#21 Placed In Your Path
The People God places in your Path of becoming who He needs you to be.
Steve Steele
9/21/20267 min read
Placed in Your Path
The People God Puts There on Purpose
Last week I wrote about learning to feel the pull. God's quiet, persistent nudge of a calling that doesn't announce itself dramatically but keeps showing up in ordinary moments until you finally stop long enough to listen.
This week I want to talk about the people.
Because here is something I have come to believe deeply, after watching my own life's story unfold in ways I could never have scripted: God doesn't just nudge you toward a destination. He populates the path. He puts specific people in front of you at specific moments. Some people for a season, others for a lifetime, everyone who carries exactly what you need to become who He's trying to make you.
The world tells you it's about who you know. It's not wrong. Relationships change everything in football, in leadership, in business, in life. The question is where those relationships come from. And when I look honestly at the most important ones in my own story, very few of them were the product of networking strategy or careful positioning. Most of them arrived when I wasn't looking, from directions I wasn't watching, carrying things I didn't know I needed yet.
The Woman of My Dreams
I want to be careful here, because this part of the story deserves more than a paragraph. However, in the context of the people God places in your path, no conversation about my life would be honest without talking about my wife, Audrey.
I was in the middle of chasing the coaching ladder with back-to-back winning seasons, play-calling experience, and offers arriving from bigger programs when everything inside me shifted. The career path that had made perfect sense suddenly felt like it was pulling in the wrong direction. Not because it was bad. Because something better had arrived.
Finding the woman of my dreams changed the entire frame. Not just personally but vocationally, directionally, spiritually. The version of my coaching career that would have continued climbing the college ladder at that moment, chasing the big-time job, grinding through all the moves that come with that life would come at a cost I was no longer willing to pay.
Audrey didn't arrive at a convenient time. She arrived at exactly the right time. And the decision to follow that relationship and to choose the high school head coaching job that would let me be the husband and father I wanted to be, instead of the bigger program that might have taken me somewhere bigger was not a sacrifice of ambition. It was obedience to a pull that was stronger than the career plan.
Even more amazing is how God ensures there was no way to mess it up. As our relationship got serious, we began to consider marriage. In the summer, Audrey had felt called to work with the diocese's Totus Tuus program where she would travel to parishes around the diocese and help put on Vacation Bible School programs at each parish. We both knew this would be a summer spent discerning if our relationship was what God wanted for our lives.
As the summer wore on and we hadn't seen each other, I looked forward to the week she would be in our town (Madison, at the time). I wouldn't see her a ton, but I would get to see her. For her first day in town, I wanted to surprise her with flowers. Madison was a small town with really just one flower shop. As I went into the store and headed to the cooler, I was devastated. They only had roses from what I could see. Audrey. Hates. Roses. With my planned surprise in danger, I asked the worker if they had literally anything other than roses that day. She told me they had one, single, other arrangement available that morning. At the time I had no idea what flower they were, I just knew that they weren't roses. I happily told her I would take them and headed over to leave them where Audrey would find them.
About an hour later, I got a call from Audrey. Quietly and simply she asked, "Why'd you get purple flowers?" Immediately I was faced with a decision of whether to come up with a thoughtful white lie about how I thought she would like them. Instead, I settled on telling her that the other options were roses, which I knew she wouldn't like. I had chosen these so there was at least a chance she would like them. Little did I know that she had been praying for something purple if we were meant to get married. As soon as we ended our phone call, you better believe I got down and thanked God for not giving me any opportunity to mess that up!
When I reflect on moving to Pierre, South Dakota, finding a community we love, and having four wonderful children, it all of it traces back to one relationship that arrived on God's timeline, not mine. Along with some divine intervention to make sure I couldn't mess it up!
The People You Meet on the Job
Last week I discussed the nudge that pushed me to the path of the Boys & Girls Club. This week, I want to discuss some of the phenomenal people I have been blessed to meet because of that path.
With a good portion of my job being fundraising, I have the privilege to meet with some of our communities most experienced people. Experienced in life first-of-all, with most also having a lot of experience in different sectors. While they are great philanthropists, they are also home to a wealth of knowledge. There is no doubt in my mind that I have become a better person, and better leader for having gotten to interact and learn from them as much as I have.
Another layer of this is who they then bring into my life. I had a great opportunity to sit down with one of their sons recently, who is an extremely successful artist and historian. His catchphrase is something that especially sticks with me in my work at the Club, and in this discussion.
"When an old man dies, a library burns"
He spends much of his life interviewing pilots and veterans, each of which has a library rich with history and life lessons that we can only imagine. As we chatted about different things, it hit me that all of the people I interact with everyday also have a library, rich with lessons. Working to treat each person as the wealth of knowledge they are really allows us to become the best we can be. You never know from whom you can learn something. But by being curious, engaging with people, and giving them your full attention, you have the opportunity to read a new book with every engagement you have with someone.
This concept holds so true for me in talking with different donors and volunteers at the Club. I have learned so many things in my meetings and lunches with different people that I wouldn't have had it not been for my work. Even better is that while the introduction may have come through work, I am fortunate to now call many of them my friends.
Much like the timing of meeting Audrey, meeting different people can also change the trajectory of your life. You never know who is going to give you your next big idea, or the next nudge from God to stay on path or move towards a different one.
On the World's Economy of "Who You Know"
The world isn't wrong that relationships are currency. In every field, at every level, the people you know shape what becomes possible for you.
But the world's version of "who you know" is essentially transactional. It's about accumulating the right contacts, positioning yourself in the right rooms, being strategic about who you cultivate and why. It treats relationships as a resource to be managed.
That's a pale shadow of what I actually believe is happening.
I believe that the people who matter most in your story from the mentor who shapes your philosophy, the colleague who sees your potential before you do, the friend who keeps your head above water in the hardest seasons, to the partner who reorients your entire direction, are not primarily the product of your networking acumen. They are gifts. They arrive on a timeline you didn't set, from directions you weren't watching, in forms you didn't expect.
Your job is not to engineer the network. Your job is to be present, to be paying attention, to be the kind of person God can trust to steward a relationship well when one arrives. To show up fully in the conversation you didn't plan, the dinner you didn't expect, the hallway interaction with a person you hadn't thought to pursue.
Be a sponge. Not because networking is the ultimate goal but because you never know who God is about to sit down across from you, or what they're carrying that you need, or what you're carrying that they need.
The exchange works in both directions. Always.
Who Is Already in the Room?
I want to leave you with the same question I find myself returning to regularly, especially now that my world is wider than a football field and the people being placed in my path come from more directions than ever before.
Who has God already put in your life that you haven't fully received yet? Here's one quick thought I read and reflected on that I think applies perfectly when it comes to networking.
"Satan got Adam and Eve to fix their eyes on one tree even though God had already given them an entire garden. Think about that. The enemy didn't have to convince them that they had nothing, he just had to make them forget everything that they already had. To this day, he still uses the same strategy. He gets us to focus on the relationships we don't have, the opportunity we don't have, the healing we haven't seen yet. Meanwhile, we are blind to the countless prayers God has already answered. Gratitude isn't pretending you don't want more, it's refusing to let what you don't have make you forget the goodness of God that's already surrounding you."
Show up. Pay attention. Be the kind of person worth placing in someone else's path and never forget those in yours that you are already blessed with.
That's the whole assignment.
PARTING THOUGHTS
Think about the two or three people who have most significantly shaped the direction of your life. How many of them did you strategically pursue, and how many arrived unexpectedly? What does that ratio tell you about who is actually doing the arranging?
The world's version of networking is transactional in accumulating the right contacts. God's version is relational in being placed at the right table at the right moment for reasons neither party can fully see yet. Which posture are you bringing to the relationships currently in front of you?
Is there someone already in your life (on your staff, in your program, at your table) who you have not fully received yet? Someone carrying something you need, or who needs something you carry, that you've been too busy or too distracted to notice?