Sunday morning I woke at 5 A.M. in a hotel next to a highway in the middle of Virginia – crying. Filled with gratitude for being a dad.
The following is a poem I wrote for my daughters, who are learning firsthand how despite best laid plans, life has an agenda all its own. Just when you have it all figured out just when you’ve got what you want you confidently stride into the batter’s box and are called upon to bunt. This is life And so it goes With little warning (or maybe no) something will happen On this you can trust Your plans will change and…
As we approach the day she leaves us, I wanted to share some things about our daughter Agatha Rose that most people don’t know. From afar, most people know her as a pretty girl with good hair. You might also know her as a good soccer player. Her friends know her as fiercely loyal. But there’s more. She’s also extremely competitive and will give up her body on the field of play. This isn’t always evident unless you get really…
It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. All my life I called bullshit on this line. If you’ve ever had a broken heart, you probably did too. But recently, after the final whistle blew on my daughter’s soccer career when her high school team lost at home during the NC Championship Tournament, this line floated up. From the time she first stepped foot on a soccer field as a little girl until this…
The following post was written by my daughter, Agatha Mitchem, whose team lost 1-0 in round 3 of the 2019 NC state soccer tournament. I was sitting in a parking lot. It was 9:30 pm on a Wednesday night. I had just played my last game of soccer. Ever. Of course I will be part of pickup games and clubs that meet once or twice a week in college in order to “stay fit,” but I knew it would never…
This summer I was part of a mission trip that traveled to Honduras for a week. The idea was for us to serve God while spreading love to people who didn’t look like us, live like us, talk like us, eat like us, or act like us. Because of these differences, I was nervous in the days leading up to the trip. Plus, the idea of traveling to a different country without my family and with no connection to the…
