Today, I went out after planning to ride Cherish and knowing exactly where we were going to go. I was so focused on what we were going to do, even where we were going to have what transitions of gait, that I unfortunately chose not to live in the moment.

I walked up to Cherish with halter in hand, completely anticipating what we were going to do. At first, she followed me, but as I began to roll out everything that we were going to do to her, she lost interest, shrugged, and left. At first, I began to wonder why she hated my idea. Then I began to take it personally, that maybe she just didn't want to be with me. Of course, all of this was quite the dramatic. I did end up getting her to the barnyard, but a second before she did so, I knew that she was going to pull away and trot off. I didn't have her lead on yet, but hey ho... she did.

To make a long story short, I eventually got so frustrated with trying to get her to follow me (which she usually will) that I said to her in my head, very exasperated, "Fine! I failed today, you win, would you like to go back to the pasture now?" Much to my dismay, her face was not smug as I had imagined it would be - but knowing and even slightly sad, the tender kind of sad. She told me that this would teach me something, something important.

I began rolling different things through my head, having myself (conscious) trying to talk to myself (subconscious) and my self or soul. The first two began to converse and relate quite easily, and began to figure things out and learn things... They began to pull things from my head of past teachers or past experiences that had taught me, but neither of them had come up with an answer. My self finally pitched in as both of the other two were running out of gas. It wanted to go read The Shack. I complied, not really having a problem with it and figuring that it would give me a break from all of that thought.

The section that I read next in the book was about how humans had dropped to such a level that rather than love things, they were always fighting for power and a vague sort of independence that was not independence at all. It began to stroll through the park of freedom, and gardens, and how everything beautiful is beautiful - and that nothing is good or bad. It put the impression upon me that I had been trying so hard to get everything right, get everything good, and get everything to be perfect and train Cherish just the way that I wanted her to be trained... that I had forgotten to love, to be with, to know is beautiful, to be open and enjoy.

I sat there for a few more moments in wonder of what I had learned today from this little book that I had originally carried a very small amount of faith in. But look here - everything can teach you something, can it not?

Love.