By Mallory Mattingly
North Carolina State freshman pitcher Aiden Kitchings leaned on one Bible verse as he navigated the “foreign” waters of boarding school and now college.
“I think it’s been very inconsistent, up and down, you know, especially going into my sophomore year [of high school], moving to a boarding school where I knew nobody,” Kitchings said of his faith on the “Access the Walk” podcast. “Everybody was honestly foreign. And they were from different countries.”
The athlete decided to go to boarding school so he could work hard at baseball. He was living on his own at 16.
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“I feel like that’s when I truly started to work my way in with Jesus, because I remember right when I moved in, my dad gave me this poster with a Bible verse on it. It was Psalms 23:4, which is, ‘I walk through the darkest valley. I fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and staff, they comfort me,'” he recalled.
“I feel like that’s just helped me ever since, you know, realizing that, yeah, with all these dark storms that we have, all these uncertainties, we know that Jesus is never going to forsake us. He’s always with us no matter what happens,” Kitchings described. “So, I feel like just having that in the back of my mind has definitely helped. But going out throughout high school, it’s just been up and down.”
He turns to the same verse today when he takes to the mound.
“So, when I get on the mound, I draw a cross and P 234 for Psalms 23:4,” the pitcher said. “And I just feel like that just having that on the mound with me kind of teaches or keeps a reminder that you know if this doesn’t go the way I feel like it should, that something bigger is happening. He’s not going to leave me. So I’ve done that probably since I moved to boarding school, honestly, my sophomore year, every outing I would just draw that in the dirt.”
Kitchings often reads the Bible before he plays. In a post on Instagram, he shared a photo of himself reading the Bible in the dugout.
One of his go-to books of the Bible is Proverbs because there is a chapter to read for every day of the month.
“So, I would read that one of those every day. And I also have an athlete’s Bible,” Kitchings revealed of his Bible reading habits. “At the end of the main Bible…It’s got like a little passage, and then it gives you a lesson that goes with athletics and sports. I’ll read that. My dad gifted that to me. So, I feel like that’s something I’ve always kept with me, and it definitely helps.”
Through anchoring his routines in scripture and drawing strength from Psalm 23:4, Kitchings navigates both the uncertainties of his baseball career and the personal challenges of living away from home.
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