There is a part of this story I can explain with photographs and numbers.
Then there is the part I’m still learning how to explain.
It involves a friendship of twenty years, a field I wasn’t looking for, and a group of kids who had no idea how much their coach needed them. But it begins before any of that, on my back patio before daylight.
I went out there carrying a fight.
God had something else in mind.
If You Build It, They Will Come
The months before that morning had been difficult.
We had vendor problems. A sale fell through after we had already spent against it. A business partner who was also a friend left under painful circumstances. Another twenty thousand dollars went into the project and didn’t come back.
I was angry, and I was getting good at explaining why.
One evening, my wife and I went out on a date. She was sitting across from me while I composed a message in my head to someone I believed had wronged me. I kept sharpening it, imagining the response, making sure there would be no misunderstanding my side of the story.
She told me not to send it.
She was right. We had a little time together, and I was giving it to someone who wasn’t there.
That’s the man who went to bed that night.
Around three in the morning, I heard a voice telling me to go outside.
I know how that sounds. I questioned it, too. I argued with it, rolled over, and tried to go back to sleep. By about four-thirty, I finally got up and walked onto the patio.
I can only tell you how I experienced it. The Holy Spirit met me there.
I had plenty to say about what other people had done. What I understood in that quiet was that I needed to let go.
The fight wasn’t mine to keep carrying.
I had spent months trying to hold everything together. When something went wrong, I absorbed the cost, took responsibility, and tried to find another way forward. I kept falling on the sword because I believed that was what leadership required. Some of that was commitment. Some of it was fear. If I stopped pushing, fixing, and carrying, I was afraid the whole thing might fall apart. But in trying to be strong enough to carry everything, I had forgotten how to come to God simply as His son.
A Father Who Wanted His Son
Then Field of Dreams came to mind.
It has been my favorite movie for as long as I can remember. I had always understood it as a story about a son and his father, about regret and reconciliation, with baseball giving them a way back to each other.
That morning, I saw my own relationship with God in it.
I thought about a Father who wanted to spend time with His son, and a son who kept arriving with an argument, an agenda, or something he needed fixed.
I had been asking God to do something about my circumstances. It occurred to me how little time I had spent simply being with Him.
That hurt.
But what brought me to my knees was the feeling that I was still welcome.
I didn’t have to resolve the business, recover the money, or make myself easier to love before I came back. I could come tired and angry, with the whole mess still unfinished.
His goodness was there before anything got better.
I came outside with a case to make. I found I didn’t need one.
Go the Distance
Not long afterward, I felt the Holy Spirit telling me to return to coaching. The message was difficult to miss. Again and again, I saw myself back on a baseball field, helping young athletes. I hadn’t been thinking about coaching, but God seemed to be showing me where I needed to go.
Financially, it made very little sense. I was trying to build a company. High school baseball was not the solution I would have written into that plan.
Still, the thought wouldn’t leave me alone.
I had coached for years, owned training facilities, and played professionally. I assumed God was sending me somewhere that needed what I knew. I even had a particular kind of program in mind.
Then I asked for a sign.
Something obvious. I know myself. Given enough room, I can explain away an answer that doesn’t look like the one I wanted.
Less than a week later, an old friend called.
We’ve known each other about twenty years. We’ve coached together, coached at different schools, and coached against each other, though thankfully more together. He’s a man of God whose character I’ve had a long time to watch.
He asked me to come speak to his players for a mentorship series he was holding weekly.
I hadn’t been thinking about his school. It didn’t fit the picture I had made. I didn’t connect his invitation to my prayer on the phone or even on the drive over.
I had asked God to make it obvious and then nearly missed it because He hadn’t followed my directions.
Within an hour of being there, I felt the nudge again—only now it seemed more specific. I wasn’t being shown just any baseball field. I felt like I was supposed to be there, helping coach those young men.
Before I left, I told my friend what I was sensing. I believed God might be leading me back into coaching and toward his program, but I needed to pray about it.
I spent the next week doing exactly that. The more I prayed, the more the uncertainty gave way to excitement. I found myself thinking about the team, the field, and what it might mean to be part of their lives. By the end of that week, I knew I needed to say yes.
I had gone there expecting to give a talk.
I came back ready to coach.
Then I got to know the kids.
They listened. They competed. They wanted to improve. They encouraged each other and brought energy to the work. Before long, I was bringing some of that energy home.
I still had bills. The startup still had its needs. But I had somewhere to be that afternoon, and young men whose progress mattered to me.
I had missed that more than I knew.
You spend enough afternoons asking kids to believe there is more ahead of them, and eventually you have to consider the possibility yourself.
I thought I was being sent there to be a blessing.
God was kind enough to let me discover how much I needed to receive one.
They had no idea how much their coach needed them.
By then, the project had been through roughly three years of starts and stops. Progress, disappointment, another attempt. At one point, I couldn’t give the concept away.
I don’t know how much of my persistence was faith and how much was stubbornness. I suspect God had to work with quite a bit of both.
I also don’t have a neat explanation for every loss. Some came from decisions I would make differently now. Some still hurt.
But I can see that God kept meeting me through those years.
Through my wife, who told me when to put the phone down. Through a friend who called with a simple invitation. Through athletes who gave me a reason to get out of my head and be useful that afternoon.
I had been looking for provision big enough to solve the whole problem.
Much of it arrived as enough for the next step.
For years, I had tried to get this idea moving through presentations, conversations, and follow-ups.
At that field, people started showing up.
My friend saw the need and wanted to move forward. A booster dad heard about the idea in a passing conversation and helped us get the container. Others contributed their time, resources, and work.
In about a month, something took shape that I hadn’t been able to force into place in years.
I call that provision, and when I say it, I see faces.
People with their own families, bills, and responsibilities who made room to help. People who cared about the kids enough to give something of themselves before there was much to show for it.
God’s goodness became tangible through their generosity.
When I think of provision, I think of people.
I’m careful about what I take from that season.
I don’t believe obedience is a transaction where we say yes and God makes the business work. Faithful people lose things they prayed over. Good people work hard on plans that never come together.
I’m grateful this one began to.
But His goodness was already there on the patio, when nothing had changed. It was there in the invitation to coach, before we had a container. It was there in my wife sitting across from me, deserving more of her husband than the distracted man I had brought to dinner.
Looking back, I can see how often I was being cared for while I was waiting for God to take care of things.
One evening, after the field lights came on, I stood near the pod and watched the athletes.
Music was playing. Equipment was out. The kids were moving through the space as though it had always belonged there.
For once, I stopped counting what was missing.
I thought about the friend who called, the people who helped, and the years when I couldn’t see where any of this was going.
I had prayed for a way forward. Along the way, God had given me people to love and work worth doing.
And He had brought me back to a part of my life where I felt like myself again.
There was still plenty left to do. That evening, I could see how much I had already been given.
That has changed how I think about what I’m responsible for now.
Every afternoon, young people come through that space carrying stories I only know a little about. I get a small part in their lives. An opportunity to listen, hold a standard, offer encouragement, and notice when something seems off.
Having been cared for so patiently myself, I want to be more faithful with those opportunities.
Sometimes I wonder how many coaches and administrators need that reminder, too. We spend so much time being the person others count on that we can forget we’re allowed to need someone.
I certainly did.
Do You Want To Have a Catch?
The last part of the movie that came to me on the patio was the ending.
A son asks his father to have a catch.
After everything it took to get there, they have a ball, a field, and a little time together.
That’s the part I carry with me.
I still get ahead of myself. I still want answers sooner than they come. I can turn a quiet moment into a planning meeting with God before I realize I’m doing it.
But I’m learning to stay a little longer.
To give thanks before I ask for the next thing. To tell Him what hurts without rehearsing who’s to blame. To remember that I don’t have to bring Him a successful day to be welcome in His presence.
Maybe you know something about being physically home and somewhere else entirely. Maybe you’ve been carrying a disappointment so long that you’ve forgotten what it feels like to set it down.
I don’t know what your way back looks like.
Mine began with getting out of bed and going outside, with nothing resolved and nothing impressive to say.
I believe Jesus Christ met me there. And through the people and ordinary afternoons that followed, He kept showing me how deeply I was loved.
I spent years trying to build something that would give athletes a place to belong.
I hadn’t realized how much I needed to know I still had one, too.
My Father had been there the whole time.
And He still wanted to have a catch.
This is the scene I picture every day when I pray. My Heavenly Father and me, having a catch. Nothing I have to prove. Just time together.
All glory to God, and to my Savior, Jesus Christ.