"There's a Horse in the House"

I have in my bedside table a speech that has been there since 1992.  It was given at a Women's Conference in the same year it was published in BYU TODAY, an alumnus magazine.  The Ph.D speaking was Maren M. Mouritsen and the story is one that resonates with me so strongly I like to read and reread it.

It is called "There's a Horse in the House".  And the whole story is delightful but the meat of the story is when the pony that she had been anticipating being born is finally born and then in a terrible accident the mother mare rolled over on the pony and the pony stopped breathing.

The father says to her, "It's over, sweetheart--it's over.  I'll care for the mare. I'll give you a few more minutes.  We'll have another foal." 

She says, "I was used to the ebb and flow of life on the ranch, but I don't remember a time when I've ever been sadder because this was to have been my pony.  As I held that little thing in my arms, those little childhood phrases were echoing in my mind".  "If you have faith, anything can happen.  if you just ask, you can receive."  " I probably didn't do it consciously, but with the simple faith that only a chld can have, I thought, "It's time to try.  I've got to try."  With every ounce of my being, I prayed that it wasn't so.  It just couldn't be so." 

Then suddenly those little eyes, with the longest eyelashes i had ever seen, fluttered and opened.  There was tension in the body, there was warmth.  The next thing I knew it was standing.  When my father came  back, he was amazed.  I  was amazed.  My pony was standing, my pony was alive and he was mine...

That night, I slept in a little tiny nook by the mare and my pony.  As my father lifted me into the manger, he whispered in my ear, "When you are good, and you have done all you can do, and you have faith, and you ask for help, then miracles can happen."  And this had been, for me, a miracle.

This is my testimony, too, I have memorized the above phrase, I believe it totally as I have seen it in my own life.  But every once in awhile when I become gloomy and sad and sorry for myself, I get out this beautiful story and read again of the miracle in a little girl's life, a little girl who grew to be an Assistant Vice President and Dean of Student Life at BYU and I am sure a great influence on all the students and others whose lives she touched.