What is the Lord teaching us in seasons of waiting? Scripture gives us plenty of godly examples of those who had to wait and trust in the Lord. In this episode, Brody walks through several examples and discusses how they can encourage us in our seasons of waiting.
While we wait for job promotions, marriage, pregnancy, etc., we can trust in the Lord to renew our strength. God is all-powerful and all-knowing. Let’s lean into him and wait confidently.
Brody also sits down with Katie Cousins as they catch up and discuss what the last year for her has looked like and what the next year may hold for her. Let’s pray for Katie as she discerns where the Lord wants her this spring.
Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters exists to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the exposition of Scripture and personal relationships in order to equip the Church to impact this generation.
Learn more about our student and adult conferences at https://www.swoutfitters.com/
Please leave a review on Apple or Spotify to help improve No Sanity Required and help others grow in their faith.
Click here to get our Colossians Bible study.
What is the Lord teaching us in seasons of waiting? Scripture gives us plenty of godly examples of those who had to wait and trust in the Lord. In this episode, Brody walks through several examples and discusses how they can encourage us in our seasons of waiting.
While we wait for job promotions, marriage, pregnancy, etc., we can trust in the Lord to renew our strength. God is all-powerful and all-knowing. Let’s lean into him and wait confidently.
Brody also sits down with Katie Cousins as they catch up and discuss what the last year for her has looked like and what the next year may hold for her. Let’s pray for Katie as she discerns where the Lord wants her this spring.
Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters exists to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the exposition of Scripture and personal relationships in order to equip the Church to impact this generation.
Learn more about our student and adult conferences at https://www.swoutfitters.com/
Please leave a review on Apple or Spotify to help improve No Sanity Required and help others grow in their faith.
Click here to get our Colossians Bible study.
Welcome to Know.
Speaker 1:Sanity Required. I'm excited about today's episode. We are going to talk about waiting on the Lord, what it looks like to be in a season or pattern of waiting, particularly as we've talked recently a lot about the providence of God and we're going to have a short conversation today with Katie Cousins, and so I'm excited for you to hear from Katie an update from Katie. Many of you have followed her journey as a professional soccer player and we'll come back in the last 10 minutes of the episode. We're going to really get into some biblical principles of waiting on the Lord.
Speaker 1:Maybe you're waiting, maybe you're in a season where you're waiting on. Maybe you've got fertility issues. Maybe you've got a promotion that you've been promised that doesn't come. Maybe you're waiting on a medical report. You don't know if you've got cancer. Maybe you're waiting for a career path and directive. You just are in a season of wondering what's next. I don't know. But waiting is a part of living and I'm hoping that today you'll get some practical and helpful encouragement, and so I appreciate you tuning in. Welcome to Know. Sanity Required.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Know Sanity Required from the Ministry of Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters. A podcast about the Bible, culture and stories from around the globe.
Speaker 1:I got an email this past week. It didn't come directly to me, it came to Snowbird and it was from a good friend. She's a pastor's wife named Emily. Her husband is a student pastor and I appreciated her. She had a question. They listened to Know Sanity Required. They listened to NSR I actually had the honor and privilege of doing their wedding a few years ago.
Speaker 1:They listened to this podcast and brought up the question about when you're in a season of waiting. Would we address what it looks like to be in a season of waiting? Maybe an episode on someone who's waiting for? It could be that they're struggling with fertility issues. It could be that it's something that heavy and weighty where you're waiting on, just like it's out of your hands. Just okay, god, what are you going to do? I know there's no doubt that we have a lot of listeners that have had to experience that and maybe you're in the middle of that. How do you just wait and trust?
Speaker 1:When we were in this is a funny story when we were in Uganda in 2014 trying to get all of our adoption stuff done, which was just kind of it's a crazy story, our whole adoption story. I'll tell that story sometime. It would fit good into the sovereignty of God series we've been doing. But we were, we just kind of, we hired an attorney and just went for it. It was kind of a crazy story, but anyway, we met this couple.
Speaker 1:We were renting a place at this boarding house in the capital near the US embassy in Kampala, uganda, and it was a lot of waiting, a lot of just waiting. That could also be another example of what we're talking about today. But there wasn't a lot to do. We tried to network with some other ministries and we would fill out some paperwork or put in a petition with the court system or with the embassy and then wait for two weeks and you just like, literally there's nothing you can do, just wait. So we try to make the most of it and visited with missionary partners in the country at the time and met some other new folks and new friends, but we met this couple.
Speaker 1:We'd been there about a month, maybe five weeks, and this couple showed up and they were in the adoption process. Young couple from Chicago, he was a police officer, she was a nurse at a nurse in a pediatrics office, and I think they now live in Florida, but at the time they were living in Chicago and their story was so funny because they had had fertility issues. She couldn't get pregnant. They had tried and tried and tried and tried. They've been married for several years and so they started the adoption process and the wheels were turning slowly so they started a second adoption process. So basically they had put in as a potential adoptive family with an adoption agency. And the way this works is you can do, you can do like you can. You can apply with an agency, you can pick an agency and then you fill out, but they essentially they do like a portfolio for you and then they hold that on file. And then prospective moms you know you could have a mom who's in, you know, a pregnancy crisis, a crisis pregnancy where she's not in a situation where she can raise the baby and so she wants to give it up for adoption but she wants to give it the best life she possibly can. It's, you know, can be such a beautiful story, but definitely hard and challenging. And so she's got to go through and pick out. Literally she goes and picks out the family that she wants to give her child to like, place her child with. So it's really, it's really emotional. So as a family, you've got a portfolio. You could be a young couple with no kids. You could be an older couple with no kids. You could be a family with three or four kids. You know the Contys who are here at SWO recently, in the last year, adopted a little boy and they had three kids, who two of them were teenagers, and then their youngest biological child was 10. And then this lady selected them to get their newborn. You know as and but they had been in the waiting. They've been waiting. You know they had put in with that agency years ago. So you just never know what. What is going to be the right fit for a potential adoptive family.
Speaker 1:It's kind of up to the mom to choose. And then the agency reaches out and says, hey, we've got, we got a mom that has chosen your family, and then you go from there and it could be that you get picked quick and it could be that man you like I've got family members and friends who put in with adoption agencies and never heard, just never got hit. You know, like nobody ever chose them for whatever reason. And it could be the weirdest you know thing that triggers why somebody chooses you or why they don't choose you. For instance, you know a family, say you got a, say you got a young mom who's having a baby and she's giving that baby up for adoption and she starts looking at portfolios. She might decide I want older couple. You know, older being couple in their 40s that's already got some older kids, that's what I want. Or you could have another lady that looks at that same family and says oh, I don't want that. I don't want my kid going to an older couple that's already raised their kids, I want them going to a young couple that has fertility issues or that whatever. Like you, just it's just kind of there's no rhyme reason, it's up to the mom. So that's one way you can do an adoption.
Speaker 1:And there's there's other ways. You can foster, to adopt. You can. You can do international adoption. You know, like, like, if you adopt from China. We've had quite a few friends that adopted from China. You go through an international agency, you adopt through China, adopt from China, and there's, it's a pretty streamlined process. It's I'm not going to say it's easy, I'm not saying it's cheap or easy or that it doesn't have hurdles, but it's pretty streamlined. If you're willing to just do the work, then then then you can get from point A to point B and and so that's that's what a Chinese international adoption looks like, whereas we've got friends that adopted from a country I won't say where, where they don't really do adoptions, and so these people moved there and then got guardianship of this child while they were living residentially in this country, and after three years they were able to adopt the kid, and so it was like there was no real adoption process between the two countries, you know, between the US and this country, and so it was. That was a little bit unique, and so adoption is one of those things, or fertility issues, one of those things that can have you in a waiting period. You know, like we're just like okay, lord, I remember for us, you know, we, we we went through that process and and and got over there, and for us it went pretty quick. To be honest. We, we worked, we talked to a couple of agencies. One of them ended up being really shady. We had tried to fall, we had tried to adopt through the North Carolina kids network, like with the state. We'd tried a couple different things. Nothing really got traction. And then the Lord just kind of opened this door where we ended up moving to Uganda with our kids our biological kids got a court date, this attorney got us a court date and we just stayed over there for I don't know about three months and and we, we got them home after about four months and then started the whole process.
Speaker 1:State side. It's just kind of a crazy story, but when we were there we met this couple and they were the husband was the cop, like I said, the wife was a pediatric nurse. They had been in the process and they finally they ended up adopting this little girl that got placed with them through the state and all in about a four I want to say like a four month window, the state they had been in, they had been trying to have a child and or adopt a child for like five years. They've been in the process for like five years and I think they had been actively trying to adopt for three years and within like a three or four month window, they end up getting hit on an international adoption with the agency they were working with. That agency called them, said we've got a match. They ended up adopting locally through the state, through the foster system, like a foster to adopt kind of thing, and the, the wife, got pregnant. So they went from five years of trying to have kids with no kids to in three months they had three little girls, age like newborn, one and two.
Speaker 1:It was crazy and I'm like well, your weight is over. Now it's the opposite. Now you live in a whirlwind and where there is no weight and there's always something going on, you know, and so that I appreciated Emily mentioning that is one of the things that you know, like waiting on the Lord when it comes to having a, having a child or parenting. Another thing might be you're waiting for a promotion that you've been promised and I got a friend named Lance.
Speaker 1:He's a he's a division one track coach and I've mentioned him on here many times and I remember he took an assistant coaching job at a university that said hey, you're the, you're. You know our head guy's going to retire and he, lance, had been a very successful like division two or three or NAI maybe track coach. He'd coached high school. He had been a phenomenal all American track athlete. He was, I want to say, an Olympic team alternate as a de-catholique in the 88 Olympics, I'm just going way back. So he had a. He had an awesome career and by the time this happened this was like in the mid nineties. He takes this job and then he's thinking, yeah, I'm going to get this job and I'm going to be the head coach. It was a career move for him. Head coach was going to retire in a couple years and then the dude didn't retire. So after about 10 years Lance moved and took a job as a head coach at another university and then eventually that head coach retired and Lance came back and that first university hired him as their head coach, where he is now very successful.
Speaker 1:But it ended up going from like a two or three year waiting process to a 20 year waiting process. You know, and I think when you talk to people that God puts in a holding pattern or a waiting pattern, or you know, when you're waiting on the Lord, people will always say man, god taught me so much during that time, I learned so much. I look back in hindsight and I learned so much. So I encourage you this morning, or whatever time of day you're listening to this I'm recording this in the morning. I would encourage you today if you're in one of those seasons where you're like what am I waiting on, lord? Why, why am I still single? Why do I still have this same job and the promotion hasn't come? Why do we not have a child when we love Jesus and we want to be parents? Why, why, why. You know, you can just you can ask the why all day long, but sometimes we don't get to know the answer, and so I want to use Katie's story to try to encourage you. So we sat down and let me give you a little quick, quick background before we dive into this conversation.
Speaker 1:Katie was in high school her senior year. She was Gatorade national player of the year. Just quick, give you her credentials. She was a multiple season all SEC soccer player at the University of Tennessee, played for a guy named Brian Penske, who is now I think I said his last name right who is now the head coach at Florida State Women's Soccer and has turned that program into like their contender this year. And Katie played there at Tennessee for Brian and then was on the under 20 US national team, was on the under 18 US national team, played in the under 20 World Cup, has a heck of a credential resume. But the year that she finished her collegiate career and would be going into the pro ranks was the COVID year.
Speaker 1:And so there were no. No, you know, europe is as tight and locked down as America was. Europe was even more so. She set for a year in a holding pattern, like she had no, like what am I supposed to do? You know, where do I go from here? What, what's supposed to happen? And just like, wait on the Lord, wait on the Lord. And so she just trained, did the best she could, worked at camp, came, came here, worked at SWO, spent time here.
Speaker 1:But the Lord, while it, while it seemed like the major doors that had been open to her all closed, the Lord opened up the opportunity for her to go play for a smaller club in Iceland. And you know, iceland is a small country. There's there's not a lot of people, there's not a lot of industry, but it is a, it's a, it's a. It's a stable, solid country and soccer is king there. And so there's, you know, there's a legitimate professional soccer league. And so she ended up getting picked up by one of the teams there, and so she spent a year playing in Iceland, the ultimate goal being to play in a in one of the so soccer, if you don't know, this has been educational for me, but it's tiered. Think of major league baseball in America, where you've got a single A, double A, triple A, and then the majors, so you could be playing quote unquote professional baseball, but you could be on a single A team.
Speaker 1:That looks way different than being on a on a, on a you know playing for the Braves or the Rangers in the big club playing for the World Series or something like that. So you've got clubs that have what they call their farm leagues or feeder system. That's the way soccer works too. Similar to that. It's similar. So you'll have clubs that are part of a larger network of clubs and so you might get in on a and to play on a team that's one of the lower ranking teams and then, if you do well, then you can kind of move up through the ranks. And so Katie's goal was to play in the American pro ranks, which is like the tip of the spear, so the women's professional league in America. I guess it's called dub dub, I don't know what it's called, you can look it up. There's women's pro soccer. So all the big cities in America have teams. Louisville's got a team, raleigh's got a team, I think. Portland's got a team, kansas City's got a team, la's got a team. So Katie was, you know the goal would be to either play for one of the high ranking European teams Out of Spain or the UK or something like that, or to ultimately to play in the pro leagues in America.
Speaker 1:So she goes to Iceland, gets that one year in, does phenomenal, like she's just a phenomenal athlete. She's incredibly gifted, but she's also got an insane work ethic. She's like total package if you're looking for pro athlete or an athlete in general. And so she does really well and gets picked up then, long story short, by Los Angeles Angel City Football Club, los Angeles pro team. Well, she gets there and immediately is riddled with an injury and so she's she's just can't even place. One of the most frustrating things you can imagine for an elite athlete is to be sidelined with an injury. As I'm recording this, my son Tucker is dealing with an injury at an MRI this past weekend. Limited play in time, so he's got a knee injury and just praying that that that is cleared up and he can finish a season. It's just, it's something that all athletes deal with. So, katie, the timing was horrible because she's done great in Iceland. She has a couple of US teams, us clubs that are sort of jockeying to get her. She ends up in LA, but she gets there and injury happens quick and so a sideline's her literally and then that sets her back, puts her behind as one of the new girls and then and we're talking about elite like women's national team there's a couple of players from the women's national team that are on that team and so it's as elite as it gets. She's attained, achieved her goal of getting into that league and now the next goal would be to do well, to start to perform play at a high level. And she's injured so she can't do it, so trust in the Lord.
Speaker 1:Then there's a deal where a guy that plays major league baseball, he takes a stand against pride night this was, this was last year, this was in 2022. And he speaks out, makes a statement real tasteful, kind, loving, like hey, not hating on anybody, but I'm not going to celebrate this by wearing a rainbow flag on my uniform. And there was. It was somewhat controversial, but in men's baseball, you know, you don't have a lot of that kind of activism. It does happen. I mean more, more than there should be, but it's not the same Like women's.
Speaker 1:Women's soccer is like kind of the, the hotbed for where LGBTQ activism takes place, which is kind of crazy in a conversation for another day. But it's like how do you fight for transgenderism, trans athletes, when you're a woman's pro athlete? Because if a dude, who's elite, decides he wants to be a woman and goes over there, then he's going to dominate. It's just kind of crazy, because it's kind of it contradicts itself, because so many women fought for, for women's rights, feminist rights, lesbian rights, and now sort of the same crowd is expected to fight for dudes to be able to compete against women. So it's, it's bizarre.
Speaker 1:And so on Pride night, which I think Pride night was more focused on, I think don't quote me on this, I'm probably way off I think it's more about homosexuality, not transgenderism. But anyway, what Katie did was she I think she liked the guy's post, she liked it. She just, you know, on whatever social media platform she I don't know if she shared it or reposted, I don't, I don't remember, but it wasn't like she made a statement. This guy made a statement and she just kind of gave it a thumbs up. Well, she just went through the ringer out there man.
Speaker 1:They blew her up on social media within the club. Go back and listen to last year's episode. We'll have that. Maddie will link that episode. That episode is going to be linked in in this episode. So down in the in the bottom there in the notes, go back and listen to it If you want to hear how that story went. It's crazy because they really targeted her. So she got out of that contract. She she only did a year on that contract. They were good to let her go. She was ready to leave so she went back to Iceland and man, I'm telling you, she did really well this past year in Iceland she's she's just so good and she killed it.
Speaker 1:She had an injury at the end of the season, knocked her out of the last few games, but she was in the running for player of the year, For I mean, you're talking about a women's professional soccer league in Europe and she was a finalist for player of the year. You know, I wonder if she would have gotten player of the year if it wasn't for that injury.
Speaker 1:I don't know, but team did well. I think they finished third in the league. Would have probably finished second if she hadn't got hurt. So we just dive into kind of where she's at update and and and we catch up on on where the Lord's God and kind of what's happening and moving forward. So we're going to jump into that conversation.
Speaker 1:Right now Katie's here. She's states out right now she lives with us. She lives with little and I and our kids here in Andrews and then works her tail off at SWO while also getting her training in every day to stay fit and stay in shape. So she'll spend the winter months with us. She did have the opportunity to go hang out with Kilby and Greg and you gone to my son-in-law and daughter for for about three weeks. But she's here. We'll be here until the first of the year, more than likely. You pray for her. There's opportunities starting to open up for her to potentially go play in a higher ranking league in Europe and that would be the goal. But she also wants to just be obedient to the Lord and use the gifts he's giving her. So let's listen to this conversation.
Speaker 1:I'm going to come back and give a couple of thoughts from the scripture on on people in the Bible who had to wait on the Lord for what probably seemed like forever. So after we get done, katie and I will jump back into that the way I want to start this interview. So the idea I got from a podcast interview Tuck had Tuck did maybe this is probably a year ago, it was probably last winter and they asked him. They did like I think they called it rapid fire. It was kind of like get to know the athlete or get to know the, the guest, so did these rapid fire questions.
Speaker 1:I don't remember all the questions. I remember one that's going to be the first question that me and you were going to answer. I'm going to answer it too, and I have not thought about it. I just I got this idea five minutes ago or 10 minutes ago, like right as you were walking in and I was scribbling. This is what I was thinking. So we're going to answer it. We're both going to answer it and it's this is a question that I got from them. Then I've got three more questions, so we're going to answer four questions together. It'll just be fun, okay, because a lot of people know who you are, know your story, they've listened to the previous episodes which.
Speaker 1:I don't remember what episode numbers those were, but I'll look them up. Okay, here's the first question If you could have a meal with, I think they asked in Tux interview. They said with three people, but we'll say three or four people from any point in history, living or dead. These people could be past or present. Who would you do that? Who would you have that meal with, and where would you want to eat? Tux said I'll tell you which ones?
Speaker 3:he said yeah.
Speaker 1:He said Kobe.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 1:Not eat at Kobe the restaurant.
Speaker 3:Yeah, kobe Bryant.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he'd want to. He'd want to hang with Kobe. He said Jesus like, like Jesus during his earthly ministry.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then I don't remember who else he said I can't remember. Um, it's weird, I can't remember who it was.
Speaker 3:It'd be fine to listen to it, though. See what he said, yeah.
Speaker 1:See what he said. I think that I think he was only allowed to do three, and I can't remember the third one. Um, okay, so three or four people from history, yeah messy messy. That would be pretty cool.
Speaker 3:Mm, hmm, um, I think my, I think I would do my grandpa.
Speaker 1:Uh huh.
Speaker 3:He died the same year I was born. Yes, and all my relatives have always said that we would have got along, so that would be cool.
Speaker 1:That's cool, Um, I was thinking of past family members. Yeah, that'd be cool Um that's the third one.
Speaker 3:What do you got?
Speaker 1:I think I would do. I was trying to think of somebody from the Bible. There's been so many times where I've thought of Bible stories and be like man. I want to. I can't wait to talk to that person when I, you know, we get to heaven. I think, uh, one would be Rahab from the Bible. That's my like historic biblical figure. I'd like to sit down and talk to Rahab and it was between Rahab and Ruth. Just in the reason behind it is they're women, which women were completely marginalized in that in those ancient societies. Ruth was from Moab and women, I think, were probably very marginalized there. Um, rahab was a Canaanite, you know. And then just her whole existence. Like you know, I've you've always assumed that she was kind of forced into prostitution. But maybe not, Maybe, you know she yeah, we don't know, we just see her conversion.
Speaker 1:I just like to hear the story you know and I'd like to. I'd like to have my conversation with her and have salmon. Her husband hanging out to be cool. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Cool.
Speaker 1:Um and then. So that would be my. That's the one that I think I'd pick from the Bible. Um.
Speaker 3:I think if I could pick one from the Bible, I would. I would do David. King David because I've been in the song so much in the last two years. I think it'd be really, really cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do too. That would be a good one. That'd be so good. Um, I think, um, I'd like to talk to Jackie Robinson, just because nowadays, all of the like, like when you think of, um, racism, civil rights and all of that, everything's so jaded for us because there's, you know, the BLM movement and then there's ultra conservative and ultra liberal, like it's become a political thing. Jackie Robinson, like he was the guy that did it, you know, like he came through the civil right, like he was a pioneer in the civil rights movement and being the first black professional baseball player, what was that? Like you know, I think the movie probably portrayed it pretty good. What was his number? 47? 42. 42. I think that was probably pretty good. But who knows, like I'd like to just go hang out with young Jackie Robinson, like, just like hit pause on a day in the life about you know his somewhere through that first or second year, not later, when he was reflective. I think I liked to meet him in real time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Like all right, what's? It like man what, what, how you doing, how you holding up. You know, like I'm from the future, it's going to work out and you're going to be a legend, you know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, let me help you out.
Speaker 1:So I think he would be the sports person. Political figures Um, I don't got none I would want. I would like to meet George Washington. I think that would be cool. Um.
Speaker 2:I think that would be pretty awesome. Um first president, sort of in with the founding fathers?
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, that's probably. And then I've thought about past family members, but I don't want to meet anybody from my daddy's family. They were a bunch of you know racist like yeah just.
Speaker 1:I mean, uh, I love them. And I mean I knew my great granddad, leroy, so it'd have to be like about before him and he just said that. I remember as a kid him saying that his dad was pretty rough. I don't think I desired to sit on him. I knew both my granddads really well, so I don't know.
Speaker 1:There's a guy named John Jackson Kilby that's who I named Kilby after and he would be my third great granddad and he fought in the in the war between the States. He fought for one of the North Carolina units and he was shot twice, I think at Gettysburg, and my great great uncle, rex, had the one of the lead balls. I saw it when I was in about the fifth grade. I saw it. I was Rex, lived up near Boone and I was. My granddad took me to see him. He was getting up in years. He was my granddad's uncle and he showed me the lead ball. He was a historian, he had all kinds of family artifacts, so this would have been like this would have been in the eighties and so he had this 120 year old lead ball.
Speaker 3:That's cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'd like to go back and talk to John Jackson Kilby, because when he got, because he ended up in a hospital prison camp he survived that survived.
Speaker 1:It got shot in the stomach and the leg and one of them is family legend but I found it in a book on the people of Wilkes County, north Carolina, and he, I guess, dug one of those out himself and then he walked home. You know, there's a lot of those stories like when that war ended and then, interestingly enough, he wasn't, he didn't have slaves, had never, I don't think he'd ever seen a slave. So there was so much I think it was. It was such a it'd be interesting to hear the perspective of.
Speaker 1:Because you had, you had the Confederate States, were all pro slavery and real racist, but you had a lot of racism in the North and then you had people from the South fighting not for. You know, there's a movie called Gettysburg and I remember there's a scene where one of the union officers asks a Confederate prisoner of war why do you, why are you? He asks him something about why you fighting for slavery. He's like slavery. I never seen a slave fighting for my rights, state's rights, you know. So like I just wonder again, like the Jackie Robinson thing, I like to go back in real time and find out what were people thinking, because everything gets filtered through history.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean. Like who knows how much stuff that we've been taught that maybe isn't exactly accurate, or maybe it's accurate on the big stage, but back then people weren't getting news in real time. A guy from from from North Carolina and a guy from Illinois could be fighting against each other, and neither one of them really know what was going on in the capitals of the two. You know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Well, we're like looking back on it and no yeah, we know how it all. Yeah, shilke out. Yeah, where would you? Where would you eat, though?
Speaker 1:So where I would eat? I think I would eat. I think I would eat at the house of Mary and Martha, where she was preparing that meal, or at the Feast Hall of King David.
Speaker 3:I was only thinking of restaurants.
Speaker 1:I know I think that's the natural, that's where, that's where your mind goes. That's funny, okay. So I think I'd want to, but but that would be more. Those places would be more if it was biblical characters, like if I was going to hang out with Jesus and some disciples. If it was like contemporary modern times, where would we eat? I'd probably. I don't know, I'd want to eat at somebody's house.
Speaker 3:Someone's house? I don't know if you do you know what Carol's place is in fours.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:So that was my favorite place and I love breakfast food, so I would go all the time but they demolished it a couple years ago.
Speaker 1:So I think I would go back there, go to Carol's place.
Speaker 3:I love.
Speaker 1:Carol's place. You ever go to the tea room. You know what that is.
Speaker 3:I know what it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I ate at Carol's place because there was a little archery shop back in the nineties that was right, not far like just within less than a mile from Carol's place, that I would get my bow stuff done. Yeah, I know Carol's place. Um, all right, dream job other than soccer.
Speaker 3:Honestly, I think if I could just, uh, I, I like working with wood, dropping wood and stuff.
Speaker 1:So like a lumberjack, like a logger it keep me strong and fit. I just enjoy it. You ought to be a logger. I got a couple of friends locally that are loggers.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm not sure I know all the details.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, but this is assuming that you would go into the career and then become proficient at it. So, like you know, like if you said I want to be a fighter pilot, it's not like that you know how to do that. Now it's, you would go through the training and the you know, yep, might sound boring, but I really enjoy it.
Speaker 1:I'll be fun. Um, I've gotten the log a little bit just from clearing land you know, big pieces of land and just timbering it, and I don't know what I'm doing dropping trees and James Wibble is like a masterful at dropping trees because he studied it and got good at it. But no, that's a good one. Mine would be something along those lines. Mine would either be um, I would just have a, uh, a trailer with a good zero turn mower and some lawn equipment and I would have about 20 accounts and I would just keep people's yards mowed, blow leaves. That would be fun, I love mowing and it would be low stress or at a higher stress level to farm, Like to legit farm, like these, like the wood brothers out here that are picking corn right now like your life depends on it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Like it's your livelihood, like you're a farmer. You drive up through the corn belt Illinois, indiana through the air, see it's massive corn fields and I know it's hard work and I've probably got it romanticized, but it'll be pretty sweet.
Speaker 1:And that same vein would be a cowboy like instead of corn and beans, cows you know, like to go a little more west, get into Kansas or Missouri or over in a really West like Montana and actually farming ranch. You know that'd be cool. Again, that's assuming like you're doing it. You're doing it for real.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you know what you're doing.
Speaker 1:You know what you're doing Shoot and I'll be chasing down bag of bandits, jesse James being trouble.
Speaker 3:I'll supply you with the firewood and then the cook.
Speaker 1:You come clear my farm. You come clear my ranch. You know how to run chainsaw, yet yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I ran yours a lot last winter.
Speaker 1:That's what I thought, so I ran it a lot yesterday. I know All right. Last one what's your favorite? What's your go to coffee shop drink? I already know the answer to this you go to a coffee shop when you gonna get.
Speaker 3:Um, if I haven't had just a straight black coffee, or if I have already, then I'll get a caramel latte caramel latte If I've had.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm the same, I always want to try out their, their house like just their black coffee. But then the specialty drink. I just go a marijuana with an extra shot Maricana. I do like a caramel latte. That's what I had today. A little dessert drink.
Speaker 3:I don't know if an Americano with the extra shot is a specialty drink.
Speaker 1:Okay, whatever you call it, it's special to me. True All right, let's get into it. So it's been a year almost, I think. I think you were here. You were on in last December and you had gosh man. Do you remember that? What you were coming out of?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean you were. You were worn out and beat up emotionally and mentally and spiritually, but you were solid, like the Lord had been faithful. So quick overview then from there walk us through the last year, I last last 10 months, I guess.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I signed a second contract with throtter and Iceland and then I moved. I moved back there in mid February for, I guess, preseason and then just I mean hot right back on in Good goal I know personal goal was just kind of get my feedback under me and try to have a good season and for the team we wanted to finish second place that was. I really wanted that a lot. And then we started season in April at the end of April and played how many games we play 25? I think 25 from April to beginning of October. Yeah, it was pretty go go, except for the week I had off in July.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we got to see in July. You came home for a week.
Speaker 3:And then yeah, we, actually we finished third, so we just missed the mark.
Speaker 1:You're the finished second Miss my opinion if you hadn't got hurt. Um, maybe you don't have to answer the affirmative. That's my take.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but I, yeah, I did finish this season injured, um, just had a small muscle injury that kept me out for the last three weeks, last three games, um, but it's been gosh seven weeks now feeling good. Yeah, went to Uganda to visit Graden Kilby, um, yeah, now I'm just waiting. Did you play soccer over?
Speaker 1:there with them boys. It was like in the yard. No, they're, they're new place.
Speaker 3:They don't really have a spot to play yeah. It's not a great yard for it, but I played with the missionary kids. Oh cool Thursday, Cool Thursday nights.
Speaker 1:And you're getting ready to go down to South Georgia.
Speaker 3:When is that that's coming up November early December, yeah, in the November, first weekend of December, and that's, you can do a little soccer clinic with some, some local kids through one of the churches.
Speaker 1:That comes here.
Speaker 3:I'll get there in time for East group. Wednesday Cool, hang out with students, sweet and then stay through the weekend.
Speaker 1:Cool and do some soccer stuff. 30 Friday, Saturday.
Speaker 3:Uh, I think this Friday Saturday.
Speaker 1:Friday, Saturday.
Speaker 3:So I'll go, that'll be fun. Go to the woods, get to go hunting, that'll be fun.
Speaker 1:We're going to take you hunting. Finish third yeah, and what does that league like? It's basically like a national league in the country.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we just like how I played in LA last year.
Speaker 1:It's, they have a league there. It's the same thing Teams in different locations Okay.
Speaker 3:Um half. At least half the teams are in the city, the other half are kind of spread out.
Speaker 1:We'll take a road trip. What's the name of the big city?
Speaker 3:Reykjavik.
Speaker 1:Reykjavik and and that's really the only big city right and I looked it up it's like half a million people. It's a good size town. Half a million, I think.
Speaker 3:I think the population is 300,000, the whole country.
Speaker 1:The whole country. So what did I look up?
Speaker 3:I think it's about 180 in the city.
Speaker 1:Yeah, half a million does sound huge.
Speaker 3:Um, there is kind of a smaller town, slash city up north.
Speaker 1:They got a team. Yes, Y'all whoop them Uh we beat him twice.
Speaker 3:Heck, yeah, I lost the last one. That was my first game.
Speaker 1:That was so. The third time you played them was the first game you missed, yeah, and we, the team, just did not play good. Population of 140. In the city Um yeah, capital region as well 240, 250,000. If you do the surround luck the greater area.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I was way over Um so 250, one of how many people are in the whole country. Yes, the capital city, then I mean the bulk of the population, I mean that is in that one city, but it but soccer is the big sport, I guess, like most European countries.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Soccer, what we call football. Yeah, and then handball is really popular, basketball, and that's about it. Basketball is popular, yeah.
Speaker 1:Basketball is popular. Yeah, what about uh is in Iceland? Is there is strength training big, you know, like the strongman stuff? I know Greenland there's a lot of that. Is there a lot in Iceland?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we uh, when we played up north that place I was telling you about, we uh went up the day before and we watched uh a competition in the downtown area between, um, like four women doing it and it was some tough girls. Oh, and we were cheering.
Speaker 3:I didn't know any of them, but we had a fun time watching it and so I think it's somewhat big. I know CrossFit is really big. I have a ton of gyms there, but other than that, yeah, football is is king. Yeah, you can. You know how. You'll drive around the corner and see a church here. There. You'll drive around the corner and see another football field Dang there's everywhere here by place.
Speaker 1:So you, you, I mean your injury came light. You only missed out of 25 games. How many games did you?
Speaker 3:miss. I missed the last three.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so good season. We're in a running for player of the year. Um, I mean, you hit a lot of personal goals. It was a good bounce back from.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, honestly, my only goal for me playing was I just had a crappy year the year before and I just I just wanted to play and have fun and get back to being fit and just have a good year. And you did it. Yeah, it was a good year.
Speaker 1:It was fun to follow along. I got to watch part of five games, two whole games, and then we had trouble. A lot of times We'd try to watch one. There were several days that I carved out. You know we were like me and little man at the house, we're going to watch the game and then for the reason we couldn't, couldn't get it to work, but it was still fun following along. I know a lot of the snowboard community did, so that's cool to hear. That's a blessing. Um, and you're good. You're injury, You're good.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm back working out training yeah.
Speaker 1:I haven't had any problems running up and down my road yesterday. Most of what's Katie doing training.
Speaker 3:Wow, for what, what why?
Speaker 1:Cause you're just Katie the mo, you know mo. Katie's a professional athlete. She has to run up and down. That's her job. Um, what about? What do you think's going to be next?
Speaker 3:Um, I honestly have no idea. I can go back to my club in Iceland Um they want you back, yeah. They've offered a contract and I'm they're kind of waiting for me to answer, Um, but I also looking at Sweden, Spain, Scotland, but those windows haven't opened yet for next year. So we're just waiting.
Speaker 1:Wait and see what's the date. When are those? When is that? When is that open period?
Speaker 3:The Swedish league ends this weekend, I think it's. Yeah, I think they have their last games this weekend and then they'll start looking for next year, and then I don't know exactly when the other two windows open. I think it's in December. It's like a winter window from December to January, so I I have no idea.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we'll be praying about that. We're praying about it and our listeners, that folks that have followed your story the last couple of years, we would ask y'all to be praying just for Katie's future and for the Lord to open her outdoors and give her clarity and give her, give her her heart's desire, like make through her desires that he would make it evident. Yeah, this is where I think you should go. You know you should get away from it. Yes, I mentioned her. We had a lot of houses and a lots of Um the let's see. I jotted down a couple of questions I thought we're really important to to talk about and then that'll be, it will be done.
Speaker 1:One more question here before we. I want you to answer a couple heavier, more serious questions. Just that, I think, the things the Lord's been teaching you. But what are you most excited about this this season right in front of you here, being home. You got the fall and the winter. You're gonna be home for a season here, at least till January, February. So you got two or three months. What are you most excited about? What are some of the things that you're excited about being home?
Speaker 3:Um well, I've obviously loved working at camp, so it's been nice hopping back in working for Sean and just I was telling people when I was like man, I just I miss playing board games at night, watching movies with my friends, like being out at the house with y'all, and so it's already just so nice being back and just can relax family life, yeah, yeah. Because I mean, I had a great time and I swing with my foreign teammates, but we're all in our 20s and they're just I don't know.
Speaker 1:That's a bubble. I mean that's like a microcosm, it's a little bubble of society. Your all, 90% of your time is spent with 20 something year old professional soccer players.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and we had a great time. We would have movie nights and we all learned how to play poker and we'd play around my dining room table and so it, we had a good time. But I was like man, I'm ready to like hang off with families and little kids and old people and just different than this age group.
Speaker 1:Go to Red Oak on Sundays. This past Sunday was your first Red Oak.
Speaker 3:Yep, so nice being back.
Speaker 1:I bet that was so encouraging. It was a good service to a lot of people and good worship Preacher was a knucklehead, but that's a different conversation.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he's all right.
Speaker 1:First week, first Sunday of the month, that's when I preach. You just hit it, so you get three. You get three weeks of good preaching coming up before you have, before you have me again.
Speaker 3:Sweet.
Speaker 1:So, all right, the I got two serious questions. What do you think Like and I think you'll have to unpack this for years, but right now you're almost a year removed from LA what do you like? Looking back Is there and maybe you can't answer this yet, but I would think you'd be able to answer a little bit. What's the biggest thing that God taught you through that whole ordeal in Los Angeles?
Speaker 3:I would say maybe, maybe, like not that I was even like doubting my faith at all, but just how much he like strengthened it during that time, because I mean, I really had to rely on him like every single day where I was going to work, because there was just so much pressure.
Speaker 3:So, looking back on it, I'm like I didn't even know I could like believe in him more, but I do.
Speaker 3:So I would say that's probably one of the biggest things. And then I was also thinking about it too, like the amount of conversations I've had with especially after we recorded the last episode from young student athletes and not even athletes as young students, or something that reached out on my social media just being like, oh, we're super scared, we're going to a public school next year or we're going to a small university that's a public school and we're really nervous that this is going to come up and we're going to be in the same situation and it's like, well, yeah, we're all going to at some point have to go through some kind of persecution If we're going to talk about Jesus and stand for him and believe in those things. So it's going to come, but at the same time, like he's faithful and he will like hold us up during that. So I think it's been really cool to just try and encourage students with that, because that's something that I really had to rely on last year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's good man, that's, that's like. I mean, that's just solid, is I think that's what the Lord would have you learn? I think the Lord would be I would say that's the kind of that's, that's an answer that pleases the Lord. You know, like okay, because I mean when I was, when I was praying for you and you're going through all that, one of the things that was so infuriating for me is I wanted to just like Protect you. You know, like the community we all did this the red oak and snowboard community it was like how can we just circle around, katie? And but it wasn't, it, ain't like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's, it's ideological, it's pressure from the women that you're alongside of it. It wasn't like let's go out there and stick up for well, you know we'd stick up for you, you know we'd die for you, you would die for us. Like that's the beauty of the family of God and the like, the, the brotherhood of the saints, the fellowship and the community we have. But there are times where it can't. Nobody take up for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, and, and you were out there and you and, and when we talked about this last year, you talked about filling the prayers and the support and the strength that came from that, but ultimately, every single day, it was filling the strength and the and the and the steadfastness that the Lord provided. And so to hear, to hear that answer is really encouraging because, yeah, the Lord was the one that was. It's almost like you use the word pressure and it's like that pressure from the outside wasn't going to break you because the Lord was stabilizing you from the inside against that pressure, and it's really encouraging. What's, what's the situation out there right now? How? What percentage of people that were there when you were there a year ago were still there Half or more, I'd probably say, I want to say three four.
Speaker 3:So that team is the same. What about the and what the head?
Speaker 1:coach got fired, or the.
Speaker 3:Yeah, she got released. The sporting director who really stuck up for me. Yeah To leadership in that club. She also left after that year. So they had a little bit of turnover but the majority, yeah most of the team and leadership is still there because they're the ones who created this club founded on these principles and ideas. Yeah, and so they're not. They're not going anywhere. They're not going anywhere. Well, it's cool to see where the Lord brought you.
Speaker 1:I'm excited for the future. It was funny, Katie was playing for. How do you say the? Team thought Throck, throctor, throctor and I was like we got to come up with a mascot. I can't say that word. So this is between the dragons and the Vikings. I kind of bounced back and forth, but you know, soccer clubs don't have mascots the way in NFL teams do. No, non Europe.
Speaker 3:The thrachter Vikings, the thrachter dragons.
Speaker 1:I think I ended up saying dragons, mostly I'll tell you what you just said. Random stuff I did.
Speaker 3:I say random stuff, talk trash.
Speaker 1:I got rid of my angel city, my little shirt, my little hat. Once she was out of there I was done. I've got in my in my shed. I've got Tux, virginia Tech, number 11, jersey and I've got your nine Teen Angel City, jersey and it's the one from the Pride night with the rainbow colored number and it's just a good reminder of what we're done. Ratchet through ruch from.
Speaker 1:So y'all pray for Katie. I know it's kind of an abrupt start and stop to that conversation, but we talked for a while and I just kind of hit record and we rolled with it. So one of the things I think people appreciate about this podcast is that it's a great opportunity to talk about. The podcast is a lot of times it feels conversational, just that you're, you're here hanging out with us and hopefully it felt like that. But anyway, continue to pray for her. She's in that. She's in another holding pattern right now because she could go back and play in Iceland. They love her there. She's, she's one of the most elite players in the country. They want her back. But she's also just this morning Gosh, it was early this morning we're standing at the coffee station in the kitchen there at my house, probably because it was before six this morning and we were just chatting and she said the Swedish league just ended and that's one of the one of the leagues that where there's some interest both ways between her and them. It's a pretty elite level of soccer and she just wants to be faithful and obedient to the Lord and use her gifts and talents as long as he'll allow her to in that capacity. She loves being at swowe, loves it, but she also wants to continue to chase this dream and do what God's gifted her to do. So please, pray. Pray for God's wisdom and direction for Katie.
Speaker 1:I wanted to kind of close things out with an example, a couple of examples from scripture. I'm not going to dive deep into these and you can go look them up and read them. I'm not going to read the, the references, but I wanted to give you some examples of people who waited on the Lord. I think you start by looking at the fact that all of history waited for the Messiah. You know, all the way from the time in the garden when God promised he would send a savior. The world creation, you know, grown and waited for the coming of the Messiah. Of course the nation of Israel waited for the coming of the Messiah, and it was thousands of years, and you could say that the creation still waits for, as Roman Romans eight says is waiting for this, you know, final redemption and restoration. But then, specifically, the stories that always come to my mind of waiting, I think of Moses, the chronology of Moses.
Speaker 1:Life is kind of crazy. You got Moses, who, as a child, is adopted into the king of Egypt's household, is race, spends four decades as royalty in Egypt 40 years. A lot of our listeners are nowhere near 40 years old, yet A lot of our listeners are older than 40 and can appreciate what 40 years looks like. In one sense it feels like a fly's by, but when you imagine being in that situation, 40 years is a long time. Then he spends the next 40 years, another 40 as sort of an outlaw, a banished person living out in this remote, desert, desolate, wilderness region, and it is there that the Lord, it's there that he finds his wife, starts a family, you know, or gets crafted into a family, becomes a sheep herder and a livestock guy, spends 40 years managing sheep out in the middle of nowhere, you know, in the wilderness, and so when he's 80 years old, 40 years into that, the Lord shows up in the burning bush and then speaks to him and says hey, you got a plan.
Speaker 1:So while I think you know Moses wasn't waiting on the Lord in the sense that that God told him he was going to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt, he was waiting. He was in this holding pattern A lot of times. I think that signifies what waiting on the Lord looks like you don't even know what you're waiting for. He's kind of like where am I going? What am I doing? What's the purpose? You know, I don't think Moses woke up on his 80th birthday or whatever day the burning bush incident happened. I don't think you woke up that morning, you know, stretched and wiggled his toes and cracked his neck and stretched his back and drunk his morning coffee and said, well, today I'm going to become the most famous leader in history. I don't think that happened. You know, today God is going to the Creator, god is going to speak to me from a burning tree that's on fire but not consumed with the fire. I don't think that happened. Lord, just so. Sometimes you're waiting. You don't even realize who or what or how or when. You're waiting for something to, you know, come through.
Speaker 1:Another situation where I think we see the hand of the Lord on someone who was waiting would be David. Samuel comes and anoints David to be king when most historians and theologians think David was probably a really young dude, like maybe 12 to 14. But for sure he was young. And then he doesn't become king until he's in his early 30s and even then it's like I mean a decade and a half of just grueling, battle and conflict and drama and craziness. It's a long. So from the time he is anointed to be king till he is appointed as king is maybe 15 years, maybe 20. It's a long time.
Speaker 1:What about Rahab? Living in the walls of Jericho as a prostitute and what her life must have looked like? And she had heard of the Lord and was crying out to Yahweh and we see her salvation in the book of Joshua. But what was her life like up until that point? What about Ruth, or Esther Ruth? After the death of her husband, who was you know kind of, she went with her mother-in-law into a foreign land where she didn't know the culture and it was just different, you know, and she was a foreigner. She was a foreigner and in time God did an incredible work in her life Queen Esther, who grew up as a Jew and enslaved people under Persian rule, and God raised her up and used her to deliver a nation.
Speaker 1:You think of the early church.
Speaker 1:What must that have looked like? Those guys thought that Jesus was going to return in their lifetimes and they preached with urgency and he didn't return and they were faithful, never seeing in the end, the prize of Jesus' return. Maybe some of us will see that. I don't know, but life is all about waiting sometimes and being in a season or a pattern of waiting. And here's what we can know the big promises of God that supersede and oversee and override the smaller promises that we might receive as individuals. God may have a plan for you or a plan for me that is specific to you or me, but the big plan that God has, and the big promises God has made, is that he's going to one day restore all things. He's going to make all things new. He's going to one day eradicate sin forever. He's going to one day stop sickness and sorrow and cancer and death and disease and abuse and addiction, and Satan's going to be bound and cast into an eternal, damnable lake of fire, utter darkness, outer darkness, bottomless, never ending torment for what he's done to God's people, and then all will be at peace, there will be no more tears, there will be full and complete joy. It's going to be wonderful and we praise the Lord for that, and so I think it's something that it's worth us all being.
Speaker 1:Maybe you're not in a waiting pattern, maybe it feels like, yeah, things are going good and clicking along and God's answering prayer and making things real clear to me. But maybe not. Maybe you're in a whole. I don't know where you're at, but know this. The scripture says in Isaiah those that wait on the Lord will renew their strength. If you're waiting for a pregnancy that why, god? Three, four, five, six years? Why do we not have a child? The Lord will renew your strength today. If you're waiting on a medical report, a doctor's report, like a good friend of mine in Virginia, good friend of this ministry, todd and Becky, who were in a waiting holding pattern for several weeks recently To see if, to determine if cancer was going to change their family again, and finally the report came and many were praying and it was a good report that hey, it's okay. It's okay, there's no cancer. You're clear, man.
Speaker 1:The waiting was the difficult part. You know, I don't know what, what you're facing right now, but all of us at times in our lives are. We feel like we're waiting on something that's out of our hands, and we're waiting on the Lord, if we're believers, and so we can take hope and solace in that Maybe you're an older man or woman in your, in your, in the twilight years of your life, and you don't know how long will my health hold out? When am I going to? Am I going to have physical health to to live independently into the latter years of my life, or am I going to have to rely on others? Look, we all have to wait for the unknown in some capacity or another.
Speaker 1:But the Lord knows all things. He is going back to what we've talked about recently. With his sovereignty, he is all powerful, all knowing, and he has encouragement for us, and I hope that you will be encouraged to know that and to lean into the Lord and trust him for your happiness and your joy, for your future, your past, your present, for your family and for your legacy. Wait on the Lord and he'll renew your strength and trust in him and know that he's going to see it through in the end. He's going to make all things new and right and good and we're going to dwell with him forever. That's the ultimate promise that we're waiting on. So, as you wait on the Lord this week, wait confidently, trust in him and have an awesome week. Thank y'all for listening.