08/22/2026
There is no rule book for motherhood.
No game plan. No cheat code. No chapter that tells you exactly what to do when your childโs heart is breaking in front of you and you know there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop it.
This week has been one of the hardest weeks I have ever walked through as Savannahโs mother.
My instinct as her mom is to protect her heart. To soften the hard things. To carry the pain for her if I can.
But when Kim colicked, when her pain escalated, when she stepped foot at the hospital, when surgery became necessary, and when recovery became more complicated than any of us prayed it would be, I realized that sugar coating the truth was not protecting Savannah.
It would have crippled her ability to face what might come. So from the moment we loaded Kim, I kept it as real as I possibly could with my eleven year old daughter.
I explained that we were taking her to one of the best equine hospitals in the country, with incredibly skilled veterinarians and technology capable of doing things that once would have been impossible.
But I also reminded her that none of those things make us God.
Medicine is powerful. Knowledge is powerful. Technology is incredible. But ultimately, life is still in His hands.
Sometimes, despite every prayer, every skilled hand, every piece of technology and every ounce of love we can pour into them, God calls the good ones home sooner than we could ever understand.
I also had to teach her one of the hardest lessons horsemanship will ever ask of us. There is a difference between heroic measures and being greedy in the name of a one percent chance.
Kim owed us nothing.
She had already given Savannah more than we could ever repay.
She taught her to ride. She taught her to feel. She taught her responsibility, patience, courage and humility. She carried Savannahโs dreams and then gave her even more dreams through the babies she brought into this world.
So I was very clear with Savannah. We would do everything reasonable to save her. We would fight beside her for as long as Kim wanted to fight.
We would pray boldly for a miracle.
But under no circumstances would we ask that mare to suffer because we were too afraid to live without her.
We would trust the veterinarians who knew her, loved her and had the experience to tell us when fighting for her crossed the line into fighting against what was fair to her.
And Kim fought. My goodness, did that mare fight.
She fought through a catastrophic colic. She fought through surgery. She fought through recovery. She gave everything she had right until the very end. And then came the moment no mother can prepare her child for.
Savannah had to love her enough to let her go.
I watched my eleven year old daughter walk into one of the most painful moments of her life with a faith and maturity that absolutely humbled me.
She asked the veterinarians the hard questions.
She listened to the answers even when they hurt.
She refused to allow the horse she loved more than words could explain to suffer simply because saying goodbye was going to shatter her own heart.
She prayed over Kim. She held her.
And in those final moments, Kim wrapped her neck around Vannah as if somehow she knew.
As if she was saying thank you.
Thank you for loving me.
Thank you for choosing me.
Thank you for being brave enough to let me go.
I watched Savannah say goodbye to the mare who helped raise her.
Then somehow, through a heart that had just been shattered, this child turned around and hugged the veterinarians and technicians who were shattered too.
These were people who knew Kim. People who knew her story. People who knew Blue and understood exactly what this mare meant to our family.
And Savannah made sure she looked at them and thanked them. She thanked them for trying. She thanked them for fighting for her horse. She thanked them while tears were still pouring down her own face. I do not know if I have ever been more proud of her. But what has stayed with me most is her faith.
The prayers she prayed out loud on the way to the hospital. The prayers in the parking lot. The prayers beside Kim. And the prayers after we said goodbye.
Not just prayers asking God to give her what she wanted, but prayers trusting Him when He did not.
That is a kind of faith I am still learning. I am her mother, and somehow this week my eleven year old daughter taught me. She taught me that faith is not believing God will always give us the ending we desperately prayed for.
Faith is believing He is still God when He does not.
Faith is praying for the miracle with everything in you and still whispering, โI trust You,โ when the miracle looks nothing like the one you asked for.
I still do not understand why. I do not understand why some of the best ones seem to leave us far too soon. I do not understand why a child who loved a horse so deeply had to learn this lesson at eleven years old.
And maybe motherhood is accepting that I cannot give her an answer for everything.
I cannot protect her from every heartbreak.
I cannot promise her that loving something with her whole heart will not someday hurt beyond measure. But I can teach her where to take that broken heart.
To God.
And this week, she reminded me how to do the same.
I wish I were half as strong, half as bold and half as faith filled as she has been through this. I thought my job was to walk Savannah through losing Kim. Instead, I found myself watching my daughter walk straight through unimaginable heartbreak with her hand firmly in Godโs.
Maybe protecting our children does not always mean shielding them from the hardest parts of life.
Maybe sometimes it means standing beside them in the truth, reminding them who holds tomorrow, and giving them enough room to discover just how strong their own faith has become.
Kim owed us nothing. But she gave us everything.
And even in leaving us, that remarkable mare gave Savannah one final lesson. Love is not proven by how tightly we hold on. Sometimes the greatest act of love is having the courage to let go. And faith is trusting that goodbye here is not goodbye forever.
โFor now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face.โ - 1 Corinthians 13:12
Until we see you again, Kim. Thank you for raising my girl alongside me. Thank you for carrying her dreams. Thank you for helping make her the horsewoman she is becoming.
And thank you for one final lesson in what it means to love something enough to put its needs before your own.
You will live forever in the horsewoman you helped create. And I know Heaven gained one very special mare.
