How A High School Injury Helped Kirk Cousins See God’s Providence
By Movieguide® Contributor
NFL quarterback Kirk Cousins recently shared how a broken ankle taught him to trust God’s plan for his life.
As the son of a pastor, Cousins grew up in around the faith. There was never a time in his life that he didn’t know about the fallen nature of humanity and the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. At around six years old, he accepted Jesus as the Lord and Savior of his life.
As he grew older, Cousins grew older, his relationship with Jesus continued to grow and when he was sixteen or seventeen years old, a bible teacher at his high school challenged him to be more than just a fan of Jesus, but an actual follower.
“[A follower of Jesus] is defined as a fully devoted [disciple] of Jesus, which would mean that even when it might cost you something, you’re still going to stand with Jesus, follow Him, obey Him, and trust Him,” Cousins told Jesus Calling Podcast. “And that’s really what it means to build your life on His teachings and on His word and His truth.”
“At that age, I made a decision, kind of drove a stake in the ground that even if it were to cost me something, even if it were to get difficult, even when it doesn’t feel like obeying Him is the right thing to do, I’m going to build my life on the gospel, on the truth of God’s word. And I really tried to walk that ever since. Not perfectly, but that’s really been my commitment,” Cousins said.
Cousins newly made commitment to Christ would be tested his junior year of high school when an ankle injury ended his football season and, in his mind, any dream of playing college football was lost.
In his first varsity game that he got to start, Cousins broke his ankle and was told he would have to sit out the rest of the season to let it heal. He was devastated. Not only would he miss out on the season, but junior year is when player get scouted for college football, and sitting out meant it would be unlikely that he would see offers from any colleges.
He started to get angry with God, asking Him why He would let his dreams be killed by an injury that he had no control over. In that anger, Cousins’ dad challenged him to trust in God’s providence.
“He brought up Proverbs 3:5-6, which say[s], ‘Trust the Lord with all your heart. Don’t lean on your understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He will direct your steps.” And so he said, ‘Even if football is not in the cards for you down the road, then you’ve got to trust God’s plan and He will direct your steps and you’ve got to obey and trust Him and believe that whatever it is is better than going and playing football,’” Cousins recalled. “‘But on the flip side, maybe God is bigger than a broken ankle, and He can lead you still to where your dreams want to take you. And if He wants to do that in His plans, He’s much bigger than what you circumstances appear to be right now.’”
Although it was difficult in the moment to see God’s greater plan for his life, Cousin’s stuck to his commitment and trusted that God had great plans for his life.
“I’m going to trust Him,” he recalls thinking. “Even though when I’m looking around, I don’t see a path. I’m going to still trust Him.”
A year and a half later, Cousins received a scholarship to attend Michigan State, his dream school.
“I look back now and see that God is so much bigger than our circumstances, so much bigger than a broken ankle,” Cousins said. “What I thought was a dead end ended up being really a tremendous path that set me on a dream course to go where I was hoping to go. So I look back now and realize, Lord, you’ve got a plan. It’s not always going to be as straight and easy as I would like it to be, but I’ve got to trust you. I’ve got to obey.”
With seventeen years of distance from the injury that ended his junior year, Cousins is thankful that it happened because it helps him see that he is not the one guiding his life.
“I look back and I really can’t explain my journey apart from God. If I had been a big recruit and if I had stayed healthy in high school, I’d be able to point and explain on my own efforts why I made it to the next step and the next point in the journey,” Cousins said. “Whereas with the broken ankle, I can truly look back and say, “No, God was involved, because in my own understanding, I couldn’t have made it.”
“It had to be God’s hand leading my life, which is what it should all be about, that He gets the glory and not us,” he added.
In looking to give God the glory, Cousins realizes the importance of engaging with his faith every day – something that is not easy to do during the long NFL season.
“Just like in construction, where you lay a foundation and you gradually build a building, much the same way for our football career; you’re just gradually putting in the work… but I think it’s no different as a Christ follower, to just keep building a foundation and stacking up bricks on a day-to-day basis,” he said.
“I think it is that daily walk. I don’t know that it’s any one day that you have this epiphany that suddenly changes your spiritual walk. I just think it is this accumulation, day after day after day, that you stack up of studying God’s Word and your time and prayer and relating to other believers where you keep stacking up those days. It becomes a very powerful thing over time,” Cousins continued.
For Cousins, one of the most important parts of his faith is living a gospel centered life that is different from those living without Christ.
“I think it’s so important to shine your light every day,” Cousins said. “And so you want to live it out. You want to walk the walk. I think it starts there. And I think you want to build relationships and invest in people and you want them to know how much you care about them and you want them to be able to feel that. And so that’s really where it starts.”
“And then certainly you want to be prepared, as the Bible says – be prepared to give an answer for the hope that you have. And so you want to know how to defend your faith, how to share your faith, so that when the opportunity does knock, you’re ready,” he continued.
“In addition to that, you try to pray for those opportunities, because I find that God – when I pray for opportunities to share my faith – God answers and provides those opportunities. So between praying for it, being ready for it, and then trying to walk it out on a daily basis, I think it becomes a great opportunity to treat a locker room almost like a mission field, if you will,” he added.
Movieguide® previously reported on Cousins:
“I recognize my faith more in a loss,” Cousinssaid, reflecting on one of his first losses during his college football career. “I think in a win sometimes you start to say ‘I got this. I know what I’m doing. I got this figured out.’”
“It’s the losses where you’re reminded that I don’t know what I’m doing, and I need help, and God’s gonna have to be bigger than my shortcomings and my inadequacies,” he continued.
Herevealed, “I found myself almost in a moment of peace in that chaos to say, ‘I’ve got an anchor. I’ve got a foundation.’”
“Thank you God that my life is not built on football because this is not a stable foundation,” he remembered thinking at the time.
“I have a worldview that says that [God’s] in control and that you don’t waste failure and that you’re going to use it for a purpose and that there’s a purpose to pain,” Cousins added. “So my ‘why’ is a lot bigger.”
