God's Hand...

What a journey, eh? Thank you so much, each and every one of you, for sticking with my indecision, whining, crying and celebrating these past few months. Wild ride, wouldn't you say?

Five months ago I wasn't sure if I had what it took to get the job done. I prayed. You prayed with me. God answered with a song, Brooks and Dunn's "God Must Be Busy". In the song there is a line that talks about his prayer being nothing more than a Speck Of Sand in the great scheme of things. That's just how I felt...what was the purpose for praying for something so small when we've got wars being fought, children dying and more in this world? But I told God that if I were accepted into the challenge, I'd name my horse Speck of Sand so that I'd remember that He was the reason behind it all.

When Sandy came home, he lacked even more confidence than I did. I remember telling myself (over and over) that this was God's horse, the horse he'd granted me, so it had to be the right horse despite how it appeared things weren't progressing here in the rain.

Then Curt got hurt. Talk about God's timing! Curt had an annuerysm and no way would he have gone to the doctor (in fact he'd ignored the early symptoms) had his ribs not been in such pain. And had he not been in pain, he wouldn't have needed my help to clean stalls and keep horses legged up. You wouldn't generally think that getting thrown from a horse into a wall would be a good thing, would you? But it could have saved his life and it most definitely got Sandy and I a solid foundation. So solid, in fact, that by the time we ended up in Sacramento last week people teased I'd been telling tall tales here regarding Sandy's progress; he definitely looked like a top ten contender.

And then he was lame. I cried. I couldn't believe that we'd gone from being unsure I'd be able to ride, to knowing we had a shot at the top ten, back to not being able to ride. And some folks hinted that perhaps I was doing this to keep the price down at the adoption so I could keep him. That was hard to swallow. I knew that's what it looked like and I'd considered that when I pulled him, and knew as well that his price would be lower as a result. He was on butte which helped, and it was hard to see the pain if you didn't know him. He looked at me with grumpy eyes and he hadn't rolled since Thursday.

When I called Curt and Linda that afternoon to tell them what I'd done, Linda was watching the Belmont Stakes and was telling me that Big Brown was fighting his jockey. I stayed on the phone until after the race and she heard the interview; "The win wasn't worth risking the horse", she repeated after the jockey. I nearly cried. Big Brown had a shot at the triple crown while the world watched, and I was only doing a small challenge with a few thousand people. But our stories were the same. Sandy was more important than the ride.

City Boy'd said he figured we could go no higher than $1000. That night, despite Patti Colbert announcing to everyone that she'd seen my horse walk, jog and loping plus doing flawless simple changes and that she knew he'd have made the top ten if I hadn't pulled him, people only bid against City Boy until we reached our top price...and then the bidding stopped. God had known I would pull my horse rather than risk injury, and that decision kept the price low enough to send Speck Of Sand home.

Back in the beginning, when Darling learned why I'd named Sandy what I had, she told me that in God's eyes no prayer is as small as a speck of sand, and that all our prayers are equally important to Him. With all I learned these past few months, that was the most important. All our prayers are important to God!