My Stick Horse

Tired... Do you ever feel like that? When you feel drained emotionally, physically, even financially. I feel vulnerable admitting it but I have felt that way lately. Exhausted, and the only thing you can do is to keep saying your prayers and hope that Heavenly Father will help you fix things in the way only he can.

Oddly enough my help came in the form of this story from my Wade's blog:

The Stick Horse
One evening when my four-year old sister and I were out walking with Father, Ellen asked him to carry her home. She was just too tired to walk, she said. When he told her that he was tired, too, she began to cry. With out a word, Father took out his knife and cut a small limb from a tree. Handing it to Ellen, he said, “Here’s a fine horse for you to ride.” Ellen hopped astride the stick, and off she galloped- beating us home by a block.

Father laughed. “That’s the way you will find life, he told me. “Sometime you will be so tired mentally or physically that you’ll think you can’t go on. Then you’ll find a stick horse in a form of a friend, a song, a poem, a flower, a baby’s smile- and over the tired spot you’ll gallop.”

Now I am telling my three children that there is a stick horse to carry them over every tired spot in life if they will but look around for it.

--Mrs. T. Edward Brown Posted in the Reader’s Digest- May, 1946

I have a few "stick horses" that without, I would probably have worn myself out long ago.

*The gospel is the one constant I have. It will always be the thing that makes everything all better. No matter what else happens in my life it will be there.

*Going to the park and swinging. I don't care how sad or down or tired I am that one things make the world something I can face again.

*Singing a primary song. The simple lyrics and truths in those songs make me feel like an idiot for ever feeling that life should be anything different than I imagined it would be in primary.

*When my dog knows I am feeling down and curls up in my lap all night long. There are only three men I have ever let see me cry and he is not only one of them, but the best for drying tears.

*A friend who genuinely cares. I have a million of them whom I love dearly but two jump to mind tonight:
~Wade because he is always there to take my call, listen, and make me laugh all the days. We talk frequently about friendships that feels imbalanced and I want to thank him for keeping ours "balanced."
~Snubs I feel like we are crisis friends. We only call each other when life is out of sorts. Thanks for being patient and sorting it out for me. You are perfect at taking what I am saying and figuring out what I am really saying. You know the me I try to keep hidden and you still love me.