I shifted my weight in my chair during lunch as the speaker encouraged us to consider our roles and write down our circles of influence on a sheet of paper. Well this won’t take long, I thought to myself.

My paper ended up with wife, family member, friend, and employee scribbled shyly and slowly so those around me wouldn’t be able to tell how short it was.

At least once a week I sit and find a calm moment on a bench dedicated to a godly woman I never met, Kaye Shipley. I came to know who she was through her husband, Mark, who didn’t know me, but still drove out of his way to pick me up in St. Louis. Oddly, I met him again in the parking lot of the national WMU building in Birmingham, Alabama. That’s how I learned about the family connection to the bench in the memorial garden at our office.