If you're scared of saying "yes" to God...
Reflections on Amazon Prime's "House of David," discontent in your season, and the terrifying calls to courage in everyday life
Do you remember how, back in elementary school, we’d sometimes be asked to write three adjectives that described us? When I was a kid, the word that appeared on my list every single time was some variant of smart or intelligent. Being smart was my defining personality trait. It was the most important to me. I liked to read. Getting straight A’s in school was the standard. I prided myself on being the Muggle Hermione Granger, complete with fear of failure and bushy brown hair.
A few years later, a new word entered my list: passionate. This one probably popped up in my list sometime in my teen years when I needed a word to describe how emotionally and violently I threw myself at absolutely everything I cared a shred about. My teenage self felt too deeply sometimes. I didn’t know how to control my raging heart, that same heart I used to claim never allowed me to cry in movies. Despite my desire to remain unfeeling, I was crying in every movie, and I was trying to learn how to accept hugs from anyone outside of my immediate family without tensing up. Really, I think I was learning to love.
Then came a pandemic. Sixteen-year-old passionate Katherine was trapped in her house for a few months as the world raged and she couldn’t. I can honestly say that I remember very little of the COVID-19 pandemic — our brains are good at blotting out painful times — but I do remember having the very powerful urge to scream. To scream as loudly as I could, just because everything was too stifling and quiet and still and sad for me to stand. But I couldn’t. I was locked up, just like everyone else, and we were all too close. Someone would hear me.
I felt dusty. All of my emotions were growing dull from misuse.
Thankfully, pandemics don’t last forever. Flash forward a few years, and I was in college. To save money, I stayed at home for two years, commuting to a campus with a shorter commute than my old high school. Most of my friends had moved away, seemingly off to bigger and better things. It was difficult not to feel abandoned sometimes, but I kept my chin up and soldiered on. What else was there to do?
High school had humbled me. Even without a worldwide quarantine, I’d struggled. With society pushing the agenda of Women in STEM, I’d decided to be a Woman in STEM because that was what the important women were doing, and I wanted to be important. Truthfully, I was asking for a good head deflation — going into my freshman year, I really thought I was unstoppable. I was the future.
Then came the dreaded biology class, and to say that my head deflated would be an understatement.
Looking back, I’m grateful for the experiences, but at sixteen years old, flopping biology exams felt like my entire world was crashing down. I was intelligent… wasn’t I? And no amount of throwing myself into studying saved me. My passion was rendered utterly useless as I received bad grade after bad grade and was forced to reckon with the impossible; I just didn’t get it.
And without the ease of my intelligence, without the power of my passion, who was I?
It was in these moments that God reached out a hand, and like Simon Peter sinking beneath the dangerous waves of his own creation, I took it, coughing on the seawater as He pulled me safely into His arms. I heard God calling me to completely turn my life around, to try another direction, to start living as the woman He made me to be, rather than the woman society wanted me to be. And although I was scared, I answered: yes.
High school was an interesting period in my faith life. I grew up going to a parish mostly consisting of an older population. Over the years, I witnessed a few attempts to start a youth group, all of which sparked, then fizzled. Thankfully, I was blessed to attend two Steubenville youth conferences and one March for Life. These two experiences, paired with a handful of faith-filled individuals, all deepened my convictions in a more personal way. I was learning to love God on my own, outside of Sundays, and this love brought about a deeper trust in His plan… whatever it was.
I entered college with the goal of becoming a high school English teacher. My highest aspiration was teaching at my local high school after college. If I couldn’t make a career as a writer — because I obviously couldn’t make a career as a writer, don’t be silly — I could make a career out of teaching others how to write. Besides, I loved writing, reading, and learning. I was humble now (or humbler) and I didn’t necessarily feel called to Greatness. My head-deflating aha! moment had lowered my goals by miles, but I could do my little part for the little guy, never leaving the town that had raised me. However, as I drove the ten minutes to class every day and read The Lord of the Rings near the fountain on campus, I came to a dismaying realization:
It wasn’t enough.
There it was again, the nagging discontent. Like a rock stuck in the toe of your shoe or an itchy sweater you’re stuck wearing for the day. My propensity for restlessness was really going to be the death of me. Why couldn’t I just be happy with where I was? Wasn’t this where I was supposed to be? It was a good life. The flowers around me were beautiful. But my mind started to wonder again. My heart started to wander. There I was, a fidgeting child at a formal event who just couldn’t wait to leave.
Again, I was forced to come to a frustrating realization; I just didn’t get it.
By the end of my two years at that campus, I’d begun to feel like a plant that had outgrown its pot. Moving to the second campus, where I spent my last two years, was the change I needed to start growing. I met new people, explored new avenues, and finally, finally, finally struck out on my own. My first great adventure had begun. And after I’d gotten over my homesickness, I began to thrive. Better yet, I was experiencing a deeper call to faith and finding God in the beauty of my new life.
After the first semester of my freshman year, I’d switched majors from Education to English, desiring more flexibility in my future. Truthfully, I wanted to be the next great American novelist, but with that as the back-burner dream, I considered a career as a literary agent, an editor, and an academic. I was particularly drawn to being a professor. Something about tacking a Ph.D. on my name just sounded… good.
Was I falling into the old trap of desiring to feel important? Probably. But I was daring to dream of something bigger than my hometown, and I let it happen because I knew I could do it. I had the grades. The intelligence. The passion. And my heart was in it. I wanted to write about Tolkien and Lewis, to study the crossovers between literature and faith. I looked at Catholic graduate schools, dreaming of the day I’d open an admittance letter from Notre Dame. I wanted to be the Defender of the Catholic Student, the professor who had never quite existed for me.
Then came this past academic year, and this past academic year brought something which became the unwitting catalyst for what has been perhaps the biggest yes of my life: an election. I’m not sure I can adequately describe what the atmosphere surrounding the 2024 American presidential election was like on college campuses, but I’ll try.
As a Catholic conservative, I felt hunted. Everywhere, there was discontent. Rallies supporting Republicans were shut down or moved last minute to smaller locations, meant to make the conservative population seem smaller and more scattered than it was. Backhanded comments become more common in classrooms. Trump was whispered in hushed tones, like if you said his name three times in a row, he’d appear and snatch away everything you held dear. Debates brought about the buzz of excitement, but you could only participate in such discussions if you supported blue. If you supported red… forget it. You were every horrible word you’ve ever heard anyone say. I pondered what it was like to be hated by those who didn’t even know me.
Thankfully, I have a few close friends who share my values, and we stuck together in these difficult months. We prayed endlessly, and on election night, we stayed up until three in the morning, anxiously watching as the polls began to tip in our favor. The “silent majority” had won the day.
A week or so after an election, I sat next to a fellow student who flat-out stated that conservative writers had nothing to offer the world. Over the years, I’d learned to remain quiet in my classes. I’d accepted that this was the world I agreed to enter when I accepted my offer. And yet, when I heard that, I snapped. I fought the entire class on this, the words “I’M A CONSERVATIVE WRITER” exploding from my chest as angry ringing filled my head.
Talk about passion, huh? Even as I said the words, I was shaking.
No one quite knew what to say to me.
Up until then, I’d been more or less “undercover.” Not anymore. And I haven’t been since.
It was early 2025, maybe January or February, when I began to wonder if the academic route was really for me. Even with a new administration, the attitudes in colleges remained largely the same, and I continued to spend classes complaining to my diary instead of telling the room how I really felt. My passion was overwhelming me, washing over me like stormy waves. I wasn’t comfortable anymore in a place where I’d wanted to spend forever.
I just didn’t get it.
It was also around this time when I started to reflect on my writerly, academic journey. What had made my heroes, Tolkien and Lewis, so profound and successful, was how they had surrendered themselves completely to the Lord and allowed Him to use them as vessels for His glory. And instead of being myself, instead of surrendering myself to God’s will, I was busy trying to follow in the footsteps of these men, rather than in the footsteps of Christ.
The world didn’t need another Tolkien; maybe it needed a Katherine.
Remember the example about choosing three words to describe yourself? Never, never, not in a million years, would I have ever described myself as someone having courage. And yet, to surrender completely, I realized that I was going to need an awful lot of it. This is Simon Peter stepping out of the boat and onto the waves. My mom had likened following and trusting God’s will to this Bible story once, and I couldn’t get it out of my head.
To take such a step requires not only courage, but faith.
Thanks to the hit TV show The Chosen, I had become fascinated with Psalm 77, which plays a powerful role in Season 3. Psalm 77 speaks to the fearful, the heartbroken, the despondent. The speaker is one who is all but at his rope’s end. I picture falling, begging, crying out in search of comfort: “You keep my eyelids from closing; I am so troubled that I cannot speak.”1 However, as Rabbi Yussif points out in The Chosen, this hopeless state does not continue throughout the psalm’s entirety:
Your way, O God, is holy. What god is great like our God?
You are the God who works wonders.”
Psalm 77:13-14, The Great Adventure Bible
I began to pray with this psalm often. I felt myself being called deeper into something, and instead of resisting or striking out on my own, I followed. On Fridays, I bowed my head as I prayed to Jesus in Adoration, feeling once again like I was being nudged to something else, something greater, something more.
It was an itchy feeling. All I could do was pray: send me.
For me, stepping out onto the waves meant broadening my horizons and being open to wherever the Lord may have been calling me. It meant opening my eyes to the possibility that my perfect idea may not have been the perfect idea. For the first time in a while, I started thinking about writing within the context of my Catholic faith. On a whim, I applied to a few internships, and with each application, my desire for this whim to come to fruition grew.
And the more I worked, and the more I prayed, the more certain I felt that this whim wasn’t really a whim at all. Maybe, just maybe, this was it.
I am not a believer in the idea that, if you feel out of place in your time, you were perhaps born for another. No, to riff on Queen Esther’s famous declaration, I was made for such a time as this.
Life went on. I continued with my classes, my prayers, my thesis, my binge-watching The Chosen with friends. And suddenly — or perhaps not suddenly at all — there was an email in my inbox. An invitation to interview. The chance to write for a Catholic nonprofit. One I was afraid to consider because it meant upending my life and relocating for a few months, farther away from my loved ones than I had ever been before. It meant leaving the comfort I’d been praying to leave for so long.
After years of begging God to send me! send me!, I had a sneaking suspicion that it was about to happen.
Oh, I was terrified.
Heart pounding, I agreed to interview. Then came another interview. Then an offer. I accepted the opportunity, quivering with fear and excitement. For years, I had been begging the Lord for such an opportunity: could I refuse to give my own fiat when He had finally given me His? He was sending me. And though I was trembling, I knew I had to follow where He led.
Ironically, I began to think a lot about Moses. The story of Exodus is one of my favorites from the Old Testament. What drew me back to this story, though, was actually Dreamworks’ Prince of Egypt. I’d recently recalled the film, rewatched it, and begun to listen to its soundtrack while working at my current internship. It was also loosely inspiring a new book I was working on (more on that eventually… maybe).
Moses. Another one of God’s mightiest vessels. A man who had fled an old life and created a new, more comfortable one, only to be called back onto the waves. In revisiting Exodus, perhaps what struck me most was Moses’ fear. I think it’s actually portrayed beautifully in Prince of Egypt. It isn’t that Moses doesn’t want to serve God; he’s just scared to be sent to his destiny.
But God sees this, and it doesn’t cause Him to abandon Moses. No, God sees Moses in his distress and emboldens him, giving him the faith and courage to return to Egypt. And so, he follows where God leads, and God’s wonders are done.
Recently, House of David premiered on Amazon Prime. I could devote an entire Substack post — and maybe I will — to the genius of this series. I completely fell in love with this show, and each week, I eagerly waited for the new episode to drop. I wondered why I’d never really thought about King David before. He was a poet, after all. As I watched, I decided to read 1 Samuel before bed each night.
I dove eagerly into the story of King David, feeling like I’d found someone who would understand the restlessness in my soul. A musician in the fields with the flock. A beloved king of Israel. Imperfect. Passionate. A writer after God’s Heart. Exactly who I wanted to be.
After catching up on the first few episodes with my family over spring break, I eagerly followed House of David in my college dorm. There is so much to be said for this show. Michael Iskander, a newcomer to the silver screen, plays a young King David, and I’ve been listening to him sing the psalms and play the lute on repeat for weeks. The score is beautiful, the supporting cast is full of powerful actors, and the show itself is breathtaking to watch. It’s also just wonderful to see good Christian media becoming more popular once again. As a big believer in “you are what you consume,” the what you consume also including media, the rise in Christian storytelling we are seeing in our society warms and excites my heart. I’m really hoping to write for a project like that someday.
House of David’s first season brought us eight hour-long episodes, all building on each other. As an audience, we watched David go from a simple shepherd to God’s anointed, one with the courage to stand up to the Philistine giant, Goliath. While each episode was good, it was episode seven, “David and Goliath Part 1,” that stopped me dead in my tracks.
The penultimate episode of season one sets up the famous battle between David and Goliath. David spends much of the episode arguing with his father, Jesse, that he should be allowed to go to war with his brothers. The prophet Samuel remains with him during this time, unaffected by David’s youthful impatience. A scene about halfway through the episode shows David and Samuel sitting by a fire at night. When Samuel assures him that “you have a role to play in this grand design,” David questions his destiny, bitterly asking “how can I do that trapped in a field?”
David, a young man whose heart is absolutely on fire for God, has grown discontented with his quiet life. In that moment, I felt like I was sitting across the fire with them as David asked the very question that had been burning on my lips for years. To feel seen in such a way was both stunning and healing for me. And Samuel’s response only strengthened me more: there is a time and season for everything, and God’s timing is not our timing.
Later, Jesse and Samuel find themselves arguing about David’s future kingship, which Jesse still cannot quite bring himself to believe or accept. He calls David “young, wild, restless” with a heart “like a deep fire.” In Jesse’s eyes, a person full of such passion could never be king. But what does Samuel say to him in response? Something that still takes my breath away2:
“Shall I tell you what I see? You are right. You are right to dread the fire in your son’s heart, for it burns very hot, like the Lord’s own, and he is beloved by God because of this, and perhaps it is the very reason that he was chosen.”
I sat there on my floral comforter, absolutely transfixed, feeling like for the first time, I was starting to get it. I saw David, and I saw myself in him.
All these years, I’d felt like God was calling me to do great things for Him. The discomfort in my current season, the yearning for something I couldn’t quite explain, the hope that my dreams were made of truth rather than discontent. The passion in my heart, the fire I felt for all that I loved… it was good. I was good. I was beloved by God for it. For no one’s heart burns stronger than the Lord’s in His love for each and every one of us.
How long had I begged God to send me because I was tired of being trapped in my metaphorical fields? The restlessness that had been plaguing me for years had a purpose, as did everything. It had brought me out of my small town, down a winding road of dreams and difficulties, and to that very moment, sitting on the edge of my bed, House of David playing on my TV, realizing everything has a season.
This is my fiat. And like David, I am singing and dancing my praises before the Lord.
C.S. Lewis described this yearning we all have in his book Till We Have Faces. Before House of David, I’d never heard it described more beautifully:
“The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.”3
I write this essay — which is getting pretty wordy, I’ll admit — because I felt that nudge to share it. This is my story of coming to understand what it means to be a vessel, what it means to be afraid, and what it means to trust in God through the storms.
Nothing in my life is perfect, of course. Nothing here is. I can’t tell you that I’m no longer afraid to relocate in a few months. I can’t say that I understand my role in God’s grand design. I can’t say that I get it, whatever “it” even is.
What I can say, though, is that God never stranded me in the fields. He was always there with me, comforting me when my heart refused to be comforted, inspiring me when my soul felt too heavy to inspire. I walk forward with the One who brought the Israelites out slavery in Egypt, the One who chose a humble poet as His king, the One who loved the world with such a burning love that He died to save it.
And in spite of my fears, I know that wherever the Lord takes me next, He’ll never let go of my hand.
P.S. - I highly recommend listening to the beautiful psalms from House of David!
Psalm 77:4, The Great Adventure Bible
House of David, “David and Goliath Part 1”
wow. forever proud to be the Lewis to your Tolkien and forever proud to call you my friend!! I can’t wait to see where He takes you in this new season 🫶