No Sanity Required
No Sanity Required is a weekly podcast hosted by Brody Holloway and Snowbird Outfitters. Each week, we engage culture and personal stories with a Gospel-driven perspective. Our mission is to equip the Church to pierce the darkness with the light of Christ by sharing the vision, ideas, and passions God has used to carry us through 26 years of student ministry. Find more content at swoutfitters.com.
No Sanity Required
An Athlete’s Identity Crisis and an Unexpected Pregnancy | Interview with Gwyn Andrews
Growing up as a pastor’s kid and a standout athlete gave Gwyn a strong sense of identity...or at least it seemed that way. But once she left for college, the structure she’d relied on fell away, creating space for secrecy, fear, and choices she never imagined facing, including sexual compromise and the consideration of abortion.
We talk candidly about the gap between cultural Christianity and genuine discipleship, the isolation that drives hidden decisions, and how easy it is to drift into serious territory without anyone noticing. Everything shifted for Gwyn when a stranger speaks a truth no one else had dared to say, confronting Gwyn’s assumptions and pushing her to reexamine responsibility, identity, and the path she was on.
This conversation is honest, grounded, and shaped by grace. It’s about being interrupted by truth, choosing integrity over image, and discovering conviction when the stakes are high.
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.
Hey everybody, welcome back to this week's episode of NSR. I am so, so, so, so excited for you guys to hear this episode. Um, we interviewed a young lady named Gwen. Um, she used to come as a young kid um with a church that Snorbert has been partnering with for a long time. So we got to kind of talk about you know her old memories from camp. That was really fun. And then um she just dives right in and shares her story, and it is just so crazy to hear her story, and she is so well spoken. And yeah, I'm really excited for you guys to hear her story. Uh, this will also be a two-parter, uh, so be looking out for the second part. Uh, you guys will not want to miss that one either. Um, but yeah, I hope I really hope you guys have been enjoying all of this interview content. I've received a lot of me and Bertie both have received a lot of really encouraging feedback. Um, it's really cool that we get to interview all these people, and I'm so grateful for that. Um, but yeah, thank you guys so much for tuning in. I hope you guys enjoy this episode, and I just wanted to give a few announcements, I guess. We are gearing up for our winter retreats and our winter swes, which are just a blast, super fun. It's almost like a week of summer packed into three or four days. Um, but if you guys are interested, I think we have a few spots left for our second winter swow. So winter swow two. If you guys are interested, I will drop the link in the description below. Definitely go check that out. Spots do fly like crazy, but I do know we have a few spots left. So if you're interested, definitely go sign up. You're not gonna want to miss that. Um, but yeah, super excited for all the things that we've been preparing for. Uh, skits and just teaching and everything like that. It's awesome. It's gonna be great. I hope you guys enjoy this week's episode. And welcome to No Sanity Required.
SPEAKER_00:Welcome to No Sanity Required from the Ministry of Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters, a podcast about the Bible, culture, and stories from around the globe.
SPEAKER_01:Well, we're gonna have a conversation with Gwen, Gwen Andrews. So we'll just jump right into it. Thanks for coming. I know it's a big deal. What's it like three hours?
SPEAKER_03:335 on the door. Yep.
SPEAKER_01:That's it's a big deal to me that you would drive up here to do this. So I just I want to start by saying that I really appreciate it. And I know the people that are gonna listen to this are gonna appreciate it. Um that's a two-day thing. That's you know, three and a half hours to to do this, it's not like up, do it, back. I mean, so it's a big deal, and so I'm trusting the Lord to use your story. I know he's going to. I kind of haven't been able to get over your story, you know, since we talked a month ago. Um and I should probably preface that by saying, I've known you your whole life, but your story, you kind of went off my radar for a while. I think how old the last time you came to Snowbird as a student, I was ninth grade.
SPEAKER_03:Tenth grade, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Tenth grade.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And so then you just disappeared and I didn't see you anymore. And I knew you were you're a hooper, and I knew you were like pursuing that, chasing that dream, and I was kind of keeping up with that through some mutual friends, um co-pastors with your dad. And so I was keeping up with it, and then you know, just out of sight, out of mind, then I and then you so then uh when Southside was here, Labor Day weekend for a retreat, Gwen comes walking up to me, like I was like, I it took me a minute, could you tell? Yeah. I was like, I know wait, I know this person, but I mean I know tenth grade you.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Right. And the last time I remember talking to you, you were probably in the ninth grade, and we had a conversation at Snowbird and it was real brief. And but then kind of the memory in my mind of you is like 10-year-old you.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So when you walked up to me, I was like, wait, are you are you and it took me a minute, but then I was like, no way. So we ended up uh sitting down. Gwen actually said, I want to sit down and just tell you my testimony.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And so all those years that I did not know what was going on, a lot was going on.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And you have lived a crazy no sanity story. Um and so I asked you to come back, and here you are. So it means a lot. Um really big deal to us that you would do this and our the folks that listen to this and watch this. So um let's let's start off. Uh, let's just do some fun stuff. Okay. So do you remember, can you remember the first time that you came to Snowbird?
SPEAKER_03:I have, I think a lot of my memories blended together because I did the same thing every time I came here. I do remember specifically being in love with the skate ramp. Um it was huge because I was little. I don't I couldn't put it into a depth perception now, but there was one time where all the high schoolers were sliding down the skate ramp, and I was like, I just wanted so desperately to be involved with the snowbird leaders. I was 10, but that was just, you know, I'm sure all the little kids do that. So I go up there and I'm like, I'm gonna be really cool and I'm gonna slide down this skate ramp. All of them are on their skates, they'll probably like come up and talk to me after this. So I sit on my butt, I'm in these sweatpants, a t-shirt. My mom is who knows where, my family's just around. I slide down and I'm like, I feel this nick in my leg. And one of the screws was up and it had nipped my butt all the way down my leg, and my sweatpants were torn and I was just bleeding. And I was like, I don't, what do I don't know any of these leaders? I don't know where Bertie and Little are. I don't know where my parents are. And so I ran and I ran up to this old lady. I don't I could I don't even know who she was, and I was like, hey, I ripped my pants. Can you help me? So then I had to go get a tetanus shot, and then I she like glued my leg together, and I was like mortified, not because I had gotten hurt, but because I was around a bunch of teenagers who had cool outfits on and my pants were ripped. That's what I was worried about, was that my pants were my mom's like, everybody has ripped pants, it's okay, like it's in. And I was like, No, but mine's on the back, not the front. Like they're gonna think I'm weird. And it's true. So yeah, even from a little age, clearly I was very image conscious and worried about what others were thinking about me. But the skate ramp was a big, big memory for me, the foam pit.
SPEAKER_01:Um I you were rough and tumble, like you fit in good here.
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely, yeah. Playing basketball, that was a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_01:So you're a tomboy. Um Laylee cut her hand on one of those. Eventually, we that's part of why we tore that thing down. It just got too what it was, the the covering on that skate park was sheet metal. And we would we would grind and sand and weld and keep everything smooth, those screws would back out. Laylee hit did the same thing and it ripped, I mean it gnarly ripped her finger. She was probably six. And I remember working taking her up to the coop and working on it, and she was always a tough kid, you know. So she usually she did not want to cry. She would do everything, she did not want to cry. Um, that's funny. I didn't I don't remember that. That's so crazy. Yeah, but what a memory that skate park and the foam pit were fixtures at Snowbird for 20 years. Yep. That's crazy. Because I don't know. Was it skatepark here when you started coming?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, like my first year, skate park and foam pit. Actually, I think I came first at a at a winter swell and the skate park was there. Came back in the summer, it was gone, but foam pit was still there. Okay. Came back again and foam pit was gone.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, the skate park's probably been gone eight or ten years now. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:My first year was either like 2014 or 2015. Okay. That sounds right.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Dang, that's crazy. And then I remember you would come before you were old enough to attend with students because your your mom's sister worked on staff, so you had a family connection, your church was coming, so y'all would just all come up.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Do you remember? Did we ever go? I don't know if you would have gone with us. We would go, Josh and Danielle Ray and a group of us, I'm getting sidetracked here, but we would go to the fall festival at the John C. Campbell Folk School, and a bunch of Southside people would go to each other.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, I'm probably very sure I went. Like, I remember going to y'all's house. I remember little taking me into a gas station and getting me a chocolate mill. Like I looking back, I didn't realize how intertwined we were. And so I think that's why it was so important for me to come up to you later on, like last month. But yeah, I have so many memories here that looking back, I'm like, man, Snowbird really did play a big part in my childhood. Yeah, yeah. That's so cool.
SPEAKER_01:It is. So you get to, and we'll see Little at lunch today, still and caught up with her. Um, so um get into high school, the main thing then the shift is you're just you're you're hooping. You're trying your goal was to go play college ball. Um you're a pastor's kid, big church, spotlights on you.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Everybody knew you could hoop. There's a lot of pressure.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But you're also kind of an alpha personality. You got that dog in you.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:So just walk us, let's let's start like get into high school, because that last time we would have seen you before not long ago was when you were a sophomore in high school. So what was high school like? And then and then just let's just go from there.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so I started out at a public school. I grew up public school my whole life, and then I realized in my ninth grade year, I wasn't getting enough time on the court. And so I wanted to, you know, make a change. I had been getting in trouble with, you know, friend groups and boys and stuff like that, typical high school stuff. So my parents saw an opportunity to move me to a private school. My dad ended up getting offered a coaching position there. And so he was like, hey, you know, you sat me down that summer. I think this would be a really good transition for you. You know, kind of pitched it as this, you'll get a lot of recognition for this. It'll be good for your career, basketball career. And I was like, Yeah, let's do it. So we transferred to Central Fellowship, me and my brother, and my sister. And from the first day that I walked in, you know, usually you would think high school girl, new school, I'm like a ball of anxiety, I'm nervous. I was eating it up. When I tell you, like I was absolutely loving it because they didn't have a lot of people transfer in. It was a smaller school at the time. On top of being athletic, being young, being cute, it was just like I loved it. And so all eyes were on me, played all the sports I could get my hands on. I even started doing cross-country for the heck of it, which I absolutely hated. I don't know why I did it. But yeah, so high school was, I mean, I I loved high school. I think I always say that that was the one of the like best or most fun times of my life, but a lot of it was because I was living my life in sin while I was in high school. So a lot of my memories were like adrenaline dopamine self-fulfilling memories. Um, but I played basketball in 10th grade through 12th grade there. I was the seventh leading scorer in the state of Georgia. I was also the leading scorer for technical fouls. I was a very angry girl. Um, my dad was the coach. My sister, I got to play with my sister, some of my best friends transferred in. And so that became my identity in high school, was just the athletic basketball girl. And I kind of rode with that. I was like, that's fine. I had came out of a season of my life where I felt so much external pressure being a pastor's daughter, and it wasn't anything that anybody put on me. It was I had created that narrative on my own. And so going into high school, transitioning into not just being a player on a team, but being the player on the team was like a dream for me. And I I loved it and just went with it.
SPEAKER_01:So when you got to that school, um, you're you're playing school ball, but you're also playing club ball or AAU ball. And so recruiting starts to happen and you end up landing on a spot for college.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. So I had a couple different offers from smaller schools. I wasn't really worried about the division, but I was excelling in high jump as well. And so I wanted to go to a school where I could play basketball in the fall kind of spring and then go into high jumping. So that ultimately led me to Truot McConnell. I went in, watched a game, kind of clicked with the team. I liked the coach, and so I committed. And it's that's a funny story in and of itself because when we sat down with the coach, it was just to learn more about the team and like the program. And so I sat down and I was like, Coach, I think I'm ready to commit to your team. And my mom and dad were like, because we didn't talk about it. I just did it. And so we will we left that that meeting, and my parents were like, Oh, I guess you're going to true at now. And I was like, I guess so. I don't know why I felt a tug to go there. I just, I was like, this fits everything that I want, everything that I see my future looking like. This will get me to my goal. And so I committed to true at McConnell. I um finished out my senior year basketball track. My uh numbers were great. And the summer before, this is like very pivotal from my story. The summer before I went to true at McConnell, I had gotten in trouble with a guy just being foolish. Um, because growing up, my parents had a rule that we weren't allowed to date. And so for some reason, I had always pushed back on that. I don't know why that was such a big marker growing up that I was like good in every other area, but for some reason not being allowed to date just did not sit right with me. And so I was always kind of maneuvering and being sneaky and rebellious and trying to figure out ways of appeasing my parents while also living in sin. And so a lot of my conviction came more from trying not to get in trouble with my parents rather than what does the Bible tell me? How am I supposed to live? Um, so I got trouble. I got in trouble. My parents, you know, they they were at their last straw. So they took away my phone, they they had me just going to work. I was working at Chick-fil-A at the time and I was going to church. My parents would drive me to and from. I didn't have any devices. And my mom was like, at this point, we don't know what else to do. So we're gonna extract everything from you and kind of give you this time to sit down in the quiet and the peace before you transfer off, and we're not there anymore. So the whole summer, you know, I did good, I behaved, I did what I was supposed to do. I worked, I got ready for basketball, I trained, I played summer ball, and I asked my parents if I could get rededicated. I was 18 at the time. And, you know, my dad sat down with me and talked with me. And I wanted to make a public statement to everybody around me. There's a lot of periods in my life where I disappeared from everybody, and it was either because I was in trouble or because what we'll get into later, but I wanted to come back out and be like, hey, everybody, I'm still me and I'm still doing good, and you don't have to worry about it because my image is still up. And so I had gotten baptized uh a couple weeks before I left for college, and that was a public statement for me, not for the Lord, to show everybody, hey, I'm still doing good. I'm still living the life, you know, that I claim to be living. And so upon the first day of being at Church McConnell, I was just surrounded by temptation. I had always heard the fun stories of you meet your husband in college. And so that's immediately where where my head went is oh, I'm gonna meet my husband in college. So every guy that I ran into that was remotely attractive, I was like, oh, this could be him. This is it, which totally sidetracked me from basketball. Basketball at that point was just kind of like something I was there to do. It almost became a job. It wasn't fun anymore. It wasn't something that I had committed my life to anymore. It was something that I had to get through in order to accomplish this goal that I had, which was to get married at the end of college. And so before I left, I told my mom, I was like, hey, you know, I just want you to know I don't think I'm gonna be tempted anymore. I don't think I'm gonna be worried about my temptation. And I think y'all, it'll be good. You don't have to worry about me. And my mom looked at me and she said, It's easy to not be tempted when you're not around your temptation. And I was so angry at her for saying that to me because I was like, How could how dare you? Like, I've been doing so good. Why would you not give me the recognition that I deserve? And then upon getting to college, she couldn't have been more right.
SPEAKER_04:So Which also I went to a Christian college and I was in a similar boat as you, like wasn't really living for the Lord. Yeah. And I just thought, okay, if I go to Christian college, then I'll like get my ducks in a row. I could not have been more wrong. Yep. I don't know if true it's the same, but like the party culture and everything like that is probably just as much as like a SEC school or like a state school. And I was very shocked by that. So I don't know if it's like that.
SPEAKER_03:But so true, again, I was only there for a semester, but my understanding of the culture is a lot of the people there are true God-fearing, like Christ-loving students. Uh, but the thing that's hard about truit is uh, and this could be a rough estimate, about 70% of the students are athletes because there's so many teams. It's a small school. So everybody is just going into school, they're doing their classes, they're doing their their sports, and then they're going back to their dorm. And so the the the drinking was heavy for some people, a lot more the boys' sports, but the the culture was just very like bloch. And again, on my end, that's a warped view because I did not do my due diligence at all to get to know people. I really isolated myself. I became a victim in my own mentality and was like, nobody wants to get to know me. Coming from a background where everybody do knew my last name, everybody cared about who my dad was and what my athletic abilities were, walking into a team where nobody cared about my last name or how good I was. I was like the tenth man on the bench. And I it was just such a difficult wake-up call for me. And so my immediate route was well, I'm not seeking attention or uh glory or any praise in this area that I had experienced before. So let me go the other route and go back to the boys and back to the mischievousness and the sin of that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It's interesting. Uh the Christian college dynamic, Christian college, Christian University. I think I have a couple thoughts. Christian high school is the same. The hardest kids we work with at Snowbird are Christian school groups. And we have uh we do quite a few Christian school events here. So, like our summer camps, 80% of what we do at Snowbird is uh student ministry, 20% is adult ministry. Um our summer camps are all church youth groups, the majority of those kids are public school kids. Um but then we run three weeks in the fall and a couple weeks in the spring of Christian school retreats, and they're the hardest people to work with. And um, you know, I've I've thought at times that I had the answer for why that is, uh, but I'm not sure I can really say why. I because a person that loves the Lord, loves the Lord regardless of where they go to school. A person that's regenerate, that has the Holy Spirit of God living in them, is gonna flourish at the University of North Carolina, University of Tennessee, UCLA, whatever whatever. Big, huge 30,000, 40,000 student secular cool schools that are assaulting the Christian worldview. Like it is academia in America for 40 years now, 60 years, go back to the 60s, has been in an all-out frontal assault on the biblical worldview. From sexuality to ethics to um truth versus relativism, like philosophically, scientifically, historically, the church is under attack, the Christian world worldview, the biblical worldview is under attack. But then you go to a Christian university and there's another thing that's working against you, and that is Christianity always flourishes when it's being squeezed. When it's like persecution always creates flourishing in Christian followers or in the Christian experience. So if I'm a Christ follower and you persecute me, you squeeze me, there's a there's a visual, a word picture in the scripture. When you squeeze something, and what you get out of that, like for the believer, when you squeeze them under the under the pressures of persecution, Christ comes out. Right? Like and and and when Jesus is displayed, then that there's where a person flourishes. And so the Christian school dilemma, a lot of a lot of parents, I think, feel like if I send my kid to a Christian school, then then that's going to be the answer, and it's not. Now, I will say this if a a person who goes to a Christian school with the mindset of, I want to get a biblical education, I don't want to deal with Darwinian evolution, I don't want to deal with humanistic uh like secular humanism in the classroom, that that could be some uh like a really cool option, like okay, I'm gonna go. Like I have two kids that have both got one's got a degree, the other one's about to have a degree in in psychology and sociology in secular universities, and it's awful the stuff they endure, you know? But uh as a believer, if you go to a Christian, a good Christian school, you have the opportunity to flourish in your faith, but you have to do the work. Yeah, you have to be disciplined and committed to make that happen. It's like you can work at a gym, but that's not gonna get you in shape, right? Yeah, you you like you got to do the work. And so I would just say to people that listen to this, parents that are thinking about steering their kids in their own education, or young people that are trying to figure out where to go to college, um, you it does not matter where you go. The Christian life is put your hand one on each side of the plow, start grinding and do that for the next 50 years. If you're at UGA or you're at Troop McConnell, you got work to do. Yeah. And and you can find what you need in terms of biblical community, um, a solid church, campus ministry. And I think Gwen's trajectory, I think that's all too common in Christian schools.
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely. Yeah. I think a lot of it at Truitt specifically was it was Christians getting caught in complacency because they're going to chapel once or twice a week. They're doing their biblical stuff. There's no, there's no fruit, there's no heart posture, it's just routine and ritual and ox checking. On the other end, we have a school, I have a coach telling, and this is no fault of his, but it it does take into account the culture of Truitt, at least at the time when I was there. I have a coach telling me he promotes biblical values, he is driven to promote Christ on this team while I'm in a locker room with girls who are in homosexual relationships. And so it's like, it's this watered down lovey-dovey Christ. It's not our just God. It's not our the God that punishes sin when you have to face him one day. It's the God that, oh, we're work, you're forgiven no matter what. And so you can live in your sin for the rest of your life. So being surrounded in an environment like that, on top of all my struggles that I had already had, on top of this warped idea that I had where my external surroundings had to all be lined up before I could work inwardly instead of the opposite. I had such a bad view of that for some reason, where the only way I could do my quiet time at night was if my whole day looked good. If my day didn't look good, God didn't want to hear from me. And so that and it just manifested itself into being this tumbleweed of, well, I'm never gonna be good enough because I'm now on campus living in sexual sin, being surrounded by people who, unfortunately on the basketball team specifically, just were not living their lives for Christ. I mean, some were, but majority weren't where they said they were and they weren't. And it's just this perpetual pattern of, and I don't think, I think I had the the mind biblical knowledge, but I didn't have the heart posture, I didn't have the Holy Spirit. I didn't get convicted. And so it was just such a confusing time where it's like, I know what I'm supposed to be doing, but I don't really want to do it, and I don't have anybody telling me now that I have to do it. And so I just became complacent in that environment of still getting to call myself Christian while not living for the Lord at all.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I relate to that so much, like having all the head knowledge but not understanding the heart knowledge. And last thing I'll say about like kind of that cultural Christian school, whatever. I think obviously cultural Christianity, I think, is a problem in America just already. Like, but then I think at a Christian school, like you were saying, I don't want to enable is not necessarily the term I want to use, but lack for a better word. I think sometimes Christian schools can enable cultural Christianity. Yeah, they don't want to like call anyone out for being homosexual or call anyone out for um drinking or getting drunk or you know, sleeping around whatever it is because they wanna keep that lovey dovey Christ. But then, like, versus if I went to a big state school where my faith is getting attacked, that's when I'm like, oh wait, I gotta get my act together. Like, is this what I believe or is it not? Versus like a Christian school, it's just kind of like almost like I feel like it has in some in some Christian schools. I can't speak for everything, but my experience, and it sounds like your experience has been like, man, cultural Christianity in a Christian school seems like way more than like yeah, like I was scared to go to a state school because I thought, oh, I'll go off the rails. Versus like at college, it's like it took me a long time to get on the rails, you know, like because it was almost like enabled, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_01:Are you saying um so it's um like they almost like they turn a blind eye, they don't address these hard issues. Yeah that was your experiences. Yeah, uh just don't talk about it.
SPEAKER_04:I also think because same at my school, my college, 70, 80 percent of the students are athletes who a lot of them came from different countries who were brought in. And so they don't know the Lord at all. They don't have any like realm. They think religion they just have different views, right? And so I think in order to like to bring them in, they would be uberly kind or uberly nice. And no one would sit them down and say, Hey, you getting drunk every weekend is not fulfilling you. Like to them, they just thought, I can't drink, it's dry season for swim, I can't drink, or like they just didn't understand it. Everyone would just kind of be like super kind, like Jesus loves you, like, no, it's for you can do that, you can sleep around. But no one would sit down and be like, Hey, wow, you know, and I I feel like that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_03:There's such a lack of accountability. I mean, the scripture is so clear about when somebody is doing something wrong, living in sin, you approach them. If that doesn't work, you bring somebody with you. If that doesn't work, you send them off. And that doesn't just apply in the church, that applies in any environment that is trying to uphold a Christ-like manner, attitude, and heart posture, yeah, even in the schools. And so when you find yourself like we did at a school where, and truth be told, I wasn't even a Christ follower while I was there either. So I fell into that camp of people who claimed to be something weren't, got to represent that on campus. And then it was just when you have people like me and other people representing Christ in a bad manner, that's just that becomes the culture. And a lot of the times it's blissful ignorance too, because the professors and the coaches don't know what's going on behind the scenes, they just see how you act in front of them and they're like, that's good. I don't even know if the coach knew that half the girls were living in not only sexual sin but same-sex sin. And that has to be addressed head on. You the the points on the scoreboard cannot outweigh the the convictions in the locker room. And so that, yeah, that's a that's a big issue.
SPEAKER_01:Oh man, that's like a sermon that you just said. The points on the scoreboard cannot outweigh the convictions in the locker room. Yeah. That's man. I what I think what I'm hearing both of y'all say, what I what I would say as a ministry leader is we just people that are gonna lead need to have a spine and a backbone. And you understand that Grace, Grace has a spine. We just did this three-part series where I talked I told that story about the young man who I got an email from that dude.
SPEAKER_04:Yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Which is crazy. Um you know who you are and you're listening to this, and uh I'm I'm gonna respond. I've just been thinking about how I want to respond. But in that it was a story where the or it was an episode where the principle I was I was trying to teach was you can forgive someone, you can extend grace to somebody. In this context, as a coach or a ministry leader or a professor or a dean, you can be gentle and kind with people, but the gospel cannot be softened. Like it is what it is. You and I remember this old uh like Spurgeon or somebody used this phrase. No, I think it was uh um I'm gonna go off sc off screen behind the camera. Who's a dude that was uh he di JC Row, you know that name? J C Rile was like uh that he was the last conservative head of the Church of England, I think. And he wrote extensively in the late 1800s on biblical manhood. And he referred to people as velvet-mouthed preachers because they had started to pedal a really soft gospel. Or Dietrich Bonhoeff, who said, he said, we peddle grace like cheap jackwares, in other words, like flea market items. You go to you go to Goodwill and you buy what when you go to Goodwill, you're looking for high-end stuff for five dollars. I'm trying to find something that's I'm I'm trying to find a hundred dollar item for three dollars, right? I'm trying to merge these two worlds where I get something valuable for cheap. The gospel doesn't work like that. The gospel is never cheap. Grace is never cheap. Grace cost Jesus his life, right? And it costs me my life. It just looks different. That's why Jesus said, take up your cross and follow me. And so my word, listening to y'all talk about this, my challenge to people, whether you're a dad, a mom, a professor, a teacher, a Christian school principal, a coach, if you are a Christ follower, do not cheapen grace. But also extend grace.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Because the flip side of it is don't become legalistic and heavy-handed, right? And so I, you know, it just makes me wonder as we as we walk through your story, like, man, if somebody just had a spine in that world.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, and I think a lot of times people are like desperately looking for it. They just don't like even the student body president at Carson Newman University, a Christian university, was gay and partook in drag, and nobody nobody would say anything about it. Like it's just it's like I don't know, it's crazy.
SPEAKER_01:That's crazy.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So uh Jeby touched on something. International students pour in, and that's where I think your story starts to kind of take a crazy direction.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. So I had met a guy, um, and you know, we showed relative interest in each other. It wasn't anything crazy. We didn't, we weren't dating, but we were pursuing an intimate relationship outside of marriage. And um every time I went and, you know, in involved myself in sexual sin, I would leave and I would be like, man, I've got to stop doing that. That's not good for me. That's not good for him. It's just not. I still had kind of that that head knowledge, a little bit of conviction, like this is just not a good situation. Nobody knew that I was doing this with him. And it I loved it. Part of me, my flesh loved it because it was this secret that nobody knew about, my parents didn't know about. It was the one situation in my life that I had control over. It wasn't I didn't have control over basketball, I didn't have control over classes, and I didn't even have control over who I got to be friends with. It felt like I kind of just had to be friends with my teammates. This was the one situation where I could predict the outcome, I could predict, at least I thought, how this is gonna go. It was self-fulfilling, uh, our our needs were getting met, we were receiving pleasure from this experience that we were doing with each other, and nobody knew about it. And so um, you know, we kind of stayed in contact. The first time that I realized I had never participated, well, I'll just say I had never had sex with somebody outside of dating them. And so while that's not even the standard, to me, that was a whole new level of of of sin in my head of I'm now just hooking up with this guy. I'm not even dating him.
SPEAKER_01:And you would you would rationalize like if you're in a relationship, you would rationalize it as, but I'm committed to this person and we're together.
SPEAKER_03:Well, I'm gonna get married, I'm gonna marry them eventually. So yeah, it was I had dated a boy in high school for two years, and I I had lost my virginity at 17 years old, and I was like, Well, I'm gonna marry him one day, and he was a pastor's son, and so we both were able to compartmentalize our faith, yeah. Talk, talk, you know, pray after and make it okay. And it was such a manipulation of the scripture and what we're yeah we're told to do. And so the very first time me and him had been in sexual sin, that next day we were in the um cafe, and so I like kind of passed him and said hey, and he kind of just walked by me. And I was like, Oh, like this is a whole new area where you're not even gonna acknowledge me in the daylight. Wow. So that was a and I immediately was so sad and so upset, and then I was like, oh no, because everything was a competition for me. I was like, You're not gonna, you're not gonna do this with me at night and then act like you don't see me during the day. And so then I was like, you're not, it was a game, you're not gonna win this game. So then I ignored him continuing on, and it became this thing where we ignored each other in person and then we were together in private. And so the last time that we hooked up, our safe sex method failed, and we had a scare, and we went and told two of our friends who were um in the dorm next to us, and they were like, Well, hey, you need to go get go get her a plan B and we will uh pr pretend this never happened. So he was a foreign exchange student, like you said. He was on the team for soccer, the men's soccer team. And again, that lined up perfectly because he's not even from my country. How much more secret can it get? You know, my parents don't know who he is. So he goes and gets me a plan B and I take it, and that was the last time I've ever seen him was the night after our safe sex method failed, for lack of a better word. So I go back to my dorm room and I'm just like sitting there grappling with my experience because every single person who's ever found themselves in an unfortunate circumstance, before the circumstance, tells themselves, this won't happen to me. Um, it won't happen to me. I know it happens to other people, it never happened to me. So I just plead out to the Lord and I'm like, God, I'm so sorry. I've been living my life like this. I I'm ready to get back on track. I'm ready to start going and doing these superficial things that you've asked me to do again while still not changing my heart posture. So I go back to classes, I go back to basketball, I'm just like locked in. I'm like, I'm I tell him we can't see each other anymore. This is just, we got to cut it off. So he leaves, he goes over uh back to his home country for Christmas break because the foreign exchange students got to leave a little bit earlier because they had more travel. And I started to not feel good. This was around November of 22, early November, about the first week of December. I start to not feel good. I'm in this is probably TMI, but I'm just like waiting for my period. I'm like, I've got to get my period, I've got to like, let's get this ball rolling, let's make sure officially, officially, that we're good. I can continue back my life how I have laid it out to be. And tell me if I'm being too like cryptic in my wording, I can be more. Okay. I don't know how the how detail y'all get and stuff. Um, so I call my friend from home. Her name's Jaden, and I was like, hey Jaden, can you please come up here for the weekend? Let's like let's hang out. And Jaden kind of knew the situation. I'd been keeping her up with the the situation with this guy. So Jaden comes up for the weekend, and I'm just telling her, like, hey, I'm about two weeks, three weeks late on my period. And she's like, you need to take a pregnancy test. I was like, I can't. And she's like, what is that gonna do? If you take it and it's negative, we'll know. If you take it and it's positive, we'll know. It's not gonna change the situation. But for some reason, I just was so against because I didn't want to have to face the truth if that was it. So she walks into this Walgreens because Truth's in such a small town, and I'm like, I'm not, you're not gonna catch me in there buying a pregnancy test. So I send her in Walgreens or CVS, whatever it was. We come out, we go to a Wendy's bathroom, I take the test, immediately it shows up two lines. And so I start laughing because I am in such a headspace where my sin has been so compartmentalized. I'm like, this is like there's no way this is not real. So I immediately go on Google and I'm reading, like, oh, you know, if a woman's dehydrated, it might come up positive positive. If she's eaten too much, whatever, it's positive. And I'm like thinking, okay, this is a false positive. You know, I'm about to eat my period, that's why it says whatever. So Jaden has like this manuscript of like the pregnancy test paper, and we're like reading it, like it's that confusing if it's positive or negative. You know, we're like, okay. So we go back to my dorm room. Well, I tell two of my teammates, the one that I had met the night of that told us we should get a plan B and another girl. Well, on the if you if anybody knows anything about a plan B, it's an abortive facient, which means that it's even if the sperm enters the egg, it can stop it from attaching to the uterine wall, which in itself is an abortion. Yes. But I was under the impression it was just your last resort to not just not get pregnant.
SPEAKER_01:And it's uh there's a window, like a time frame.
SPEAKER_03:Yes, there's a 72-hour time frame, so it says, but if you're ovulating, it doesn't, it almost helps, it almost helps the egg attach to the uter wall. So I was ovulating at the time. So I was like, I didn't know that that was just gonna increase the chances of being pregnant. But you did take Yeah, I took it within 12 hours of the incident. And so I was like, Oh, I'm good. There, I'm in the green, we're good. So I take the pregnancy test, I go tell these other two girls, they're like, hey, let's all go together because they've taken tests before, you know, and they were like, let's go together, let's go to Walmart, we'll get some tests, we'll figure this out. So Jaden's in the car, she's in the front, these other two girls get in the back, and then this other girl gets in the car. And I'm like, What in the world? Like, I'm trying to keep this on the low. I do not want my sin aired out, and some random girl is getting in the car. I was so upset.
SPEAKER_01:You didn't know this girl.
SPEAKER_03:I didn't know her. I didn't know her. And I had recognized her, obviously, small school, but I have never had a conversation with her, wasn't friends with her. So I turn around and she tells me her name is Zoe. I was like, hey, I'm Gwyn, I'm pregnant. Do you want to go get some tests with us? And she was like, Yeah, sure. So she had already kind of been briefed on the situation. So we drive to Walmart, everybody's giggling, frolicking around, having a good time, and I'm just like, This is surreal. Guys, like this is serious. And it was weird because I was with them on the fun of it, and then I was like in the back of my head, like, well, no wonder you're having a good time. This isn't you that's pregnant, you know. And I knew, I knew in the back of my mind that I was pregnant, I just wasn't willing to accept it yet. So we go, we kind of play pregnancy roulette where every girl takes a test just to compare, because we knew some people were gonna be negative for sure. So we lay them all out, and mine is just like, oh, immediately. It we didn't even have to wait the three to five minutes. And so I take myself around the corner and I sit down, and I had told the dad from the first pregnancy test, I sent him a picture. I was like, hey, this is saying I'm pregnant. What do you want to do? And he immediately said, You got to get an abortion. And growing up, I hadn't really heard about abortion. You know, I knew it was bad the same way I knew sex and drugs were bad. I didn't know why, I didn't really know what it what it entailed. And I knew I was against a procedure. My conviction was I'm not getting a procedure, but then he introduced me to the abortion pill. So I thought, well, that's the same thing as the plan B. That's fine.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, until right now, I thought that was the same thing.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, no, completely different. Okay. So the plan B is the so condom's kind of the plan A. Plan B is this actual pill, that's what it's called. And then they call it a plan C sometimes to avoid the abortion word, which is abortion pill. It's called methapristone. And it terminates it terminates your pregnancy. Pregnancy. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Plan B, correct me if I'm wrong, just makes it a hostile environment for the sperm and the egg to meet. Yeah. But plan C or this abortion pill literally kills the fetus. Kills the baby.
SPEAKER_03:Yep. You can take it up to 12 weeks.
SPEAKER_01:Um so the whole first trimester you could take this pill.
SPEAKER_03:Yep. And there's some there's some uh places in the US that will prescribe it up to three the third trimester. There are women who have the the FDA right it's not FDA regulated, which means it can cross state lines, it can be given to minors. There is so much uh just malpractice around the abortion pill specifically, and that is the leading cause of abortions right now because of the overturning of Roe versus Wade and a lot of the heartbeat bills in these states, women can't go in and get abortion procedures anymore, but now they can get the abortion pill.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. So you get so first trimester. If you if you are pregnant, you can you get this pill, you have to get it prescribed, or you're saying you can't.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, you can just go in.
SPEAKER_01:I that's where you're saying that even you cross state lines and go get it. Yep. Also you just go get it.
SPEAKER_04:A lot of things with abortion and planned parenthood and everything like that, they will advocate. Like let's say I brought in a 16-year-old girl and was like, hey, she's pregnant, I need someone to get me an abortion pill. Their little workers would somehow go get it, find it, and get it. Like they will advocate and find ways because this is their crusade.
SPEAKER_01:Yep, yeah. This is their this is their purpose, their crusade. Let's get this baby aborted in this 16-year-old girl's belly. Yep. And so you could just get that pill, you take the medication and it terminates the pregnancy.
SPEAKER_03:You can order online. There are websites. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So then when you do that, then do you pass that baby? Yes. I'm assuming. Yes.
SPEAKER_03:So you were told you were instructed by the either website that you buy from or the clinic worker that you meet with. You're gonna have a couple cramping, it's gonna feel like your period. Do not just don't look in the toilet, just keep flushing, and you'll be good. There's testimonials of women who have looked in the toilet at 10 to 12 weeks and have seen their child's limbs in the toilet and have hemorrhaged. There's story, there's a recent story out of Texas where a man bought an abortion pill, crushed it up, put it in his girlfriend's drink, she drank it and passed the baby. Because there's no regulations around this pill. Anybody can get their hands on it. This is the number one thing that sex traffickers use to keep women from, the young girls to keep them from getting pregnant is they just push out this abortion pill. It's disgusting. And if it was FDA regulated, it would have to be stripped off the market because the turnover rate of people that experience, I don't know what the number is, I think it's like less than 2%, something like that. The turnover rate of people that experience fatal outcomes, the women themselves, it is so dangerous. And so we can get in this later, but thank God I didn't because who knows if I would even be here if I took that pill, much less my daughter. But it is so dangerous. There is so much malpractice around it, it's disgusting.
SPEAKER_01:Man, I'm I'm a little embarrassed to say I didn't know any of this.
SPEAKER_04:Well, um honestly, rightfully so, because they do such a good job of disguising it. Yeah, you wouldn't know. You know, like even in high school, a lot of my friends would take plan B and I did not know like I remember when I came to Snowbird in high school and there was an abortion breakout, it lit my butt on fire. Like from that moment, I've done research because they do such a good job of disguising it to make it seem like like even birth control. This this might be a hot take, and I know a lot of people do not agree with me, but I think birth control is if not, it like I think anything that makes the womb a hostile environment is abortive. Absolutely. And I think even if it's not, even if somehow you tweak it and say, Well, no, this one doesn't, it's still supporting a an abortive company. Yeah, it's an abortive it's an abortive facient.
SPEAKER_03:All birth control is an abortive facient.
SPEAKER_04:And there's no a lot of people don't agree with that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Which okay? That's so that becomes uh and I I am familiar with this debate even within evangelical Christian circles, there's a debate over that. Sure. What is what would be allowed, what would not be allowed. But you said this has become the number one form of birth control.
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely. And that's why when when you say to somebody who you're debating with, oh, abortion, abortion's the number one leading cause of death, and they say women aren't even getting abortions at high numbers anymore. It's because they don't mark the abortion pill as an abortion. So you don't know. I think it's something like 1,600 lives per day. Babies are passed due to the abortion pill.
SPEAKER_01:And that number doesn't get counted in abortion statistics.
SPEAKER_03:Because it's not the procedure.
SPEAKER_01:Oh wow.
SPEAKER_03:Because you can just hand it out. We don't know how many people are getting these every day because you can just give it to anybody. Men can get it, women can get it, kids can get it.
SPEAKER_01:Does it uh if if somebody goes to get it, does it cost them money?
SPEAKER_03:So, from my understanding, when I so I I again I talked to the father, we can get back to this because this will answer your question. I talked to the father, he was like, You need to get an abortion. Well, I go and I look it up, it's$600 to get an abortion. And then I look up the abortion pill, which was introduced to me by him, and I see that it ranges from about$300 to$150. I don't know what it would look like, the cost. A lot of these Planned Parenthoods will give it to you for free if you go in. Because while they are a nonprofit, they get taxpayer money from the government. Yeah. So they don't have to charge people for these things.
SPEAKER_01:Which that is could be an entire episode where we talk about funding of Planned Parenthood. Um, yeah, like m like a few years ago, that whole thing, that undercover thing where they were selling baby parts and that could be its own disgusting episode.
SPEAKER_04:It's bad.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so all right, let's let's Yes. So he this is what he's encouraging.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so he's like, you've got he's freaking out. He's like, I can't tell my parents I got some girl in America pregnant, like you've got to get an abortion pill. And he wasn't saved at the time, and so it was a I I I fought I had so much anger towards him at the beginning, but I understand because I also was like, yeah, let's do it. Like, let's get the let's do the pill. So I go and I talk to the girls, and they're like, well, you know, they didn't really encourage me to do it, but they also weren't saying that's not a good idea. They were like, that's what you want to do, that's fine. And so I went and I called every hospital and clinic within an hour radius, and I was like, Do you carry the abortion pill? All of them said no, because the heartbeat bill had just gotten signed. I believe it was in 2018 by Randy Robertson in Georgia. I was at four weeks, so I had up and I had two weeks to make this decision before I wouldn't have any other options unless I was gonna cross state lines. And so I eventually went and got online and found a Planned Parenthood in Atlanta. It was about an hour and a half away from Truett. And I made an appointment. I didn't have to talk to a person, I didn't have to tell them I was pregnant. I just went online. I put in my name, my birthday, when I want to do my appointment, and what I'm looking to get. And I submitted it. And I had my blocked schedule for me to walk in and get an abortion pill.
SPEAKER_01:And how fast did that turn did you get confirmation from them when you it was immediately.
SPEAKER_03:Immediately I literally just had to go on the website. Yeah, I just put in the time that I could come in. They showed me the slots that they had. I chose what I wanted, I put my name in and I submitted it and I was on the schedule. Wow. And so immediately I'm like, oh well, I I have a conclusion to this problem. I'm good. I I didn't want to go. A lot of times when I tell my story, I emphasize how impactful this was for me. But I knew in the back of my head I was doing something wrong. But I had dehumanized and devalued my daughter so much to the point where I didn't even see her as a human anymore because she didn't have a heartbeat. Her brainwaves weren't going. She was still a clump of cells. It's my body. This will ruin my life. I'm not financially stable. I'm not with the father. I had all the excuses to rationalize this decision in my head. And I was just pushing them over and over to myself to convince me, hey, this is okay. You're doing okay. You will look back at this and be thankful that this is what you did because you have a basketball career ahead of you. So I'm sitting in this room. I found myself conveniently enough, not wanting to be by myself, shocker. I'm in the worst situation that I've ever experienced. So my friend Jaden, she's, you know, trying to like pick at me a little bit, like, hey, are you sure? Like, you know, she showed me these lyrics to this Nicki Minaj song where Nicki Minaj had talked about getting an abortion and how um she regretted it. And I was, I just, she was too close to the situation for me. I just couldn't hear. So she eventually goes home and I'm sitting in the room with my two basketball friends and Zoe. The two basketball friends leave because they have other stuff to do. So now it's just me and Zoe. So I was so desperate to be in company.
SPEAKER_01:Zoe's the girl you didn't know.
SPEAKER_03:Yes. Yeah. I was so desperate to be in company that I'm sitting in a room with a girl I met three days prior, and we're just sitting there and we're chatting and we're talking, and I was like, all right, well, I gotta go back to my room. So I'm packing up my stuff. And she's like, Hey, can I talk to you for a second? And I was like, Yeah, sure. And she's a pastor's daughter as well. I didn't know that at the time. And she said, Hey, I I want you to know that although I don't personally understand what you're going through, I know people that have gone through what you're going through. And I'm also a pastor's daughter, so I cannot imagine what this has been like for you. But you need to know that the Lord has considered you now and forever a mother. Because that baby is in your stomach, you whether you get this abortion or not, you are going to be a mom. And you have been chosen to take care of this baby. This is your DNA that is growing inside of you. And this baby was made in the likeness and image of Christ. And if you go and get this abortion, you are killing what God has created. And I was like, What the heck?
SPEAKER_01:Were you mad?
SPEAKER_03:I was pissed. I was like, How dare you? How dare you tell me what to do? How dare you try to hold Christ over my head? How dare you try to speak into a situation that you are not a part of? So I just start bawling and I was like, look, I get it, but I just can't. I'm sorry, I can't. So I go back to my dorm, I go to sleep. The next day we have practice because so this was the day that me and Zoe talked. We have practice, and then we have our last basketball game on December 16th.
SPEAKER_01:Before the Christmas break.
SPEAKER_03:Before the Christmas break. So I had I had planned, here was my plan. I was gonna I had scheduled the abortion pill to go pick it up. I had practice game. I was gonna tell my parents I have to stay an extra day for practice. I was gonna have one of my friends drive me to the clinic, get the pill, come back, take it, and then go home for Christmas break.
SPEAKER_01:All right, stop. Let's stop right here.
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:We're at 50 minutes. This will keep people are gonna be so mad. They're gonna have to wait a week.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks for listening to No Sanity Required. Please take a moment to subscribe and leave a rating. It really helps. Visit us at swoutfitters.com to see all of our programming and resources. We'll see you next week on No Sanity Required.
