Buddy Sour

God recently taught me something about myself - again. His messenger to deliver this lesson was a tall, overweight equine with a big head and long ears; Sassy is her name.

I love my horse, Kezzie, dearly, but I have been eager to tackle some trails that Kezzie is just not sure-footed enough to handle. I decided to look into buying a trail mule. When you live in the middle of Ohio, good mules are hard to come by, so off to the internet for an extensive search for a good mule.

After a month of searching, emails, phone calls, and videos I decided to buy Sassy’s Southern Bell, a 14-year-old, 15H molly mule from South Carolina. Sassy was a “been there, done that” type of mule, having been shown western, english, and even some jumping, in addition to trail riding. The only negative I was aware of was that she hadn’t been ridden much in the past few years.

Sassy arrived on Sept. 6th, desperately anxious to get out of the trailer after a two-day trip from South Carolina. It took our two horses a few days to accept this strange-looking equine, but finally everyone was at least tolerating each other.

It  very quickly became obvious that Sassy was extremely dependent on my mare, Kezzie, to the point of becoming nearly frantic when Kezzie was out of her sight for a few seconds. At first I attributed this to her being taken away from her home of many years and transported hundreds of miles to a strange, new environment. She has improved somewhat over the past month, but still has a ridiculous dependency on Kezzie. Why is she so obsessed with this horse, when she should be trusting me as her master?

I immediately saw a Scriptural parallel in how people often become dependent on others in their lives to fulfill them and satisfy their needs, rather than finding fulfillment in God and trusting Him for their security. The person we rely on and put our hopes in may be a spouse, boyfriend or girlfriend, parent, child, or just a friend. Or maybe it’s not a person at all, but something like our money or the government. Whatever the dependency, if we are relying on something else more than on God, it is wrong. The idea for a devotion on this topic floated around in my head for a while.

The funny thing is I saw all of this very theoretically and abstractly for quite a while, but it didn't hit me until the other day how much it applied to me. Intellectually I know that God is the one I need to rely on and that He will take care of me, but my feelings and thoughts don't always line up with that. As a single parent in this financially difficult time, I often become weary of working and struggling just to pay bills each month. (yeah, well it probably wasn’t the best time to buy a mule, I know) Too often lately, my temptation has been to reflect on how nice it would be for someone to come and sweep me off my feet and take over all those worries and responsibilities; then an image of Sassy flashes into my mind and I have to smile.

That’s probably how absurd I look from God’s perspective, desperately trying to latch on to someone or something to save me, rather than turning to the One who is truly in control. There’s a certain sadness too as I watch Sassy clinging to Kezzie, when I want her to give that devotion to me. I’m sure my thoughts and actions have also saddened God. He hasn’t given up on me though and continues to teach me that He is truly all I need.