Jenell Shields Jenell Shields

Episode 350- Trading Our Fears and Anxieties for God's Unshakable Peace with Katie Davis Majors

What does it look like to answer God's call in our life? How do we step into our calling when there is suffering that we never expected?

For author, ministry leader, wife, and mom of 15, Katie Majors Davis, she could have never imagined all the ways in which God would call her into the unexpected places that He has over her life. As a young woman, Katie answered the calling of her life and became a missionary in Uganda. Through that time, God called her to start a ministry called Amazima and adopt 13 girls from Uganda. While many have marveled at her inspiring story of faithfulness, it was often met with unseen difficulties and trials as she cared for the poor, walked her children through their own stories of trauma and suffering, and faced the unrelenting challenges of life and ministry. Her most recent book, Safe All Along: Trading Our Fears and Anxieties for God's Unshakable Peace, offers readers her own reflections on how to find peace in a world full of fears.

In this deep conversation, Davey and Katie talk about how calling looks much different than we anticipate it to, the ways in which wrestling can lead us to more intimacy with God and why pointing our kids to Jesus in their pain is the most loving thing we can do.

If you've ever found yourself in the midst of suffering after answering what you thought was God's call, this episode will remind you that even in the middle of God's invitation there can be both pain and joy coexisting as you step out in faith.

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Jenell Shields Jenell Shields

Episode 339- Nothing is Wasted Book: More to the Story with Mack Brock

How can music help us heal? What role does worship play in our most difficult seasons?

Songwriter, worship leader and singer Mack Brock has written countless songs that have helped people connect with God. But there is one song that became a rally cry for Davey Blackburn after losing his wife, Amanda and their unborn child in a home invasion. It was the song Nothing is Wasted by Elevation Worship. Mack was one of the songwriters and the singer on the release of that song. Mack could never have known that the words he penned years ago, would become a glimmer of hope to Davey in his darkest moment and a living reminder on which he would later build a ministry.

In this full circle conversation, Davey and Mack talk about the impact of the song Nothing is Wasted had on Davey personally, how God can use worship and music in our healing and why it is so important to take small steps of faith into a bigger, unforeseen purpose.

If you've ever been impacted by a song in your journey towards healing, this episode will teach you that God will use even the music that we hear to speak to us in our pain and remind us that nothing is wasted.

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Jenell Shields Jenell Shields

Episode 332- The Gift of Limitations with Sara Hagerty

What do we do with all of our limitations? How do we begin to reframe the limits of our bodies and our lives in a way that allows God to use the boundary lines He has placed around us?

For speaker, author and mom of seven, Sara Hagerty, it was the many limits of her journey with infertility, motherhood, walking her kids through their own pain and grief after adoption, and the daily reminders of her finite ability to deal with all the challenges she was facing that led her to look at what God may be doing in her limitations. In her latest book, The Gift of Limitations: Finding Beauty in Your Boundaries, Sara explores how our limits may actually be the grace of God rather than a withholding of something better.

In this insightful conversation, Davey and Sara talk about what God may be doing in our limitations, how we can find the beauty in the small, and the power of naming our limits.

If you've ever found yourself discouraged by the very things that reveal your humanity, this episode will encourage you to reframe the way you see the boundaries in your life and find beauty in the gift of your God-given limitations.

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Megan Griffith Megan Griffith

Episode 321 - Joyce Dalrymple

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 of how God is always at work. Seeing her daughter practice empathy birthed out of her pain was a reminder that even our greatest wounds can become a well of goodness if we allow the transformation to come from the power of the Holy Spirit's work within us.

In this insightful conversation, Aubrey sits down with Joyce to discuss how adoption involves so much loss and grief, the importance of learning to rest in your belovedness as a parent, and how to practically help foster and adoptive families. In addition, they touch on how to navigate church hurt with a wider perspective that can help you see the good in what the global church is doing and how that can keep you connected to a community of faith.

If you or someone you know is an adoptive or foster family or if you've ever struggled to see the good in your pain, this episode will encourage you that miracles are always beyond the surface of our hurt if we can learn to see them.

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Megan Griffith Megan Griffith

Episode 285 - Reflections on Family, Ethnicity, and the Sacred Work of Belonging with Tasha Jun

How do you navigate living between two completely different worlds? How do you honor the culture of a parent while being a part of another culture that doesn't always do the same?

For author Tasha Jun, learning to love and embrace the culture of her Korean mother while finding a place to belong in American culture left her feeling caught between two worlds at times. Being biracial, Tasha struggled with a sense of belonging, but even more so, with her own identity in feeling too much and not enough at times. Learning to love who God made her, including the different parts of her culture, helped her to fully experience the love of God in the messy middle of understanding and embracing who she was. As she became a mother, she saw the sacred gift in her own heritage and give that gift to her children.

In this raw and honest conversation, Davey and Tasha discuss what it is like to feel "othered," how writing can be a tool for healing, and seeing God meet you in your identity while learning to grieve the ways we feel like we don't belong.

If you've ever felt like an outsider in any sense, this episode will encourage you that you belong in the beautiful kingdom tapestry that God is weaving together and your unique makeup is exactly what God intended.

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Megan Griffith Megan Griffith

Episode 282 - Getting Unstuck and Moving Forward with Passion and Purpose with Christine Caine

How often have you found yourself stuck in the past? How is looking back keeping you from moving forward?

Best-selling author, speaker, and founder of A21, a worldwide anti-trafficking organization, Christine Caine knows how pain, trauma, and tragedy can keep a person stuck. Having experienced abandonment, being adopted, abuse and trauma as a child, Christine is well acquainted with the schemes of the enemy to hold her back from the purposes of God. In her latest book, Don't Look Back: Getting Unstuck and Moving Forward with Passion and Purpose, Christine explores Jesus' words in Luke 17:32, "remember Lot's wife," and how looking back kept her and how it keeps us from experiencing the fullness of God's promises, especially in our most painful moments. When our eyes get stuck on our circumstances, past or present, we can miss the invitation from Christ to look forward to a future full of hope.

In this episode, Aubrey has the privilege to sit with Christine to talk about what can get us stuck in the first place, what can happen when we constantly look backwards, and why it is so important to know the promises of God so that we can begin to move forward in faith.

Whatever is keeping you stuck, don't miss the opportunity Jesus is inviting you into as you trust Him when everything around you changes. Let this conversation be a guide for you as you turn towards Him and His promises.

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Megan Griffith Megan Griffith

Episode 279 - Finding Faith and Family through Foster Care with Tori Hope Petersen

What do we do with the messages that imprint themselves on our souls from our earliest memories? How do we overcome the most difficult parts of our story when our circumstances seemingly want to make us a statistic?

For author, speaker and advocate Tori Hope Petersen, growing up in an abusive home and entering the foster care system at a young age made her start to believe that her life didn't matter. But somehow in the midst of the darkest moments, God met her and showed her His unfailing love in the face of people's failures to love and care for her and that her life had a greater purpose. Since that season, Tori has written about her experience through the system in her book, Fostered: One Woman’s Powerful Story of Finding Faith and Family through Foster Care and has become an advocate for others. She is also now a mom, undoing the brokenness from her family of origin and creating a beautiful tapestry called family through biological, adoption and foster parenting.

In this important conversation, Aubrey sits with Tori to discuss the questions that can come when you're wrestling through a life riddled with pain, the value of community in healing from our trauma, and how the Church can become the foundation for care and love for those in the foster care system.

Whether or not your life has been touched by foster care, this episode will remind you that no matter the messages you received as a child, God's message for you is clear: you are dearly loved and none of your pain is ever wasted.

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Catherine Fitzgerald Catherine Fitzgerald

Episode 257-Embracing the Messy and Complicated Journey of Adoption and Fostering with Jillana Goble

Parenting is complicated whichever way you come into it. When grief and trauma are part of the equation, it can add even more layers to navigate. How do you sit in the messiness of adoption and fostering while learning to see the joys and the wins in the midst of it?

For Jillana Goble, it has been through the challenges of parenting via birth, foster care, and adoption that she has learned to welcome the invitations the Lord offers in the tensions of it all. As she said yes to the difficulties and joys, she has seen her own understanding of God and family widen in an unimaginable way. She has learned that parenting of any kind does not come with a road map or a formula with a promise, but rather it is the small, daily obediences to say yes to loving our children well in all circumstances. It is there that we begin to see God show up in places that were once thought to be irrevocably broken.

In this conversation, Davey sits down with Jillana to discuss the often complicated nature of adoption and fostering that we don't always see as well as how understanding how integrated we are-mind, body and soul-can help us love kids who have gone through unfathomable loss and trauma and how in it all, Jesus shows up in the mess.

Whether you have adopted or fostered or know someone who has, this episode will help you see that God invites us to know Him more through the imperfect and often difficult stories we all walk through.

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Amy Sylvestre Amy Sylvestre

Episode 229 - Building Resilience in the Face of Adversity with Dr. Danisha Keating

How do you persevere in the face of unending challenges and difficult circumstances? Where can you find the strength to keep going when life tries to knock you down over and over again?

For Dr. Danisha Keating, building resilience seemed impossible after a traumatic childhood filled with abuse and moving in and out of the foster care system. Her journey in life was hard, at one point leading her to be a caretaker for her younger siblings while in college and yet she persevered to graduate and go on to earn her PhD.

Now, she spends her life reaching back into the fire, encouraging kids walking a similar journey in the foster care system, to know that their lives have promise and hope beyond their current circumstances. In all the trials she has endured, Dr. Keating has anchored her hope in the Lord and her identity in Him.

In this episode, Davey sits down with Dr. Keating to discuss what it looks like to build resilience in a life that is full of difficulty, the power of community in encouraging those low on hope, and how healing can lead us into a life of purpose in helping those who are walking the road we once did.

This conversation will leave you inspired as you hear how even the most dire of circumstances can forge a deep-seated resilience in our hearts as we move forward into a future filled with possibility.

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Amy Sylvestre Amy Sylvestre

Episode 228 - Choosing Joy in Chronic Pain and Painful Circumstances with Lindsey Wheeler

How do you choose joy when it feels impossible? What can you do when a chronic diagnosis leaves you debilitated?

For Lindsey Wheeler, the answer did not come easily. After a Lyme disease diagnosis left her struggling to get out of bed everyday, Lindsey knew she had to make a choice: to see the good in life in spite of her circumstances or to dwell in self-pity.

It wasn't easy, but Lindsey chose to change her perspective on her life in the middle of so many challenges that included her health and raising a child with special needs.

It was that perspective shift that has given her the strength to bring hope to others in their pain. She started a company called Bottle of Tears that provides curated gifts of comfort to those who are hurting.

In this episode, Davey talks with Lindsey about what it looks like to choose joy when life feels hard, the power in reminding people that they are seen in their pain and why community matters so much in our suffering.


This conversation is an encouragement for anyone who has ever felt like some parts of life cannot be "fixed" this side of heaven and offers an invitation to hope and joy in the midst of it.

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makerscc makerscc

Episode 34 - Jamie Ivey

As the host of the popular podcast “The Happy Hour” and author of If You Only Knew, Jamie Ivey has had the opportunity to share her story with thousands of people across the world. It’s a powerful story, but like most of ours, it’s not always pretty. Jamie’s story is a moving testimony of failure and redemption, pain and healing, and God’s work through our messes. On this episode, Jamie sits down with Davey to talk about how God has taken the messy parts of her story and redeemed them for His message.

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