I had been dreaming of coming to Nepal since I was a junior in college, four years ago. I dreamed of the stunning Himalayas, the kind locals, and the way people come from around the world to experience this beauty. Nepal seemed like a well-kept secret that I wanted to be a part of. My excitement was spilling over when the airplane wheels touched the ground in Kathmandu, and I was in awe when I found I would be living with a lake view under the shadow of the Annapurna Range. The dream was coming true.
The morning after we arrived in Pokhara, the city we would call home for the month, I let my thoughts bleed onto the pages of my journal:
“I’m sitting on top of the Maya Guest House. It’s 8am. Rice fields are below me, and then the lake, and its stunning and I can hardly believe this is real, and yet I still feel heavy, kind of. Like I should be filled with joy but I’m not.” (November 11, 2016)
(Also written in my journal that morning that is worth noting: my counselor once told me to remove the word “should” from my vocabulary, such as in “should be filled with joy.” It’s obviously something I’m still working on.)
So there I was, breathing in the Himalayan air, and yet feeling completely empty. I arrived in Pokhara and immediately began questioning my relationship with the Lord. Our first night here, I sat on the cold concrete outside and sobbed, consumed with doubt and inadequacy, believing that God could never and would never love me like He loved so many of His other stronger, more deeply connected daughters. Seemingly out of nowhere, I was wrecked.
That same morning, I continued in my journal by writing directly to the Lord:
“Jesus. Please show me who you are this month. You know how I need to be shown. Romance me, God. Make it personal. I don’t know how to do this. Where are you? What do I need to do? Make yourself undeniable to me.” (November 11, 2016)
(It’s a weird concept at first—that Jesus wants to romance us. We’re taught that He’s our Father, but also the lover of our soul. I’m here to tell you that He can be—and is—both, because His love is one that is profound and not meant to be understood easily. But that’s a blog post for a different day.)
A couple days later, I was still struggling spiritually. If I’m being brutally honest with you, I was starting to wonder if any of this was even real. Did I really believe in God? And what was I doing here if I didn’t?
I decided to ask the Lord to prove Himself, to show me if He was really there, if He was really listening to me, if He really loved me. The Bible tells us not to put the Lord to the test, but when Thomas doubted His resurrection, Jesus appeared and told Thomas to go ahead and touch his hands and sides as proof—to feel the holes in His hands where the nails held Him to the cross as He died.
All I did was ask God for a horse. I hadn’t seen a single horse since I left the States, and it seemed like a reasonable enough request. More specifically, I asked for a white horse (yeah, I know they’re actuallygrey, horse friends, but for the sake of clarity I will be calling them white). I journaled about feeling like a fraud, and asking the blank page in front of me why I was even doing this. And then I wrote:
“God, I need You to show Yourself to me today. Are you there? Please, Father, through a horse—a white horse—in the field…speak your love clearly to ME. I’m sorry I’m a doubting Thomas.” (November 14, 2016).
The next morning, I stepped outside groggily, a little disheveled and looking for breakfast. As I walked toward the kitchen, something caught my eye. Sure enough, trotting through the rice fields all by itself, a horse. It wasn’t white, but it was a horse, and it obviously wasn’t supposed to be there because close behind it were a couple of boys chasing it with sticks. I smiled to myself but remember thinking, “it’s probably just a coincidence, and besides, I asked God for a white horse.”
Maybe an hour later, walking close by down a dirt road, there it was in a field—my white horse. Again I smiled to myself and thought “it’s probably just another coincidence.” Mere moments after that thought went through my mind, there was a second white horse. I could almost hear the dialogue between me and God. He was saying something along the lines of, “How many dang horses do I have to give you before you believe it’s me?!?!” “Okay God,” I thought, “I see you.”
Since that day, the horses have multiplied. They’re everywhere. At nearly any given moment, there are 10-20 grazing in front of where we live. Nearly half of them are white. There seems to be more each day, getting closer and closer. While the first day they were scared and skittish, I can now approach and pet every single one. It fills my soul.
It would still be easy for me to assume these instances to be insignificant coincidences. And I did still, for a while, until a friend we’d been doing ministry with pointed out so casually, “you know Sam, there weren’t horses here until you showed up.”
How could this not be God? I asked the Lord to show His love for me in a tangible way, and it showed up in a space that was previously empty. How can I deny it when these horses that I so specifically asked for showed up the day after I asked for them and haven’t left since?
Jesus loves us deeply. My brain knows that. We are His bride, and He wants to show His love in ways that will call us deeper. Every time I see a white horse these days, I know it was put there for me to enjoy. It’s God’s still small voice telling me that He loves ME—Samantha Drew Cook—for everything I am and everything I’m not. With each horse in that field, I’m learning what it means to love God and be loved by God. While my brain has always known His affection and longing for me, my heart is finally catching up.
