Last week I told the site to publish my post. Went back several days later and found it hadn’t published it. Let’s see what this week brings.

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It’s a required course with horses, and something I’ve always struggled with (with people).

Whatever you do, don’t pray for patience. I did for years until I realized how God handles this. He doesn’t just give you patience, he gives you circumstance to learn how to grow patience.

I’ve recently talked about patience in loading a horse, we all have experienced that, but there are so many more areas where patience comes in.

Training is a big area of patience. Some horses grasp the idea quickly, some do not.

You get frustrated and your adrenaline starts pumping. Your energy changes. Your body language changes, and you know that your horse is reading all this and then his energy changes and his fight or flight instinct kicks in. Life goes down hill rapidly after that.

This, however, is not the patience I’m dealing with today. My friend told me a couple of weeks ago that I had much more patience than she has. It’s not so much patience as perseverance. And truly, it’s more determination than perseverance.

My mare Friday injured her leg 25 months ago. The vet said she was done. I told her that I “believed”, and I told myself that every day when I went to treat the leg and wrapped it for two years. She is fine and galloping around the pastures like nothing ever happened. I gave her the two years that another vet had suggested and was just about to start her back to work and wham! a Stromal Abscess in her left eye. So once again she can’t be ridden. I’ve been dealing with this for three months. She goes back 3/19 for a recheck. So I’ve been dealing with four medications six times a day and now we’re down to four medications four times a day. (Still medicating only three four times a day after visit for another month.)

I made up my mind from day one that she was not going to lose this eye, not after two years of wrapping her legs. I’ve had horses who have lost eyes, but I wasn’t giving in to this one. (Not that I gave in to the others either.)

It’s up to you on what matters most. Horses might be one of the best teachers of patience, but only if you, as a student, are willing to learn. In the end, it does pay off big time. The satisfaction of knowing that you beat the odds is so empowering. (I’m waiting for the empowering thing.)

Patience, perseverance, or determination? It doesn’t really matter what label you put on it, the only thing that matters is that you follow through on what “YOU Believe.”