This morning I had two of those moments shortly after waking up.  The first, a call from my dad, telling me he has a job interview this week.  He's one of the many, how can I say, seasoned employees that have currently been replaced by younger, cheaper employees, but that's not why we're here.  He told me that he got the interview because he was volunteering at a medical clinic assisting with the computer networks and basic desktop support.  My father is a network engineer with many years of experience and the ladies in the office think he "walks on water", at least according to the Director my father was helping out.  It just so happened that the Director was married to an IT VP of a large regional bank in central Kansas.  One of this bank's network engineers had just left the company and he was looking for a new staff member.  His wife told him that she had a guy, you guessed it, that walked on water, so he gave my dad a call.

The second "you never know" moment came when reading The Pioneer Woman's blog post from today.  Yes, I'm a guy and yes from time to time I glance over my wife's shoulder to see what she's reading.  Okay, fine!  I'm busted, I like to read her blog!  What can I say, she's great and I love to laugh at her expense.  Anyway, her post this morning was about a moment on a plane ride back from Seattle.  I won't go into great detail, I'll let you read that, but just as the plane was about to land the pilot hit the throttle sending the plane skyward again.  Of course, this rattled the usually strong hearted Pioneer Woman and at that moment she did what any passenger with a heartbeat would do.  Her mind started racing, wondering what went wrong.  Was it the landing gear?  Did we almost have a mid-air collision?  What could it be?  A few minutes later the pilot came on the loudspeaker and informed the passengers that he had detected some dangerously strong crosswinds so he aborted the landing.

So, what do walking on water and job interviews have to do with The Pioneer Woman and aborted landings and how do they relate to "you never know" moments?  As you can see, I'm sure there was no way for my father to know the set of circumstances and events that he set in motion when he agreed to volunteer to assist the medical clinic with their computer needs.  Just like The Pioneer Woman had no knowledge or foresight of why they had to suddenly abort the landing and circle back around to make the landing several minutes later.  These are you never know moments.  They are moments when we encounter, fate, divine providence, accident, luck or whatever you might call it, but these moments happen and all too often, I find myself quitting just before I would have had my moment.  

I once remember reading that the Space Shuttle expends an unbelievable amount of fuel just getting free from the launch platform (something like 85% I believe).  If, for some reason the engines would be throttled back a few milli-seconds early it would be catastrophic.   Instead it's pedal to the metal until the Shuttle has reached escape velocity.

The you never know moments can happen at any time so I think the lesson here is to keep pressing forward, because you never know what's just around the corner.

Do you have those "you never know" moments?  If so, would you share?

When I first had these questions posed to me through the video I had 2 reactions.  First, "cheezy" and second, after they lingered a while, was "wow"!  The second question was a bomb shell for me.  What IF my calling WAS my story?  You'd think at 43, that I would have all of life's big questions answered, but what I find is that the farther I go down the trail of life the more questions I actually have.

What if my calling was my story?  What if I was not only the narrator, but a character in my own story.  What if I was also a co-author, not just in my story, but in the stories of others and vice versa?  These were all questions that came to mind as I pondered the my own emotional and intellectual response to the initial questions.

So why would your story be important to me?

First, it is in hearing other's story that I realize that I'm not that unique and yet still uniquely me.  We are all travelers in this life, sharing similar experiences and yet we have very different responses and outcomes.

Second, by the mere fact that you are reading this, our stories are now intertwined.  Maybe not like a best friend, husband, wife, son, daughter or someone very close to us, but we still are connected.  I have come to realize that MY story is not just my story, but the coalescing of my story with those around me as well.

Third and by all means not last, your story and you are important to me.  Every person is truly valuable and when one single story is not heard we all suffer loss.

I hope that this post along with Chris' in some way inspire you to realize that you have a story, it's important and you get to co-author it.

Have a great day and make your story great.

Are you a neon sign or a cairn?  Right now you're probably saying to yourself I know what a neon sign is, but how does it apply to me and what in the heck is a cairn?

Let me start with the cairn.  A cairn is a small or sometimes rather large pile of rocks to intentionally mark something.  In the past they were used to mark graves or for religious alters among other things.  Today, hikers the world over know them as the universal markers to help keep fellow travelers on the trail.