"A Baby Changes Everything"

The title of the first sermon of Advent this year by the pastor of our church, Chuck Jacobs, was "A Baby Changes Everything". This sermon has set the wheels spinning and I now have the theme for this blog, I  hope my writing can makes some things come back alive, on this my 82nd birthday.

December 20, 1928; Seattle, Washington - Ballard Heights Hospital(I think) Five days before Christmas and another baby is added to the Bullard household with 3 other kids and Mom and Dad. Now there are 6 mouths to feed and things are still really tough. I know this because Uncle Steve and Aunt Zady told me the story of how word from Seattle came in May, asking them to come and rescue my family.

In June of 1929 Steve and Zady and family -Leroy and Wayne - set out in their new farm truck, with a tarp over the back, straw in the back end, camping equipment, firewood, and some sense of how to get from eastern Colorado to Seattle.

On the journey back to Wray, Colorado , so Aunt Zady told me a few years ago when I asked her why I was so deeply bonded to her, "that was the first time I visited Yellowstone National Park. She also said, "The worst part of the trip was finding milk for you." as the two families (10 people) camped there way back home. Apparently, the two families lived in the same house for the next year as my Dad found a way to survive, "back home".

Does a new baby make a difference, at Christmas time, in the midst of a depression? With six mouths to feed how much humility does it take to ask a brother to drive over 2400 miles - there were no super highways, just lots of gravel roads, ruts, mountain passes, and a new 28 ford farm truck - to rescue your family, and to go back home to face the other 5 brothers and 3 sisters?

I was the new mouth to feed, and Aunt Zady told me that her home was the place where both families learned how to survive and where I learned to walk, to talk and take my place in the whole scheme of things. According to the court records, in a little over 3 years my folks had divorced, and now there were 7 mouths to feed.

Bob went to live with our grandparents, Richard stayed with Dad. Virginia, Shirley, Lois, David and I went to Denver to live with our mother. Where did the 2 younger kids come from - according to the court records the divorce was granted in 1933, Lois and David came along after that date.

A baby changes everything - really changes everything! I grew up in Wray, Co. not in Seattle. Learned to love my Aunt Zady and Uncle Steve, (we named Stephen after him) and still to this day do not feel bonded to my parents.

Forgive me if this is too personal. I wonder, how Mary and Joseph must have felt to have "a mouth to feed" in their desperate situation? Herod wanted Jesus destroyed, a trip of some hundreds of miles - no super highways, just dirt roads, mountain passes, bandits, hunger, lots of walking, shelter is needed each night, diapers must be changed, milk must be found and there is no "home" to go back to!

Jesus is unaware of all these issues, he is just relaxed with his mother. Joseph, on the other hand, thinks of all these issues. He thinks that "home" will never be seen again, that Herod will find them and ultimately destroy Jesus - Kings have ways of getting their will done - but Joseph also knows that God sent an Angel, so he is on this journey even though there are no immediate answers.

I'm home now on my 82nd, comfortable in a warm house, with a sleeping wife, with plans for this evening to celebrate with Mark, Joanna and family. There does not seem to be journey of over 2400 miles - each way - through Yellowstone. There is no king with an edict to kill me, there is only that deep inner need to allow Jesus to reign internally ..... I hope that need never goes away!

Much love,
Bill