Love — The Ultimate Gift

FIFTEEN years ago, today, my first four calves were on the ground. On the ground means freshly born. I was in awe during those eight days. My first experience of birthing livestock had been with sheep in my late teens and a foal from my dad’s horse in my early twenties. Although cows were not my first livestock experience, they are herd (family) animals, which gave me a fondness for them as I could easily compare human characteristics to them. 

Seeing new life appear chokes me up every time and I hope that never changes. My heart is touched, and my spirits are lifted in the miracle of it.    

You might think that when cows are born in the barnyard or out in the pastures or even in a barn stall that it would be quite messy and cause a stench. It is quite the opposite in most cases. The afterbirth is the messiest part and unless something is wrong there is no real odor. Newborn calves smell quite nice. It’s a cross between the freshest barley grass odor and a sweet lanolin lotion smell. Cow mothers lick their young with strong aggressive strokes until their furry coats are dry and fluffy, which in turns warms the calves.

Those first four calves born in December 2010 between the 17^th and the 24^th were Joy, Noel, Peace, and Star in honor of Christmas. My late husband, John, experienced a stroke during those dates, and the last calf almost ended up being named Love because Christmas or Noel as it is called, is full of Joy, Peace, and Love, and we certainly felt that in our family when John came home on Christmas Eve. 

However, the moment I wandered into the barnyard at suppertime and spotted the calf, alone and shivering on the frozen concrete slab in front of the feeder, and under the flickering lights, on Christmas Eve, the name Love just didn’t fit her situation. Instead, a Star was born that 24^th day of December 2010, with a white smudge on her forehead that looked in fact, like a star. 

Star had one of the only cow moms that did not love on her like the other cow moms did with their calves. Her mother did all the basics that was required of her but that is where the line was drawn in her responsibility to her calf. Did Star’s mother know what would be her fate in life and thought it best not to devote time to her offspring? Or was she just a selfish cow? Unfortunately, I know human mothers, and human fathers, and quite recently human children, for that matter, that are no different than Star’s cow mom. 

Knowing that hurts my heart. 

I’m proud to say that both John and I were parents that felt honored to have the gift of parenthood. We took the responsibility seriously and with great love, perhaps to the point at times of spoiling our daughters. John and I were not unlike most other parents we knew. We wanted the best for our daughters, better than we had, even though we were not deprived or unloved. We wanted them to have what we didn’t, even though we never lacked for love, food, a warm roof over our heads, or the key essentials we needed to make us successful in life. 

I’m sure looking back we sometimes got wrapped up in what our dreams for their lives were instead of their own. We spoiled them when we could, especially after John’s heart and stroke issues, trying to make up for what we couldn’t give them – unlimited earthly time. Our family time was special in road trips on Sundays and family game nights on Saturdays. 

We worked hard and struggled much during those years because with each health issue the rug was always pulled out from underneath our financial assets. We didn’t want our daughters to feel the financial strain of life at an early age. I don’t think we did anything exceptional in spoiling them when we could. Life can be brutal and who needs to feel that as a child, a youth, a teenager? 

It makes me think of Jesus’ earthly parents, Mary and Joseph, and what if they had been like Star’s cow mom? The Christmas song, “Mary, Did You Know” gets to me not only at Christmas time but any time I hear it, or think about it. Being a parent is such an honored gift, and I never took the job lightly, and neither did my late husband, John. 

We loved them unconditionally for whatever time we would have on earth together. Parenting is not an easy job, it is most self-sacrificing, and the best role models of parents can be taken from the examples of Mary and Joseph with Jesus. His earthly parents. They loved him unconditionally, knowing he was not ultimately theirs and one day sooner than later they would have to let him go, and they did that in love.  

According to online sources the highest level of love is generally considered to be Agape, an ancient Greek term for selfless, unconditional, and universal love, extending to all humanity, even strangers or enemies, without expecting anything in return. It’s a compassionate, sacrificial love rooted in empathy, often seen as divine or spiritual, motivating actions like charity and the desire for others’ well-being, representing a powerful force that overcomes hate.

1 Corinthians 13:13 NIV – And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Until quite recently I have never thought about the flip side to a parent’s unconditional love of their children. I have to admit, my thoughts always rested with, “are the children being loved and cared for”. Never contemplating, “Do children give unconditional love to their parents?”

What if children in a family were raised with unconditional love, given all the necessities needed to thrive, and in fact spoiled, but unlike my daughters, these children were spoiled financially too, never having been expected to earn what they are given? If young adult children are gifted all their parent’s financial assets, in fact gifted their entire inheritance before their parents die, to ensure a firm basis of survival without much effort for the rest of their lives, at an early adult age, will they truly appreciate this gift? 

My personal belief is, NO! Can they without walking in their parent’s steps through the years of sacrifices and hard work, failures, and hard lessons? 

How do you console parents that have gifted everything to their children, are left with nothing, have quite possibly decades left to live on earth, and their children do not respect this gift to the fact they blame them for not doing, being, or giving more in the way they wanted their inheritance?

How do you sit by and listen to these parents in their sadness sob and question why their children hate them so much when all they wanted for them was an even better happiness than they had with a unity of family. 

This amateur cow whisperer is having a hard time keeping her mouth shut. I want to give these children a piece of my mind, I am being the judge, and that’s not my place. I’m finding myself spending much time in earnest prayer, for only God will know the best way to direct me in lending aide.  

Did Jesus treat his earthly parents like these children? No. Did Mary and Joseph treat their son like the unloving cow mom? No. Then I say, there is HOPE in this season of miracles at Christmastime. Star, not being loved by her cow mom, did not let that stop her from being a loving cow herself. She in fact was a precocious calf that was friendly, joyful, and had a peace about her that settled the others around her, and she let us humans love on her. LOVE IS IMPORTANT.

I want to implore each of you, as parents or children, to take the time to walk in the other’s shoes, before you judge, and especially before you act in anything other than love, you might learn something very important, and it could change the whole direction of your heart. Be a STAR!