If You Don't See The Pebble, Here Comes The Brick.

Have you ever heard the saying, “First, God throws a pebble, then he throws a brick.”? I love this quote for so many reasons. I feel like this quote can resonate with each person for a different reason.

First of all, I think that there is more to life than just going to work, paying your bills, and doing it all over again the next day. We need to have fulfillment in our lives to keep us going, and I personally do not believe that fulfillment comes from success. Everyone’s is going to be different. For me one of the things I get fulfillment from is helping other people.

Ever since I was 13-14 years old I knew I wanted to have a career that involved horses. In fact, I may have even known sooner than that. To the point that I was going to dropout of high school because I thought that I did not need a high school diploma to work with horses. In fact when I was younger I remember saying, “I will not work for someone else, I will be self employed. I will not go to college and I will not be stuck in an office.

Fast forward five years, I am now finishing my last four classes to graduate high school. I will be going to college in fall of 2021 for Equine Science. But that decision did not come with out self trial and discovery. In spring of 2020 I decided to try and create a backup plan in case my career in horses did not work out. I decided to play it safe and go to school for Agribusiness Management. Then the pebbles started to come. I started to get second thoughts, had no motivation, did not want a job in that career field, and I knew it was not what I wanted but society told me it would be the safe option. I didn’t listen to my thoughts, so then the brick came.

In July of 2020 I sustained a Traumatic Brain Injury. I knew right when it happened that I was not okay but I did not say anything. Weeks later my daily life was very much affected, I had memory loss, could not put sentences together when I would speak, migraines, I still didn’t listen. One day I ended up blacking out and was on the floor when I came back to and have no memory of that and I realized something was seriously wrong. I went to a doctor that specialized in chiropractic neurology. I went in for tests and tested -15% out of 100% on their testing scale. Needless to say I was not okay.

I was told I could not demolition derby again, no riding horses and I was supposed to really stay in bed. I told my doctor “not riding horses again is not an option.” I wasn’t even allowed to mow the lawn how was I supposed to get on a horse again? I went through weeks of therapy and rehabilitation to get back to just half of what function I had before. It was in a split second that I had lost the very thing my whole life was set up for. Five months later I started riding horses again.

I missed all of the pebbles being thrown at me so, a brick was thrown. It took that injury happening to me to realize that I need to chase the things I truly want in life. I have a second chance at life and a second chance at working with horses and I am not going to let that chance go to waste. We are not guaranteed tomorrow, or even later, but we are are guaranteed the now, and it’s up to us what we do with it. Just remember to always chase what you want in life, not what other people say you should do. So, make sure you catch the pebbles, so they don’t turn into a brick.