Healing Horses, Healing Children
Crystal Peaks Youth Ranch witnesses emotional and physical healing on a daily basis.
It takes a broken heart to know one; it takes a healed broken heart to help one heal. This is the foundation of Kim Meeder’s work, Crystal Peaks Youth Ranch. A “ranch of rescued dreams,” it’s a ministry for hurting children and horses located in Bend, Ore., that has also mentored other such ministries throughout Canada and the United States.
Meeder is on a mission to save young lives headed for disaster before it’s too late, offering hope and love to those who have none. She is living proof that no matter what tragedies we face, we shouldn’t give up. She was orphaned at an early age in a most horrific way: her dad murdered her mother and then killed himself.
“As a young girl, I opted not to go to their funeral with those images in my heart,” she recalls, her expressive eyes clouding over. “Instead, I got on my cousin’s horse and rode, all day long. Thankfully my grandparents had the foresight to buy a little horse for me. Through the unconditional love of a horse and the mercy of God, my life was saved from destruction.
“Every day after school, I just couldn’t get to my horse fast enough. I know that there was no better place to cry than on her neck. I would gallop as fast as I could go. I always imagined that the hurt and pain in my heart wasn’t fast enough to keep up.”
As an adult, she never outgrew her love and gratitude for horses. In 1995, Meeder had the opportunity to purchase an inexpensive parcel of land and, with her husband Troy, opened Crystal Peaks for equine rescue. They started out with two horses and have since saved hundreds from lives of abuse or neglect.
Rescued animals never forget they were rescued. They have a softer and even more grateful heart that makes them reach out and connect, in a way that sometimes more privileged animals can’t.
The healing power of “I know. I’ve been there.”
Not only does Crystal Peaks give horses new lives, it invites children who have suffered abuse or neglect to join them in helping heal the horses. In turn, the children miraculously are healed. It is the perfect match-up. Every year thousands of children enjoy the ranch facilities, free of charge.
“We wanted to create a safe and peaceful environment where broken horses and children could find hope through unconditional love,” says Meeder. “So many of the kids that come here have known the same kind of sufferings that the horses that we rescue have known, and the understanding one to another is really beyond what perhaps an outsider could understand.”
She never runs out of stories about children’s and horses’ lives alike that have been rescued, healed and turned around. Meeder recalls one particular visit by a group of tough-looking teenagers.
“They all had a ‘what are you gonna do about us’ attitude,” she smiles. “But by the end of the day they were just a bunch of kids having fun. You can’t un-feel love.”
She knows that whether they come from a whole family or a broken one, it’s hard being a kid these days. Meeder worked with one particular girl who was going through an awkward adolescent stage. Cathy* had poor health and an abusive father.
“She was out at the ranch recently and we were riding and laughing together,” Meeder relates. “When we came back, I mentioned that I didn’t have any pictures of our new eight-week-old colt. So I suggested we lie down on the grass, and the colt came over and layed down beside us. We got great pictures of us laughing with that little horse.”
After the fun, Meeder saw that Cathy’s mother was crying and went over to her. She told Meeder how thankful she was that her daughter could come to the ranch. Only a month before, the girl never ventured out of her bedroom.
“The ranch saved her life,” Meeder says. “Her mom says now Cathy sings while she does her homework, and she can’t wait to see the horses again.”
The healing power of “I’m just like you, and we’re OK.”
Meeder also likes to share a story about Mateo, at one time the smallest horse on her ranch.
“As the sole survivor of a once hellish existence, he came to us with many troubles,” she remembers, “the most difficult being the worst equine under-bite that I had ever seen. With his head in a downward position, his lower teeth jut nearly an inch beyond his upper teeth. Not a good thing for a creature that needs incisors to line up so they can graze.”
She was sure Mateo belonged at the ranch, but she wasn’t exactly sure how he would fit in. Then, six-year-old Gillian came to visit. She shyly told Meeder she really wanted to ride a horse. When the little girl heard she could, she grinned broadly in excitement.
“This was a smile that I had seen before,” says Meeder. “Baby lower teeth jutted out before baby upper teeth. Like Mateo, Gillian also had an under-bite. I said to her, ‘What a beautiful smile you have! Did you know that you are the only little girl to come to this ranch with such a special smile? Hmmm, there’s another special smile on this ranch, and I’m pretty sure that he’d like to meet you.’”
Meeder took Gillian to see Mateo. She warned Gillian the horse would be shy and had been through a hard time before ending up at the ranch.
“To my great surprise, he did not step away from her, he stepped toward her,” Meeder recalls. “As he reached out to her, she reached out to him. Two mirrored halves of a bridge came together. They had found each other. Then Gillian looked up at me with a brilliant reverse-order grin!”
Meeder reached down to carefully spread Mateo’s lips apart and revealed his lower teeth were firmly in front of his upper teeth. Gillian was shocked.
“He DOES smile like me!” she beamed.
After that instantaneous bonding experience, Gillian continued to visit the ranch to ride Mateo. One day her mother told Meeder about a recent trip to the dentist. Throughout previous dental appointments Gillian had been very self-conscious, but this time as she got into the chair she proudly announced:
“It’s okay that I have an underbite. The horse I ride has an underbite just like me. He loves me and I love him. It’s really okay that we have an underbite. That’s what makes us special. That’s what makes us friends.”
Meeder looks forward to witnessing hundreds of more stories about the healing power of her healed horses.
“I have learned that even the smallest heart or ‘pebble,’ when thrown into a pond, can make impression rings,” she says. “But no impressions are made if the pebble chooses to stay on the bank. All of us have the opportunity to choose to make a difference in the world around us. We can choose to make impression rings of love.”
To protect the privacy of the individuals profiled in this article, the names have been changed.
This story originally appeared in Destra Magazine.
