Loving Perfectly

By Anita P. Seavey

   The sun was beginning to set below the tree tops and a crisp breeze stirred the air seeming to hold the promise of a coming autumn. A scattering of dried leaves swirled across the ground and crunched beneath horse hooves; hooves fighting stubbornly to break into a trot when I was just as stubbornly telling them “No”. 


     I remember the moment when I first threw my arms around the dream I had been waiting and saving for. When I bought  my little mare, she was absolutely perfect. She was an appaloosa like I had always wanted, had a sweet, yet entertaining personality, and promised to become a beautiful horse in the years to come. I bought her with the hard-earned money I had saved for the past four years and finally had my very own horse.
     Winter melted into spring and with it came a few changes. My little mare suddenly grew and began to fill out, while her coat changed from its roan spotting to a well-dappled, glossy white coat seemingly over night. She was young, but still willing to learn and seemed the perfect horse for me.
     Unfortunately, like most humans, I also noticed the flaws. My mare drug her hooves at a trot, nipped me when she felt like it, enjoyed going backwards because it was the closest thing to stop and suddenly seemed not so perfect.
     We had plenty of good days, when her pretty head would lift at my call and she would trot to the gate. She would listen to my cues in a heart-beat and her lope became blissfully smooth. Then we had our bad days, where she stalked away at the sight of a rope in my hands, flattened her ears at the simple command to lunge and fought against the reins so that I finally walked away with my arms aching and my mind taunting that I would never get it right.

     I could feel today becoming one of those days.
She was fighting me on the turns and both of us were growing stiff and uptight with every lap of the round pen. Granted, I hadn't rode her for several days, but she should have known better than to bite my leg as I mounted.
     As the sun dipped below the horizon, I finally took note of the growing darkness. I sighed and dismounted, unsaddling and brushing Reba down while I reprimanded myself for what felt like an unsuccessful training session. But before I led Reba to her pasture, I climbed on bareback in an attempt to end the ride well.  It took a few taps from the end of my rein and my heels, but once Reba started moving I took a deep breath and immediately felt the mare beneath me relax. I grabbed a fistful of mane and dropped the reins on her neck as we free trotted around the pen, simply enjoying the ride until the sun disappeared.
     When we finally drew to a halt, Reba rested her head over the top of the corral panel and yawned. I smiled a little, then leaned back and laid down across her back. Reba shifted beneath me and I felt her cock a sleepy back hoof as I stared up at the sky. In the deepening twilight, a single star glinted softly in the vast expanse. I gazed at it and involuntarily imagined a wish.
     “I wish that every day with my horse could be just like I want it. Perfect.”
     Even as the thought entered my mind, another followed. They were words I had read, though where I had seen them or who wrote them I couldn't remember.
     “Love is not loving only the perfect, but rather learning to love the imperfect perfectly.”
     I thought about the words for a long time. Maybe to some, a horse has nothing to do with this, but to me it did. Reba wasn't perfect, she never could be. But I loved her because she was mine.
     I stared at the glittering sky and my breath caught a little. Loving perfectly. Wasn't that what Jesus did for me? Why the Maker of all creation calls me by name and says, “You are Mine.”
     I, the imperfect and He, the perfect love.
     This may not have been the moment when every problem I experienced with my horse was solved. But as I stared at the deep blue expanse of sky filled with stars and felt Reba sigh with contentment, I thanked God for loving me for the imperfect person that I am, just as He always has and always will.
     Perfectly.