I had enough success as a high school baseball player to catch the eye of the Texas Tech University coaching staff. They were in Houston playing a weekend series and one of the assistant coaches came out to watch me play. 

I hit a homerun and a double that night and that was good enough for books, tuition, and fees. For a boy from Houston in the early eighties, Lubbock was clear across the planet.

At the time, Texas Tech was better known for fraternities hosting the largest calf fry in the country than it was for successful athletic teams. Students had to drive twenty-five miles outside of town to buy beer since the school was located in a dry county. It snowed in the winter, and you had to dodge tornadoes in the spring. 

I wanted to play baseball, so I gladly accepted. I had never seen a pump jack or a field of cotton before, or even eaten a mountain oyster, so my trip to the Texas Panhandle was like visiting the wild west, and the wannabe cowboy in me liked the thought of that.

As I approached Lubbock for the first time, I smelled it before I saw it. The type of smell that immediately makes you snap your head back, grab your nose, and say, “whoa, what is that?” On the right side of the highway entering Lubbock from the south is a sprawling cattle feedlot. Acres of cows crammed side by side eating feed from a trough.

When the wind is blowing a certain way, the blunt, wet smell of hundreds of cows doing their business is sucked through the air conditioner vents and directly into your face. It is the kind of smell that can stick to your clothes for days. The sight and smell of an enormous cattle feedlot on the red, dusty plains can be a sensory overload for the big city folks moving to Lubbock.

As I look back now, Lubbock is exactly where God wanted me to be. It was not my first choice, or even my second or third, but it was where I needed to be. I guess you could call it destiny.

I was sent there for a reason. Even though God was not a priority in my life at the time, He was guiding my steps without me even realizing it.

The people I met and the experiences I had changed my life. For me, it appears to be how God works in my life.

He plopped me down in the Texas Panhandle at the age of eighteen and placed people, challenges, experiences, victories, and defeats before me.

There was a reason for me going to Lubbock, and it wasn’t just to play baseball. Today, I know the reason was to meet others who did life better than me.

I needed help with that.

I look back now at my time at Texas Tech, and I cannot imagine what my life would be like without the relationships I developed there. The reasons for me going there are still flourishing in my life today.

The cool thing about life is that no matter where we are today, there is a reason. I recommend you don’t spend time pondering what that reason is, just be the person you believe God wants you to be, and reason seems to appear.

I am where I am today because there’s a reason. Can I tell you exactly what that reason is? Nope, but I bet there is more than just one.

I do fight the temptation of growing tired of trying to do the right thing. Sometimes it seems easier to settle for the “less than best” version of myself.

But that will get me nowhere, so I keep my hands moving. Plus, there is no reason in offering less than your best to others.

God sent me to Lubbock over forty years ago, and between then and now, I have had reason in every place I’ve lived.

Even today when I got to Lubbock and drive up on that cattle feedlot south of town, I am thankful for God sending me there all those years ago. Although I did not know it at the time, the reason turned out to be much bigger than playing baseball.

I’ve had some rough water, and some smooth sailing, but reasons for living have been revealed in both. Oftentimes, our reasons are not grand and complicated, but small and simple.

Don’t let the simplicity of God elude you.

Right now, you may not be where you hoped to be, but maybe – just maybe, it is where you need to be to get where you want to go.

That’s what I keep telling myself, and there is reason in that.

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Todd Howey is a columnist for BrownwoodNews.com whose articles appear on Fridays. Email comments to [email protected].