REFINING FIRE
By Steve Lowery with Jeff Hopper

When I walked off the final green at Tucson in February 1999, my thoughts were on the round, which is pretty typical for a professional golfer. We earn our living by focusing on the game.

But when the Tour official approached me, the look on his face was not the kind you want to see. "I have bad news, Steve," he began. "There has been a fire at your house." Immediately, I assumed it was a small kitchen fire or something like that. But he went on, "It was bad, Steve, very bad."

Of course, my mind then raced to Kathryn and the kids. Were they all right? Had anyone been hurt? I was assured that none of them had been harmed, but I knew also that I needed to get home to Orlando right away. The tournament officials rushed me to the airport and I flew home.

When I got there, my manager, Mark Johnston, picked me up. It was two o'clock in the morning.

"I need to take you by the house before you see your family, Steve," Mark said. "You need to see what they went through." So we drove by the house, and it was gone. There was nothing left. It had burned literally to the ground, and nothing was salvageable.

Eventually, I found out that my daughter Kristen had been doing homework at the kitchen table and she saw the flames. Kathryn thought the spotlight had burst and there were flames shooting out. She ran to get help from the neighbors, but by the time she got a hose, there were 30-foot flames shooting out of the ceiling.

At that time, our two younger children were asleep upstairs, and Kristen was still at the table. Kathryn had to run back into the house and get everyone out.

The firefighters arrived in about five minutes, but all they could do was contain the fire so that it wouldn't spread to other properties. A high wind had pushed the fire through the attic in no time, and it was going through all the trusses and everything. It was just a total loss.

But God knew what really mattered. Not only did Kathryn and the kids escape unhurt, but none of the firefighters was hurt either. When they first went into the house, they mistook where the fire was located and they found themselves under a huge ball of fire. They got out immediately, and then the whole roof came down.

A drama like this can be pretty exciting in Reader's Digest or on TV, but you never want it to be your own story. Suddenly, we were without a house‹in fact, we didn't really have anything, not even a crib for the baby. We lived in a couple of rental houses, trying to figure out whether we should rebuild, but with all the insurance questions and decisions to be made, it was taking so much time. We didn't want to put the children through all that.

What we wanted to do was move home, which for Kathryn and me, is Birmingham, Alabama. So we did. We ended "the Orlando chapter," and we have been back in Birmingham for about a year and a half. We were able to buy an existing house, rather than build again from the ground up, and it just worked out well.

I can see now that God wanted us back here. It was a dramatic way to get here, but I think Kathryn is a lot happier because when I travel she has friends and family here, and she's not so much by herself.

Actually, what I see is that God has always had His hand in my life, from long before the fire in early 1999 to winning the Southern Farm Bureau Classic to close out a great year in 2000.

When I started the year, I set a goal that I wanted to win a golf tournament (which I hadn't done since 1994), and I wanted to finish in the Top 30 on the money list. Well, I set the goal, and I had a lot of chances to win, but actually it came down to the last putt of the year.

While Phil Mickelson was winning the Tour Championship against the Top 30 players on Tour, the rest of us were trying to close the year strong in Mississippi. I led the tournament for three days, but Sunday was a struggle.

In the end, I had to make birdie on the 72nd hole to get into a playoff with Skip Kendall. Then, on the first extra playoff hole, I made a 40-foot putt from the fringe for another birdie. When Skip's birdie putt missed, I won the tournament.

I know you always hear about how Tiger Woods comes to win. But so do 144 other guys. Every week I go in there to win the tournament. I've played in all these tournaments in the 14 years I've played on Tour, and I have won just two of them. But every time I go to win. So it is satisfying to finally accomplish your goal. It is very satisfying. But like a lot of things in life, it doesn't last. The next week, there is another winner and the Tour goes on.

This time, though, at the Southern Farm Bureau Classic, I knew what the letdown was going to feel like. Winning is the ultimate goal on Tour, but I know with a different perspective that it is not going to fulfill or complete me. It's just a goal. I did it, and it's over with. It's something to be proud of, but it's not everything.

There are other goals that golfers don't really talk about, but they are there all the same. For me, I think that loving people is really important. That could be the camera man who is driving you crazy, or a broadcaster criticizing you on the telecast, or your playing partner who is distracting you. One thing I especially try to do is make the pro-am days special days for my amateur partners. You have to realize that people are more important than golf tournaments. This isn't my idea, of course. It has everything to do with my relationship with Christ. There was certainly a time when I put golf before everything else.

When I was playing golf as a junior and then in college, I had a lot of success. I won the Alabama State Junior and I was an All-American at the University of Alabama. So, in my mind, playing on the Tour was a done deal. I was young and confident--maybe even cocky--and I always thought that playing the Tour was what I was going to do and that was going to be it.

But it was never an easy road. I went to Tour Qualifying School nine times. On my fifth try I made the Tour, but one year later I was back again, having lost my card. Four more tries were unsuccessful, but by making money on mini-tours I was able to earn my way back on Tour. I think God uses all that difficulty to teach you that He's in control of your life. You come to understand that He has more planned for you than just pursuing golf goals. I was going down one road, which was to pursue success in golf, and because of my early success, I didn't think I needed anything else. But when God chooses to humble you, and when the successes stop, you begin to realize that you don't want to put all your heart and soul into something that is going to be so fickle and disappointing at times.

When I was 26 years old, my relationship with Christ took shape. Everything kind of came together at once. My lack of success had caused me to search for a greater purpose. I was about to get married, and I wanted Kathryn and me to be on the same page spiritually. And I was hanging around with several other believers who were playing mini-tours around Orlando with me.

I knew that I wanted something more than just golf and worldly success, because they were not filling the void in my life. Golf was not going to make me happy for the rest of my life. It was something I enjoyed, but it was not totally what I needed.

What I needed was Jesus Christ. So I gave my life to Him. You see, golf can be very superficial and external. But God is internal and eternal. Does this mean I have all the answers? No way. It's part of the game to set goals for yourself. But most of the time, you don't reach those goals. Does that mean God has let you down? I sure don't think so. It's just all part of the Christian walk, where the journey is so important. And that includes so much more than winning golf tournaments. It includes business, and family, and even a fire.

I wish I was knowledgeable enough to explain everything that God is doing in my life. But I can't. All I can say is that God is God and I'm not. With that in mind, I have definitely learned a lot. But most of all I have learned that if you are honest with God, He will almost certainly change your goals along the way. And you never know what He might use to do that.

This story originally appeared in the Links Letter, February 2001.