Reflections on Walking with God from a Mother-Daughter Duo

“We have 101 things that we can ask for. But He’s mainly asking from us to love Him.”

May 07, 2025

Below is a snippet of a conversation with Pat Vallefuoco (85) and her daughter, Pamela Steele — the first mother-daughter duo to be featured! Pat shares her journey of faith, resilience, and lessons learned through life’s challenges, including a divorce and the loss of her son to drug addiction. Pamela shares the impact of her mother’s faith on her own life, highlighting the power of leaving a legacy of faith. Throughout our conversation, Pamela and Pat speak to the importance of daily devotion, obedience to God, and staying rooted in God’s word. If you prefer listening, you can listen to or watch the full conversation on Apple, Spotify or YouTube.

Pat, tell us a little bit about yourself and your walk with the Lord.

I've been walking with the Lord ever since I was in my 20s, but I had strong Christian parents and I lived in a Christian home. But, as we all know, there's a point in our life where no matter where we've been with our church attendance and stuff, there's a specific time in which the Lord touches our heart and we know there's a change.

And I was in my 20s, I believe, when that was happening. Pam was already born. I was married, obviously. And I wanted to be a good parent for my children like I thought my parents were good parents. And so my husband and I put them in a private Lutheran school. I was not raised as a Lutheran. I was raised in a very evangelical church, the Christian Missionary Alliance. And so I feel like I had a very good upbringing and stuff and that I was passing it along to my children the best that I knew how.

But, I was in a sermon one evening with the Lutheran pastor and I have no idea what the sermon was. It was some kind of special celebration of something. And the pastor, at the end of the sermon, brought before us a calling to help us walk close to the Lord. And normally that wouldn't be so much of a change or whatever. But all I can tell you is that I was standing in that pew and there was a big change that came into my mind and into my heart. And I knew that something had been brought into my life from the Lord. And I had no drawbacks in just moving along that pew and getting up there to the front. And that was the beginning of my strong, real Christian joy and love and feeling of the Lord going into my body.

What have you learned about the Lord that maybe you didn't realize when you were younger?

Well, we live in a work world. So my understanding of the Lord, I knew that He didn't care what my occupation was really. He was more interested in my heart. And so I just learned that if this task didn't work, try something else.

And you can always ask the Lord, ‘Lord, I have no understanding of what direction to go. Give me some light, some indication.’ And it didn't have to be in church. I mean, a Christian friend I had that was talking about something else and all of a sudden it was something that I could do. And that’s the way it went.

What’s the most significant challenge you’ve faced in your walk with the Lord and how did He bring you through it?

Well, I also had a wonderful son. But this terrible drug world that we have in our country, it really destroyed my son. And my biggest challenge with him is that I could see a light. You know, you don't need to be alone for the Lord to give you a light. You can have it come through someone else or through something across the street or on TV or whatever.

But I would take these lights and these indications and I'd, okay. And there was always this thing with the Lord, ‘Go ahead and try it. Go ahead and see. Go ahead and do it,’ you know? And I never was a wealthy person, so we're not gonna talk about finances, but I always made it through. But I tried to help my son overcome, but he was so addicted.

And I'm telling you, as a parent, you're not going to take that child out of that. He or she has to come to the point where they say, hey, look, this isn't working for me. And that's true for all of us. We might be alcoholics or we could be smoking or something else that’s not good for our bodies. We have to make that same decision. We have to do it ourselves, with the Lord leading and teaching.

He's got all kinds of scriptures that lets us know that He loves us and He wants us to love Him and, you know, that's really what He's asking. We have 101 things we can ask for. But He’s mainly asking from us to love Him. And if we really love Him it's like loving anybody else in your family: you're going to try to do what's right.

But this is why it's so important that we spend time in God's word every single day, because I can tell you, time after time after time, where I knew that that scripture was specifically for me. He's talking to me. So, you know, of course you want to talk to your pastor, you want to get wonderful Christian friends. But it's Him. You’ve got to get into His word.

Pamela, how has your mother’s life and faith impacted your own faith?

Wow, that could be answered so many ways. One of the special things in our relationship is that we've just been through a lot of ups and downs. She's very respectful of my dad. She does not speak of the reality of the situation she was in. So, I won't share details, but she needed to be out of the marriage. I'll just put it that way, for the benefit of her children, not just for her comfort.

She lived with a lot of chaos for a long time. And I remember the day that she physically decided to leave. It was very hard, but I remember just a sense of, God is with us and no fear. Because when you walk in obedience with God, there is not fear. And that would probably be the story of her life, is just to desire to obey God. And that means you’ve got to be in His word.

So she's given me a desire to please God. And she is thinking and communicating and doing really everything in her life with that perspective. What pleases God? Is my tone pleasing to God? Are my words, is my action, how I spend my resources, everything. So I hope someday that that's what people say about me, someone who desired to please God.

Other wise words worth echoing:

- “When the Lord is in charge, He takes care of those problems that you think are a problem. They don’t stay.”

- “I have to say the most important lesson for me has been to daily spend time with the Lord.”

Listen to or watch the full conversation on Apple, Spotify or YouTube.

Thank you for being here,

Katharine

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