We started off our first SANESA season as a yard the way we always do: a little clueless, a lot scruffy, and ready to give absolutely everything we had.

At our first qualifier, I didn’t even know that SANESA working riding tests are given at the judge’s box instead of at the class itself. My poor teenager and I had to beg a friendly stranger in the warmup arena for her copy, and skimmed it in three seconds flat. One of the little kids fell off and injured herself. I missed both performance riding classes. The showing judge patronized my teenager for not trimming her horse’s ears, and Zorro got eliminated for three refusals (at the third fence).

The second qualifier was a little better. I had to panic to find a horse for K because of a glitch in her previous mount’s paperwork. We were late for my first class and I warmed my four-year-old up for all of one minute, shunting him into the arena just in time, bug-eyed and uncertain. Zorro got eliminated for forgetting the course. But Vastrap came third, and K won her class. And then Liana’s kid fell off again. But at least this time she waited until after the finish flags.

By the third qualifier, things started to look up. Vastrap was placing in every class he jumped; we would get someone into Finals after all. I got eliminated for failing to jump the A element of a combination after refusing at the B element. Liana’s kid fell off the day before, but stayed on throughout the actual show – and remembered her tracks. Pennie won two of her three classes and our new little lead rein kid placed third at her first show ever.

At the fourth qualifier, all snot promptly broke loose. Pennie was dead lame with a mystery issue we couldn’t get to the bottom of. She had to withdraw. Midas and Lancelot had stops and poles down all over the place and Vastrap took a silly rail. K forgot her course for the first time in living memory, her shot at finals slipping out of her grasp. My lead rein kid was late into her class because I was riding dressage in the arena next door and her poor mother almost had a heart attack. Amid this chaos, Liana’s kid pulled out a fabulous score in the prix caprilli and popped into finals. She didn’t fall off even once.

Then came Finals, and that was brilliant. The two little kids put in the rides of their lives, which made it irrelevant that neither of them went through to Nationals. Zorro the remedial stopper ate up a difficult track and leapt into ninth place (of over 40 riders), taking his rider from her first Finals to her first Nationals.

And Pennie, newly sound again, won her class.

And then everything started to fall to bits again. Pennie went lame. Hardly had she recovered than G went lame and was stuck in a Moon-Boot for four weeks while I wrestled with her fiery little pony, trying to install brakes. Zorro, at least, made up for his chaos early in the season and behaved just fine, but his kid battled stomach issues. Two weeks before Nationals, G came out of her boot and could finally ride again. Two days before Nationals, Pennie stopped so hard G fell into a fence, necessitating three stitches to her chin. One day before Nationals, it rained and rained and rained, turning horses into mud monsters and arenas into bogs.

We took a deep breath, bathed Zorro in the sunrise and made it happen. He jumped a fabulous round for his kid and they finished happily in the middle of the pack. We were delighted, and so so proud. Then Pennie jumped, conservative and just a little off her rhythm, taking a cheap pole down. We had showjumping the next day. None of us were feeling confident.

It was about this point where I threw up my hands and said, “God, I hope You have an idea of what You’re doing, because I don’t!”

He did. He was doing something incredible: teaching us that nothing is impossible with Him.

Brothers and sisters, our God is in charge. We had our first season, we had drama, we had blood, sweat and tears, we had lameness and falls, we had breakdowns and meltdowns, we kept trying, we hung on, we watched, and we saw miracle upon miracle as He worked mightily in and for every single one of my kids, regardless of where they finished. And I cannot wait for next SANESA season so that I can watch, again, what He does for us through our horses and our wonderful, crazy sport.

This last miracle was just the cherry on top.

Pennie and G are double national champions.

Glory to the King.