WTEC (The Finish)

My grandmother died the Monday before the Timed Event.  Grandma was 98 and she had an amazing, healthy, long life but it is still hard to say goodbye to your last surviving grandparent. I arrived at Guthrie a day early so that I could put my horses up before attending my grandmother’s funeral on Wednesday.   While this was a bit stressful emotionally I woke up Thursday feeling ready for the weekend.  We got the cattle ready on Thursday and my horses felt really good.  I headed a few and heeled a few and it all went really well.

               Consequently, when the first round began Friday at noon I was excited to see how it would all turn out.  The first round started great. After the heading, calf roping, heeling, and steer wrestling I was in position not only to be good in the average but also to place in the round.  Then it was time for the steer roping.  I got a good start and roped the steer slick horns but as I laid the trip the loop dropped over his nose. With my second loop I had trouble getting the steer to line out at the back end and I took a bad shot and necked him again.  Taking a 60 hurts but you can still win a lot with one or even two 60s so I still felt like everything was going to be ok. However, from there the tripping only went from bad to worse.  Before the WTEC was over I had taken five 60s in the tripping and I was headed home having done well in every other event yet winning nothing. 

                After the third round and the third 60 in the steer roping I was at the trailer roping the steer horns and beginning to question why I had put all of the time in and why I had worked so hard when I heard the Father ask me a question that didn’t answer my questions but it did bring me back to the right place.  The question was “Will you quit or commit?”  You know that really is the question that is being asked of us at every difficult point in our lives will we quit or commit.  I believe all too often we choose to quit.  We may not quit that day but we begin a process of drawing back and not fully committing which is essentially quitting.  We do it when things get unpleasant in our jobs or careers.  They get difficult we don’t get the raise or promotion we feel we deserve and we begin to just put in time.  It happens in our marriages when we get our hearts hurt by our spouses, by what they did or didn’t say and so we pull back and we protect our hearts instead of continuing to commit our whole heart, our entire lives to our marriage.  It happens with our kids when we hit a rough patch in raising them.  We fear we won’t be able to cross the finish line with our relationship with them being the way we want it to be, so we pull back and prepare our excuses for why it didn’t work out. 

                 I am just here to say that if you are born of God then you were not born a quitter.  Jesus finished the work and He is still the author and the finisher of our faith.  I am not saying there will never be a day when I won’t enter the WTEC or there won’t be a day when I don’t stop working at Sky Ranch But if I am to follow the Father’s example I will finish my last day fully committed to the task at hand.  I pray I will finish in my marriage and with my kids, taking my last breath knowing I stayed fully committed, with my heart totally open to the Father and to them.
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