You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink

By Kari Froelicher, MA, LPC

I wish I came up with this wonderful saying but it is an old saying from the days of cowboys (and cowgirls). I don’t know that anyone actually claims authorship of it, but I certainly would have if I was that clever. As you begin to work with horses you find out how true this saying really is. Here in southern Arizona it is hot and dry (OK that is an understatement). We ride all day long in the hot sun most of the year (summer is too hot to ride at all except in the early morning or late evening) and it is absolutely amazing to me that those horses can be out in the heat riding for hours, be sweaty, dusty and you have got to believe incredibly thirsty and yet when offered water at an unfamiliar (or sometimes familiar) watering hole or bucket they will actually refuse to drink the water. I, as many other riders have often done, have made the foolish attempt to try to force my stubborn horse to drink at least a little of the life sustaining water to no avail.

Then I remember this is so like we are. Our hearts, minds and souls are thirsting for living, life sustaining water, we are literally dying of thirst in this desert of life, only to refuse it when it is presented to us. God offers us the life giving water of His Holy Spirit poured out in our hearts if we will only open ourselves to receive this most thirst quenching gift. So why do we refuse it so often? Maybe like the horse we are not sure we can trust the source of the water. We are afraid, afraid that somehow He will let us down as we have so often been let down by the world before. Maybe we are in denial, denying we need anything or anyone but ourselves to be alive and healthy. Maybe we are stubborn too and don’t want to accept something that is given to us by another. Maybe if we took the water we fear it would call attention to our thirst (our deficits and our needs). Maybe we think there is a price for the water…a price we might not be willing to pay.

The sad thing is that God is totally trustworthy, He will not poison us with His gift. He will not let us down. We are in need of someone else to help us and to sustain us because in the end we can not do this life on our own. And the best part of all, we fail to recognize, is that the water is free, free because He Himself paid the price for it with His very own blood.

I see this resistance in counseling too. We can at times refuse to admit that we are in need of help from others, that they have anything of value to give us or to teach us. As a counselor I can offer my clients to drink of the water of healing from past and present wounds, but they can also refuse to take the water even when they are, like the horse, clearly thirsting. That is the awesomeness of our freewill. We can choose to stay sick, to stay unhealthy, unhealed, sad and alone, or we can chose to drink and be satisfied.