Life Is Short – Live It Well

There are certain events that will stick with you for the remainder of your life.  Things that will forever change your perspective and give you an altered outlook.  Not always in a bad way, especially if you are a Christian, but there will be a shift regardless.

So as a Christian I never have to be concerned with the future because God promises me that all things will work together for my good.  But in regards to these life altering events, death is almost always one of them.  Every time a family member or pet passes, my perspective on life begins to change.  Things that seemed so important or demanding suddenly become irrelevant.  I’m reminded of the lyrics to one of my favorite Switchfoot songs, Live it Well:

Now I believe that God has given each man the opportunity for at least 120 years of life.  But that is less than a drop in a bucket compared to all of eternity.

You really begin to realize just how fragile life can be during these events, those words ring so true within my ears right now “Every breath that you take is a miracle”.  Sometimes we get so busy that we don’t stop and realize that the simplest things in life are not guaranteed and something as simple as breathing is a gift from God.  Life itself is a miracle.  Yes I’m kind of obsessed with Switchfoot, but I just love the fact that their songs have depth.  The lyrics typically hold deep meanings that make you stop and think.  So being a thinking man, I love a thinking man’s band, lol.  Sometimes you just need to step back and really take in the small things in life.  Such as the butterfly that lands in front of you on the mountain summit.  If you were moving too fast you would have missed it.  But because you took a couple of minutes to detach yourself from life and just exist, you were able to observe and admire it’s beauty.  This brings me to the purpose of this post.

Just the other day my mom’s horse PJ, a member of our family, passed away suddenly.  We had her for 15 years and she moved between multiple cities in her lifetime.  So I guess this is a sort of eulogy or memoir.  When we first brought her home my mom’s trainer said that she was too wild and could never be fully trusted.  Well she turned out to be the best horse we could have ever asked for.  Yes she had an attitude sometimes, and when she was younger she would test inexperienced riders.  But that was part of what made her unique and special.

In 2003 not too long after we moved to our property in Lakeside we came home to a deer roaming around our barn, but wait it wasn’t a deer, it was a foal!  No one had any idea that PJ was expecting except for our spanish gardener who didn’t speak english.  Apparently he knew the whole time and just assumed that we did also.  He of course thought the whole thing was hilarious.  So that is when Bella Sorpresa was born, the name means Beautiful Surprise in Italian.  She was paint colored and PJ took great care of her.

Then came PJ’s move in 2011 from Lakeside, CA to Farms of Ta Dae in Winchester, CA.  That’s a 70 mile trailer ride and she was unfazed by it.  But this was a big change for our family because for the previous 8 years she was a stone’s throw away from us.  Now she was 20 minutes away and someone else was caring for her.  But it turns out that my mom picked the right place.  We couldn’t have asked for a more caring facility or community than the one at Farms of Ta Dae.

Fast forward to 2014 when PJ and my Mom passed all of the required training to join the Temecula Valley Mounted Posse.  The respect for horses that have passed this training is immense.  In fact they wear badges, and in the eyes of the law hurting a posse horse is the same as assaulting a police officer.  The training involved remaining calm during gunshots, passing by multiple flares while moving towards a patrol car with lights and sirens active among many other things.  For those of you who don’t know, horses are very skittish and will typically bolt under these sorts of conditions.  But not PJ.

She was kind, caring, and loved to roll in the dirt, haha.  Those who don’t understand the pain of this type of loss have never truly bonded with an animal.  They don’t understand the deep connection, the mutual reliance.  Animals are a gift from God, never take them for granted.  But this really brings me to the end of this post and I’ll close with this.  Everyone who saw her red-ish brown color assumed that her name was some sort of play on peanut butter and jelly or something.  But the name was actually an acronym for Pride and Joy, because she was the pride and joy of our family and most of all my mom.  You will be missed PJ, and you will always hold a special place in our hearts.