Out of my distress I called on the Lord; the Lord answered me and set me free. The Lord is on my side; I will not fear. Psalm 118:5-6
God always answers prayers, sometimes it just takes a bit for us to recognize that.
It’s been busy times here on the farm. For the most part, I’ve been incredibly grateful for the subzero temperatures; frozen ground means no mud. The snow on the ground looks beautiful too. And then the thaw came…
We’ve got water management problems on our property after all of the building and landscape changes we’ve done this year. Solving that, and putting in some drainage tile is absolutely on our list for 2022. But that doesn’t help right now. Last week we had a major warm up (loved it) and then some rain (oh no!). All of that on frozen ground meant a lot of water, like I mean A LOT of water, on our property. Unfortunately a lot of that water was in our horse paddocks.
You know what doesn’t go well together? Horses and ice. And when we got another quick and hard freeze, our paddocks became mini frozen lakes. ACK!!! No turn-out for horses means sad horses, and sad horses means sad Meredith. I’m very blessed to have the indoor riding arena so each group of two got two runs per day, but it didn’t help me to feel better, because I knew that they really needed the movement of being outside during the day.
I don’t know why it takes me longer at times to bring my problems to God, but I think it’s because I allow myself to be convinced that this isn’t really a problem worthy of God’s time and attention. But who am I to tell God what’s important? So finally Saturday night I told God how I was feeling.
How many times has God used the people in my life to solve my problems? I ended up chatting with a horse friend later that day (named Karen) who suggested we salt the paddocks – great idea! Why didn’t I think of that? We salted, and the next day I was able to get the boys all out in the afternoon for some fresh air.
That night we got a deep freeze and snow – like the kind of weather even salt won’t help with. So now I had snow on top of ice!!! Treacherous for humans, I can’t even describe how dangerous that is for spindly legged, creatures with an innate desire to kill/injure themselves. Back to my friend who suggested plowing my paddock.
Thank you Jesus! I plowed my paddock and by then it had warmed up enough for the salt to work again, so the boys had a nice, clean, wet, but non-icy place to spend their afternoon.
The crazy part about this is that it wasn’t until this morning that I was finally able to recognize God’s hand in all of this. His answer to my prayer was my friend. How many times has God answered prayers through the people in your life and you missed seeing it?
Thanks be to God for reminding me that if it’s important enough for me to worry about, then it’s important enough to bring it to him in prayer.
Have a fabulous day and God bless!
Meredith
finchmeredith1 