Made for this one thing

We just thought we would have more time.

This horse led me to the Love of my life. Dasani was young, wildly alive, and filled with presence. He also had a quirk for bucking that I didn’t know about when I bought him. My second unplanned dismount resulted in broken bones. I needed help with this youngster.

Enter Bill Sullivan, a self-made horse gentler. The day we met, I was intrigued. Here was a man also wildly alive and filled with presence. Even so, that day and the next, it never occurred to me that he would someday offer the love I had yearned for all my life. Even later, when he professed that love, I didn’t believe it. For the longest time, I couldn’t believe such love existed or that I deserved it.

Some words change your life. Like: “I feel I’ve always known you.”

Something in my chest quickened. It was true. For all my resistance, everything about him was familiar and dear, like our souls had known each other long before we met.

(For a taste of his tender generosity read “Fixing Small Things.”)

Now, all these years later, Bill and I have more lines on our faces and silver in our hair. My horse, Dasani, is twenty-three. Yet our hands clasp together perfectly as they always have, as if our palms and fingers were made for this one thing. As if the warmth shared between his skin and mine contains an entire universe of love.

Some words change your life. Like: “The mass shows high probability of malignancy.”

We are still in shock, still reeling that this is possible, still incredulous it is such a deadly kind of cancer. Yet, of course it is possible, like it has been for millions before us. We just thought we would have more time. We thought our twilight years would be spent quite literally riding into the sunset together. We are waiting for the biopsy.

As I sit here at 3 a.m. in the glow of the computer, I remember our wedding on horseback in the wilderness. I rode Dasani, the horse that introduced us. Bill rode his horse, Sunny. During the ceremony, our officiant read 1 Corinthians 13. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

I’m not sure I can write our way through this. I’m not sure I cannot write our way through. Please help us in praying for miracles and healing as we embark to wherever the trail ahead leads us. I am praying for faith and hope. Love is already a given.