by Jason Brown
Tay and I had always wanted at least three children, and we were determined this time to do the birth the natural way. But even though the second C-section didn’t change our desire to birth our next baby more naturally, doctors and hospitals were skeptical. As we talked with doctors about our plans, none of them would take us on. To perform a vaginal birth after two emergency C-sections was, at the very least, unusual, they told us. And Tay’s history made her too much of a risk to go a different route. Her history suggests that a C-section is the best way to go, they’d say.
We weren’t going to do that again. Not if we could avoid it. If a doctor wouldn’t help us through a more natural childbirth, we’d take matters into our own hands. We decided we would have the baby at home. We hired a midwife, not a doctor, and in December 2012, she helped bring Noah into the world, a very short time after we’d bought the farm itself. He was the first baby born there.
Noah has spent seven whole years on the farm now, and he’s the household’s little preacher. Sometimes he’ll just stand up and start preaching to his little brothers and sisters as if he were in a church pulpit. This is what Jesus said, he’ll say, and, This is what Jesus did, and Noah knows. He knows the stories of Jesus backward and forward. He’s the family bookworm too. We homeschool the kids, and every day we have time where they can go outside and play—recess time so they can burn off their excess energy and, once they’re back inside, pay attention again. But Noah, even though he might be the child who has the most pent-up energy and needs recess time more than anyone, will try to work all the angles so he can stay inside and just read.
“Dad, can I stay inside and read my Bible?” Noah will ask.
“No, don’t read your Bible!” I find myself telling him. “Go outside and play!”
I never thought I’d be telling any of my children to quit reading their Bibles, and I bet most Christian moms and dads would love it if their kids wanted to skip playtime to be in the Word. But you don’t know Noah.
* * *
···
By 2014, the year Tay gave me that anxious call, she and I were mother and father to those three wonderful children. When it came to having babies, my wife was a seasoned pro by then.
I was not. Sure, I’d been around when Noah was born. I helped where I could. But Tay and the midwife did all the real work. It was a beautiful experience—awesome, in the truest definition of the word. But I appreciated the moment mostly on the sidelines, admiring the miracle of birth like an art connoisseur might appreciate a famous Renaissance sculpture, or like a fan in the stands might cheer an overtime win. It’s all well and good to appreciate the process and celebrate the final product; it’s another thing to actually help bring it about.
I was expecting my role to be much the same this time around. Our midwife, though, knew that babies aren’t that predictable. This baby might decide to show up when she wasn’t there, or he might come much faster than expected. So, a couple of weeks before Tay went into labor, our midwife pulled me aside and handed me a small box.
She said, “Hey, Jason, just in case anything happens—if there’s an emergency or something—let me give you this. There’s some material in it that you should look over if I’m not here. Read it over. Get comfortable with it.”
I smiled and nodded and thought, Read it? Are you kidding? If I could do this myself, why would I be paying you? You’ll be here. Everything’ll be fine. I pushed the whole conversation off to the side, and I didn’t think of it again. Well, not until…
“The baby’s coming right now!”
In that moment, as Tay was shouting at me over the phone that our fourth baby was on his way and that he was coming as fast as a runaway train, I came to a staggering realization: I was going to have to deliver this baby myself.
As gently and calmly as I could, I said, “Um, Tay, do you remember what you did with that birthing kit? All that material that I was supposed to read?”
Well, she told me, and I had to skim through all that reading in about fifteen minutes. I gave myself a crash course in delivering babies, reading the stuff that looked important, flying through the illustrations and feeling very unequal to the task of helping bring a new life into the world.
It took me more than a year to really learn how to bring sweet potatoes into being. Now I was going to have to deliver a child?
Tay had no confidence in me whatsoever. Her stress level was straight through the farmhouse’s roof. The fact that I didn’t know where the birthing kit was or that I hadn’t read over what was in it didn’t help Tay’s trust in my abilities one little bit. And I couldn’t blame her. She knew the truth: that I didn’t really know what I was doing.
When I played football, everything we did during the week pointed to getting ready for a three-hour game. The coaching staff sometimes tried to make it feel as if those games were the most important three hours of our lives, and the preparation we underwent for those three short hours was unreal. Now, in what was really one of the most important moments of my life, I felt woefully underprepared. I didn’t have a pregame meeting to go over the game plan. I didn’t have a coach to help me work through the techniques. And that afternoon, I was definitely far more terrified than I’d ever been before going up against the Pittsburgh Steelers or the New England Patriots. This was real. I knew exactly what was on the line: the life and health of my child, and the health and safety of the wife I loved. This was my family.
So I did what I always do when I’m way out of my depth: I prayed.
“God, You know I have no idea what I’m doing,” I admitted as I prepared for the birth. “So, God, I need Your help. I need You to anoint my hands. I need You to give me the wisdom right now. In my time of need, give me the strength and understanding I need to bring this little baby safely into our family.”
After the prayer, I took JW and Naomi and Noah and sat them down at the table. I made their dinner as fast as I could and put it in front of them.
“All right, let’s say our prayers and eat,” I said. I led them in grace, smiled reassuringly, and went over to the kitchen sink and washed my hands like a surgeon. And then I walked, absolutely terrified, into the next room where my wife was in labor.
I tried to be as calm and assertive as I could. I reminded Tay of various breathing techniques, trying to coach her through the pain. I held her hand, wiped her forehead, and assured her that everything was fine, everything was great, everything was okay.
But on the inside, I was freaking out. I knew things were not okay at all, because I had no idea what I was doing!
“You’re doing great, dear,” I said. “Breathe. Use your breathing exercises.” I needed some of those breathing exercises too. Our fourth child hadn’t made his big debut just yet, but let me tell you, there was still a baby in that room—or, at least, some big farmer who inside was crying like one.
I went back in the other room to check on the kids.
Praise God, I thought. They’re all doing fine. No one’s screaming, no one’s crying, and no one’s bleeding.
“You’re doing great!” I assured the children.
I called my mom and dad, who live just forty minutes away, and told them the glorious, terrifying news.
“He’s on the way!” I shouted maybe a little too loudly.
And I went back in with Tay.
A few minutes later, I helped Tay into our bathroom, where we’ve got a big tub, and settled her in there. And right there—in our bathtub—I helped our son into our home, our family, our world.
After the delivery, my former sports agent, Harold, got wind of the story. And he either misunderstood the circumstances or, like some people, decided to embellish it a little.
“You remember Jason Brown?” I imagine him telling folks at parties. “The center? Played for the Ravens and the Rams? Had this crazy idea of becoming a farmer? Well, get this: he delivered his own
baby out in the middle of a meadow!”
Nope, no meadow. Just a bathtub. I wasn’t fending off coyotes or raccoons—just my own fear. But I think it makes for a pretty good story anyway.
We named him Lunsford Bernard Brown—in honor of my father, in honor of my brother. He’s the third member of the Brown family who’s borne that name, and because of that, we just call him Trey.
Babies
When Tay and I first met, one of our first conversations was actually about the number of children we wanted. Between three and five, we decided at the time. Ultimately, we combined those two numbers and now have an even eight: JW, Naomi, Noah, Kahlan, Trey, Judah, Olivia, and, as of December 2019, Isaiah.
That’s a lot of children, and the world doesn’t quite know how to handle families as big as ours. They don’t make minivans big enough for ten people, so when we all go somewhere, we go in a big used church van. Obviously, we can’t sit at a restaurant booth, so when we go out, we make due however we can, whether splitting up or squishing tables together. Even when Tay and I had just five or six children, people would actually stare at us as we walked down the street, pointing at us and counting up the kids as if we were a gaggle of geese with a bunch of goslings trailing behind.
But two or three generations ago, large families were the norm, especially those raised on farms and around agriculture. Men and women from those generations don’t find it strange at all. They’ll come up and tell me, “Oh, I was one of eight,” or “I was one of twelve.” We’ve met people who come from families of fifteen or even eighteen. I don’t know if Tay and I will ever have that many kids. Even now, when we’re practically halfway there, I can’t imagine trying to raise eighteen children. But at the same time, if God blessed us with that many kids, we’d celebrate each and every one.
All our babies are so different from one another. Some people think that we have so many children that we wouldn’t be able to keep track of them all. But Tay and I can’t envision what life would be like without even one of them. God made each one so special, so unique, so precious.
You look at society today, and the preciousness of life often isn’t valued as much as it once was. Life spans are certainly longer now than they were sixty or seventy years ago, but we’ve gotten stingy with giving that gift of life. Some people look at children as expenses: you pay to feed them, to house them, to pay for braces and dance lessons and college. The US Department of Agriculture says that the average family spends more than $233,000 to raise a child to age seventeen. And that’s not even counting the emotional cost. Kids can try your patience too. They can break your heart. I understand all that. Tay and I are fully aware how much it costs to feed a big family every day, and our kids—as wonderful as they are—have given us plenty to worry and stress about. But what our babies give us in return—the value they bring to our family, the joy they’ve given Tay and me, the memories they’ve given each other—you can’t put a return on that.
From where I sit here in my farmhouse—a farmhouse filled with all this love and laughter and, yes, noise and chaos and sometimes tears—I know that life is a blessing. Every single one of our children, with their characteristics and quirks and outsized personalities, is a treasure that can’t be measured.
When you get to be a certain age, you start thinking about your legacy. What have you brought into the world? What have you given? Some people look at their career achievements or their bank accounts. Some have streets named after them. I think about the Ravens’ stadium, now called the M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore. A Ring of Honor circles the field, filled with the names of twenty or so Baltimore football greats (from both the Ravens and the old Baltimore Colts). Two statues stand outside the stadium: one of legendary Colts quarterback Johnny Unitas, and the other one of Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis. Many kids look at those statues or the names around that Ring of Honor and believe that’s the kind of legacy they want: to have someone to think enough of you to stick your name in a stadium for everyone to see or to mold a hunk of bronze in your image.
All that stuff is great. But if you’re really thinking about your legacy—what you want your memorial to the world to be—don’t build a statue. Concentrate on your children. That’s the sort of legacy the Bible holds dear. You can read Jesus’s earthly genealogy all the way back to David, and then all the way back to Adam if you want. That shows how much the people of the Bible valued family—how much they valued the shared history that passes down from parents to children to grandchildren.
Families are complicated things, and not a one of them is perfect. But God’s blessings flow through a family’s veins just as surely as blood does. We’re shaped and molded by our mothers and fathers, who were shaped and molded by theirs. And because of this, we’re all influenced in some way by generations long gone. I never really knew my grandfather Jasper Brown. I never got to hear his stories. But who he was helped make me the man I am today. There’s a piece of him inside me. And because his grandfather was a piece of his upbringing, there’s a piece of him in me too.
Family is our real legacy. It’s a big reason why Tay and I moved out here in the first place. We want to raise our kids with whatever wisdom we have to offer and give them whatever character we have to give. We didn’t want to see them just at dinnertime. We didn’t want to ship our babies off to school to be raised and taught by strangers. They’re our children. We want them to grow up learning our values. We take our responsibility as parents seriously.
If ever I feel my focus on family falter, I think about something that Tay told me one day.
“Jason, we grow a lot of food on this farm,” she said. “We help feed a lot of people, people we don’t even know. We raise a lot of animals. We give a lot, and we’re a blessing to this community. But don’t you ever forget that the most important thing growing on First Fruits Farm is our family. The love between a husband and a wife. The love that we share with our children. That is the most important thing growing here.”
You want to talk about being centered? Tay is centered, and she helps center me. She reminds me of what’s important. She reminds me of where we were in St. Louis, when our bank accounts were full but our hearts were empty—when we had more money than we knew what to do with but not enough love for, or time with, each other.
Watering and Pruning
Most of our kids were born on the farm, so it’s all they’ve ever known. Only JW has any memories of our lives before we came back to North Carolina. If he’d been older—if we had left St. Louis when he was twelve—he might’ve been sad to leave that old life, with its ridiculous mansion and luxury lifestyle and NFL-playing dad. If the popular culture had sunk its teeth into him then, he might’ve felt the pull of that life a little bit more. And, listen, I get it. It’s very attractive. When I go out and give talks to schools, many of the children and teens I speak to can’t comprehend giving up the life of a professional athlete for the life of a farmer. To them, it doesn’t make sense. Some of them look at me as if I were crazy.
But JW was four at the time, and for him the farm wasn’t a step down from wealth and security. It was a step up—a new adventure. Wow! A real pasture! A real pond! Look at all this land! What more could a boy want? And it’s a life that not many children get to experience now. Many people have no idea how the food they see at the grocery store ever gets there or the work it takes to make it happen. Many have never even seen a farm. And because of that, with the right attitude, farming can feel as exciting as sailing on a pirate ship or blasting into outer space.
When JW was seven or eight years old, he and I were cleaning out some of the stalls in the barn. He was helping do a few little things, but I was doing most of the work, and all of the real dirty work: mucking all the animal poop out of the barn. It was heavy and filthy and smelled to high heaven.
He watched me work. He could see how hard it was. He could smell that loamy scent of animal po
op, just like I could. But he still said, “Dad, can I do that? Please? Please!? I’ll do a good job—I promise!”
He’s begging me—literally begging me—to shovel poop.
“You mark this day down and don’t forget it for the rest of your life,” I told him. “The day you begged me to shovel poop out of the barn.”
It was a good reminder to me of what a gift this farm is. More than that, it’s a gift to be able to work on this farm. As adults, we forget about that sometimes. I look at all the work First Fruits requires of me, and I can think of it as drudgery. It feels like the punishment of Genesis 3:19, when God told Adam that “by the sweat of your brow you will eat your food” (NIV). But even work is a gift, too, and sometimes our children remind us of that. And in that moment, when JW begged to muck out the stalls, I thought, Why can’t we all look at work with that kind of enthusiasm? Hey, it’s got to be done anyway, right? Why not enjoy doing it? Even today when I get weary and tired, I look at my children’s enthusiasm they show for every day. They can be happy for no reason at all. That gives me encouragement. My children and their love of life give me extra fuel in the tank.
They love the farm too. They don’t always love everything about it, and you never know how that will change as they get older. But they see the beauty of it, even as they do their own share of work. Maybe that work helps them see the beauty all the more. This place of sweat and toil can sometimes look like Eden to them. It looks like one of Naomi’s beautiful pictures.
Naomi gets it. She’s a step back in time. She would’ve been right at home on a farm in the 1920s, I think. Whenever anyone needs help in the kitchen, she’s the first to volunteer. She loves to cook. She loves to clean. She loves to make things with her hands. Naomi already knows how to do some sewing and knitting.