"It's the way you ride the trail that counts." Dale Evans

I knew Dale Evans was fabulous and I knew I admired her, but I didn't know how much until today when I read part of a book her daughter Cheryl wrote about her.  It was sort of like how I found out just how fabulous my mother was.  It's unfortunate that I really didn't know how fabulous my mom was until I was sitting at her funeral.  As the church filled to capacity on a weekday and they read her obituary and the pastor and my cousin talked about her life and her giving spirit, I knew I was born to a legacy…there will be no one else like her.  What she did for others was incomparable, to me anyway.  I know why she loved God and I now know why she liked Dale so much.  What you don't know is that I was named after Dale's daughter, Robin.  Dale and Robin touched the heart of my mother.  Both my mother and Dale were devote and loving Christian women and wives who loved their children, and their husbands.  I can't think of anyone I'd rather be named after that an "angel unaware".  Robin was a beautiful little blond, curly headed angel, sent to the earth by God to touch people.  And boy did she.  And she still does through the words of her mother and the book Dale wrote called "Angel Unaware".  Robin was very early diagnosed with Down's Syndrome.  At the time, those children were hidden from the public and felt to be born as a result as some sort of genetic weakness of the parent.  However, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans determined she was just as much a part of their family as their other children.  She appeared with them everywhere and was in the public eye.  I'm sure Dale questioned God as to why her child was born with Down's Syndrome.  I'm sure Dale questioned God as to why her Robin died just before she was two years old.  But what she later discovered was that the small angel like little girl was sent to earth with a purpose.  "Like sunlight breaking through clouds after a storm of darkness, it all became clear to me. She had come to us from God - an angel - with all her handicaps and frailties to make us aware that his strength is found in weakness. In the two years she had been among us we had grown close as a family and we had learned how deeply we needed to depend on God. My job was to help deliver that message that had been given us by an angel." 

And she did that in her book and made the world aware that in God you can trust all things.  With God all things are possible, even surviving thedeath of a child. 

So I see Dale's statement of "it's the way you ride the trail that counts" to mean it's not that you ride or where you ride or what you ride, it's how you live your life, how others see you, how you carry God's message that counts.  That's all that counts.  Anybody can ride a horse, but not everybody can touch the lives of the world with a loving message from God.  Not everyone can change the way the world looks at something from a negative way to a positive way.  Not everyone can create comradery between women who love their children.  Not everyone can raise all their children to love God.  Dale Evans was truly a messenger, like her daughter Robin.  An angel sent to touch us all.  So just know that in each person you meet treat them with kindness and "Be not forgetful to entertain strangers; for thereby some have entertained angels unawares."  Hebrews 13:2

Encourage One Another