms

Delight yourself in the Lord,

and He shall give you the desires of the heart.

Psalm 37:4

God does answer prayers!!

~B#2