Trapped in a Ditch

Illustration by David Green

Working as a farm consultant some years ago south of Casa Grande, Arizona, USA, I saw a mare in the middle of an alfalfa field.

“There shouldn’t be any horses out here,” I said to myself. As I drove closer, I found a baby horse trapped in an adjacent concrete irrigation ditch. The foal, only a day or two old, was so small it couldn’t jump out of the ditch. He was trapped.

As I approached him, the mare in the field became agitated. I jumped into the dry ditch and talked calmly to her baby, petted him, picked him up, and put him on the ditch bank.

Instead of going to his mother, he jumped back into the ditch. I grabbed him by the right rear leg, lifted him out of the ditch again, and pointed him toward his mother. He quickly turned around and tried to get into the ditch again.

I grabbed him a third time and talked gently to him again as I carried him toward his mother. As I left him and started to back away, he followed me!

“No,” I said as I again pointed him toward his mother, “you’ve got to go to your mother.”

Then something remarkable happened. His mother whinnied. Immediately, the little horse recognized her voice and took off after her. The two of them then ran out of the field toward the desert.

As I reflected on this experience, I wondered how many of us have fallen into a ditch we can’t get out of or keep falling back into. Perhaps it’s a ditch of sin or addiction or doubt.

President Russell M. Nelson (1924–2025) taught, “We are to hear the words of the Lord, hearken to them, and heed what He has told us!” He said we hear the Lord’s voice in the scriptures and the temple, in the words of latter-day prophets and apostles, and through the whisperings of the Holy Ghost.

The foal was saved when his mother called to him. He recognized her voice and followed her.

The Good Shepherd is calling after us. As we hearken unto His voice and follow Him (see Alma 5:37, 41), He will lift us when we fall, heal us, and lead us home.