Bittersweet Farm

We are here on Oregon’s North Coast to celebrate the birth of the baby and to be a help. I’m reading through Luke’s Gospel in preparation for telling the stories surrounding Jesus’ birth. So it’s neat to be among people welcoming and nurturing a baby up close and personal.

We welcomed eight babies, four sons and four daughters, and if you know me well you have heard me say that before. Our lives have been all about having babies and raising them to flourish in life and follow Jesus for over 42 years. The clan numbers near 40 now, but it’s been well over twenty years since we have had the heart-bursting joy of welcoming a little infant into our home.

Little Xander August is as near perfect as any child I have ever seen. Even though I am contributing little to the nurturing, he does seem from where I sit to look like a very healthy, easy baby. He is eating and sleeping and doing the other stuff babies are supposed to do with a minimum of disruptive crying. I keep thinking now many things could have gone wrong and how many cannot have children and how very privileged and blessed this little family is.

Dad is Mr. Busy all the time doing project most days, working just a bit from home and spending time helping with the baby, playing with the kids, and entertaining the guests (us). He grabbed ladders and outlined the house with white lights the first day. The day before yesterday he plotted to fix a downspout drain problem and yesterday he knocked out that project while taking the older kids along and involving them in the work and talking with me.

He also wrote and printed the Annual Family Christmas Letter, folded it and addressed it and printed the family picture and mailed it.

Mom is glowing with beauty, happy, healing, and whole. Her last two births were very difficult and frightening so it was delightful to watch her have what she has described as a “five-push” easy birth. Praise be unto our God for answered prayers.

Lois is at her very best when she is helping with a newborn. She moves easily around the house keeping meals and desserts ready and clearing up the mountains of dishes and pans it takes to feed the multitudes. I didn’t notice it so much when I was young, but she really has a natural ease about making the home welcome.

Every morning we have enjoyed the smell of coffee and bacon, the sound of the banter of children, the joyful laughter of the new parents and the occasional alto of the baby’s cray. It’s not shrill but low and sweet and it usually does not go on for very long and I’m experienced to know this is a special mercy from God for Holly and for her little family.

Aiden, who is seven is oriented toward projects like his dad. Bella is magnetized to animals and loves to coddle her little brother. She never tires of holding him.

Dad (Jesse) is a tender-hearted man of faith. He plays hymns on the piano, and leads the children in a Bible reading and prayer every evening while mom tends to the baby. He easily tears-up when he thinks of God’s goodness to his family.

The little tree when drove up into the hills to get is glowing with lights in the corner. Rain has come today. After all, it is the Pacific Northwest, but the sun has shone every other day since we came. I’m sure there will be challenges and the down-spout system will be tested, but this experience of God’s goodness is one will will deeply cherish and long remember.

Salty Cove | Gearhart, Oregon | November 30, 2023

This morning we drove away from the Pacific north coast of Oregon and into the coastal range of the Cascades. We were headed for an old logging camp converted into a rustic restaurant sitting on a river called Humbug Creek.

The restaurant is constructed of huge logs and decorated with fascinating relics from the longing industry. When we arrived we asked to be seated be between the roaring fire and a towering fresh-cut evergreen bedecked for Christmas as if they knew we were coming to celebrate the birth of two babies. One born long ago in a rustic place and the other just a few days ago on a day set aside in America for Thanksgiving.

On the climbing drive out we talked and listened to Christmas music and drank in the beauty along the way. I always keep my eyes open for mountains and valleys. I watch for water.

A creek or river running along the forest floor always arrests my attention and stirs my spirit. Sometimes the waterway follows the road, sometimes it crosses the road and runs off at an angle through the woods. Here you look down into a valley below on the silver water, and there you can see its color and form as it burbles along close at hand on the same level.

Trees, mostly conifers, rise along the banks. The mountains soar up on the horizon. It’s a spectacle even on a wet grey day. However you see it, clear mountain water running over rocks has a simple and magnetic beauty unmatched by any synthetic decoration we could invent, no matter how beautiful.

As they so accurately say, “Poems are made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree.” Only God can make a mountain or cause the silver river to run down the mountain through the forest to the sea.

I don’t know when we will travel again to this place so for away from our home in the Mitten made by the Great Lakes, but I know we will cherish the memory of it. We will not forget the good food, the laughter, the leaping fire, the huge evergreen soaring up into the peak of the restaurant all bedecked for Christmas.We will rave to all our friends about the huge, hot cinnamon roll. We will long cherish the memory of the childish antics of the grandchildren and the warm happy security of having a tiny infant sleeping at hour feet. We will ache with longing to hear again the little lisping voices still working to achieve adult pronunciation of some words.

Yesterday news came of the sudden and unexpected passing of a young mother in our church, a woman still in her late forties with four children still at home. Today we are mindful of that as our visit comes to an end.

How long do we have to cherish those we love and how long do we have on earth to point others toward to One “…who formed all creatures with his word and then pronounced them good.”

Salty Cove | Gearhart, Oregon | December 1, 2023