The First Post - RIP Steve Arnold

January 16, 2014

I read something this week that said if you just wrote 300 words a day you could have 5 novels written within 5 years – they might not be good but you would have novels written none the less so today is day #1 of this “journaling” attempt.  I am interested in seeing how long I will actually continue it.  Today I am going to go to around 400 since this introductory paragraph will take some of them up!

Yesterday I learned about the passing of a very dear friend of mine.  He was not in the best of health but he was still young and has 3 sons.  The oldest is a Helicopter Pilot in the U.S. Navy, the middle is a full time teacher working on his Master’s Degree, and the youngest is a Junior at Marquette University in Navy ROTC.  His wife is a great lady as well and this year they took in 2 International Students from China.  He had also just recently graduated with a Master’s Degree in Human Resources and was able to retire from his “sales” position and had taken a new job with a company doing motivational training work for them.

So what does a good friend mean?  In my opinion, to the male gender, it is someone that you deeply respect and that you don’t need to talk with all of the time but when you find time to talk it is an instant reconnection.  Steve was that type – we would text each other periodically just catching up quickly but not that often.  We often caught up after church for a while – me asking about his boys (I coached one of them in our church league and sort of “mentored” two during their Youth Group years) and he would ask about my children.  His sons are the type of boys that I loved catching up with because they were real and he raised them to be good stock!

We also spent a week together in Newark, NJ a couple of summers ago with our Youth Group Mission Trip.  Steve was our Morning Motivator – his talks always ended with YOU ARE GOING TO GRAB THEM, HUG THEM, AND LOVE THEM UP.  Steve I know when you entered Heaven God grabbed you, hugged you, and loved you up!  You are missed my friend and now you get to motivate the Heavens!