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

What do you do when your worst nightmare comes true after a painful battle with a loved one's mental illness? How do you hold the tension between hope and the mysteries of God in your life after loss?

For author, speaker, advocate and pastor's wife Kay Warren, learning to hold onto hope after losing her son Matthew while accepting the mysteries of all she did not understand was difficult. Kay and her husband, author and Pastor Rick Warren, had walked a long, difficult journey through Matthew's lifelong struggle with mental health and faced every parent's worst fear coming true when their adult son died by suicide. Kay experienced the depths of grief and sorrow as she wrestled with God to make sense of such a tragedy. But her pain has given her the opportunity to become an advocate for mental health in the church and a voice of hope for parents who are facing a similar journey.

In this honest conversation, Davey and Kay talk about how reality, grief, and hope must all co-exist together, why we need both hope and mystery as we look back on our pain, and how to deal with the shame and guilt after losing a loved one to suicide.

If you've found it hard to hold on to hope in the darkness of your suffering, this episode will light a pathway towards it.

How do we hold onto faith in a world full of so much suffering and sorrow? Where do we find hope in the mystery of all the pain?

How do we begin to lead our generation through pain? What do we do with the tension of our heartache and the hope we have in Jesus?

For author and pastor Levi Lusko, learning to grieve the loss of his daughter Lenya while leading others through their own pain has been a beautiful dance of both sorrow and hope. After losing Lenya from an asthma attack, Levi began to write down everything God was teaching him in the aftermath. Those lessons would eventually become a part of his best-selling book, Through the Eyes of a Lion: Facing Impossible Pain, Finding Incredible Power. Years later as Davey found himself in the depths of his pain after losing his wife Amanda, it was a text from Levi that would encourage his spirit and help him to find a way through his own grief.

In this encouraging conversation, Davey and Levi talk about how to deal with the feelings of guilt that can sometimes accompany a loss, why building a strong marriage is so important before a major trial, and the ways in which each new grief is unique.

If you've struggled to hold the tension between the hurt you've experienced and the hope you have in Christ, this episode will remind you that even with hope, our hurt will still hurt and God is with us through it all.

How do you keep choosing to truly live after losing one of the closest people in your life? What does it look like to show up when you're feeling the depths of grief?

For our Nothing is Wasted podcast co-host, author, pastor and speaker, Aubrey Sampson, learning how to allow life to come in again through the cracks of her pain after losing her best friend, Jenn, was difficult. Finding her way through the grief without having the person she could always process pain with felt impossible. And yet, through it all, Aubrey began to see how even in one of her greatest losses, there were moments where she could keep death from winning by choosing to find joy and life in what was in front of her. It was there that she could begin to see God's redemption in her heartache and fight back against darkness.

In this vulnerable conversation, Davey sits down with Aubrey to discuss how redemption often doesn't look like we think it will, how to begin to move forward after losing someone you love, and what to do when God's presence feels more like absence in your pain.

If you've ever experienced the loss of a best friend or have wondered how to even begin to live again in grief, this episode will inspire you to keep choosing to show up fully in the one, precious life you've been given.

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 Director here at Nothing is Wasted, as she shares practical wisdom from a previously recorded masterclass called Hope for the Holidays: Navigating the Season When it Hurts. This podcast episode is a special gift to you, our Nothing is Wasted listeners, as you walk through this season.

If the holidays feel different than years past because of the pain you are enduring, let this episode offer you tangible ways to honor your grief and make it through this Christmas season.

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.

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.

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.

Andrew and Christy Bauman were like many expectant parents. As they neared the birth of their first child, they were filled with excitement. But their joy turned to anguish as their child was stillborn. Now, six years later, the Baumans are channeling their pain into helping others. With two more children and a third on the way, two therapy practices, and a number of books, Andrew and Christy are a testimony that God isn't afraid of our pain, and of the hope and healing that can come out of our laments.

Davey continues his conversation with Amanda's mom and sister as they talk about how pain has changed them, raising children in the wake of tragedy, how to help someone going through loss, and more.

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.

Welcome to the first full episode of the Nothing Is Wasted Podcast! In this episode, Davey sits down with Amanda Blackburn's father Phil Byars to talk about living through tragedy, some of the emotions that come with grief, and how to relate to God in the midst of our pain.