I've been thinking a lot lately about the little moments that shape who we become.

It started with a conversation in the car. My son asked me something from his Civics class about speeding tickets, and we ended up talking about how different people experience the same laws differently - how a broken headlight can cascade into something much more serious for some, and how we hold the tension between accountability and compassion.

These unplanned moments matter more than we realize.

Then I remembered Grandpa Mennerick.

My senior year of high school, I won a leadership award. Someone took photos, framed them, and displayed them at a local mall. My mom's dad - Grandpa Mennerick - saw them there. He stood next to me, looked at the photos, and said:

"You look like you will be a fine businessman."

One sentence. Probably forgotten by him moments later. But I've been trying to fulfill it ever since.

That's the weight we carry as parents, grandparents, mentors. We speak words we barely remember into lives that never forget them.

I started mapping the seeds other men planted in me:

Every seed landed. None of them landed the way the planter imagined.

Jim probably pictured service in one context - some type of servant leadership or community volunteering. He couldn't have seen ordination, teen youth group, a community for Catholic deacons.

Bruce saw storytelling and leadership through narrative. He coached and mentored me as I wrote a dramatic production as a theme show for 7,000 scouts at a national conference - he couldn't have pictured me building a content ecosystem that weaves running, faith, fatherhood, and transition into a single integrated voice.

Even my dad's push toward athletics found its fulfillment - but not until I was 46, when my son invited me to start running with him. Not on my dad's terms. On my own terms, in my own time.

But Grandpa Halbrook's seed is different.

"Loving family man" isn't about doing something. It's about being someone.

I left that last cell in the table blank on purpose. Because I wonder if his seed is actually the one I haven't had to transform. Twenty-one years of loving partnership and mutual support in marriage. Four sons. Running because my son invited me. A business launched as a partnership with my wife. Every venture filtered through family-first.

Maybe his seed is the root system that allowed all the others to grow differently than the planters expected. The other seeds became something new through my freedom. This one became exactly what he said - and it's the foundation underneath everything else.

Which brings me back to that car conversation with my son.

I'm planting seeds too. In him. In all my boys. In the teens I lead at church. In the people who read what I write.

I can't control how those seeds grow. I can't predict the soil they'll land in or the sunlight they'll reach toward. The goal isn't to plant seeds that constrain them to my vision - it's to plant seeds of capacity they can take wherever they're called.

Grandpa Mennerick saw leadership. He called it "businessman" because that was his frame. But maybe what he actually saw was something more elemental - something that's expressing itself now through channels he never could have imagined.

I hope the same is true for the seeds I'm planting.

More on where these seeds are leading me - tomorrow.

What seeds did others plant in you? And what are they actually becoming?

If this resonated with you, I'd be honored if you shared it with someone who might need to hear it.

Michael Halbrook is a Catholic deacon, husband, and father of four. He writes at DeaconMichael.net and sends a weekly email called Wednesday @ Lunch - reflections on faith, family, work, and life. Subscribe here.