Baby Changes Everything

So maybe it's the Holiday Season or the weather or the Christmas music and decorations, or perhaps it's the fact my 3 female goats just gave birth to a total of 6 babies. LOL. Regardless something has really started something rolling around in my head.

Mary and Joseph and that whole "Christmas" story. Can you imagine? Mary being a young girl and pregnant, you know she was criticized. Can you imagine Joseph? Finding out it's true your girlfriend who you have never touched is pregnant? I know I know there was the whole angel thing, but come on, how would you feel? Sometimes God has us do things we know we have to do but people look down on us or make fun of us or tell us their opinions. You know Mary and Joseph probably dealt with some of that.

To get to a strange town and look for a place to stay. No room, sorry no room. We are full up, no room. Finally someone offered a stable??? They jumped at it as a place to stay. I wonder what it was like. Was it a cave, I've heard the story told that way. Perhaps a big nice cozy and warm barn? What if it was like the little shelters my goats are using right now...

Their shelters are what I call the "Homeless Shacks" They are thrown together things, that is the only way to put it. Warped wood and tarps to keep them dry and warm until their better housing is completed.

I wonder if there was a billy goat named Phantom but everybody called him hillbilly, he might have been antisocial. Perhaps there was a little horse named Rowdy, but he was sweet. Maybe there were chickens peeking into the manger and horses eating the hay and chickens gripping the horse out for eating the hay and a horse that kept wiping his nose on everyone and nipping at their robes.

I wonder what it was like. It all hit me in reality as I lay on the yucky, nasty ground trying to save a breech baby. I didn't care if there was goat poo under me or the remains of Lexington Noel's birth. I didn't care, I was focused and determined on saving that baby. I wonder what the ground was like where Mary was, I really doubt it was crisp and clean. I live on a farm basically, we have close to 40 animals, counting all the cats, dogs, goats, horse, rabbit, fish and a goose. I know what the ground is like, YUCK, but in every one of the goats giving birth I've plopped my behind on the ground and helped. Cleanliness is not something animals care about and in that moment in time I didn't either, believe me that jean skirt and shirt will NEVER be the same. LOL.

Mary had a BABY there. I was laying there helping Oreo and I thought, this is what Mary endured. Someone offered her a stable!!! A STABLE. Hay and smells and dirt and unpleasant stuff and Jesus was born there. Animals all peeking in a small doorway perhaps or squeezing into corners watching.

I will NEVER be able to think of the story in the same way. In a strange sort of way, I felt the yuckiness she endured, my mind goes crazy with what could have happened. I have a good imagination. In all that has happened in the last 3-4 days in some strange way I feel closer to God, I experienced, the awesome miracle called birth and the miracle of a baby that shouldn't have survived, surviving. Even though it was in the animal kingdom they are special miracles for me. Things that let me know God is out there and cares, even for a goat named Oreo, to save her baby. That is a miracle. So you see A Baby Changes Everything