Parenting was different 85 years ago. 

Most likely influenced by the agonies of the depression, and later by the major impact of the Second World War, and probably by things that I don’t understand.  Just making it through life, paying bills, and having a place to live were major challenges for my parents.  My parents loved me and were proud of me but they never even once told me.  Years after my father’s death I learned that he bragged about my accomplishments to others often—but never once did I hear from him, “Well done!  I’m proud of you.”

My older sister responded to this lack of expressed affection by running away, at age 16, to marry an older man.  My younger brother responded to this lack of expressed affection by hanging out with the people on the edge of society.  He was drinking, smoking, and dropping out of school in his early teens.  These things shaped his life in not good ways. 

I chose to deal with my insecurity in different ways.  I was a good student, on the basketball team, and active in campus politics.  I was a hard worker, having worked all summer in the fields eight hours a day from the age of seven on. With summer work and part-time jobs, I paid my way through a private university with no help from my parents.  My life looked a lot better than my siblings, but I was just as desperate for love and affirmation as they were.  (And later when I began to understand this I found myself loving them and being bonded to them—in spite of the differences in our lifestyles.)

God Shows Up in Disguise

But then God showed up in disguise.  The summer after my junior year in high school I spent a week at Boy’s State on the Willamette University Campus in Salem.  The Dean of Men, Mark Hatfield, spoke at that event.  I was impressed and since I was senior class president I later asked him to speak at our graduation.  When he did this I was again impressed with his ability to communicate good ideas. A couple of weeks later I was back at Boy’s State as a counselor.  I went in to see Dean Hatfield.  He said, “Why aren’t you coming to Willamette?”  My response was that my parents had no money to pay for college, I had a scholarship to the University of Oregon, my girlfriend was going there and I could live at home.  He asked if I was working that summer – yes, at the sawmill – and how much would I make.  He then calculated if I had another $600 I could afford Willamette.  (Yes tuition has gone up since 1953).  He went next door to the president’s office and came back with a grant for $600.  I was so impressed with him that I forgot all my reasons for going to the University of Oregon and I signed up.  It was a God thing.  It shaped the rest of my life. That’s where I met Jesus, my life-long partner in life, Kay, and my life-long partner in ministry, Doug Coe.

In the middle of my sophomore year at Willamette some friends helped me find out about Jesus and I began my journey of following Him.  But I took myself with me!  I still longed for love and affirmation so now I studied the Bible, memorized verses, got up early each morning to pray, and talked to my fellow students about Jesus.  This looked good to others—I was a winner in a competition others didn’t even know was a competition.  This was just another way for me to perform as I sought love and affirmation.   

In those early years of following Jesus I had a mental understanding of many things God wanted me to know that I had yet to embrace with my heart.  A good thing about the grace of God is that God’s transforming power isn’t something we deserve but what we need.  By God’s grace, gradually, the things I was learning began to become part of my life as well.

God Shows Up Through Others

The grace of God, also, showed up in others who met with me to talk about this journey with Jesus.  Gradually I began to change from being self-centered to being God-centered in my thinking and in my living.

Gary Smalley in The Gift of Blessing described a major factor in giving me life for the journey:

“Any person who has missed out on all or a part of their parent’s blessing can acquire a spiritual family of fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters who can fill that void.  With a personal relationship with a heavenly Father that is secure, and through a spiritual family that can offer warmth, love, and acceptance, every element of the blessing can be ours and overflowing.”

There have been many who have been that spiritual family for me in the 65 years of my journey—too many to even try to name them all.  But I will write about a few who cared for me in ways many friends have done through the years. I am aware that when other companions read this they will wonder why they did not get written about – especially since my journey with them is similar to those I am writing about.  Love to all of you!

Doug Coe was a mentor and a prophetic voice in my life from 1955 until he died in 2017.  One gift, to all of us who knew him, was his helping us to be free from organized religion and to center our lives on Jesus.  Another one of the gifts he gave me was an introduction to Kelly Kenagy.  Kelly was twenty years older than I and in many ways he was a father figure to me.  He showed love and affirmation to me that I had not received in my home.  He was also one who walked with me as both of us sought to live as apprentices learning from Jesus.  He had insight into Scripture unlike any other I have been with and those ideas have become part of my thinking and my living.  But most important was that he loved me in all the ways I wanted to be loved.  And this was a gift for 50 years until his passing.

Partnership in Marriage

And of course, the most consistent partner in my journey has been Kay.  I met her half a year after I began to walk with Jesus.  We have been together for the past 66 years. There are so many things we learned from the Lord on our journey.  I want to share one that transformed our marriage

One of the things I learned from Kelly was what Jesus meant when he told his followers that life unfolds in good ways if they are in agreement.  As Kelly and I studied this idea we discovered that the root word was sumphono, the word from which we get symphony.  In a symphony we don’t play the same notes or even the same instruments, but when we respond to the conductor we produce beautiful music.

Kay and I had hearts in tune with this idea from the very beginning, but ten years into our marriage we made a dramatic leap forward.  In 1968 we moved to Montreal with our three young boys at the request of a Canadian friend and Doug Coe.  This was a difficult move.  We came from an English-speaking protestant world to a French-speaking Roman Catholic world.  And those we had partnered with in the Northwest were a long way away.  We had not yet found the people in Canada who would journey with us.  It was a very difficult time—in fact, it was one of the few times that both of us often felt lonely and depressed.  I tried to hide it from myself by staying busy and Kay’s way of handling it was by being the primary person parenting three boys.  These things kept us busy but they did little to deal with the loneliness we felt in this new place. 

One day we were driving someplace when I asked Kay about a decision I was facing.  She responded as a good, submitted wife should: “Whatever you want, dear.”  I was aware for the first time that I had a loving wife (which was not a new thought), but I also needed her as a partner in the decisions of our ministry in Canada and elsewhere.  My reaction to her remarks was not kind, but it began an important new direction in our marriage.  It meant a change in both of us in the way we processed our lives.  Being in agreement with the Lord and each other began to be foundational in our marriage.  We have often described the transition using the symphony metaphor:   I had to learn to play my trumpet with a little less force and she has had to learn to play her piccolo with more confidence.  And even if she no longer told me I could have whatever I wanted I got something far better—A life-long partner!

Learning to live in Community

Several of our good companions from Oregon and Washington, D.C. came to be with us in Montreal for short visits. The support of these friends brought life to us when we were struggling.  And because this brought greater life to us we were able to pass that along to the emerging friendships in Canada, beginning with Bill and Sandra Bussiere and gradually others in many places in Canada.  In these relationships, I was receiving love and affirmation that encouraged me when things were difficult.   

When we moved from Montreal to Springfield, Massachusetts we knew no one in that part of the world.  But we had off-shore resources – women and men from the Northwest, Canada, D.C., and other places who were part of our lives. Thus, when we met people in this new location there was an ongoing fellowship they could join. 

There were many things we learned in the ten years of walking with our new companions in New England.  One that stands out is what is involved in doing what Paul told his friends in Ephesus to do: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”  This is not an easy command to obey!  At least for me!  I almost always begin in any situation thinking my ideas are the right ones.  Kay and I had been living in mutual submission with each other (at least partially) for several years and with the Bussieres and in some ways with Doug Coe.  As the team in our new location came together this added more people to whom we would be submitting and that made living this truth a greater resource to help us know we were loved and affirmed, but the more people speaking into our lives also was more challenging.  So we continued to learn. 

A couple of the things we were learning about mutual submission emerged during these days.  The first was an illustration Kay came up with.  She said submission is like doing your best work and submitting it to an editor for improvement.  We don’t submit so the editor can dominate us or demean us, but so that what we have written can be improved.  Thus this kind of submission to sisters and brothers is one of the ways God works to improve us—to help us become more like Jesus. 

The second is that submission to others does not mean you give up responsibility for your decisions.  Others help us understand and come to a decision about what God wants us to be and to do.  But we should not give veto power over our decisions or our lives to the ones to whom we are submitting. This is an abdication of our responsibility.  We are to stay responsible before the Lord even as we experience the help we receive from our companions.

The Challenge of the Nation’s Capital

The move to D.C. was relationally the easiest of all our moves.  We were moving to be with friends with whom we had walked for years.  We immediately joined a weekly evening group of like-minded companions.  This was a group that a few years before we, and the Bussieres, had encouraged to meet to share life on a regular basis.  When we joined these friends we found a place to celebrate each week the good things God was doing in us and through us.  It was also a safe place to bemoan the things that had been difficult that week.  And living with our own brokenness in a city of self-important people can give us lots of things to bemoan.  This group was another place where we experienced God’s love through others.

The move to D.C. also gave me the opportunity to work closely with Doug Coe on the many concerns of this world-wide fellowship.  We had been partners for years (I coordinated the National Prayer Breakfast for three years while living in Springfield.) but we had not lived in the same city since 1959 – 23 years earlier.

The working partnership was special and very good for five or six years.  Then for a reason I could not understand we were just not getting along.  I remember sitting in a meeting with him and four others and one of the men said how wonderful it was to be together and he wished we could spend the whole day together. But I was thinking, “How the hell do I get out of here?”  This was just one example of the disunity I was feeling with Doug.

Friends to the Rescue

But again the grace of God—for this became another one of the times I discovered that problems are an opportunity to learn from the Lord.  And having good friends help us work through them making the learning more certain.  Let me explain:

John and Jeanah Gilman, who were friends with us when we all lived in Oregon, lived in Kansas.  Friendship with them had grown more special over the last few years.  We spent time together several times a year.  We were learning from them better ways to deepen our marriage.  They both affirmed us and gave us new insights.  One in particular that I recall:  John said to me, “Kent, no one knows you better or loves you more than Kay.  Maybe you should listen to her.” These words from John helped me to learn how to walk in agreement with Kay.

John had known Doug since he was in Doug’s Young Life club in high school in Salem. He learned of the struggle Doug and I were having in our relationship.  At a retreat in Bermuda he brought us together to sort it out.  We talked for hours.  Then at about two in the morning he said, I think I know what the problem is.”  I thought, now Doug is going to be called out for his failures.  Instead, John said: “Kent, you have described your work in a way in which you can never succeed.  You came to D.C. to walk with Doug and to lift his workload.  And every time you take on one project it gives him time to pick up two more.”

John was right!  And my old problem had surfaced again.  I was busy earning love and affirmation, and though I certainly got some of this from Doug, I never got enough to satisfy my hunger for it.  It has become a truth for me, that if what I am doing is for the purpose of earning love and affirmation I will never get enough. 

That night I had a dream about being a teenager in Eugene when our neighbor came over and asked me to bring our wheelbarrow to move a pile of wood to put into his wood shed.  As I wheeled load after load I kept saying to him, “Aren’t you glad I have this wheelbarrow? Aren’t you glad I have this wheelbarrow?” And he never once thanked me for bringing the wheelbarrow.  When I woke up I thought the Lord was saying go park your wheelbarrow and bring it out when I direct, not when you want to use it to be affirmed.    

When I told John the next morning he laughed and said, “You were taking the wood away with the wheelbarrow and Doug was dumping by the truckload.”

I still have a toy wheelbarrow on my windowsill given to me by my son, David, as a reminder of that major change in my life.

The wonderful thing is that because of John’s intervention I had a whole different reason for helping my friend.  Doug and I were partners in the work of the Kingdom until he passed.

I could write for many pages on all the ways I have experienced the love of God through friends, but I will just write about one.  I met John Dellenback when he was a member of the Oregon legislature in 1959.  We had a small group of legislators meeting each Wednesday morning for Bible study and sharing of life.  John never missed a meeting.  Also, we were both handball players so we spent time on the court together.  When elected to Congress in 1966, among his important duties was a lesser one – hosting me when I came to DC to work on the Prayer Breakfast and related activities.  He and Mary Jane became life-sharing friends to both Kay and to me.

When I was in the midst of my struggles with Doug, John did an amazing thing.  He bought a baseball and had eight friends of ours sign it.  He put it in a baseball glove trophy which was engraved, “Kent Hotaling, Friendship All Time Golden Glover.”  He understood my pain and affirmed me in a way that was healing for me.  (And the glove is sitting next to the wheelbarrow on my windowsill.)

A Major Turning Point

Another experience that was a great help on this journey happened over 30 years ago.  I was sitting on our front steps holding my six-month-old grandson, Thomas.  He was just cozy in my arms.  He would watch a car drive by or a bird fly over and I had this thought.  He is not doing anything at all of value and I have never been happier in all my life, just holding him and loving him.  Then I had a burst of insight as I was overwhelmed with the thought that this is how God feels about me.  His love is not dependent on my performance.  I don’t have to perform to win His love.  He just loves me.  Live into this abundant love of God that has nothing to do with performance.

Many times in the years since, often in the morning or when I find myself sitting waiting for a doctor or friend, I just revisit that experience of sitting in God’s arms, being grateful that I am deeply loved.

Letting Go of Agendas

Then in 1995 we moved back to Oregon.  It was wonderful to have time with friends who had stayed part of our lives for over forty years.  As we arrived in Oregon I had this thought that must have come from the Lord; “Don’t have an agenda for anyone else.  If they discern that God has something He wants them to be or to do and you can encourage them in it, do so.  But don’t lay your agenda on them.” This was not an easy change for me to make.  When you have spent forty years changing the world for Jesus it is difficult to let go of that “spiritual” agenda.  Anyone you met could start a group, travel to another city or country, give money to various outreach projects, and on and on—and I am to deny this part of my DNA?

But it was a clear message from God and this became a dramatic change in the way I welcomed new people into my life.  I no longer wanted anything from them or for them.  I became much more of a safe place for them. 

And I should have learned it a long time before.  When you have three wonderful sons you tell them that you love them often and there is always something for which you can say, “I’m proud of you!”  But early on I discovered that they didn’t want me to lay my agendas on them—help them figure things out, yes.  Tell them what they should do, no.  And they have turned out very well—even without my agendas for their lives.

I still have much to learn on my journey but in summary, three things have helped me connect deeply with people in the last 25 years.

The first is I am not seeking love and affirmation from my work—I’m getting it directly from the Lord and that means I can also receive it from companions on the journey as a gift from them rather than a demand I lay on them.

Second, I am grateful for the people God brings into my life for me to love.  And when I allow the love of God to flow into me and out to them, then God’s love flows back from them and experience love in healing ways in my own life.

And the third is I have determined to release any agenda that occurs to me for others, which takes the stress out of the relationship for them and for me.

Kay and I are still on a journey of learning from the Lord, from each other, and from many special people in our lives.  One example, and with this I close:

Recently, we were getting ready to go to the beach for a couple of days to celebrate our 64^th wedding anniversary.  A year or so ago we were given a book of liturgies for almost anything we are doing in life.  One of them was, “Arriving at the Ocean”.  It suggested that when we stand on the shore we realize that we have run out of land and that is a message that tells us to embrace our limits.  Then as we look out at the ocean it is a reminder of God’s limitless presence extending immeasurably beyond us.  So in those two days, as we watched the waves come in without pause, we envisioned that this was the immeasurable love of God sweeping over us, cleansing us, and giving us new life.

Kent Hotaling – November 2022