I was four and a half years old when (I'm told), I made the above proclamation to our entire family, standing upon a strange piece of furniture that we called "The Big Box"! It was, I believe, originally a wooden box that had held a coffin for shipping--whose? I wouldn't know; we used it as a gigantic storage container for all manner of things. At that moment it served as my "soapbox" for announcing to the world that I was no longer disappointed not to have a baby sister!
The day's excitement had started that morning when Grandma and I were alone in the big old farmhouse. Dad and Mom had gone to furnish music for a church service which Grandpa (a retired pastor) had been asked to conduct in a small church somewhere in the area. It didn't occur to me to wonder why we didn't ALL go. What I didn't know was that my grandmother was staying home to listen for a very special phone call that might come--that DID come, it turned out.
The big old wall phone rang our ring. Grandma answered, talked briefly to someone, and hung up.
"Who was that?" I queried eagerly.
"That was the hospital up in Salem," Grandma explained. "They say they have a little baby brother for you!"
That afternoon, I rode with Mom and Dad from Corvallis to Salem to bring home this baby boy who would be adopted into our family. A clothes-basket had been carefully lined with soft blankets; on them lay a long-legged, bright pink baby! It was in the days before seat-belts; I rode in the front seat on my knees the whole journey home, gazing in fascination at this little speck of humanity who would become my six-feet-four bachelor brother and the best Uncle George our three children could ever have had to take them on fishing trips, carnival rides and you-name-it!
George is gone now. If anyone ever walked on "into the Light," he did, when God called him home. He wasn't just adopted into OUR family; he had that "spirit of adoption" the Bible talks about, whereby we become children of the Kingdom through Christ our Lord. So it isn't goodbye, George, it never was; it's so-long, "till we meet at Jesus' feet"!
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