Page 37 of There I Find Hope

Chapter 15

Sunday’s mouth dropped open in an “O,” and she might have said something, except they reached the stable and a whinny shattered the air, shrill and high.

“I think that’s our girl.”

“It was a girl?”

“Yes,” she said as she opened the door and stood back so he could go in.

It was supposed to be the other way around, but he hadn’t had any idea of how to open the stable door. It didn’t have a doorknob like a normal door.

He made a note for next time. Plus, he hadn’t been sure where the foal was.

She came in behind him, shut the door which made it dark inside, and he stood, waiting.

“I’ll grab the lights,” she said as she walked over. He heard the click just before the lights came on. “She’s in the first stall on the left. I’m going to run over and check on her, then go back to the tack room and make the formula.”

“I thought she’d be out in the pasture where she was born,” he murmured as he followed Sunday as she walked to the stall.

“Matt wanted to keep her in the stall for a while until he was sure she would come to us in the pasture. Trying to catch her might be a little bit difficult. He didn’t think it would take very long, and honestly if he were here today, he might have left her out. But he didn’t want to make things harder on me.”

“That was considerate of him.” Sunday had a great family, and he loved how close they were. It made it all the more obvious his lack of family. Of course, Franklin was like a brother to him. And he loved Franklin’s brother Peter almost as much.

Still, what would it have been like to grow up with such a close-knit family?

“I admire your family. You guys are all so close.”

“That’s probably because of my mom. Or maybe even because my dad left.” The foal stuck her head over the side of the stall, and Sunday held her hand up while the foal sniffed it. “I guess that’s another example of something bad, or at least something that everyone would think was bad, happening, but good came out of it.”

“Interesting.”

“Yeah. We all had to work together. I mean, Mom didn’t make a big deal about it. Sometimes it didn’t even feel like I have a dad. She just didn’t mention him. She didn’t go around complaining about him or whining that he wasn’t paying her, which we found out later that he wasn’t, or that she had so much work to do, or that she was scared or anything. It was like she just put her hand in God’s hand and then made everything so much fun that my siblings and I just followed along, thinking everything was a big game almost.”

“She’s quite a woman,” Noah said, thinking that Sunday was quite a woman as well.

“I’m thinking of her example more and more as I’ve been going through the grieving process. For lack of a better word. I see how my mom handled things. I mean, it’s not like she lost a child. It’s a completely different thing. But it’s a devastation nonetheless. And... I’m sure she probably felt like hiding under the bed or lying there with her covers pulled up over her head, but she couldn’t. You know?”

“Because she had a bunch of kids to take care of. And you can’t just take off.”

“Exactly. So yeah, she kept going, but it’s more about how she did it. She did it with a smile. With joy, with faith in God. It’s like she put her hope in Jesus and never lost that.”

“Because when life feels hopeless, what’s the point of going on?”