Relationships….

Gary believed in the nature of relationships whether it be family, friends or business associates. He made sure everyone was taken care of. Gary was a member of St. Paul's Methodist church.

I found these words in Gary’s obituary this morning. He has been on my mind for days, so I tried to find him to reach out, only to discover he has been dead for almost ten years. His life impacted mine, and I’m sure lots of others, as we worked together in the late 80’s. I was a 27 year old account executive and he was the CFO of Iowa National Insurance company. I had no idea what I was doing, but he spoke to me and represented me as though I did. He constantly spoke into my life as a father would, encouraging me and building relationship like no other person I ever met.

The statement is so true, Gary made sure everyone was taken care of. Gary protected me, brought me into his home, shared with me the love he had for his wife Myrna, and his son David. They even came down to South Carolina in their motorhome and stayed with me for several days. He would call me long after the business relationship ended. He still encouraged me to really talk to him, share my life with him, he was good at putting the pieces I gave him together and then weave exactly the right words together to breathe hope and life into me. He was a true father to me and represented our Father God so well in the living of his life.

He is the one who ran the company from the financial standpoint and the company I worked for was automating their entire book of business. He and I coordinated the project. We had a conference room in his building called the “War room”, and it was there that he showed me favor, preferred me, and would only let me be the disseminater of information. In all he did he communicated throughly to all that all information came from me and not from my boss or his boss. My superiors were dumbfounded and were forced to give me credit for the success of the project. But Gary so throughly communicated through his actions that he trusted only me, which probably for the first time in my life I had ever received that level of favor. How I wanted that sort of relationship with my own father, but the Lord saw to it that others fathered me in just the perfect place in my Journey. The Heavenly Father, the Father of the eternal Son, Jesus , fathered me through Gary.

Now, all these years have passed and ten years after his death the Lord is showing me the power of Gary’s relational way of being. His outpouring of consistently preferring me, always giving me exactly what I needed to become who I was created to be. This is the power of relational living just as the Trinity is and created us to be. Thank you Gary for loving me and showing me just the tip of the iceberg of how my Heavenly Father loves me.