Nine-year-old Kim climbed awkwardly onto the little mare, anxiety swirling around her heavy heart. She’d never been on a horse before, but she didn’t care. Something in the horse’s eyes, in the way he responded to her touch, told her that she was safe. That she was loved. That everything would be okay. How she needed to believe it, to feel it – today of all days.

It was the day her parents were buried. Her father, unable to face the bitter divorce ahead, killed his wife and then committed suicide. Their deaths shattered Kim’s already shaky world. But that day, riding as fast as she dared, Kim galloped out to the edge of her childhood and into the arms of a loving God.

Looking back, Kim Meeder, now 49, fully understands the significance of that tragedy, not in terms of mourning and loss, but in terms of healing and ministry.

“That was the first day that I understood unconditional love of the Lord through a horse,” she says. “And how ironic and completely not coincidental that my personal tragedy was the beginning of what we’re doing here now.”

Land of the Broken
Here and now, Kim and her husband, Troy, own and operate Crystal Peaks Youth Ranch, a nine-acre plot of heaven-on-earth for broken, abused horses and hurting, neglected children, a humble piece of red crust in the Cascade Mountains of Central Oregon, where in nine years more than 25,000 children have found hope and healing.

The ranch is home to 26 horses from among the 300 Kim and Troy have rescued from severe neglect, starvation, or abuse. Funded by grants and donations, Crystal Peaks is the only ranch of its kind in the country, with a program that promises one child with one horse and one counselor, 100 percent of the time, free of cost to anyone.

When Kim and Troy cashed in their life savings to buy the old cinder mine with a three-acre crater smack in the middle of it, they knew it would take years of grit and determination to restore it.

“The property was so broken, no one wanted it. That’s the only reason we could afford it,” Kim says. “But my husband, who is a landscaper by profession, would bring home all these broken trees and organic material to help the property heal and be able to support life. And then the broken horses started coming, and the broken kids started coming. The results have just been miraculous.

“But isn’t it just like the Lord to choose the broken and useless things in this world to show His greatest glory?” Kim asks, not for an answer but as the answer. “In our brokenness, He begins to fit everything back together... like stained glass that is beautiful beyond words.”

Unlike other ranches that work with disadvantaged children, Crystal Peaks isn’t a “saddle ’em up, ride ’em, and leave” operation. It’s a place of self-discovery, a place where horses and children make an unmistakable connection. Whether it’s cleaning a paddock, pulling weeds, moving hay, or fixing a fence, Kim explains, “these kids, who are rejected by the world, suddenly find a place where they’re needed. And that changes everything. They’ll bring their friends and say, ‘I fixed that fence, I planted all those flowers, and that horse is alive because I loved it back to health.’ It just gives them a sense of identity and purpose. It also opens the door for us to speak into their lives.”

At Crystal Peaks, children learn how to move safely around a horse and how to treat every horse with kindness and respect. This begins to teach them how to treat others with kindness and respect, something that has never been modeled for them.

“With horses, you can’t just come barreling right up because the horse will back away from you,” Kim says of the interaction between kids and horses. “Life is kind of like that, too. We need to go gently, creating situations where it’s easy for the horse or our friends or our family to choose the right thing. So we’re kind of teaching them about life through this process of working with horses.”

Horses, especially these rescued horses, connect with neglected, hurting children in real, visceral ways, Kim explains, ways that say, “I understand your pain.”

“Horses don’t know if you’re unpopular or don’t wear designer clothes. They don’t know that you have buckteeth and a pimply face. They just know that you’re here to love them, and because they’re assured of that, they give more than they receive. ...Horses have and express much more emotion than we give them credit for. They understand more about these children than we think,” she says

The Ranch of Rescued Dreams Is Born
Crystal Peaks began unexpectedly within weeks after Troy and Kim rescued their first two horses. Jessica, a quiet 16-year-old attending the Meeders’ church, began visiting the ranch to help out. She wasn’t coming to ride because the horses weren’t in any condition for that. Most likely, she wanted to get away from the difficulties she faced at home. At the time, Kim explains, “there was just nowhere in her life where she felt safe, where she saw love expressed.”

Although she hadn’t always been so, Jessica had chosen a life of silence, her shattered hopes and dreams locked tight in the fortress of her fragile heart. Her voicelessness was her self-defense.

One Wednesday, a winter storm kicked up while Kim and Jessica were constructing a new fence. Kim tried to get Jessica to take a break and come inside while she made a phone call. But Jessica shook her head resolutely. Thirty minutes later, her phone call completed, Kim looked out the foggy window to see Jessica, nose-to-nose with the filly. The horse began bobbing its head up and down, and Jessica’s mouth began to move. She began talking to the horse, gesturing with her hands and arms. A flood of words, as driving as the winter sleet, began to fall on the filly’s eager ears as the walls around Jessica’s heart began to crumble.

“At that instant,” Kim writes in her book, Hope Rising, “I purposed in my heart to build the kind of place where this miracle might happen over and over again ...where angels disguised as starving horses could reach out to the souls of starving kids. It was the moment when Crystal Peaks Youth Ranch was born.”

Today, Jessica works at a children’s orphanage in Peru, teaching English as a second language – a testament to the power of God. She’s one of many miracles that occur almost daily at Crystal Peaks. These everyday miracles are undoubtedly God’s way of reminding Kim and Troy that nothing is beyond His reach.

One Story of Broken Dreams
Although open to any path the Lord would choose for them, the Meeders never really desired to have children of their own. “Instead of being mother to a few,” a friend once told Kim, “the Lord wanted you to be mother to many.” And that she has been. Here’s a story of just one of her “kids”:
 
Born to a crack-addicted mother, Matt’s deformed arm and hand had long branded him a “freak.” He grew up choked by the lie that he was unlovable and unwanted. Angry at the world and at God for making him this way, by age 17, he’d been in and out of trouble most of his life.
 
“Doesn’t she know I’m bad?” Matt asked his social worker after Kim welcomed him and six other boys to the ranch and started off down the hill toward the barn, beckoning them to follow. “Yeah, she knows,” came the reply.

Unbeknownst to Matt, Kim and the ranch staff had just rescued a young Thoroughbred/Quarter horse in the largest equine rescue in Oregon history. Of the 130 horses, the two-year-old filly was in the worst condition, wasted away to 400 pounds. She was so weak, she couldn’t bend any of her joints without collapsing. Rotting skin hung in patches on her winter-exposed back. She had never been touched by a human.
 
As they walked toward the barn, Kim told the boys, “I have a horse I think you need to meet. She’s pretty shy, so just let her come to you.” Gingerly, in her weakened state, the horse smelled each boy in the circle. Then she turned, took one look at Matt, and walked straight toward him. Sensing that he, too, had suffered in many ways, the horse pressed her head against his chest as if to say, “I know, I know.”
 
Two days later in his counselor’s office, choking back tears, Matt said, “My heart, my heart, something has happened to my heart. I never knew that I could be loved. But if the horses and the people at this ranch can love me and believe in me, maybe I can believe in myself.”

Step by Step and Side by Side
When Troy first met Kim, he was a self-described “hormone-enraged, beer-drinking wild man.” While he was a believer, he considered himself more of a “Sunday morning Christian.” At 19, he was working at a grocery store, trying to figure out what to do next.

Kim, who lived with her grandparents only two miles from where Troy grew up, stopped by the store every Sunday evening on her way to church. At 18, she was mature for her age, and Troy thought she was older and far out of his league. Kim thought he was sweet and cute, but she knew he’d never muster the courage to ask her out.

So she asked him out.

Their first date was to the evening service at her church, and though it was a bit strange for him, he was thrilled to be near her. He knew this was no ordinary girl.

“Not only was she beautiful on the outside,” he says, “but the inside was so far and above her beauty on the outside. I knew at that moment if I could ever spend my life with this woman, she’d make me a better person – and she has.”

That night, as they were sitting in Troy’s Volkswagen, Kim talked about her parents’ deaths and how her life had changed since then. At that point Troy caught a glimpse of the tenacity and passion of the woman he would marry. “I know the Lord must have sat back and smiled and said, ‘Boy have I got some plans for you two.’”

“What really drew my heart toward Troy,” Kim says, “is his absolute, foundational kindness. There’s a gentleness about him that’s so unexpected in a man his size... in a man, period.” Within a week of that first date, she knew she’d marry him.

Twelve years later, Kim coaxed Troy to a barren patch of useless mountain land where God began showing them both the sacrifice and meaning of ministry. “When she sat in front of this property and shared her dreams, and I saw the sparkle in her eye, I knew that when you truly love someone, you’ve got to step out there and say, ‘OK, let’s do it.’”

In order to financially support the ministry of the ranch, Troy has worked as many as four jobs at one time. After 60-plus hours a week elsewhere, he spends 20 to 30 hours more maintaining the ranch and its outbuildings. “There have been moments when it would’ve been easy to walk away, easy to quit what we were doing,” he admits. “But unless you’re truly tested as a couple, unless you’re tested as an individual, you never know what you’re made of. The two of us standing in the storm together has made us stronger. We’re committed to the Lord and to each other, and this is what we’re going to do.”

Kim mirrors that level of resolve and commitment. “The thing about Kim,” Troy says, “is that she’ll dream the dream, but turn around twice, and she’s out there with a pick ax in her hand, making the dream come true. I’ve seen her work til her hands were bleeding. This ranch wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the passion and tenacity of my wife.”

Even now that the ranch has been fully operational for more than nine years, Kim and Troy battle ongoing challenges with finances, insurance, maintenance, and just spending time together when surrounded by such demanding work.

“Of all the things we deal with, having privacy and time where we can just be a couple is probably the most difficult,” Troy says. “What we’re learning is we truly have to say no, shut the doors, and take time.”

Every day Troy and Kim are learning more and more about trusting God to take care of the details. “Had He shown us the mountain when we were at the foot of it,” Kim says looking back, “we might have been too fearful to climb. So the Lord has revealed one step at a time. We’ve stepped through some real mud holes, yet step-by-step, He’s called us to trust Him to walk on water.”

A Mark of Beauty
Together, Kim and Troy are a beautiful example of how God accomplishes His purposes through love and loss, diligence and uncertainty. How He uses the weak and the hopeless – broken humans and horses alike – to cultivate strength, faith, and hope.

“One of the foundational verses of my life,” Kim says, “is 2 Corinthians 1:3-4: ‘All praise to God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the source of every mercy and the God who comforts us. He comforts us in our troubles so that we can comfort others. When others are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.’

“This verse assures me that suffering has a purpose, that a tragic event can become a healing event not only in your life but in the lives of all the people that God brings you in contact with. In my mind, every time I have the opportunity to touch the hearts of children with what I’ve been through, that heals me. It’s the power of Christ within us. There’s victory through tragedy. And these big raking scars in our hearts – instead of being raw, open wounds – become beauty marks for God’s glory.”

For more information on Kim and Troy’s ministry at Crystal Peaks Youth Ranch or how you can help, visit their Web site at www.crystalpeaksyouthranch.org. 

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