Tip of My Iceberg

When I was growing up, I was one of those girls who loved horses. Obsessed may be a better way of looking at it. I’d cut pictures of horses from magazines and put them into my dream scrapbook–the place where I planned, plotted, and projected how I would someday get my own horse. I collected model horses of all kinds and had a shelf dedicated to displaying them.

In a bedroom shared with my two sisters, this was a big deal.

Dad was raised on a small farm, with chickens, a cow, and lots of vegetables. The family across the way had horses throughout his life — horses we saw when we visited my grandmother. That was a highlight for me; we were never allowed to ride them, but I’d spend hours feeding them grass I pulled or sneaking them a carrot from Granny’s house.

Dad understood my obsession best, and he would often say he wished he could have brought me up on a farm. He was a proponent of positive thinking. He’d tell me, “Never give up; you can pray for the pony.”

As I’ve gotten older, the pony became symbolic of the things that were beyond my capacity to provide for myself or my family. Things that, unless God provided, would never be possible.

And I saw God provide often what felt like an impossibility.

When a dear friend, a widower, was telling me about his heart’s desire to be remarried, it made me think of the impossibilities we often confront in life. He’d loved being married, sharing his life with a wife he could enjoy. So I told him my story, and together we prayed for the pony–we asked God to provide him with a wife to love and enjoy.

God provided just such a wife.

I know the Lord doesn’t always provide what we ask for, but He knows there are things we desire, so He tells us to ask. “You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong–you want only what gives you pleasure.” James 4:2-3.

Abram (Abraham) was willing to follow God wherever He led, but when God told him he’d be the father of many nations, he had his doubts. He was 75 years old at the time, and fatherhood seemed beyond him and his wife. But God told him his descendants would be more numerous than the number of stars in the sky. “And Abram believed the LORD, and the LORD counted him as righteous because of his faith.” Genesis 16:6.

It didn’t happen right away, but the promised son, Isaac, born of his wife, Sarah, was born 25 years later.

Living in a culture where results for most things are swift to arrive, where food is fast, and information is at the tip of your fingers, it feels inconceivable to wait so long for an answer.

But God.

God’s timeline is better than ours because He knows the whole picture. He knows what’s best for us, what will help us grow, and what will satisfy our hearts. Sometimes His answer is no; sometimes it’s wait.

When I prayed with my friend for a wife, he didn’t have to wait that long; God provided him with a wonderful woman within a few years.

Not overnight.

He’s happily married now. I gifted him with a stuffed pony to remind him of God’s great gift and his willingness to ask for what he longed for.

I’ve learned to ask God for what seems impossible.

If it’s not what He thinks is best for me, He provides better.

But it begins with praying for the pony.