Episode 93: Faith, Family & Fishing with Shannon Dickens

Contend. This is a word that keeps coming up in my psyche as of late. C-O-N-T-E-N-D. Contend. And for those of you having flashbacks to the spelling bees of our youth, I know you want me to use it in a sentence. So, here it goes. I contend to learn in every conversation I have and host on this podcast. Yeah, see what I did there? Perhaps it is because I am enjoying the great work of a fellow podcaster, Erick Godsey, who in his latest episode encourages listeners to go back to understand the definition of the word, the origin of the word CONTEND. And so I did. In its Latin root, it means “with stretch, or with strive” and to stretch with or strive with is one of the things I love most about meeting new people and hearing new stories. My guest's story on this episode came to me, and us, because we were both in a time of great stretch and strive personally and professionally. For me, I was attending my first work dinner in almost two years, and frankly I was nervous to be in a restaurant to meet new colleagues in a new job. And so, I stretched myself, and that led to a great conversation with a fellow human across a table, who also stretched himself. And so began a friendship and a kinship when we learned we had more in common than others may realize. Heck, we even surprised ourselves a bit in our ability to stretch and grow. It is joy to share Shannon Dickens' story and inspire him to capture stories of his own with a fishing pole, a lot of faith and family first. Enjoy the listen.