Relationship

It’s all about relationship.

Horses, this Christ-walk, how to be a good human.

It seems so obvious, especially now as we approach the season when God’s greatest miracle came as an underwhelming homeless baby from the wrong town, that God wants us as his children in a relationship so close that he will guide all of our steps. He doesn’t want religion from us, he doesn’t want performance. He doesn’t want us to earn his love, or prove our worth. He just wants us. In a relationship. Where we give and take, lay down and pick up, empty and fill. For that exchange to happen, we need to be close, and honest.

Every day I’m with horses that will be used for ministry. I use the relationship with them to create relationships with others and with Christ.

But how quickly I forget that it’s about relationships. It’s not always on my mind. Often, I’m task oriented in training. Getting a halter on, desensitising to a saddle, teaching to yield to pressure. Or maybe it’s teaching a lesson at youth group, or kid’s church. It becomes just a lesson, just a box to be checked off and not an experience in our relationship. Prayer becomes one-sided, conversations are empty words. Mentoring becomes about plans or discussions and not about simply walking beside my neighbor.

A little dark buckskin mare is reminding me what it’s about.

I’m going to get paid to put some time on her. We’ve got guesses about her amount of training, but I’m beginning to have my doubts about if, when and how much she’s had. I did spend some time with her, got a saddle on, got on her last week. But she wasn’t ready.

I could have kept going. I could have worked under saddle, could have ignored a dozen red flags that I am having a harder and harder time ignoring.

So, Thursday, I locked her up in the smaller pen and decided to ask her to come to me.

In a relationship, listening is far more important and valuable than speaking, moving, and doing.

I stood in the middle of the pen and she ran around me. She stopped only to sniff at the gate, trying to find a way out. Simply looking at her was enough to send her off. The 2 other horses in the pen simply stood and watched. She went around and around, one ear on me, but otherwise keeping the widest distance possible. I let the other two horses (distractions) out and began focusing my attention on her hind end. I was asking her to connect with me, with the least amount of pressure. When she slowed down a bit, I asked her to turn her attention to me by clicking, putting a little more pressure on her. She would take off. First one way, then the other.

And then she slowed.

I kept the pressure the same. Waiting. Listening.

Once, when she stopped, she looked at me. Taking the pressure off, I turned away. Relief. In a moment she was off again. But her head wasn’t as high, those two or three inches of tension that left her neck signaled she was beginning to understand. I was simply asking for a connection. For her to look at me. She stopped again, I backed up, let out a deep breath. Her head dropped more, her trot around me loosened again. We danced a little more, as I put a bit more pressure on when she turned away and backed off more as she turned in.

And then it happened. 15 minutes into the game, she circled around again, dropped her head, walked within 5 feet of me and stopped.

She had only ever been caught by being forced into a corner or small space and a halter hastily tied on.

I had dropped the halter 5 minutes into the circling. Even now I wasn’t sure I wanted to pick it up.  You only have 15 days to start this horse, they want to be riding it regularly and safely after that. I needed to get a halter on, bring her inside and keep working the saddle.

But would I do what was best for Rosita, or best for the schedule and the intended outcome?

We danced a few more circles. She would come around to me in half a circle now, walk up, and began to give a lick and chew, a sign that the tension was leaving her jaw, that she was loosening up, that she was beginning to think.

I needed to think, too. I went and picked up the halter from the dirt and ignored her for a moment. She trotted to the gate, stuck her head over the rail, sniffed the ground again, paced back and forth.

I sat down on an overturned bucket, thankful for the sun but feeling the cool wind.

She left the safety of the gate, half circled, and walked up behind me. I didn’t move. I felt her nose come over, the sweet warmth of her breath. Turning around a bit to watch her, I saw a different horse. Her entire face read relaxation. Safety. Ears cocked lazily, her eyes were soft. Her muzzle twitched as stress left her body. A back leg cocked.

Here we are. In relationship. Listening. It gets you there slower, sometimes agonizingly slowly, but it gets you there for real.

God waits like that.

Waits for us to run out our irrational fear, our mistrust, our trying-it-every-other-way, our comfort in sin, our complete ignorance to the other Way. He puts a bit of pressure on us: conviction, the testimony of others, consequences of our actions. But he always waits and listens. He is in the quiet, in the questions, in the pull of holy curiosity. He is gentleness and patience, perfect eternal patience. He is always here, a breath away from us or the breath within us, but we are often so busy looking to the outside and looking away that we don’t see or feel or hear him. Until the running stops making sense. Until we look for another way. Until, like the prodigal son sitting in abject poverty, we remember the source of life.

Going forward, I have to think of the relationship above all else. I will have to balance the asking with the listening, the task and the reward. The goal is still to have Rosita be a riding horse. But I have to keep my training within the boundries of a healthy relationship.

Above all, the relationship is the holy and the sacred and how God comes alive in this world. We know we are to love like Jesus. At the very root of that is a love of absolute surrender. Giving our lives for others. Giving time and money and serving others is part of it, but the greater part is the motivation. God sent Jesus so he could be one of us, so he could have the most authentic relationship with us. So he could physically sit down and eat with sinners, invite the least of these to him, heal the wounded and bear our sins so that we could be reconciled to him. Made right. Brought back.

Going forward, with people and with horses, I’ll keep Rosita in my mind. I’ll keep the relationship in front. In everything I do, I should be strengthening relationships. First with God, then with each other.

That is the holy, come to earth.