I always wanted to own a horse

• My mother had an Aladdin’s lamp. Actually, it was a sterling silver cigarette lighter shaped like Aladdin’s magical lamp. I remember kneeling at the coffee table in front of the big picture window of our house in Brewster, NY; I’d close my eyes and wish for a horse to appear on the front lawn; then I’d open my eyes and check to see if a horse had appeared. No horse.
• Lucky for me, my next-door neighbor’s cousin Jeannie O’Riordan lived on a farm where they boarded horses for horse owners who lived in the city. Her father was a horseman from County Cork in Ireland; he had carried on the fox hunting tradition here in the United States. The stable was called Duhallow. It became my second home until I went off to college. I went there every day after school and worked for my ride brushing horses and cleaning tack. It was wonderful. I knew I was lucky. Perhaps the lamp had worked after all.

• I decided to be a minister, learning ancient Greek so I could read scripture in the original language. However, in college I fell in love and got married. I ended up becoming a law librarian and a certified records manager.
• I took riding lessons when we lived in Pittsburgh and continued to dream about living on a farm. Nevertheless, I pursued my love of scripture and studied with a retired seminary professor one-on-one to learn text-critical methods. I was convinced I wanted to be a theological librarian.
• I followed my ex-husband to Tulsa, where we bought a house in Chimney Hills. I started to take lessons with Libby Barrow in Bixby. That’s when I finally acquired my first horse. Come September was handed down to me from someone else in the barn. What a grand old mare. She lived to be 38 years old and is buried on our farm in Claremore, where my ex now lives.
• I took hunter-jumper lessons from Libby Barrow and dressage lessons from Lynn Lyons. We bought a farm in Claremore and all seemed grand. Yet the call to study scripture kept calling me. I went to Southern Methodist University to learn Hebrew. I picked up a second Masters degree.

• I took a job at Sabre, working on the Subscriber Hardware Help Desk, speaking French to travel agents from the Caribbean and Quebec. Then I taught French in Bartlesville and worked as the director of religious education at a church in Broken Arrow.
• In 2004 I divorced my farm and my horses and moved to a little house in Broken Arrow. I chose to sell real estate as a way to make a living. More specifically, I sell horse farms and homes in the country as a way of pursuing the lifestyle that I had as a kid.
• I now live in Tulsa.
• I sell horse properties in Tulsa, Bixby, Broken Arrow, Claremore, Jenks, Inola, Collinsville, Catoosa, Coweta, Owasso, Verdigris, and throughout Northeast Oklanoma.
• I still want to buy a horse. (I’ll have to board.)
• For more than eight years I have been an adorer at the Chapel of Peace at St. John’s Hospital in midtown Tulsa. Because real estate is a cut and run business, my shift is in the middle of the night twice a week when there are no possible conflicts with my schedule. It has been such a wonderful constant in my life.
• I also have begun singing in the choir at the Church of St. Mary in Brookside. I’m a second soprano singing in the alto section. It’s been a real delight to sing under our talented young choir director, William Buthod.
• Recently I’ve been recruited by one of the chaplains at St. John’s Medical Center in midtown Tulsa to be a weekend volunteer in their department. I am now a volunteer pastoral care visitor. The cool thing about doing pastoral care is that I don’t have to “do” anything, since it’s a ministry of “being.” Being present and keeping my mouth shut is something that has taken me a lifetime to learn, a skill that’s hard for someone who is an extrovert with so much to say about just about everything. As a pastoral care volunteer I don’t have to teach or preach or write a short term paper once a week. I have the wonderful opportunity to just be me and share my presence with others with a listening heart. It really keeps my life in perspective.