How Can This Be?

How can this be? She came and stood next to me at the fence. She came and breathed next to me. She came just to be with me. Her warm horsey body stood right in front of me. I didn’t see her because I was staring at the ground, trying to grasp and hold on to the deep flow of peace that had ebbed up inside during my time with her. I couldn’t even remember what we had actually done during our “session” together. What did it matter?

She had come to stand next to me, and that was all that mattered. It was her choice and she chose…me.

Together, we looked out on the autumn sunset, breathing what our eyes saw into our bones as if to try and capture it forever, yet knowing that we cannot even understand forever. The brief bands of coral pink sank into the depths of a smoky blue that in one last moment, briefly shone with golden light before the sun embraced the mountains and surrendered to the time of night. Peace hung in every thread of that evening, the more so because the peace was shared between two creatures just wanting to belong. To belong to endless twilight, to belong to beauty, to belong to something that could not be ended. As we came together in that moment, we realized that our belonging was not our choice, but His.

We already belonged.

The details of the endlessly long and dark week began to fade, just as the light faded from our eyes. We looked upon a deeper Light though. The Light of His face who had smiled down on us in knowingly bringing us together so that we could learn of our belonging. The Light was coming from within us. Had His Light ever been so tangible, so real, so utterly ours? Yes, it always had been.

But it took complete faith and trust to be able to find that Light in such utter and complete darkness.

The sound of her hooves gently rolled over my ears. I stirred and looked up, watching the slow gait of her body as it moved away into the darkness. I turned to go as well, breathing one last time into that peaceful, now crisp autumn air. The stars were beginning to twinkle in the advancing blue of another night. The fire that was lit within shone brighter than any star, burned warmed than any sun, pulsed through me with a stronger heart beat than mine; the breath of God.

How can this be?