Learning from Steve 1: How to Love, episode 114

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If you love a prodigal, you can discover help and hope for their wilderness journey right

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here when you love a prodigal.

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And also help and hope for your own life journey.

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On October 29, 2022, my wonderful husband was called home by our Lord.

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It has been a hard, tearful, but joyful year.

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I have represented him, received awards for him, written and spoken about him, and visited

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all of our children and grands at least twice, giving and receiving love and comfort.

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Steve was a wise, godly man.

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He was intentional in how he lived and walked with God, and loved people, and shared the

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gospel.

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I knew him so well, 52 years together, including 5 dating and 47 years married.

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I am dedicating this month on the podcast to Steve, not to talk about him so much, but

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to share his life practices that will, I believe, encourage each of us to become more

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and more like Jesus in every part of our lives, and especially as we relate to our loved prodigals.

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These are things I have written about, Steve, over the years.

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May they bless you, encourage you, strengthen you, give you wisdom for your own life and

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for your loved ones.

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May his actions and attitudes open your eyes to ways you might do things better with your

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wanderer.

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Please, when God whispers to you about something that I share, write it down and seek to act

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on it.

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The best gift God has given me other than Jesus is this wonderful man.

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So here are some of the things that I have appreciated about him.

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Again, this is not just to talk about him, but to share the way he lived that might encourage

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you.

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He loved God.

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It is wonderful to partner with a man who loved God above all, even more than he loved

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me.

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He would seek, listen, follow, obey our Lord on a moment-by-moment level.

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I could go on and on.

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He loved me.

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He has always loved me well.

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But in recent years, he had increasingly shown what it means to love like Christ loves, to

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sacrifice for me, to give preference to me.

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I marvel at his goodness to me, and I could tell you lots of examples.

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He served me.

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His favorite way to serve me was to fix my coffee in the morning, bringing it to me and

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keeping my cup full.

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But there are so many other ways.

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He always washed the dishes after meals.

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He usually beat me to doing the laundry.

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He picked up the house.

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I am more tolerant of Clutter than he is or was.

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He did our finances, probably in self-defense.

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He got the oil changed and my red Mustang convertible, and I could go on in the many ways that he

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served me.

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I was so pampered.

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He believed in me.

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I do think he thought I could do anything.

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He had more confidence in me than I did, for sure.

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I have taken faith risks because he was sure I should and could.

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He was always saying, you can do that.

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He helped with the kids.

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He agreed to expenditures, sometimes more than he thought were wise even, came along

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to pray for my ministry opportunities, and he listened to me—ideas, passions, concerns.

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I could go on.

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He encouraged me.

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As the more emotional one of us, which is an understatement, I sometimes would get down

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or discouraged or overwhelmed.

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Always he was there with attention, comfort, perspective, encouragement, or an invitation

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out to dinner.

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He learned not to try to solve every problem except when I asked for help.

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He was so good at believing the best and helping me to also believe the best of others.

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He was so wise, always he encouraged me.

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He considered me a true partner.

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We always did our marriage together for our walk with God and our living and loving together

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in parenting, in ministry.

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We were partners.

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We each had our responsibilities, our strengths, our contributions to make.

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We thought, planned, studied the word, prayed, worked as a team.

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This was a great high-performance team, and I miss it.

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Oh, yes, he fixed things.

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The only things I can fix are words and maybe feelings, emotions.

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But he could fix almost anything.

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When it breaks, I by knew he repaired.

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He loved doing it, thinking of creative ways to solve a problem.

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Ask about lawnmowers.

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Let me tell you about the iron.

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I don't even remember what was working with the iron, but he fixed it.

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He also made this little thing like they have it cleaning places.

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They have a thing where the cord goes up.

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And it's out of the way and not getting in the way as you iron.

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And so he fixed one for me.

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It was kind of humorous, but it helped and it still works.

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It's been there, I bet, 15 years now.

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He fixed everything, which I greatly appreciate it.

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And I'm missing.

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Oh, the differences.

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He was steady.

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I'm somewhat volatile.

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He was contained.

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I'm pretty emotional.

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He was always cold and I am always hot.

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He was thrifty.

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He was sure I might give all our money away, though.

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He said no better than I do, but not a great strength for either of us.

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He liked movies.

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I liked books.

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He thought strategically.

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I thought compassionately.

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And I could go on with more differences, but they didn't matter because they helped us

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work together as a team.

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There was such oneness.

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God is so creative.

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We had the same passion for the Lord and for our family.

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We both loved to stay home when we could, but we traveled a great deal.

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We didn't like wasting time, but we could relax.

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We loved to be together, but we're okay to be apart because we were a lot.

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We didn't really like traveling, but would go anywhere to serve the Lord and our staff.

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Okay, I could go on on that as well, but I won't.

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Thank you, Lord.

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I have been so blessed and so grateful.

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Now I know I'm describing a marriage, which is a relationship.

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And yes, your relationship with your prodigal is different from a marriage, but I'm hoping

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you picked up that there are some important ways that people relate to each other in a

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good relationship and that you would try always to be applying those that work for you so

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that you can learn from my relationship with Steve and the years that we were together,

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ways to relate better, which we talked about previously with Heather Holloman, to develop

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loving conversations in order to enhance and improve your relationship with your prodigal.

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I'm praying that learning from what Steve was like will help you to be that way to your

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prodigal.

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Now I want to share with you a poem I wrote to Steve when he turned 70 expressing the

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wonderful ways that he loved.

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It's brief.

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Steve, I love how you love.

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I love how you love people intentionally engaging them, offering to help, believing the best.

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I love how you love our ministry, leading us humbly, keeping us focused, working tirelessly.

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I love how you love our family, responding to requests, modeling a walk with God, giving

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priority to each child and grandchild.

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I love how you love me, desiring to be with me, serving me in so many ways, believing I

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can do anything.

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And I love how you love God, seeking him first and always, multiplying your gifts for the

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kingdom, humbly bowing before him.

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Happy birthday, my love.

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So that's what I wrote because I just think the way he lived his life and the way especially

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that he loved everyone, people that didn't even include the neighbors and the people

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he met on an airplane and the people that he was speaking to and he would stop and say,

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how did this go, did you think I could have done better in this message and being humble

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to ask for input from people.

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And again, I think this models a way that we can walk with God and a way that we can

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love, that we also connect with our loved prodigal.

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They don't want to connect with us sometimes.

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They are pushing away, but that partly is because we're so often seeking to correct

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and we get angry or we're frustrated or we throw up our hands, whatever, I don't care.

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And he just showed us how to keep loving and to keep loving and to keep loving.

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And it has been my prayer that I would consistently live and love as Steve did.

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Of course, he was not perfect, but I'm not going to tell you about those.

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But he pursued God's heart more than anyone else I know.

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And it's also my prayer that his example will encourage and inspire you to love well as

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he has demonstrated to love in general, but specifically love that one who often makes

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it hard to love.

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And you know, our prodigals can push away and do things almost intentionally to annoy

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and upset us.

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And they make it hard for us to love them.

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But God keeps loving us no matter what we do.

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And Steve kept loving me and he kept loving our children and especially our prodigal even

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when he was doing all sorts of things.

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And so I pray that love will flow from you.

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God's love flowing through you in such a way that it woos your prodigal back to you and

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to the Lord.

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God bless you.