Missy's Bridal

All I wanted was a horse. Not just any horse. I wanted Missy.

A bay Quarter Horse, she belonged to Dale Tackett. He was a cowboy who worked summers as a wrangler on the guest ranch we visited every summer in Sisters, Oregon. Missy was gentle, wise, wicked good with cattle, and worked with a hackamore bridle called a Bosal. She had a light touch and seemed to know what he wanted before he asked it of her.

When I was eight years old I asked my dad if I could have a horse. I could when I was 12, he said, if I wanted to work hard enough to save the money to buy one. By the time I was 12 I had saved $350. On my 12th birthday my parents took me to Sisters for the weekend. The guest ranch was closed for the season, but we stopped by for a visit. Dale met us out by the barn, and after a little small talk, he climbed to the top rail of the fence and gave a long whistle. Over the rise in the field one horse came into view, cantered through the open gate and into the arena. It was Missy.

Dale wanted to sell her. To me. For $350.

Missy, Pistol’s Little Miss, and me. 1967

Missy came with her bridal, the only one I ever used on her, and from the time I was 12 until I left for college, summers were spent working as a wrangler on that same guest ranch. Work started early as the sun came up and didn’t stop until long after dark. The staff bunked near the barn, except for the few weeks that my parents rented a home at a nearby ranch. During that time I stayed with them, riding the several-mile trail through the woods to and from work. In the morning the sun warmed our faces, and at night, we traveled by starlight. It was dark and a little scary for a young girl. Night noises came from tree branches, underbrush, and the footfalls of creatures hidden in the shadows. I remember one night when a pair of yellow eyes followed us most of the way home. Turning my collar up against the chill, there was no moon that night and the woods were darker than usual. I wanted to cry out for help, but there was no one to call. It was just me and my horse, and I was at once grateful when the lights of the ranch house finally appeared, and gratified for braving one more ride home in the dark. It’s the first time I remember the sensation of being afraid and courageous all at the same time. Time in the saddle will do that to you.

On the back of a horse I found freedom and independence at an early age. I learned how to work hard, work long, and work well. Because of her, I am stronger and more courageous. I learned to trust the horse beneath me, knowing that she could see the trail even when I could not. If I lost my way in the woods, she would always get us home. I think Missy knew that I needed her more than she needed me. She saw me through my teenage years that often felt filled with as much pain, loneliness, and angst as laugher, friendship, and fun. Her patience, loyalty, forgiveness, and grace tended to my young heart in ways that even my parents couldn’t.

So many memories are wrapped up in my time spent on the back of my horse, reins held loose and low on her neck. It’s a magical thing how objects connect us to memory. Missy is long gone, but I’ve never been able to let go of that bridal.

Until now.

My great niece, Ashby (named for my mom), has fallen in love with horses too. We are sister hippophiles, and she is about the age when Missy, and her bridal, came into my life.

Now, it’s is time for me to pass the reins to Ashby.

I can’t wait to see where her ride takes her.

Climbing A Mountain Part 4: Courage Under Fire

“I don’t think I can do this,” he said.

Back at the trailhead we had each shared our biggest fear about the climb. His was a fear of heights. Not an insignificant thing on or off a mountain. A few hours into it, he hadn’t had to stare that fear in the face. Now he did, as our next steps would include a short but steep climb, a traverse across a narrow trail with steep slopes on either side, and finally, another steep pitch bordered by a crevasse.

“I don’t think I can do this,” he said.

We had stopped at an outcrop to put on our crampons. He turned his face away from the slope and gripped the sides of a boulder. We all silently went about gearing up, sensing that for the moment, all we could do was give him a safe space in which to be afraid. Not try to talk him out of it, or tell him what to do or how to do it. Fear doesn’t need fixing.

“I don’t think I can do this,” he said.

Looking up from my boots, he was sitting on a rock, his wife kneeling at his feet, carefully attaching his crampons to his boots. It was like watching Jesus washing the feet of his disciples, showing them what love does in the face of fear.

“I don’t think I can do this,” he said.

And then he did. He stepped out onto the slope and headed straight up. Like climbing a ladder that is leaning up against the side of a house, but with nothing to hold on to. One step ahead of him, his cousin told him to fix his focus on her feet rather than the steep slope on either side. Behind him another cousin told him to simply take five more steps. The one in front was terrified too, but by focusing on him she momentarily forgot that she was afraid too. The one behind him called upon her experience as a Cross-fit coach to help him simply take the next right step. Step-by-terrifying-step, he made his way to the other side of the thing he thought he couldn’t do. He did it himself, but he didn’t have to do it alone.

When did we decide that being vulnerable is an act of weakness? From what I saw up on that mountain, it is one of the most courageous things we can ever do.

Two days later, we passed that same steep stretch on our way back down.

“I can do that,” he said.

The Scream

Ducking my head to walk underneath the small fort we built for the little people in our lives, I dropped to the ground to see if I could add another pushup to my tally. It was raining, and the ground underneath the fort was dry. Standing up, one more pushup under my belt, I headed back out into the rain. Because I was wearing my Seahawks Super Bowl Champs hat I didn’t see the low board ahead of me and walked right into it. I hit my head. HARD. I hate hitting my head.

The next thing I knew, I was bent over, screaming at the top of my lungs. I screamed, and screamed, and screamed, until I couldn’t. It’s a good thing our closest neighbors are a ways away, or they might have called the local sheriff to come investigate.

All I can say is that it felt really, really, really good to scream. It felt like a mixture of rage and fear, and a few other emotions that must have been lodged pretty deep inside for awhile.

I guess I just needed to scream.

There is a lot to be angry and fearful about right now. So many things out of our control. So many things that need to be addressed and fixed and repaired and built and changed, and most of us feel pretty powerless to do anything about it. Whenever we feel powerless, rage and fear aren’t far behind, and those emotions need to come out somewhere. For me, it was a guttural scream, bending over underneath a fort out in the pine trees.

Sometimes I guess we just need to scream. And then stand up and get back to work loving and helping the people and the world within our reach.

Mox-Nix

When faced with two options, my sister often replies, “Mox Nix”. It comes from the German es macht nichts, and originated with American soldiers stationed in Germany after WWII. The gist of the term is that it really doesn’t matter, or it isn’t that important.

I’ve always loved the term, and how the words feel rolling off my tongue.

If 2020 has taught us anything, it is that there are things that matter, and things that don’t. We’ve also learned, or perhaps, remembered, how little is under our control, and we don’t like that. We’d rather have our hands firmly at the helm thank you, and when we can’t, we get scared, grab for control wherever we can get it, and pick battles that don’t matter with the people that do. .

We want what we want, and we want it now. But there is little joy in such victories, and while we may get what we want, rarely do we get what we need.

Mox Nix can help with that.

Hope As A Practice

Every day we get to choose whether to give

the microphone to hope or fear.

The choice we make is the life we’ll lead.

Bob Goff

Someone recently shared this quote with me, and I couldn’t agree more. The words ring true in my head and my heart and in my experience.

However.

Especially now, there are days when I am in need of the tiniest of victories, and choosing to listen to the voice of hope in the morning is no guarantee that it will stay with me for the day. Fear can ambush me at any moment, and when it does, I have to choose to pry the microphone out of fear’s ferocious grip, and place it firmly back in the hands of hope. And then do it again. Hope is a practice.

Hope isn’t seeing the silver lining in a pit of despair. It is mining for the gold that is found buried deep in the heart of struggle.

Hope isn’t looking at the bright side of dark realities. It is choosing to be a light in dark times.

Hope isn’t passive. As I was reminded by someone recently, it requires something of us. It calls on us not to just choose it, but to work for it. Not to just wait for it, but to watch for it. To pursue it by pushing toward something better.

Like I said. Hope is a practice.

Photo by egil sjøholt from Pexels

The Magician

Fear is a magician. It distorts the truth, and conjures up images of potential disaster to distract us from the present moment. Captivated by fear’s illusions we believe what we see instead of daring to trust ourselves.

It isn’t that fear isn’t real, it’s just that we shouldn’t confuse it with reality.

God's Jar

Last night we gathered to celebrate the life of my dearest friend’s father who passed a month ago at the age of 95. We told stories, ate her lasagna (his favorite) and drank Manhattans (also his favorite), and at the end of the evening I read a piece I wrote a few years ago about a beautiful wooden bowl we received as a wedding present. Life looks different now than when I wrote these words, but they still have a ring of truth to them, and probably always will.

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We have a God Jar in our home. It is a beautiful, hand-turned wooden bowl created by my best friend’s dad. It was a wedding present and I’ve never quite known what to do with it. Until now. It sits on a little round metal table that I found at a junk store somewhere, and I guess it’s kind of like an altar. I like the idea of an altar coming from the Goodwill or a dumpster. It isn’t all churchy and shiny and serious. It is uneven, rusty and beyond imperfect. Like life. 

The God Jar sits on the junk store altar next to a little pot that one of my daughters threw in a pottery class. It isn’t perfect either, so it fits perfectly, and is filled with blank, torn up pieces of paper and a pen. Whenever anyone has something that they need help with, something that is bigger than they are, they write it on a piece of that paper and tuck it in the God Jar. Every day I stop at least once if not a hundred times, put my hand on the God Jar and ask for help with whatever is in there. 

Now, God is not in the jar. It’s not a magic jar. It is just a simple way of remembering to have faith and trust that life will work out. 

 God’s Jar has brought faith to our home in a new way. My girls ask me to put things in the God Jar, and their friends slip notes in there when I’m not looking. I am always putting things in there too, and no matter how many things go into that jar, there is always room for more. Stuff happens when something goes in the jar.  Things in the jar have resolved, grown or gone away. Opportunities have come knocking, solutions have arisen, and cups have runneth over. Jobs have been found and bad relationships left behind. Forgiveness has been extended and health has returned. Strength for one more day has been mustered and next steps have become clear.  

But lately my faith has been sort of shaky. We are facing all kinds of changes and transitions, the future seems sort of rocky, and I can’t see as far down the road as I would like. Rather than walk in faith, I creep in fear. I write down my concerns, fears, hopes and dreams, put them in the jar, and then walk away, but I can still feel the weight of them on my shoulders.. 

Then one day it dawned on me that I might just need to climb in the jar too. Put my whole self in, just like the hokey-pokey.  So I did. I just took one of those little torn up pieces of paper, wrote my name, and dropped it in.  I have to be honest though, ever since I got in the jar with all the other things, life still feels shaky. As if God is shaking me and the stuff in the jar all around. I don’t like the feeling. I feel out of control. And then I remember the hokey-pokey. You put your whole self in and you shake it all around. That’s what it’s all about.  

Pitons

According to Wikipedia, a piton is a metal spike that is driven into a crack or seam in the climbing surface with a climbing hammer, and which acts as an anchor to either protect the climber against the consequences of a fall or to assist progress and aid climbing.

I’ve hiked some steep trails and summited a mountain, but never in conditions that required the use of pitons. I hope I never will, however, if I ever am in a situation where a piton will keep me from free falling down a steep rock face or over a precipice, I will be deeply grateful for those metal spikes driven deep into the crack.

A piton must hold fast, allowing the climber to fall only so far.

A piton becomes a marker for progress made.

A piton is the place from which further progress begins.

A mountain face is not the only place where we suddenly find ourselves in need of an anchor to keep us from falling. Every one of us can fall into old habits, and tumble into long-held stories that are no longer true, or perhaps never were. None of us can make it on our own, and we all need those who will serve as our pitons. Those trusted few with whom we scale the mountains and precipitous cliffs to become our most wholehearted and authentic selves.

Onward.

Upward.

Together.

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I'll Show You Mine

“Every person has a story with the power to crack you wide open.”

Oprah

We are story tellers at heart, and we see ourselves in one another’s stories.

Why is it then, that we are so reluctant to actually tell our stories? The real ones. The messy ones. The ones that don’t have happy endings. The ones where we still haven’t figured it all out yet. I’m not talking about blurting everything out behind the cyber curtain on some social media platform, but in real life conversations, with real people, in appropriate settings.

When I was writing BLUSH: Women & Wine, it took me a long time to talk openly about my love, and my misuse, of wine. This was partly because I knew that I had my own hard work to do to figure it all out. But it was also because there was some shame connected to the reliance I had on my nightly wine to cope with the stress and painful parts of my life, and fear of what others would think if they knew. Shame and fear keep our stories under our carefully crafted wraps.

One day, in the midst of a catch-up phone conversation with a friend, she asked me what I’d been up to. Without thinking, I blurted out my story of the book I was writing about my relationship with wine, and my use of it as a very classy looking coping mechanism. There was a long, awkward silence on the other end of the phone, and I immediately regretted my impulsive vulnerability. But then she said, “You’re talking about me. But I would have been too embarrassed to talk about it if you hadn’t said something first.”

When it comes to our very human stories that connect us with all the other human stories, why wait?

Let’s be the ones to go first.

Crossing The Ditch

Today Gracie-the-chocolate-labradoodle and I wandered over to the irrigation ditch behind our house. We are working to expose her to new experiences, while also trusting her sense of timing in exploring each new encounter that is just beyond her comfort zone. Rather than push or rush her, or try to solve her problems for her, we simply invite her to explore the wilderness on the other side of her confidence threshold.

It was a gorgeous sunny day, and once at the ditch, I gave her plenty of leeway on her leash, but not so much that she could turn tail and run from the challenge before her. The bank is grass covered and a bit steep, so I went first. Stepping into the water, I simply stood there and let her get her bearings. She was clearly cautious and curious all at the same time, but curiosity eventually won out. Offering her a treat that coaxed her a few inches closer, she nervously snatched it up, dipped one foot into the water, didn’t like the feeling, and retreated. But not quite as far away as before.

Climbing up the other bank, I continued to leave enough slack in the leash for her to explore her surroundings but not escape. The distance between us was still a bit too far for her, so I returned back into the water, this time holding the treat a bit farther away. Grabbing it, she made a mad dash back up the bank, but by then I was standing on the other side again, with a firm hold on the leash.

Making her way down the bank one more time, she was obviously gauging the distance across the ditch. Clearly, she wanted to get to the other side, she just didn’t want to get her oversized puppy feet wet. Suddenly, with a daring leap, she cleared it, her feet never touching the water.

Go Gracie!

We strolled along the path heading back to the house, still on the far side of the ditch, which meant she had another little stretch of water to negotiate. Finding a new place to cross, we repeated the same basic process, only much quicker as a result of her growing confidence. Wanting to see if she had it in her to stretch herself even further, I continued to step from one side to the other, inviting her to follow. By the end, of our outing, she was splashing her way right through that water to the other side of the ditch.

Go Gracie!

Anytime we challenge ourselves to “cross the ditch”, to stretch the boundaries that have become comfortable and familiar, we are a lot like Gracie.

We don’t like being pushed or rushed as we explore the wilderness on the other side of our confidence threshold.

We need enough room to navigate but not run away from a new challenge.

We need time to get our bearings.

We will probably feel cautious and curious all at once, but given a little time, curiosity has a chance to win out.

We might not like the feeling when we first dip our toe into new water.

We may find ourselves taking a sudden daring leap to the other side, but still not get our feet wet.

And, if we stretch ourselves just a little further, we will eventually find ourselves splashing our way straight through the water to the other side of the ditch.

Go us!