I lay on the snow covered ground gasping for air. I could
hear someone moaning. Was it me? What had just happened? The pain! Oh the pain!
`I’m dying’ I thought. `Why can’t I move? Am I paralyzed?’
Just seconds before I had been doing the farm chores,
dumping out some grain for the horses. The lead mare chased the others away
from the first pile. The second horse in the ranks chased off the two young
ones from the second, and then decided she should have the third pile too. That’s
when I had approached her with a hand outreached to touch her on the shoulder
and she had decided I was a threat to her dinner. In less time than it takes to
tell you this, she had spun and kicked. I remember seeing a blur of the hoof,
weather it was coming or going, I don’t know. All the reaction time I had was
to squeeze my eyes shut. When I opened them, I was lying on the ground, about 5
or 6 feet back from where I had been standing, unable to move, and my right
side was in intense pain.
It was past 7:30 on a cold January morning. Sat. the 17th
2004. No one else was awake. We had all stayed up late the night before
visiting with an uncle and aunt who were staying at my grandparents. Everyone
was still in bed, but I had faithfully gotten up to do the chores at the
regular time, and now I lay in the snow with an unknown injury wondering,
praying, that I could get help.
`I’m going to freeze before they find me! It will be hours
before anyone gets up and realizes that I haven’t come in from chores!’
How cold was it? -25 maybe?
`Maybe Grandpa and Grandma saw what happened. Their light
was on. But they would have done something by now if they had seen.’
`I have to get up!! I have to get help!! God help me get
up!’
`But what if I’m paralyzed?’ I had read somewhere that if
you can wiggle your toes and fingers, you knew you were ok. So I tried, and
sure enough I was able to wiggle my toes and fingers; my left hand still held
on to the grain pail. But getting up was another problem alltogether. The pain
was bad.
I tried to move but couldn’t. I was still too winded. It was
a very long time before I was able to get up, and even then it was with
difficulty. Since my right side hurt, I tried turning onto my left side, but
that did not work since it seemed to pull on my right side. So I rolled to my
right, getting my arm under me so I could get on my hands and knees and then
stand. I was bent over in the middle unable to straighten up because of the
pain. I stumbled through the snow to the rail gate. Somehow I managed to maneuvre
through the rails. Since I was bent over in half, all I had to do was get my
legs up and over.
I stumbled on towards the house, through the 12 in. snow.
Our dog sat at his dish and watched me walk by as if I did that every morning. The
grain pail still swayed from my hand.
When I reached the house I was determined to wake someone.
So instead of being quiet like usual, I banged and slammed the doors, hoping to
arouse help. Upon slamming the door behind me I threw the grain pail in the
corner. Leaning heavily on the door, gasping for air, I could see the clock up
in the living room. It was well after 8. I had been lying in the snow for a
good 20-30 min!
You know how quiet the house can be in the morning when
everyone is sleeping? That’s how quiet it was that morning, except for my
racket. I heard my mom, down in their room, mumbling to my dad about how noisy
I was. Good. I had woken them.
I collapsed on the stairs leading up from the porch to the
living room. I wanted to call for help but had no strength or air. After a few
minutes of panting I was able to call out weakly, “Daddy!”
I heard the covers whip back and my dad’s feet hit the
floor. He came running. When he merged from the stairway and looked down at me,
he knew something was very wrong. “What happened?”
“Poko kicked me!”
The moment I said it, the tears came. Up until than I hadn’t
really thought about what had happened. I had just been focused on survival and
getting help. Now reality hit home. But because I had been kicked in the ribs
and had the wind knocked out of me so severely, crying was not good. For the
next hour I sobbed and was unable to stop.
I had 2 or 3 ribs kicked out of place and possibly internal
bruising. Chiropractor treatments were required twice a week for the next
month, and as for the internal stomach problem, I was unable to wear a belt for
about 5 years, or it would cause me to get sick to the stomach. Car trips were
bad also as I would get motion sickness almost instantly on any lengthy car
ride.
Horses were no longer an interest for me, unless it was in a
story or drawings. I had no desire to go near them. My older cowboy brother,
Andrew wanted to help me overcome the fear from that accident, but every time I
was near a horse, my chest would tighten with uncontrollable fear and I would
get jumpy. I later learned that I had the same symptoms as someone having a
panic attack.
It was an inner battle as to if I wanted to overcome this
fear. With my brother’s help I was making progress until one summer evening
when my sister and I took a ride on our old gentle mare. She may be old and
gentle, but she very quickly decided that she did not want me sitting behind
the saddle and proceeded to buck us off. My sister was the heroin of the hour
as she road the horse to a standstill and then fell off, while I went flying on
the second buck. This was about two years after my first injury, and it was
finally healing the doctor said, but this second injury jammed my lower back as
well as put my left hip out of place.
My brother soon moved away to go to school and them met his
wife and married and did not return to live at home. So I resolved that I was
just meant to be this way.
`Why God?’ I wondered. `Why did you let me have that
accident?’ He could have prevented it. On the other hand, it could have been
much worse. The horse could have kicked me in the head, or I could have had a
life threatening injury. He did protect me from that. But now I had to live with this fear.
Upon visiting my brother at the school he attended, he took
my siblings for a horse ride. When they were done, he asked me if I would like
to get on the horse. I sort of wanted to, but I had conditions.
“You can’t let go of the horse,” I told him.
“I can’t promise you that,” he told me.
I didn’t like that answer.
“Do you trust me?”
I didn’t answer at first.
“Do you trust me?”
Of course I trusted my brother. It was me I didn’t trust.
He had me rub the horse down before I got on, even walking
behind the horse. Tears rolled down my face. I was emotionally in turmoil.
The ride went fine until he told me to close my eyes.
“I can’t!” I told him.
“You have to. Do you trust me?”
I did and nothing happened. I didn’t get bucked off. I was
perfectly safe. He let go of the horse and had me take the reins. Everything
was fine.
God was asking me “Do you trust me? Do you trust me?” but
just as I struggled in that moment to trust my brother, when I did and yet
didn’t, so I was struggling to trust God with all this.
We do that a lot, don’t we? “Well God, I trust you in area
1, 2 and 3, but in 4, well, you let me down, so uh I’ll just hang on to that
one, because I can’t give it into your all powerful, all knowing hands.”
Back home there was no one to help me continue working on
this problem with fear of horses. So again I resolved I was just going to be
like this the rest of my life.
Until the summer of 2010.
Through circumstances that could only be divinely put
together, I ended up at Blue Bronna Wilderness camp. A Bible camp set in the
foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Although
they have other wilderness activities, such as rock climbing and repelling,
canoeing, hiking, etc… the main activities revolve around… horses.
When I went there, I told them I couldn’t do anything with
the horses. At first they didn’t give me an option. All staff needed to know
how to run or help in every area of the camp. So during staff training they
took us to the pen and got us all on horses to see or make sure we had adequate
horsemen skills. I knew how to ride, I knew quite a bit about horses. I grew up
on a farm, my brother was a cowboy, and yet, put me on a horse and I would
freeze.
That’s exactly what happened during staff training. I
couldn’t do what I needed to do. They put me on a good old slow horse named Denver, but fear was ever
present.
We often wonder why God gives us challenges to work with,
but we often forget to be thankful for the people he puts in our paths to help
us along the way. So this is where I’m going to brag on some people, and in
doing so thank the Lord for putting people in my life when I needed it.
My brother was married and living far away, so he could no
longer help me, but God brought these wonderful people into my life at Blue
Bronna to help me, because it is never God’s will that we live in fear. We
don’t have to live in fear!
“For God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power,
and of love and of a sound mind.” 2Timothy1:7
But you say, he let you go through that terrible accident.
Yes, but when he allows those hard things to happen, there is a bigger picture
that we do not see.
God was saying to me. I want you to trust me in every area
of your life, and you have fears that you are not willing to surrender to me,
so I’m going to allow this horse accident in order to teach you about fear and
what it is doing to you and what I can do for you!
So when I got off that ride during staff training, I was
emotionally finished. I kept my head down so my cowboy hat would hide my face,
because the tears were flowing. A man who I call Papa Jim was there and he
noticed my trauma. After a hug he sent me to the kitchen where his wife Martha
was and I received another hug and then as the staff were coming back to the
dining hall for another session around the tables, I hid in the pantry.
That’s were Brother Josh found me. He was responsible for
putting me on a trustworthy horse and was concerned that the ride had not gone
well for me. He sat there while I cried. Tracy the only other staff girl at the
camp during that time, came to check on me too, and they ask if they could pray
for me. I said yes. Then Josh sat there until I calmed down, and then he ask me
how he could help. The Lord provides… always. Here my brother Andrew was
hundreds of miles away and could no longer help me, and yet the Lord had
provided another brother for this cause and a couple I consider second parents
as well as a whole body of staff that came around me, supporting me and willing
to help me be an OVERCOMER!
Papa Jim challenged me one day with, “Are you praying about
this?”
To be honest, I wasn’t really. I would say “God help me,”
but I really wasn’t putting it in HIS all powerful hands.
“Because if Satan can defeat you in this area, he will in
other areas as well,” Papa Jim told me.
I was shocked. What did Satan have to do with a fear of
horses? And yet it makes sense. God dose not give us a spirit of fear. That
means it comes from the enemy. Satan wants us to live our lives in fear. Fear
of tomorrow, fear that we won’t have a job or enough money to buy food, or a
place to live, etc… He doesn’t want us to put it in God’s hands. He wants us to
live in fear instead of trusting God.
In my case I had another fear that I was being defeated in
as well. That fear was of people, and being in front of people. It came from a
bad church experience where our family was not accepted and in a way, shunned.
To this day I do not fully understand why people treated us badly, but I have chosen
to leave it in the passed and forgive. At this point in time I thought it was
forgiven, and yet I still hung on to this fear that was a result of the bad
experience. I wasn’t trusting God.
We do that a lot, don’t we? “Well God, I trust you in area
1, 2 and 3, but in 4, well, you allowed this bad thing to happen, so uh I’ll
just hang on to that one, because I can’t give it into your all powerful, all
knowing hands.”
I continued to struggle for some time, but I trusted my new
brother and knew he would never put me on a horse that I couldn’t handle. He
also had me go out with them for chores again and again when I didn’t want to,
and had me tie in one or two horses for feeding and then I could leave the pen.
There were three black horses that had injuries that needed care, and again my
new brother had me be an assistant when he or another staff member treated
them. Eventually the panic attacks subsided. The fear was finally gone. And
before the summer was out, I had faced my other fear as well, and shared my
story at the camp fire in front of campers.
It’s never easy. Sometimes we just can’t understand God’s
plan. We’re only a tiny corner of a big painting. God sees the whole picture
and we can only see our surroundings. And yet we are called to trust Him.
Because if we don’t, we live in bondage.
“For I know the plans I have for you” declares the Lord,
“plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a
future.” Jeremiah 29:11
“Do you trust me?” God asks.
Because if we don’t, we are missing out on a big adventure.
Once we give God total control, once we surrender our fears, or anger, or
anxieties, our burdens, or sickness, and the scars and baggage from the past,
only then do we have freedom. Only then can we live to our full potential.
“God I give it all to you. Forgive me for my fear and not
trusting you. I want true freedom!”
“Do you trust me?” He asks.
I take His hand and I step forward.
S.L. Kliever
