Flash

by Rachel Anne Ridge

  Flash approved the stack of four-by-four posts that were awaiting stain and assembly, but found fault with the rope that had tied them together, which was now carelessly tossed aside. He picked it up with his teeth and shook it vigorously in front of me. He was right: Ropes shouldn’t be left around, waiting for someone to trip on them. Chastened, I took the rope from his mouth, looped it around my arm, and hung it on a nail.

  Post after post. It felt like the job of staining them took forever. But Flash hung in there, keeping me company and offering silent suggestions. A tail swish here, an ear twitch there. He guzzled the last sip of my coffee, then stepped on the Styrofoam cup when he was through. He bit off a chunk of the cup and let it dangle from his lips in comic relief. I can’t say he was a whole lot of help with my project, but I began to see something about him that made me understand this idea of serving.

  Tom’s joking comment was all wrong: Flash wasn’t completely worthless.

  He was just serving in other ways.

  Flash was serving up some of the best sermons I’d ever heard . . . all without saying a single word.

  Those biblical donkeys. Meghan and her friends. Chris Kyle. Ordinary characters from ordinary towns, whose service to others made them extraordinary. Humble ones who had found what they were made to do. They served in obscurity, looked for no personal glory, and simply gave of themselves.

  They walked.

  They did what was asked.

  They did what donkeys and people do best: They served.

  In the process of serving, they bestowed value on those they served.

  And in the act of giving, they changed the world. They became part of God’s unfolding, amazing grace.

  I realized that God takes regular people— unassuming individuals who are willing to play supporting roles—and uses them in His grand story that’s being played out on eternity’s stage. He takes those who are willing to be saddled up, loaded down, and given the task of serving, and He puts them in places where their abilities can best be used.

  Maybe you’re not asked to do something noteworthy or remarkable. Maybe you are simply called to walk alongside someone for eighty miles. To be a friend to someone who needs a friend. Or to do that one kind thing that no one will ever know you did. Maybe it’s washing a needy woman’s laundry. Maybe it’s helping her shower. Maybe it’s arranging flowers at a small funeral in a tiny chapel. Maybe it’s working at a post overseas, away from family and friends, for months on end. Maybe it’s changing diapers, washing dishes, helping with homework, being a scout leader, or mowing an elderly neighbor’s yard.

  This is what we are made for.

  To serve.

  To love.

  To give.

  And I could see it so clearly.

  Being part of His grace story means allowing your life to be bookended by two donkey rides. You enter and you exit, in humble service. It means that you are defined by what you give, not by what you have. Your life is marked not by talent, but by commitment. Not by beauty, but by sturdy hooves and a willing heart.

  “Be a service animal. You are made to serve in love.”

  I wrote the words in my journal, my fingers espresso-colored from the project I had just finished. I knew it would take days for the stain to work itself out from under my fingernails. Oh well. I turned my hands over and raised my palms up in a silent prayer. Flash stepped forward to see if there was anything edible cupped inside, then looked up at me in inquiry.

  “Baby, there’s nothing here for you.” I shook my head and paused for a moment, wondering if he’d understand. “I’m . . . I’m giving these hands to God right now.” Rough and stained, small and empty. But ready to work, willing to give. Flash nuzzled my palms and nodded in agreement, his brown eyes upon me and soft ears pricked forward. He blinked his dark lashes, and I put my arms around his neck.

  This donkey. This service animal. This God who whispered through him.

  “Let me serve others in love, the way I was made to do.” My prayer floated past the corrugated metal roof and gnarled tree branches and into the winter sky above.

  Be a service animal.

  You are made to serve in love.

  There was change in the wind. Not nickels and dimes floating through the air, because imagine how much it would hurt if you got pelted by random coins.

  No, the type of change that blew in was different. It felt like a chilly March morning, all gray and damp, when you’re outside in your jacket with your fingers tucked into your sleeves and shoulders hunched with chin down against the wind. And out of nowhere, there is a flicker of dappled sunlight that falls on your furrowed forehead, and it feels warm for a tiny moment before skittering away. Did I really feel that? Or did I imagine it? No, those clouds are too heavy for the sun to break through.

  But then, a bit later, you feel that sun on your face again, this time for a couple of seconds, just long enough for you to uncurl your fingers to try to catch it before it’s gone. It, too, darts away, but you know you felt it. You had to squint in the brightness, and now there is a funny pattern on the insides of your eyelids from the unexpected shaft of light. And even though the rest of the day is still gray and damp and chilly, you feel a tiny bit hopeful and happy inside because you experienced those two fleeting moments (well, maybe just one because the first one could have been your imagination).

  Suddenly you think about Easter eggs and the fact that you haven’t used up all the firewood and haven’t worn your cute boots enough this winter. You realize you should have put tulip bulbs in the refrigerator weeks ago, and it’s already too late if you want to have blooms this year. The Christmas wreath that somehow never got packed up with the rest of the holiday decor (you were okay with leaving it out because it seemed “wintery” and not too “Christmasy,” and you also didn’t feel like climbing into the attic to put it away) now seems horribly out of place. Spring is upon us. We can’t have a fake pine wreath on the door!

  You think about all this, even though it’s just as cold and miserable out as it was ten minutes ago. You couldn’t wait for a hint of sunshine and a break in the clouds to signal a new season, but now that it’s here, you realize you aren’t even close to being ready for it.

  That’s what one waft of change (maybe two, depending on how you count them) can do.

  I stood at the kitchen window and watched Grayson hit golf balls into the field just beyond the front yard. He lined up his driver, shifting weight between feet and taking a couple of short swings to center the ball on his club. His tongue worked his lower lip in concentration. His arms swung the club back in classic golf form. Whack! The ball flew out over the tall grass and into the oaks along the dry creek bed.

  Beau, who once loved retrieving balls, sat in quiet repose nearby, content with being an armchair athlete these days. His hips and declining eyesight kept him sidelined, but he never complained. Both Gray and Beau were getting older, but only one of them was getting bigger and stronger with each year. The other took to napping and tail wagging as forms of exercise. Grayson reached down and tried to talk Beau into fetching, but he wasn’t too keen on leaving his comfy spot on the grass to futilely search for a ball in the thicket.

  “I think I’m going to set up a practice area for Gray in the barn.” Tom’s voice drifted over my shoulder as he came up behind me to see what was happening. “He’s really motivated to get good at it, and he wants to practice his swing as much as he can. But he’s losing so many balls in the field out there, and it’s frustrating trying to find them.” He scratched his chin. “I’ve got some netting that we could hang across the opening. Then all we’d really need to do is make a little tee-off area, and we’d be set.”

  This sounded simple enough, so the boys went to work. Of course, Flash was on hand to oversee the project. No telling how they would have messed it up otherwise. He watched as they raised the netting into place and secured it on the top and sides. Half of the three-sided barn was open but covered by the tin roof; this would
allow Grayson to stand inside, out of the elements, to practice.

  Flash had little to say about the proceedings, although we noted his agitation when the teeing green was placed in the center of the open area. A piece of plywood covered with artificial turf, it would make a good place for Grayson to work on his swing. Flash sniffed the surface and nibbled at the corner with his teeth.

  “Flash, that’s not real grass, you silly.” We chuckled at him and then became slightly puzzled when his front hoof came down on it with a thud. He blew hard through his nostrils and stamped once again.

  “Hey, buddy,” Tom soothed him. He moved close to Flash and ran his hand along his back, then leaned on his shoulders to get him to step back. Tom looked him in the eye. “You’re not telling me you’re objecting to the golf stuff in here, are you?”

  Flash shook his ears as if to show his indifference and then turned on his heel and moseyed out. I guess he was just having some fun with us.

  Anxious to try out his new practice area, Grayson awoke early the next morning to get a few swings in before school. How handy to have everything all set up! He hurried out to the barn.

  Minutes later he was back, a strange look on his face. “Mom, the barn has been vandalized! You need to come and see this.”

  I followed him outside and stopped in my tracks at the sight.

  The turf-covered plywood tee had been destroyed. It was dragged off to the side, dented and covered with dirt. In its place, someone had cleared the layers of loose dirt and wood shavings, exposing the hard ground. The netting had been torn on one side and was hanging limply from the upper beam. An overturned chair lay in the corner. It looked as if a tornado had blown through.

  But the coup de grâce was right in front of us. It was a pile of donkey poop, smack in the middle of the dirt floor.

  A calling card, if you will.

  This was the work of one angry donkey.

  It suddenly came to me. Oh my. Just like the Christmas boxes. How could we have forgotten? A few years earlier, after the holidays, I had packed up the decorations and put the boxes in the barn’s open area for temporary storage. Flash had waited until he thought no one was looking before attacking the boxes. We heard the sound of cardboard breaking and the tinkling of ornaments being smashed before we realized what was happening. Good-bye, 1989 Hallmark Snoopy ornament and untold number of lights.

  And then there was the Workbench Fiasco. How quickly it had been erased from our memories. But now that you mention it, who could forget the mayhem that ensued when a worktable was introduced to the stall area before the barn renovation took place? The stall was unused. Flash’s name was not over the door. Nobody had claim to it. It was a perfectly logical place to set up shop for the various projects we had going on.

  That is, logical to everyone except a certain long-eared, opinionated member of the equine family, who shall go unnamed. The table was at the perfect height for a large, fuzzy muzzle to sniff and inspect everything. One easy swipe of the nose, and it could all be overturned and knocked to the ground. The tools, the wood, the papers, the measuring tape, the work gloves. In and out, a smooth operation by an experienced vandal.

  And how is it that we did not consider the New Fence Situation? Tom tried repeatedly to run a new fence around a small section of the pasture in which he had created a hockey training area for the teams he coached. He made stations out of synthetic ice that had been donated to him so the players could practice shooting pucks in what is called “dryland training.” He did not need a six-hundred-pound donkey walking across the synthetic ice or pooping in inconvenient locations. Or moving the synthetic ice sheets or nibbling at the targets. But somehow Flash managed to sneak through the barricades and magically appear out of nowhere in the cordoned-off area. He’d nonchalantly graze, as if nothing were out of the ordinary. If he couldn’t stop the change from happening, at least he could pretend it didn’t affect him.

  Then there was the Utility Trailer Incident, which we won’t go into here, except to quietly mention that Flash didn’t appreciate having it parked near his favorite roll spot in the pasture. And also that he “unloaded” (which, in this instance, means “forcibly removed by means of chomping into, dragging, and dumping out”) the contents of the trailer to get to the bag of feed at the bottom.

  It’s safe to say that Flash welcomes change, just as long as nothing is different or altered in any way.

  “Too much change for one day.” Hands in pockets, Tom assessed the golf carnage and delivered his pronouncement. “We should have done this gradually.” He pulled the tattered tee platform from beneath the dirt to mend it and stapled the net back in place. I shoveled the “calling card.” We would try again.

  Next day, same thing. Tee kicked and buried under dirt, net torn down, roll spot cleared, chair overturned, poop pile front and center. At least Flash was consistent. And, apparently, regular. Oddly, he always looked just as surprised as everyone else each morning when we came in to inspect the damage.

  “Don’t look at me,” he shrugged with a phhhht, his lips vibrating like a motorboat. As if there could be anyone else. There was no remorse. Only a slight twitch of his large ears that belied his smug claim of innocence.

  We continued in this pattern on and off for days until the destruction gradually ceased. Flash never really liked the golf equipment in there, but after a while he was content with merely kicking dirt over the tee and walking over it whenever he felt like it to show his disdain for the changes. He wanted everything to stay exactly as it had been, with himself in control of his little world.

  And I couldn’t blame him. I felt the same way.

  Because things were shifting in my little world outside the barn. Somehow, Grayson grew taller than me, and I wasn’t sure when that had happened, exactly. His feet hung off the end of his bed at night, and when I tucked him in, I noticed how his frame now filled the full-size mattress. He would be heading off to college soon, and there were applications to fill out, tests to take, and lots of new things to experience. I was excited for him but suddenly felt uncertain about who I’d be without children under my care. My chest was heavy and light at the same time.

  Lauren and Robert were hoping to start a family soon, and my head nearly exploded at the thought. It was just a few years ago that I had grieved over the loss of Collin and desperately wanted to fill the vacancy in my heart with a new baby, and now . . . now my oldest child was thinking of having babies of her own.

  Meghan, grown and married, was teaching elementary music. Such happy, wonderful changes, but if I’d had a box to stomp on or a chair to overturn, I might have done it.

  A shaft of sunlight on a furrowed brow. Fingers clenched in sleeves, refusing to unfurl.

  An e-mail landed in my in-box. It was from a complete stranger, asking if I would be interested in speaking at her church’s women’s retreat in Illinois.

  “I’ve been reading your blog, and your words have touched me. I wonder if you might come and share with my ladies this fall,” she wrote. I reread it several times to make sure I understood the request. Because I wanted to be certain that the terror I felt was well grounded.

  Run with horses, Rachel. Run with horses. Or just run.

  So, of course, I immediately put the e-mail aside. I formulated my gracious decline. “Thank you for your lovely invitation, but I am currently paralyzed from the eyes down, and I’m also busy that weekend, and every other weekend, with a thing.”

  I could never stand up and speak to a group of women. Remember the drooling and the blacking out in the business meeting? I’m still not over it. Plus, I have nothing to say. Blogging is one thing, namely baring your soul to the world from behind a computer screen. I’d been writing online for years, something I’d come to love as a creative outlet and as a way to help others find a sense of sanctuary in their busy lives. I had no problem with that. Speaking is another thing, namely sharing your expertise with people who are actually present in the room, staring back at you and tak
ing notes. I’m pretty much terrified of that.

  The familiar voices began whispering: You’re a failure. A fraud. You don’t have anything to share out loud. You’re too unworthy. You’re not good enough.

  Remember your name. Remember whose you are. Wait. What’s your name again?

  “I would like to talk more with you about your event,” I typed back. Not exactly a no, but also not a yes. A noncommittal reply might buy me some time. Perhaps the lady would go away.

  “When may I call you?” came the response. She wasn’t going away.

  “Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. would work great!” Why I was using an exclamation point was beyond me. What I really wanted to do was run and hide.

  Find your refuge in Me. You can hide in the shelter of My wings.

  As we began having phone conversations about the event, I found myself turning to the pages of my journals and blog posts and sorting through old, scribbled notes. Even as the ground beneath my feet felt shaky, I started to see some messages within the scribbles. A phrase here, a Scripture there, a donkey story in a margin of a notebook.

  Say yes, Rachel. Don’t let fear keep you from moving forward. Keep putting one foot in front of the other. Blaze a new trail.

  A date was set and airline tickets purchased. I committed to it, and there could be no turning back. But there was still regular work to be done. Ladders to haul, sketches to draw, projects to complete, bills to pay, dinners to make. The clouds above were still heavy, but I knew I’d felt a ray of warmth on my face that made me think a new season might be ahead. Or did I imagine it?

  The retreat went well, I thought. I had prepared like crazy for my speaking sessions and obsessed over my hair. Obviously, the timing of root touch-ups is crucial. You cannot afford to underplan this. And because my hair looked so good, I hoped it made up for what I lacked in smooth sentence transitions. I returned home with a pocket full of sweet thank-you notes and a little taste of confidence. Wow!