How can we begin to process our stories after a life-altering loss? Where can hope be found in the midst of insufferable pain? How do we connect the dots and find God's hand in our lives when suffering overshadows?

For Joan Kelley, those were difficult questions to answer after losing her teenage son, Will, to cancer. Yet, she found healing through looking at her life and the ways God has shown up, even in her worst pain. By going back in her own story, she has since been able to help walk alongside others in theirs by offering a listening ear or spiritual direction. And she has used what pain has taught her to bring hope and healing to those she encounters. While Joan knows she doesn't have all the answers, her journey has brought incredible lessons of faith, endurance, and how God can be trusted even in our darkest seasons.

In this episode, Davey sits down to talk with Joan about how everyone can use their unique wirings to bring hope to the hurting, why we have to make the time for our grief, and how processing your own story is pivotal in whatever healing path you are on.

Whatever the loss, Joan's story reminds us that we can all get to the place in our grief where we can still dare to hope.

WARNING: This episode contains conversations about suicide ideation and may not be suitable for all listeners/viewers.

The statistics are staggering: twenty-two veterans die by suicide a day. After years of serving in the Army, Fernando Arroyo almost became one of those twenty-two when the pain of his experience in the military made him want to end his life.

Finding hope and healing in the aftermath of war and post-traumatic stress was no easy task. The transition from a life full of meaning and purpose as a Paratrooper in the Army into the civilian sector was difficult for Fernando. He went from having a tight knit community, a brotherhood, with a common mission into a life where he felt alone and without purpose. That pain began to build as he was reminded of his past and eventually, he found himself on his couch with a gun, ready to end his life when the Lord miraculously intervened. From there, he found restored hope once he began to be open and honest about his struggles. Through sharing his story and what he was walking through, a newfound purpose emerged as he found other veterans who needed understanding and help in their own journey. Now, Fernando serves veterans at Step Forward Academy, helping them through the transition from military to civilian life and has recently written a book chronicling his journey called, The Shadow of Death: From My Battles in Fallujah to the Battle for My Soul.

In this special Veteran's Day episode, Davey and Fernando talk about the difficulty for veterans to transition out of the military into the civilian world, the powerful impact that can come when we share our story, and the importance of community in our lives and our healing.

Whether you are a veteran or not, this conversation will help you walk with others through the most painful parts of their stories and encourage you in sharing your own.

If you've been around here at Nothing is Wasted, you probably know the story of how we came to be as a ministry. It was after his own pain to purpose journey in which Davey Blackburn lost his wife, Amanda, and their unborn child in a tragic home invasion that God birthed this idea of a ministry that walked others through whatever pain they faced.

In this special two-part conversation, Davey sits down with Aubrey to discuss what the past few months have been like as the legal side of their journey came to a close with the trial and sentencing of the perpetrator of Amanda's murder.

For many, it may come as a surprise that this part of their story is just now happening, seven years after that fateful day that forever changed Davey's life. And yet, for the Blackburn's and Amanda's family, the significance of the number seven, a number that means completion in Scripture, is more than a mere coincidence. In spite of all the suffering they've endured, the timing is just another reminder that God has been with them every step of the way. And as this chapter in their journey comes to a close, a new one is beginning.

In Part 2 of this two-part episode, Davey shares walking through the sentencing of one of the accomplices in Amanda's case, how you never know the impact your response to your story may have on others, and the wrestlings that can come as we struggle to understand God's justice in our hurt.

Whether you've been following Davey's journey since the beginning or if you are new to the Nothing is Wasted family, this conversation will encourage you to press into the hard parts of your journey with God because His faithfulness will be revealed and redemption will come in the most unexpected of ways.

If you've been around here at Nothing is Wasted, you probably know the story of how we came to be as a ministry. It was after his own pain to purpose journey in which Davey Blackburn lost his wife, Amanda, and their unborn child in a tragic home invasion that God birthed this idea of a ministry that walked others through whatever pain they faced.

In this special two-part conversation, Davey sits down with Aubrey to discuss what the past few months have been like as the legal side of their journey came to a close with the trial and sentencing of the perpetrator of Amanda's murder.

For many, it may come as a surprise that this part of their story is just now happening, seven years after that fateful day that forever changed Davey's life. And yet, for the Blackburn's and Amanda's family, the significance of the number seven, a number that means completion in Scripture, is more than a mere coincidence. In spite of all the suffering they've endured, the timing is just another reminder that God has been with them every step of the way. And as this chapter in their journey comes to a close, a new one is beginning.

In Part 1 of this two-part episode, Davey recounts what he encountered during the trial, how he learned to find closure outside of the courtroom, and the way the picture of his earthly father helped him deeply understand the posture of His heavenly one in the depths of his pain.

Whether you've been following Davey's journey since the beginning or if you are new to the Nothing is Wasted family, this episode will remind you that even in the complicated parts of our story, God is ever so near.

There are moments in life where in an instant, everything changes. How do you choose joy when your whole life is blindsided by pain? How do you find hope when you don't even know what the next hour may bring?

For Kelli Campbell-Goodnow, she never imagined the turn her life would take one night in January 2016. As she went to sleep, her life was good with her loving husband, United States Marine CH-53 pilot Major Shawn Campbell and her four children that she homeschooled at their dream duty station in Hawaii. But when she awoke, she got the call that every military wife fears, there had been an accident. For five days, rescue workers searched for the wreckage of a two helicopter collision off the coast. Soon thereafter, the search ended and Shawn was among the twelve Marine lives lost.

Kelli would have to immediately step into a completely unknown life. She would pack up her home and move across the country to be with family. She would decide to put her kids in school instead of homeschooling. And she would remind herself that while everything around her was changing, God did not.

Davey and Kelli discuss why it is important to pay attention to the small details of our stories as they unfold, the daily act of surrender that grief requires of us, and the ways we can trust God even when our lives change completely.

Kelli's story will help you face whatever circumstances you are in with a determined perspective to see God in the midst of it.

Losing a spouse is devastating. Losing a spouse to suicide is full of layers of pain and questions. How do you even begin to wrap your mind around such a traumatic event and how do you walk your children through their pain? What do you do when a new tragedy stirs up your past wounds and hurts from your childhood?

Blake Williams has spent the last year navigating those questions and so many more after losing his wife, Hope, to suicide. Having wrestled with mental health issues and chronic pain, Hope took her life in the couple's home and Blake found himself in the middle of a story he had never imagined for himself or his five children. As he has started to heal and move forward, the pain was a reminder of some of the past lies that haunted him his whole life after being abandoned and rejected by his parents. Blake could have easily allowed the old scripts he so often felt in his life to become his reality, but instead, he decided to shift his perspective from that of a victim into a victor.

In this transparent conversation, Davey and Blake talk about the importance of not allowing our past to dictate our future, the paradigm shift that is necessary to keep us from going under from our hurt, and the value in learning to speak truth to the lies we are believing.

You'll be encouraged to look through a different lens when it comes to your history, no matter what you have experienced.

There are some stories with such unfathomable pain that it can seem impossible to ever see a glimpse of redemption throughout them. When the depth of heartbreak is so great, how can you ever see the light of goodness again?

Jerry Sittser has walked a road of catastrophic loss that most of us cannot even imagine. In 1991, Jerry and his wife and children were hit head on by a drunk driver. In an instant, life as Jerry knew it was completely over as the wreck claimed the life of his wife, his young daughter, his mother and the wife and unborn child of the other driver. There in the complete wreckage of his life, Jerry slowly began to learn how the must excruciating of suffering can grow the soul in unimaginable ways. The lessons Jerry learned through his own grief have served as a healing balm to many through his groundbreaking book, A Grace Disguised. Recently revised for a 25th Anniversary edition, Jerry vulnerably shared how grief has not only changed him, but grown him in ways that only suffering can. Through his story, he recognizes how all griefs, whether comparable or not to his own, invite us to step in to a grace that transforms us.

In this episode, Davey talks with Jerry about how experience can and ultimately has to be, the catalyst for our growth, the tensions that exist in pain and suffering, and how to step into the questions that inevitably come from our greatest pain.

With a hard won wisdom, a theological richness, and a profound outlook, Jerry's insight will help you process any grief you've experienced through a completely new lens. This conversation is one you'll want to listen to more than once as you glean from the deep well of Jerry's experience and wisdom.

What do you do when you were living the life you always dreamed of and find it taken away in a matter of moments? How do you learn to trust God after a tragic loss? How can you forgive when a grave injustice is done against you and your family?

Laura Hao had to answer these questions and so many more when she lost her husband in a senseless murder in 2018. Laura had always dreamed of becoming a missionary since she was a little girl. She realized that dream and moved to Asia as a young woman. There, she met her husband, had her four children and began working as missionaries in the place the Holy Spirit had planted a seed of a dream in her heart so many years ago. Together, they experienced blessing and favor as they served the Lord and sought to build the Church in a closed part of the world.

But that all changed just two days after returning to the United States for a time of refreshment and visiting loved ones. While packing her daughter's bag for camp the next day, gun shots echoed just outside the door. She opened it to find a traumatic scene, her husband was lying lifeless on the ground after being shot in a random act of violence.

Laura experienced the depths of the darkness that grief can bring. Feeling buried like a seed, she felt as though she was frantically grappling her way out of the dark. But through it, she also experienced the illuminating light of truths that can only be found in the recesses of pain. In this raw conversation, Davey and Laura talk through a shared experience of learning to live in the darkness of a painful loss, how to trust the Lord in the seasons fo grief, and how justice, mercy and forgiveness all coexist.

The truths Laura and Davey share are ones that will help you as you navigate the most difficult parts of your story with honesty and hope, whatever it may be.

It's every parent's worst fear to lose a child. How do you continue to trust God when your experiencing unrelenting pain? The journey after such a tragic loss is never linear and it can be full of chaotic feelings and opposing emotions. Yet God offers us an invitation to meet Him in the messiness of grief.

For Esther Lee, that invitation was often on the cold, dirty hospital bathroom floor where she cried out to the Lord so many times during her young daughter, Ava's, cancer journey. And while her grief began there and continued on well after her devastating loss of sweet Ava, she has learned that the Lord graciously allows for the anger, the questions, the fears and the doubts in the messy middle of our suffering. Esther has walked a long road of first being a parent of a child with life-threatening allergies to later receiving a diagnosis that no parent wants to hear as well as the non-stop rollercoaster of doctors and hospital visits. And while her circumstances have felt impossible and her grief has been messy, God has met her in it all.

Her story doesn't tie up in a neat, tidy bow when it comes to her pain, but instead, it is honest and authentic, one that allows for the raw emotions she feels while leaving room for the truth of God's goodness and kindness as she grapples her way through every parent's greatest fear.

In this moving conversation, Davey sits down with Esther to talk about how vital community can be after experiencing loss, the true wrestlings that can come in regards to God's goodness in our pain, how purpose shows up in small ways, and learning to worship when it feels hard.

No matter your story, you will be able to relate to Esther's wrestlings in the messiness of heartbreak and pain and find comfort in knowing that we serve a God who is not alarmed by it when we do.

So often when it comes to the topic of singleness, there is this sense that many believe significance comes only when you finally find "the one." But the truth is, leading a life full of purpose doesn't have to wait until there is a significant other. In fact, singleness, no matter how long that season lasts, can be a fulfilling, purposeful time that the Lord uses in your life and in the lives of those around you.

For Mandy Hale, it was coming to this realization that provided her the freedom to find joy in fulfilling her life's purpose as a single woman. Rather than focusing on the one kind of love she didn't have, she learned to see the love all around her through friendship, community, and family. She was able to connect with others through her writing and not get in stuck in waiting for a future with her present right in front of her.

In this episode, Davey talks with Mandy about finding purpose right where you are, the impact the pandemic and other difficult life events can have on a single person, and paying attention to the love you already have in your life.

Whether you are single or just waiting for something in your life, this conversation will remind you to choose to live fully in whatever circumstances you find yourself in.

Sometimes life can break your heart after one unexpected tragedy. But, what about when circumstances seems to break your heart all throughout your story? How do you find healing when it seems heartache is woven into the fabric of your life?

For Christian recording artist Blanca, it felt like her whole life was marred by heartbreak. As a child, she was a victim of sexual abuse. As an adult, she lost both her parents and went through a devastating divorce. Finding healing in life when it seemed like the pieces were shattered has been difficult, but through her journey with the Lord, through her music and with the help of a counselor, Blanca has begun to experience healing from her wounds.

In this episode, Davey sits down with Blanca to talk about facing the pain in order to heal, the value in sharing your healing process with others, and how creativity can be a tool God uses to mend a broken heart.

Healing is never an easy endeavor, but Blanca's story is proof that God is in the business of binding up the wounds of the brokenhearted.

How do you live life with the end in mind, especially when you are told your days are numbered? We all know that Scripture calls us to live life through the lens of heaven, but how do we really do that?

For Colleen Chao, finding out she had Stage 4 Cancer forced her to think about living the way God called her to in spite of the fact or perhaps because of the fact, that she is dying. Having expected life to go in a much different direction, Colleen has been learning to see the beauty in the most unexpected places like suffering and pain.

In this episode, Davey has a raw conversation with Colleen on seeing God's beauty in the darkness of suffering, the transformative power of gratitude, and how the blood of Jesus can keep us from dwelling in our regrets.

You don't have to have a life-altering diagnosis to be encouraged by Colleen's story of living life fully when heaven is closer than you anticipated.

Have you ever felt like you've gotten stuck in the grief? Instead of allowing the pain to bring something new and beautiful forth in your life, do you find yourself struggling to move forward?

Any loss can leave us feeling stuck, but for a parent, losing a child can make it feel like there will never be life past the devastation. For September Vaudrey, losing her beautiful, 19 year old daughter in a car accident in 2008 made her wonder if life would ever look different than it did in the aftermath of that tragedy. And yet, step by step, she began to see God's goodness as He took her pain and created beauty from ashes. It was not an easy journey by any means, but a rich one.

In this episode, September sits down with Aubrey to talk about what it looks like to get unstuck in our grief, why facing our pain head on matters so much, and how to give permission to others around us as they grieve in their own unique way.

Full of practical wisdom, this conversation is for anyone who has ever felt like moving through the pain in their story is an impossible feat but wants to try and experience the good God has on the other side of it.

What do you do when you feel disconnected from God in the middle of a hard season? How do you learn to trust Him when circumstances make you angry and confused?

For Emmanuel and Adrienne Threatt, this was the wrestling they navigated after experiencing multiple miscarriages over a period of time in which other losses seemed to come at them unrelentingly.

Trust can come easy when things are going our way and when our prayers are being answered the way we want, but learning to put your hope and faith in God after disappointment after disappointment can feel daunting.

For the Threatt's, this process of learning was arduous. It came through vulnerability and transparency with themselves, God and others. Sharing their journey through the valleys of miscarriage helped them to find purpose in the seemingly never-ending pain and helped them to be honest with the Lord as to what they were feeling in the midst of it.

Even after receiving the news that they were finally pregnant with triplets, there was still so much to work through with the Lord.

In this episode, Davey talks with the Threatt's about what to do with the feelings that God is far away from you in your pain, how to process anger towards the Lord and using worship as an act of faith in hard times.

The vulnerability and transparency the Threatt's share will encourage anyone walking through a painful season to continue to trust God, even when the path seems dark.

What do you do when life takes a turn you never saw coming? How can you step into a story you didn't plan for yourself?

For Kelley Scites, the wrestling with those questions began after an unexpected surgery. What had promised relief from pain and a new lease on life ended with having to be put on full time oxygen. The life she had imagined as an active mom came to a screeching halt as she had to adapt to this new pace of living. But it was through this shift in her story that Kelley began to see the importance of perspective. Living focused on Heaven rather than her current circumstances began to give her hope in what at times felt hopeless.

In this honest conversation, Davey sits down with Kelley to talk about why perspective is so important in circumstances that won't change, learning to trust God with the outcome of our story and choosing growth over bitterness.

The details of Kelley's story may be different than yours, but they offer a rich insight into how our perspective can make or break us in the middle of hard things.

It can be so hard to see, let alone accept the hand of God in the middle of our deepest pain. How can you learn to trust God's sovereignty in your darkest moments?

For Greg and Cathy Buffkin, that was no small feat. After losing their adult son Ryan to suicide, it was difficult to accept their loss and find the strength to move forward after so much pain.

Living every parent's greatest fear, the Buffkins found themselves wrestling with difficult emotions and yet, managed to find the Lord in the most heart wrenching loss they had ever endured.

From their pain, they have a new found purpose as they've sought to equip others as they navigate walking alongside someone who has lost a child.

In this episode, Davey sits down with Greg and Cathy to talk about what it looks like to experience God's sovereignty in grief, the best ways to support someone who has lost a child, and the difference between healthy and unhealthy ways of healing after loss.

Grief is an inevitable part of our lives this side of heaven, which is why this conversation is so important for all of us as we come face to face with pains we never imagined.

Whether or not you've endured the loss of a child, this episode will give you important insight into what it means to choose healing when grief threatens to overwhelm.

On one fateful day, Jon Hagedorn gathered his wife and children to engage in a family tradition of theirs, something they did to make sure they always remembered God’s goodness and faithfulness. But they couldn’t have known how much that belief was going to be tested.

Mere hours later, Jon’s wife died suddenly. Facing life as a single father while dealing with his own grief, Jon had no choice to face the same questions that any of us would ask in that situation.

Is God really good or really faithful if he let this happen?

To conclude our Widowhood Series, Jon sits down with Davey to share his story and how he found a deeper, richer knowledge of God in the midst of unimaginable pain.

It’s hard enough when one challenge hits your life, but what if it’s not just one? Sometimes trials don’t come alone, and we can find ourselves walking through one difficult season after another. Every new circumstance brings new levels of pain and grief, and it can be hard to draw near to God when everything seems to be going wrong. This is exactly what Molly Huffman faced. After her mother’s death, a miscarriage, the loss of her newborn son, and a divorce, it seemed like the whole world was against her.

Davey sits down with Amanda's mother and sister to talk about their family relationship, dealing with grief, questioning God, and more.

Davey continues his conversation with Phil Byars, Amanda Blackburn's father, as they talk about ministry, leadership, family relationships, and more.