The Long Trot

Ask anybody who’s spent a long day horseback what gait gets you home, and most of them won’t say the gallop.

The gallop is the one everybody pictures. It’s the one in the movies, the one that looks good on a ridgeline with the dust boiling up behind. And there’s a time for it — a cow breaking for the brush, a gate that needs shutting before the bunch gets there. But a horse can only run flat out for so long before it’s got nothing left. Push one too hard early in the morning and you’ll be leading it home by afternoon.

The gait that actually covers country is the trot. Not fancy, not fast, just steady. A good horse can hold a long, easy trot for hours, and the miles roll by underneath without either one of you hardly noticing. The old hands knew it. You don’t win the day in the first hour. You win it by still having some horse under you at the end.

We’ve been thinking about that a lot this fall, because if we’re being honest, most of us live our weeks at a gallop.

Run, and not be weary

There’s a verse in Isaiah that a lot of folks have heard, even if they couldn’t tell you where it comes from:

“But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” — Isaiah 40:31

Most people remember the eagles. That’s the exciting part. What’s been catching us lately is the end of it. The verse doesn’t stop at soaring, and it doesn’t stop at running. It comes all the way back down to walking. They shall walk, and not faint.

That feels backwards at first. You’d think the big promise would be the flying. But anybody who’s been through a long stretch — a sick parent, a lean year, a newborn who won’t sleep, a job that keeps asking for more — knows the hard part usually isn’t one big burst. It’s the ordinary Tuesday. It’s getting up and doing the next thing, and the next, without falling over. Strength to walk and not faint might be the most useful kind there is.

And notice where the strength comes from. Not from trying harder. It says they that wait. That’s a word most of us aren’t any good at. Waiting sounds like losing ground. But a horse that gets a breather at the water tank goes farther than the one that never stops, and we’re starting to think people work the same way.

What we’re learning

We’ll own up to it: we’re gallopers by nature. Running a small business, there’s always one more thing. One more email, one more order, one more fire. And for a long time we wore that like a badge, like being worn out was proof we cared.

But we’ve noticed something. The weeks we run flat out are the weeks we’re shortest with the people we love. They’re the weeks we make the dumb mistakes. They’re the weeks we’re least like the folks we’re trying to become. Burning hot and burning out turn out to be pretty close neighbors.

We’re still new at this faith stuff, and we don’t have it figured out. But this verse keeps nudging us toward the idea that we weren’t made to run on our own fumes. Strength gets renewed. Something gets poured back in. And it gets poured back in when we slow down long enough to receive it.

The small try for the week

Here’s what we’re trying this week, if you want to ride along. Look at your calendar and find the one thing you’ve been galloping at — the project, the worry, the commitment that’s got you running flat out. Then ask a simple question: what would this look like at a trot?

Maybe it means doing an hour a day on it instead of four hours and a crash. Maybe it means saying no to one new thing so you can finish the old one well. Maybe it just means taking ten minutes in the morning before the phone comes out — a cup of coffee on the porch, a short prayer if that’s your way, or just some quiet — so you’re not starting the day already behind.

Pick a pace you could hold all week. Then hold it.

If faith is part of your life, Isaiah’s promise is worth leaning on: you don’t have to carry all the strength yourself. If it isn’t, the horse sense still holds: the ones who go the distance are the ones who don’t spend everything in the first mile.

We’re learning this right alongside you, and some days we still catch ourselves spurring hard on a Monday morning for no good reason. But we’re trying to trot a little more.

Pew, porch, or tailgate — wherever you’re reading this Sunday, thanks for riding along. Same time next week.

— The Sackett Ranch Family