A couple of months ago, police lights flashed behind me early one morning, and I was so confused as to what was going on that I was positive they must be pulling over someone in front of me.
The confusion grew greater when, as I pulled to the side of the road by the ice cream shop in my signature school-drop-off outfit, sans bra, I saw that the cop was definitely there for me.
He approached my car with his clipboard.
HIM: “Do you know why I’m pulling you over, Ma’am?”
ME: *thinking, “maybe crimes against fashion?”*
“No. I actually don’t have a clue.”
HIM: “Well, you passed a school bus back there with its lights flashing.”
I honestly hadn’t even seen a bus at all,
let alone a flashing one.
It was such that I almost demanded that he roll footage, because I truly hadn’t seen a bus,
and I’d been driving very cautiously, and slowly.
A couple of months later I received an $800 ticket in the mail, on which I almost choked.
I chose the “Go to court and see about doing community service instead of paying” option rather than pay them through the nose.
I’ve never done community service for the court.
They gave me a few choices for where I could serve.
I chose the least mind-numbing sounding one, as I didn’t really want to sit in a Goodwill for 10 hours folding and sorting other people’s donated coffee mugs and clothes.
The second the community service coordinator said there was an option to work on a
rescue horse ranch, I jumped on the opportunity.
I love animals.
For days my girls teased me about my sure descent into becoming a “Horse Girl.”
They joked about me coming home as a Hobby Horse Riding Competitor.
I simply pretended to clip-clop away from them while making hoof noises with my tongue.
When the first day came for my service, though, I’ll admit I was nervous;
After all, I am a grandmother now, not some 20 year old.
I was mad at my plight in life at that moment.
It was daunting to think of shoveling horse manure and hauling hay for hours in the blazing sun.
I decided, though, on my drive up the hill to the farm to make the best of it.
I whispered a prayer about my attitude, and that maybe God would help me see the parts of Himself that often stay more hidden in the world.
I like to keep my eyes and heart open to life’s hidden messages like that; Almost like a treasure hunt.
Sometimes I see a lesson in a flight of birds. Sometimes it’s the fog settling on a hillside when I need a reminder of stillness that shows me.
Sometimes I see something like a perfectly stacked wheat stalk, blowing in the wind,
and I take it as a lesson that, even in chaos, there can be a quiet order to it all.
So, I had made up my mind to put my worries about how it would be aside, in order to just live there in the moment, and I was definitely living in the moment when I first set my eyes on where I would be working:
A stunning multi-acre ranch tucked in the California hills, close to the ocean – An absolute DREAM of a property.
I looked around in awe.
I was pleasantly surprised at the peace I felt mucking horse stalls, and scrubbing food bins out after that.
My eyes were open to the beauty around me, the fruit trees bursting with fruit, the way the overgrown fields rustled in the wind like a whispered song.
I had a very real awareness to look around and see the beauty instead of just the work.
I am of the firm belief that is how a person looks for the face of God.
I had my head down sweeping out the barn, though, when I started to hear the yelling.
It was in the distance, but not far enough. I could hear every word.
It was a man’s voice, middle aged, by the sound of it, and he was yelling that he was “Done with it! Completely done!” He screamed out threats in a scary way; The kind that ends in someone getting shot, or some sort of rampage.
There were constant expletives.
I cautiously edged one eye out past the edge of the barn, pressing my face into the wood.
I started to worry I should hide behind the hay. It was enough that I was working out an escape plan, in case the shouting moved more in my direction.
I went to find the other worker.
She sighed as she came to me to explain.
The shouting was coming from the adult son of the woman who owns the farm.
He suffers from several mental health conditions, and he apparently shouts like that a lot.
She told me that the police are called out often, and I worried about if the mother he was shouting at was OK.
If I was scared a long way off in a barn full of tools I could defend myself with,
she had to be so traumatized being regularly right up against that kind of violence and rage.
Eventually the screaming stopped, and my heart slowed.
The grain stalks continued to sway.
The horses kept on eating.
They were used to everything.
The second day of volunteering came, and I groaned when my alarm went off.
I had clearly used muscles I had been forsaking.
Several things popped when I stood up. My whole body ached.
Thankfully, when I showed up there was not much to do, as we’d done so much the day before, and I whispered thanks.
We got to drink coffee out under the fruit trees, and the main worker and I talked about our own children and grandchildren as we set the horses free in the fields to graze.
I stood with my hands on my hips, then, looking out across the vast property.
I was covered in mud and manure. The picture of beauty.
I wondered what a single woman like the owner had done in her lifetime to have the money to buy that kind of place.
Surely it cost at least 5 million dollars, maybe more.
It would have been worth that price alone just for the view of the hills and trees.
“How far does this property go?” I asked the other worker, breaking a few moments of silence.
“It stretches up that way behind those paddocks, and I don’t even KNOW how far it goes that way.”
We stood together, staring, wondering, thinking the same thing.
“See that balcony, though?” She pointed.
“Yes.”
“I was once up there with her commenting about how amazing this property was, and she told me that she would trade every inch of it if her son could be healthy.”
My breath caught in my throat.
I saw myself in my poop-shoveling, Hobby Horse teased life, standing at the top of my own hill, only mine was of manure, and I had the exact kind of moment that I had prayed for in the car:
I saw my own abundant riches in the four faces of my daughters back at home,
even though they had been teasing me. They were always teasing me…
She would trade it all for what I have.
The one standing that day in the greenest field was me.
I stood there thinking about how a person could own acres of pristine land, barns, horses, orchards, and multiple properties, and yet, as they stood on their balcony, overlooking it all,
they were looking out, wishing they had a life like mine.
Me: Being giggled at by teenagers all day.
Me: Driving in circles to soccer practice, and the grocery store, watching my granddaughter all day, picking up the same old toys.
Me: In my tiny house where, to vacuum it all, you only have to plug the vacuum into one single outlet to clean the whole thing, it’s that small.
For a moment it felt like this other woman and I stood facing each other.
I have the very thing she, who seemingly has it all, said she would trade everything for,
and I got it then. I heard it:
The lesson I had prayed for.
I could be content in my circumstance, even knee-deep in horse manure.
I had a healthy family waiting for me in my tiny house at the bottom of the hill.
Things are not always as they appear when we look out at the world.
Others may have riches that the world can immediately see, but,
in this way,
I have everything.
I drove back down the hill that day having seen my life for the true gift it is.
I looked inside of a sometimes overlooked truth in the world, and,
on that day I was sure would be hard and exhausting, instead, because of it, I saw myself become more thankful, and secure.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
