Winning the family lottery.

My brother's better than your brother.

He turned 70 today. Seventy! Seven decades behind him.

Just thought I'd rub that in, because that's what we do around here, love with a little backhand.

When it comes to brothers, I won the lottery, though that might not have been apparent in the First Decade of Steve's life.

In my earliest memory of Steve, the four of us children are playing in the shade of the verandah that wraps around three sides of our home in Dera Ghazi Khan, Pakistan. A mattress of some sort lies on the verandah, and Steve has called for a Big Toe Fight thereupon. The object of a Big Toe Fight, for the uninitiated, is to crawl around on hands and knees, attempting to grab the big toe of someone and give it a twist. This necessitates acrobatics and swift pivoting to keep one’s toes out of reach whilst you grab the toes of others, so we are laughing and squealing until, well.... Until we are not. I shriek, horrified that my brother is hurting me, and Steve’s merry eyes are squinting into half moons as he laughs with glee in victory.

By his Second Decade, I was of the belief that Steve was practically an adult. He may have been 12 or so when he went climbing with friends several years older than him, attempting to scale a rock cliff near our home. I can still recall the shock of panic I felt when one of the Big Boys came running up, telling the adults that Steve was stuck on the face of the cliff and couldn’t move. I trembled with fear for my big brother, and was so relieved (and also proud) when he returned safely. This affirmed my belief that he was not only grown up, but very brave and physically fit.

Steve’s penchant for tormenting his siblings softened considerably in decade two. In fact, Steve became quite a tender protector of his sisters when our parents were not around. Two incidents come to mind, accompanied by the visceral memory of early childhood angst.

In the first, I was staying with friends while Mom and Dad were at the hospital. When she began to hemorrhage after surgery, God in his gracious providence brought a nurse and her husband home early from a trip, and finding Mom in distress, they gathered help to carry my her, bed and all, down the hill, and they made their car a makeshift ambulance and rushed my Mom to the city for help. But I knew none of these details at the time, only that dinner was over, I missed my Mommy terribly, and I could not live without her. I was inconsolable and recall feeling literally sick to my stomach. Enter Steve. He wrapped his arms around me and comforted me, and as in my mind he was practically the third parent, he made everything better for me.

A year or two later, some adult without a brain thought it would be a great idea to show a movie to the boarding school children. Not a Disney movie or cartoon or anything, a documentary. On the Berlin Wall. The one where children on one side of wall were crying and reaching for Grandma on the other side, unable to unite with their family. To a room full of grade school and middle school children separated from their families. I felt the horror of separation in my gut, as though I were one of those children on the screen! Fortunately, an adult equipped with a whole entire brain brought my brother to me, and my hero wrapped his arms around me and I found comfort once again.

It was also in the Second Decade of Steve’s life that he had to negotiate moving halfway around the world with his family to a country that seemed more like a fairy tale than home: the United States of America. We didn’t have much--all our worldly possessions fit in the trunk of a car—but we were used to saving things like gum wrappers and teabags, and turning our shirts inside-out when they got dirty. So when 13-year-old Steve entered junior high in the states, he was very resourceful. My parents had to explain to him that it was not necessary to collect all the used paper lunch bags from the other students’ sack lunches and bring them home. But if you know my brother now, you will recognize that the same sense of economy and resourcefulness has followed him all the days of his life, and he has lived well and content.

Unlike the rather sizeable Kathy, my siblings were each the smallest in their classes, having grown up on a different diet than American children. Nevertheless, I was SO proud of my small big brother when he began to show promise as a runner during his Second Decade. I used to boast about him to my classmates, who rewarded my impressive stories with stares of complete boredom. In high school Steve ran cross country and track, and I was pretty confident that he would be in the Olympics someday.

Before that decade closed, I also recall my great pride as I sat in some grand, public building in Seattle (the opera house, perhaps?), watching my brother graduate from high school with his classmates.

When Steve left for college, he was an adult and I was a middle-schooler. Imagine how much we had in common.

But when Steve graduated from college, now in his Third Decade, Steve made a concerted effort to build a bridge to his youngest sister. For a while we were the only two children living at home, and at his kind initiation my relationship with him moved from distant admiration to warm, often laughing, acceptance and inclusion. He brought his maturity to our conversations and adventures, and I learned from him how to think, how to be kind, and how to follow Christ.

One evening, mature Steve drove us immature high schoolers on a youth group outing, and decided we would enjoy what was called a Chinese Fire Drill.

If you’re not familiar with Chinese Fire Drills, they are the high school version of Big Toe Fights—delightful, but risky. When you stop at a stop sign, you all jump out and race around the car, leaving doors open until you jump back in! Great fun. Except this time, our escapade was witnessed by a police officer. We all sat mute after Steve was pulled over, listening nervously to the conversation between my brother and the cop. Steve modelled humility and graciousness as he apologized for the ill-advised foolishness and thanked the officer for doing his job.

The Third Decade of Steve’s life also included one of my favorite life adventures, a 4-day (I think; he will remember and correct me) bike trip up the Olympic peninsula to Whidbey Island and on to Bellingham, down to Seattle, and back across the Puget Sound to my home in Gig Harbor.

Okay—I’m pretty sure I botched that itinerary badly, but what I do remember was early morning starts, sunburns and sweat, big breakfasts mid-morning where we drank a lot of water and coffee, and setting up our tent in early afternoon, after which we would rest and lick the salt from our arms. I also recall being pretty sure I would die as I pedaled furiously mere feet from speeding cars on some busy aqueduct into downtown Seattle.

The dying part didn’t actually happen, and the alternate frenzy and leisure of this adventure bonded my brother and I forever.

At the start of Steve’s Fourth Decade, Jim and I got married and moved to California, and in the same year, Steve moved to a different part of California, but close enough for some spirited rendezvous with us from time to time. As I was learning to separate from my family of origin and become a new family with Jim, Steve was this wonderful glue, this bridge between my two worlds. And because we were both free and childless, we had many amazing adventures together.

The San Francisco adventure is fading in my memory, but I believe we attempted to eat the world’s largest burrito.

Once we impulsively toured San Diego county, where Steve actually looked up Dr. Henry Morris in the phone book and called him to find out where the Institute for Creation Research was! This was the trip where we later chortled in glee at an outdoor performance of The Music Man, while low-flying planes froze the action on the stage as the planes drowned out the dialogue.

There was the Christmas we spent in Yosemite, where our White Christmas actually was the start of the great flood of 1997. Steve later saw a picture of the jacuzzi outside our hotel room… with the Yosemite River running through it!

It is worth noting that the conversation that weaves through each adventure with Steve is the dearest part. His sense of humor and our shared idea of what is funny always leaves me delighted and amused and giggling childishly, but Steve is also able to process hard and tender moments, or speak with wisdom on topics of faith or finances or family or fitness or fun.

In the Fifth Decade of Steve’s life, our precious little surprise daughter was born, and Steve, being the closest relative to us, came often to share in our joy and pack my little girl around in a back-pack on our adventures. Christmases away from home were not so lonely when Steve joined us with his roughly wrapped packages and hand-scrawled, humorous hints as to their contents. To this day it feels like Santa Clause is spending Christmas with us when Steve arrives for the holidays.

It was in the Sixth Decade of Steve’s life that Jim and I moved to Oregon to begin a project foolishly huge: building a house ourselves out in the forest. What began with guts and glee slowly degenerated to a burden impossibly huge. When the bank would no longer extend our construction loan, Steve spent his Christmas vacation helping us practically pull all-nighters, trying to finish before the December 31st deadline. When December 30th came, we were still on ladders nailing shingles to the exterior when the inspector drove up and work screeched to a halt.

“What can I do for you?” the inspector asked.

“We need an occupancy permit in order to transfer our construction loan to a regular mortgage,” Jim explained. Steve and I held our breath, silently praying for mercy.

“Hmmm,” he said. “Oregon doesn’t have occupancy permits.”

The bottom fell out of my gut. I froze. Steve prayed. Jim explained. And the inspector scribbled on the loan form: “Okay to occupy,” and scrawled his signature without so much as stepping inside.

We watched in disbelief as he walked back to his car.

“Oh—” The inspector turned back as he opened the door of his truck. “Your house looks nice!” he said with a wave.

I’m not sure whether we climbed down from our ladders or fell off, but I do know we set our hammers down for a few days and celebrated hard in our little unfinished basement apartment, alternately giggling, sleeping and pushing Ibuprofen. We could not have done it without him. Steve truly saved the farm.

The Seventh Decade of Steve’s life brought many joys, but also the angst of watching our parents decline, and eventually say goodbye. But there was one particular heartache I witnessed Steve bear with amazing grace and faithfulness.

As my father’s only son, Steve was a treasure to my Dad. They adventured together often, scaling Mt. Rainier together, exploring Washington D.C., and my father was so proud of him. He had such trust in Steve’s knowledge and character, and Steve was truly his best friend and greatest joy.

(Well, besides his dog. We all believed his dog was actually his favorite child.)

But in the last year of my father’s life, Dad’s brain began to function differently, and he was no longer always able to assess things accurately or make skillful decisions, as he always had before. When it finally came time for his children to protect him by taking over the direction of his affairs and his finances, my father was unable to understand, or see the need for help. He fought us hard. When the four of us were in anguish about how to build safety around him when he was not willing for it, Steve quietly took all the responsibility, did the research, paid the fees for professional help, and eventually stepped in to manage Dad’s finances. My father was unable to understand, and saw this as a huge betrayal, almost as though Steve had stolen his money. The kindest, hardest act of loyalty and love Steve would ever take was greeted with censure.

In the painful and thankfully brief months to follow, Steve maintained his respect for my father and faithfully, beautifully, selflessly cared for every detail of my parents’ needs, but without the agreement or thanks of my father. Steve continued to reach out to Dad in love, though Dad’s response was mostly grim.

Two weeks before my Dad’s death, Dad was taken to the hospital, and I, recovering from Covid, was not allowed to be with him there. Steve and my sister Chris immediately dropped everything and came, and for the first time in an achingly long time, my Dad forgot his wounds and was able to respond to Steve’s presence with delight and gladness and love.

In the months following Dad’s death and then our Mom’s, Steve faithfully loved, advised, prayed, encouraged, packed, finalized, paid, cleaned, officiated, calculated, swept, transported…. whatever was needed, as though all of the responsibility was his. And he did this all with tact and grace and humor and joy. And when that was impossible, with love and faithfulness and righteousness and grit.

If you have known my brother Steve, you will have your own stories to tell. And I know those stories will also include these words: joy, and faithfulness.

Seventy years, Bro!

So thus begins your Eighth Decade—a blank slate! Thanks for breaking all the barriers first, and making that next decade look less daunting for all the rest of us. Show us the way!

Happy Birthday!!!! And may the rebuttals begin.

Oh... and that photo you took on my phone when I left it unguarded?