How can you believe that God's good work will be done in a story that begins with so much loss and tragedy? Where can you find miracles in pain and life's difficulties?For author, Bible teacher and ministry leader Joyce Dalrymple, opening her eyes to the way the Lord was moving in her own life and through her daughter's adoption required intentional attention. By starting to notice the way God was bringing redemption into their stories, she began to experience a deeper understanding as to the...

When trauma or tragedy strikes, how do you find the support you need? Who can you trust to be a wise guide on your path towards healing?In this special episode, Davey and Aubrey are joined by Nothing is Wasted coaches Ken Roberts, Teresa Glantz, Jen Ball and Karissa Sprinkle to discuss why having people to walk alongside us in our pain is so important. Each one of them have found themselves in the darkest valleys and found a way towards healing with the help of others. Now, they help walk...

How often have you found yourself ready to give up? What do we do when it feels too hard to keep going?Pastor and author Nick Connolly knows what it is like to be ready to quit. As a pastor, he has faced challenges that have made him second guess his calling. Even in the midst of writing and launching his book, Don't Give Up Just Yet: Choosing Persistence in a World of Overwhelming Resistance, he found himself experiencing panic attacks and unrelenting anxiety for the first time in his life....

How can you find laughter and joy when life is so unbearably difficult? Where is joy when pain and suffering seem to be a never ending part of life? For author and podcaster Molly Stillman, learning to laugh has been balm to her soul in some of her greatest losses. Having lost her mother as a teen, inheriting a sizable inheritance only to lose it shortly after and finding herself in debt and then experiencing pregnancy losses later in life, Molly has walked through too many sorrows to count...

How do you know when your way isn't working? What are the signs that tell you that perhaps you aren't abiding in God and instead relying on your own efforts to get through life?For pastor and author Kyle Idleman, it took a friend suggesting he see an executive coach before he realized that the indicator light of his life was on and that he needed to make some adjustments. There were so many signs that were suggesting that he was trying to force his way in life and leadership instead of living...

What do we do with the hard questions that arise from the pain we are feeling? How do we acknowledge our fears and our doubts while holding onto our faith?For author Kristen LaValley, the process of moving from a formulaic faith that believed God wouldn't allow pain if she did all the right things into a genuine, messy belief and understanding of God came through several seasons of suffering. From losing her and her husband's ministry position and faith community to witnessing a murder, the...

How can the most difficult moments of our lives point us to our purpose? Where can we find God's will for our lives in the sufferings that we have faced?Raleigh Sadler, author and founder of the anti-trafficking organization, Let My People Go, experienced a shift in his life's trajectory after the tragic loss of his best friend to cancer. From that painful moment, God seemed to align a path that he had never considered by helping the most vulnerable and yet his first task was leaning into his...

What does grace have to do with our suffering? How do we experience the fullness of who God is when life is full of pain? Author and journalist Philip Yancey has long sought out to understood the role grace plays in life and in our hurt. Having walked through a difficult childhood and untangling his understanding of God from church legalism steeped in racism and sin, Philip has offered what he has learned along the way to his readers through his many books, including his latest, Where the...

How do we navigate those questions we have in the middle of our struggles? How can we hold onto our faith when doubt seems to want to unravel what we know to be true? For author and podcaster Laura Wifler, walking through a season of doubt in the middle of life's challenges wasn't something she anticipated. As someone who spent much of her time encouraging other women on her well-known podcast and through her book by the same name, Risen Motherhood, to cling to Jesus in their lives, she never...

What do we do when we find ourselves in the middle of a medical crisis with our kids? How do we learn to trust God with our most precious gifts, our children? For author Jessika Sanders, learning to surrender and trust the Lord was a journey after she found herself in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). It was through that experience that she began to not only pray for her own child, but the countless others that she met while attending to her son's medical condition. As she saw the need...

What do we do when there is no cure for our pain? How do we live with joy and thanksgiving when our physical reality is a chronic condition?For author Andrea Herzer, learning to find joy in her chronic pain and incurable diagnoses was a feat. While her mind longed to be grateful, her physical condition made it seem impossible. And yet through her journey with chronic pain, cancer, and an accident, she was able to see God's kindness to her in the middle of her literal aches. Learning to rely...

How do we move through our deepest hurts in marriage? What do we do when the marriage we envisioned is not the one we are living in? For authors and podcast hosts Aaron and Jennifer Smith, the difficulty they endured in the early days in their marriage made them wonder if they would even make it as a couple. Troubles with physical intimacy and disappointment threatened to undo their union. It took them learning to be vulnerable and transparent within safe Biblical community for God to start...

How do we begin to experience the strength of God in the middle of our weaknesses? How can we allow the Creator of all to enter into our greatest place of need? For author and podcaster Emily Jensen, walking through her son's medical challenges revealed weaknesses in her spirit that were unlike any she had faced before. The missed milestones, the extensive plans for intervention, and her own grief in the midst of it all revealed to her a need for God's strength where she felt the weakest. It...

How do we live in the most connected generation and yet feel so alone? What do we do when we find ourselves struggling with loneliness? Author and lawyer Justin Whitmel Earley argues that loneliness isn't the way God intended for us to live because we were made for deep and intentional friendships. It was his own journey through a season of depression and anxiety led him to discover the power of spiritual disciplines including the practice of embodied community. In his latest book, Made for...

How does suffering shape our hearts? How do we tell the story of our pain in a way that both heals our own ache and helps others in theirs? Author and recording artist Andrew Peterson is a storyteller. His beloved Wingfeather Saga Series tells an epic fantasy-adventure tale about three children caught in a great mystery. Exploring themes of courage, sacrifice, and redemption, Peterson masterfully captures the attention of audiences young and old alike. His understanding in the power of story...

How do we practice the way of Jesus when our lives are riddled with pain and suffering? What does it look like to grow spiritually when we are hurting?Author and Bible teacher John Mark Comer has been leading others towards what he calls an apprenticeship with Jesus, teaching how we can learn the intended rhythms and practices God wants us to engage in by simply looking to how Jesus walked and talked in this world. We are all being spiritually formed by something, he argues, and if we want it...

Have you ever wondered if you are still truly healing when the pain feels as fresh as the day you experienced a past loss or grief? How do we know that healing is happening as time moves forward, but our ache remains?Davey Blackburn, Aubrey Sampson, and Eric Schumacher are not only hosts on the Nothing is Wasted podcast, but all have experienced their own seasons of deep grief, loss, trauma and tragedy. With pastoral wisdom and the heart of fellow sojourners in the valley, this episode is a...

How do we enter a new year after a loss or trauma? What do we do when it feels like that flip of the calendar means leaving something we held so dear in the past? The truth is with every new milestone, including a new year, our pain can seem to be amplified by the memories of what we've lost. It can be hard to enter a new season knowing that parts of ourselves, people we love and our lives as we once knew them are in the year we are leaving behind. How do we even begin to navigate a beginning...

The holidays can feel especially tender for those of us who have recently experienced a loss, trauma or transition. Figuring out how to move through a season where it can seem like the whole world is experiencing happiness while we are struggling with feelings of grief and sadness is hard. How do we begin to find hope for the holidays? How do we navigate the waves of emotions and the changes in traditions we once held so dear? In this special release episode, join Amy Sylvestre, Community...

Grief can feel crushing. How do we begin to take the steps to move through the pain we encounter? How do we help others who are experiencing loss? Author Beth Marshall has felt the pangs of loss in her life. In one season, she lost three family members and began to wonder if the feelings she was experiencing were normal. Wondering if she could ever love her life again, Beth began taking some practical steps towards healing. It was through that journey that she began to learn from herself and...

What do we do when the things we are seeing in church or with Christian leaders is leading to disillusionment? How do we deal with the disappointment in the ways Christians behave in the public square, online and in the pews?Author and Editor in Chief Dr. Russell Moore has experienced the pain of denominational turmoil and sharp political disagreements that have led to hurtful slander and unkind discourse. He has found himself at the center of conflicts that he never intended to be a part of....

What if the perpetrator of your pain isn't something on the outside, but your own sinful choices that have led to your suffering? How do we navigate the self-inflicted hurt caused by our own destructive decisions?Author and Pastor Max Lucado knows the feelings that can come from sinful decisions. In his own life as a young man, he began to see the dangerous trajectory of his choices if he didn't surrender to God's leading. Later as a well-known pastor and author, he would experience a similar...

What do you do when your past keeps showing up in your present? How do you address the pain from childhood as it presents itself in your adult life?For Dr. Mark McNear, a childhood of every kind of abuse and trauma left him completely broken. From sexual abuse as a small boy and the harsh emotional abuse of his father to several traumatic events of violence and being hit by a drunk driver, Mark's entire life was marked by extreme pain. The wounds o f his past begin to manifest in his adult...

How do you find the words to pray when you are in the middle of loss and suffering? How do mark the holy moments, both big and small, in a special way? Author Doug McKelvey and artist Ned Bustard have collaborated on three volumes of Every Moment Holy, books filled with liturgies to help people find the words in the joyful, the mundane and the most difficult moments of life. In their second volume, Every Moment Holy: Death, Grief, and Hope they offer prayers for those who are in the middle of...