Horses

The next best thing (according to my girls) to owning horses, is having good friends who own horses. Of course, my husband prefers the latter as there is no hay to buy, corrals to build, or whining about whose turn it is to muck out the stall. We have been very blessed to have good friends who not only own a few horses, but who have raised two amazingly sweet daughters that love to indulge our children’s love of everything “horse-y”.

Recently, while we were all “gettin’ our cowboy on” around our friends’ corral, I was struck by just how much the girls had grown. Not mine so much as our friends’ daughters. One just graduated from high school and the other is hot on her heels. What really got me, though, is that we met these girls when they were about my oldest daughter’s age, and now here they are, on the cusp of adulthood. It made me wonder who we are befriending now that will be present in the lives of our children when they’re that age. What toddler friends do we have that will be climbing all over my kids later, like mine do with our friends’ girls? Am I teaching my children to be patient, encouraging, and inquisitive, so that they can teach those traits to the younger ones later? I hope we haven’t lost our sense of urgency when it comes to raising Godly children who see everyone around them as precious and cherished in the sight of our glorious Heavenly Father!