Velvet & Steel

I spent the weekend surrounded by family, as we celebrated a family member and his milestone birthday, seventy years of a life fully lived!

There is something about gatherings like that. They have a way of softening the noise of daily life. You start noticing things. Not the surface-level things we so easily comment on… but the deeper ones. The layers that time quietly reveals.

Age, I’ve learned, does not simply make us older.

If we are paying attention, it makes us wiser.

And wisdom, at least for me, has become the art of seeing beneath the surface, especially in the people we love.

Family we may not always agree with.
Family who may not always see their own beauty.
Family whose contradictions tell the most fascinating stories.

And so, this one is for him…

He was born on Valentine’s Day, a day devoted to love and tenderness. Which somehow makes perfect sense. Because beneath his unmistakable steel, there has always lived a heart of velvet.

His mother said it years ago, almost in passing, as though she were offering a simple observation:

“My son is velvet and steel.”

But some descriptions are not casual at all. Some are revelations disguised as sentences.

At first encounter, you notice the steel. A voice firm with conviction. Edges that do not soften for comfort or politeness. Opinions delivered plainly, without ornamental cushioning. There is a strength about him that feels immovable, unapologetic, certain.

But steel alone does not explain a man.

Time does.

Because beneath the gruff exterior lives something far more delicate. A heart wired for deep feeling. Sensitivity concealed not by absence… but by protection.

A tenderness that rarely announces itself, yet reveals its presence in unmistakable ways.

You see it in the way he speaks of animals - not sentimentally, not casually - but with respect. A deep regard for the balance of nature, for the discipline of the hunt, for the responsibility it carries. He walks into the wilderness with patience, skill, and an unwavering code.

Taking only what is needed.
Never more.
Never carelessly.
Always with respect.

Velvet… woven seamlessly through steel.

Strength wears many disguises. His has always been sacrifice, responsibility, and an unwavering devotion to those he loves, even when devotion demands inconvenience, requires cost, or asks him to place his own needs quietly aside.

Perhaps one of the rarest forms of strength is the willingness to give without certainty. To help without guarantees. To extend generosity into situations where outcomes remain unwritten.

Because grace often lives in quiet acceptance. In choosing love even when appreciation is imperfect, understanding incomplete, or the story unresolved.

Life has shaped him through difficulty. Loss. Battles fought on uneven ground. Dreams rerouted. Entire paths rebuilt through determination few people ever witness.

One career constructed with discipline, only to be dismantled.

Reimagined.
Rebuilt.
Strengthened by the very storms that might have hardened another.

There are moments when I think I remember him saying he would have loved being a ranger, somewhere deep in a forest.

Perhaps I’m misremembering.

But somehow… it feels true.

Where strength is measured not in titles… but in presence.

Because it reveals the velvet beneath the steel. The man drawn not to recognition, but to stillness. To solitude. To landscapes where strength is measured not in achievement…

But in patience.
Presence.
Quiet endurance.

To know him well is to recognize the contradiction.

Blunt, yet deeply sensitive.
Unyielding, yet profoundly loyal.
Gruff, yet capable of extraordinary generosity.

Steel in posture. Velvet in heart.

And beneath both lives something even steadier, a faith as grounded as the forests he loves. Not loud. Not performative. But woven quietly into who he is. A deep, unwavering relationship with God that does not waver with circumstance or applause.

His love for Jesus is not spoken as much as it is lived.

In his generosity.
In his patience.
In the quiet grace with which he walks through both joy and hardship.

Some people harden with life. Others soften.

And then there are those rare souls who manage, somehow, to become both.

Velvet and steel.

Soft enough to feel deeply.
Strong enough to sacrifice anyway.

✨ Author’s Reflection

Happy Birthday, my brother.

The world is better for your strength…
And softer for your heart.