It is an unusual mercy that Steve Moore and I found and fell in love with each other. Someone like Steve should not have been hanging around with someone like me -- certainly not at that time in my life. Thinking about it now, I am embarrassed that I've ever complained to God about anything. Whatever dark moments I've endured, in the most important relationships God has been uncommonly merciful.
Steve is funny. He looks at life through the thick spectacles of a poet/ historian and finds the most interesting angles. An expressive and dry humor. Intelligent. He's the kind who doesn't come off as funny in the first five minutes, so you're delightfully surprised down the road when you realize he's been joking most of this time.
His deer whistles and bear whistles and flashlights at every exit are the endearing side of a careful nature. I have the luxury of poking merciless fun at that nature simply because I'm still here to do so. I owe my present existence to my own personal safety patrol. Who knows how long ago I would have perished without Steve to stop me from some ridiculous and deadly risk I would surely have taken? I am, because Steve suffers no foolishness.
That same careful nature has talked me off the ledge countless times. Steve has a calm, reasoned sense about him to counter my overactive (and sometimes emotional) imagination. When I see lions and tigers and bears all around, Steve flips on the lights and shows me its just shadows. He has learned how to say the one thing I most often need to hear: "It will be okay."
I'm strengthened by Steve's strength. He knows who he is. He is a nerd who doesn't attempt to bizarrely compensate by taking steroids and buying a Harley. He is a reader and a passionate student of history. He is a one-thing-at-a-time kind of guy who has grieved his limits and lives peacefully within them. I'm welcome to halfway do fifty things at once; Steve will do one thing at a time and do it well. He is at peace with his "no's" and follows through on his "yes's." He bears a remarkable patience and kindness toward others and especially me.
We are tethered to Jesus and Jesus has tethered us to each other. I am ecstatically happy with that arrangement and grateful to God for the company and partnership of a good man.
Happy 52nd, my Steve.