Drem, and her dreamer

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Last night I watched a current of wispy pinkish clouds float across a lapis lazuli sky and wondered if that’s what it would look like to see the train of the Lord’s robe fill the temple. It was one of those precious, fleeting moments when the veil between heaven and earth feels nearly transparent—I could see the flame of the Holy Spirit flickering over neighbors’ houses, while the happy wild daisies bobbed together along the roadside to remind me of the Great Cloud of Witnesses that cheer me on from the next realm.

It was a gift that I didn’t know I would need to carry me into this hard day.

My horse, Drem, passed away overnight, at home on my parents’ farm. My mom called to tell me this morning. Dad buried her on the hill that rises beyond the creekbed that runs beside her corral, in view of Mt. Adams.

I call her mine, but she was really shared between me and my sister, Hannah. I think of her as my lifelong confidant and friend, but she didn’t enter my life until I was 12 and I only saw her sporadically after I got married at 20. Mom, Dad, Hannah, and Amy all spent more time with her in the last ten years than I did. Even so, the bond between a horse and her girl is real, and without her sweet spirit on this side of it anymore, the veil between heaven and earth seems a lot thicker today.

It’s a literary cliche at this point, but with good reason: A love for horses has been tattooed on my inner being since before I had the words to express it. I distinctly remember the ache in my chest every time I saw someone else riding a horse, every time I watched Black Beauty, every time we passed horses grazing in a field on the way to church on Sunday mornings—starting at three or four years old, if I had to guess. I remember the hours Hannah and I would spend poring over horse books, magazines, and Breyer model horse catalogs. We eventually outlet our obsession by writing and illustrating our own horse stories (shout out to my beloved fictional racehorse, Robin Hood).

Drem was my dream come true. She came to us as a seven-year-old greenbroke quarter horse mare named “Lady,” and we renamed her “Dreamer” because she had the same coloring as Soñador from the movie, Dreamer. But the name evolved over the years to fit the horse she really was: quick, endearing, a little bit unexpected, and highly independent.

The hardest part of anticipating this parting, besides surviving the crashing waves of grief, has been wondering who I will be without her. In so many ways, she formed me: I learned how to lend her my calm when she was nervous instead of adding my own anxiety into the mix; I learned to lead with confidence even when my follower is ten times my size; I learned what it feels like to be free and independent on those long, solitary rides in the fields or around the Winterstein loop.

To her, I was strong and trustworthy, a safe place—even when I felt scared, small, and weak. Sometimes all it takes to become something is for someone to believe that’s what you already are.

I had no idea back then that the horse I was trying to train was actually training me in all the skills I now use daily to be a wife, a mom, a disciple.

It’s hard to release her, the link between Hallie the child and Hallie the adult, especially knowing that she might be the only horse I’ll ever have that is really “mine.” But the tattoo on my inner being is still there. I’m still the same dreamer, meeting God beneath cloud-trails and on horseback, in the shadow of mountains and the sunshine of daisies.

And I know who I’ll be riding in the ranks of the armies of heaven. ☺

inner earthquakes and hellfire

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Today I resurrected the old @halliewrites Instagram account that I started about six years ago, right when I was working hard on my first book and building up a community around the Bible180 Challenge. I was 24 years old, had been married four years, and had no children. These were only the earliest days of Instagram stories and reels didn’t yet exist, so the entirety of my presence can be found in a handful of photo posts with captions. Looking back at those posts, for me, is like a glimpse into the story of a young woman I met once, but barely remember.

But because I lived it, I can read the paragraphs in between the posts that the true outside observer will never see.

Can you tell that in the space between the first post and the second, the life I thought I had exploded?

Do you sense that between the colorless self-portrait and the phone camera snap of the last autumn leaves, I nearly gave up and walked away?

And in the caption beneath the bachelor button at the top of the grid—dated June 8, 2019—can you hear the shaking breaths of someone who survived, but still desperately fears that a survivor is all she will ever be again?

I may barely remember that person, but I will never forget that fear. I thought I had been permanently shelved, sidelined by God, and that I was doomed to waste the rest of my life because what I believed were my best years had been ruined by grief. If I wasn’t going to get to change the world as a young, free, childless Proverbs 31 wife, when would I ever have the chance?

But what I said in that caption rings true: “God works slowly. He’s a farmer, not a magician.”

I’ve aged 5 years and had two babies since then. I’ve continued to write, even though many times it seemed pointless. And I’ve been learning that no one changes the world without first navigating the earthquake within themselves.

I think I am just now learning to yield to the seismic shifts of the Holy Spirit in me. I don’t expect to be out there massively changing the world anytime soon, especially since the world that’s most important to me right now is that of my 3-year-old and my 6-month-old. But my heart is overflowing with thanksgiving for God’s grace and goodness that has gone with me at every step, even when I was sure He was the one trying to lead me over the edge.

I’m so thankful that I was born in the year 1994. A little earlier, and I’m fairly certain I would have been caught in the farce of idealistic Christian mommy blogging, hot on the heels of extreme purity culture. A little later, and I would have been buying into the deceptive appeal of today’s “tradwife” crowd. I missed them both by just a little, and thank God.

I’m so thankful I got married at 20 years old. Although processing through the sense that I couldn’t really have a fair choice in the matter at such a young age has been fraught, I know that God was gracious to teach me some very important things a lot earlier than I might otherwise have had the opportunity to learn. I lost less of my life to the lies.

I’m so thankful I married the person I did. I can’t imagine anyone else being able to weather these existential storms with me so humbly. The Holy Spirit is leading us as we walk after Christ together, side by side, and there is nothing more gloriously kingdom-of-heaven-like than that.

I praise and glorify God my Father that He did not allow me to stay the same, even when the process of change felt like traversing hellfire. His vision for me has been far greater, in the real and important ways, than my vision for myself ever was.

these are the days: february

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These are the days of sunlight, at last, streaming through the windows in the morning—after eighty days, some estimated, without the sun showing its face here. Until you’ve lived through eighty days without the sun I don’t think you can fathom how suffocating and dire the world becomes, nor how life-giving and joyful the privilege of sun on skin really is. The first week of February, when it finally came out from behind the gray blanket of clouds, I wanted to cry from pure relief, and I haven’t taken a minute of it for granted since. There is nothing so important that it can’t wait for a few hours while I sit outside in the sun.

These are the days of waiting eagerly for more flowers to pop up—my crocuses are in full swing, and the hyacinths and daffodils are close on their heels. I feel starved for every bit of color and light and joy the world can spare me and if I thought that sleeping in the garden next to my plants would make them grow faster, I’d do it. Every leaf that emerges is hope.

And especially, these are days of quiet. Even inside my mind, which is usually buzzing with new ideas or goals or processes, it is quiet—because nothing else seems reverent. I wish we still followed the old customs of mourning, in some ways, because the plunge back into life the day after a death seems not only horrifically inappropriate but exhausting beyond description. So many days I’ve wished I could respond to a call or a text or an appointment or a reminder with “Sorry—in mourning until further notice.” As much as life must stubbornly go on, it feels like something somewhere must cease, because a life that shaped my entire world is gone.

Suggested Thinking