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The Miracle of Life – and Death
by Jim Sevy 

We have recently enjoyed the arrival of several baby goats. Two more just arrived night before last. It was wonderful and at the same time sad.

One of our "does", who was on her first batch of kids, had two beautiful little bucks. We were all busy taking care of them and our 11-year-old daughter came running in the house saying there were more coming. We split up, half to take care of the 2 that were already here and the other half to go see to the additional arrivals.

This is where the sad part starts. As Fudagasi, the doe delivering, strained it was difficult to see if it was truly another baby or if it was afterbirth. As we looked more closely we could see a very small, not completely developed little goat. It was still born. This was very disappointing and the half of us that were there we feeling sad for the "Mom" and a little bit for ourselves.  The same daughter actually found another stillborn baby goat, the same way, the next morning and had to deal with the pain all over again.

As hard an experience as it was for our kids, dealing with the disappointment of the stillborn goat kids, they had the joy of witnessing the miracle of the birth of the living "kids" to balance out the experience. This is the reason that we moved our family to our little farm. We wanted our children to learn of the pain of death, and by understanding that, more completely know the joy of life. Without opposition we cannot know joy. Without opposition we cannot grow. The kind of opposition we face on the farm has been very manageable, so far, especially when compared to some that inner city children have to face, but it is opposition nonetheless.

I hope that my children will grow up knowing what a miraculous and wonderful thing life is, that they will gain a respect for life and learn to grow from the opposition that they will face. I believe that they will and that they will be able to help their children to learn these lessons.