“If your dreams don’t scare you, then they aren’t big enough.”

I guess you could say I’m getting a little into this journaling thing. This is not about a ride in particular, but more of where I want to take my riding in general. Lately I have been looking into summer internships and trying to figure out what school I am going to be at next year. These are all significant decisions, and I’m finding it hard to choose. Each place has their own unique opportunities in which I could grow as a rider. I suppose I should be thankful that God has given me so many amazing places to choose from. However, that does not make the decision any less difficult.

As for my riding career… I have viewed it for so long as “who do I want to be like?”. Which is a difficult question today, where everyone completely admires someone for who they are as a rider and person. But what happens when you don’t want to be a Lendon Gray prodigy, aspire to George Morris, or imitate Ray Hunt with every fiber of our being? What happens when you want to ride in a dressage show one day, and go herd cattle the next? What happens when I just want to be me? The one that God made me to be, not the one the world told me to be.

I look at all of these opportunities and at my future, and I am scared. Partially scared that I won’t get to do everything I want in just one short life, and then a little frightened at the thought of not getting to do any of it. I am excited to store all of this information in my brain about the things that I love, but am also scared that I won’t be able to fit it all in. I am nervous to go out West this summer and learn from horsemen I have never met, but ecstatic to gain a piece of their knowledge. I have this desire to be the absolute best I can be, but a hesitation, because what if I fail? But through all of the ups and downs that everyone faces from time to time in their life, what I am so privileged to do is sit here, and know that my life is not my own. I know that my life already screams of a Perfect Designer, and that who I am is only a product of the One who made me. And it is that One who has a plan for me that far exceeds anything I could even dream of. So if my dreams scare me, let them, because I am lucky enough to have so many opportunities that I am scared out of my mind. I don’t have to be Lendon, Ray, or George, but I can be me. The Jesus loving, dressage riding, cow herding child of the one true God.