If you had told the Christopher Yuan of years ago what his life would look like today, he probably wouldn’t believe you. As a promiscuous gay man who made his living selling drugs, Christopher’s life didn’t look anything like it does now. But an arrest, a prison sentence, and an HIV diagnosis turned out to be the things that would change Christopher’s life forever. Now, Christopher spends his days sharing the message of the gospel. To kick off our series on singleness, Christopher sits down with Davey to share some of his powerful story and how he’s learned to find his identity solely in Christ.

When we experience something traumatic, it affects far more than we often realize. We often carry our worst moments with us in both our minds and our bodies. Take Michelle Moore for example. Michelle spent much of her life carrying the trauma of watching her mother die at a young age. Entering motherhood herself caused Michelle to experience the trauma at a whole new level, but it seemed like Michelle’s worries were coming true as medical issues threatened both her life and that of her child at the same time. But through it all, Michelle learned to find God in the midst of pain, and from there to find healing from trauma both new and old. Michelle sits down with Davey to share some of her story and how she’s turned it into her purpose to help other mothers who face the same challenges they did.

Where is God in our worst moments? For those of us who have experienced some event that caused immense pain, it can be nearly impossible to see how God was present in that moment. After all, if he was there, wouldn’t he have saved us? Kurt Willems wrestled with this question as he spent his life struggling to heal from the abuse he experienced as a child. Now, Kurt spends his life teaching others the things he learned in his own healing journey and helping people to answer that question in their own stories. Kurt sits down with Davey to share some of his story and the things he’s learned about the presence of God in the midst of our sufferings.

Our faith in God can be tested beyond our wildest dreams in a moment. We can think our faith is strong one minute, and the next minute a single event, something as small as a conversation or a phone call, can shatter our delusions and bring us face to face with reality. Kristy Furlow experienced this when doctors told her that her husband had a rare, terminal form of cancer. With only a few months left together on this earth, Kristy and her husband learned to see God for who He really is in the midst of trials, and found a deeper, truer faith out of all of it. Kristy sits down with Davey to share some of her story of losing her husband and the purpose she has found out of the ashes of this pain.

The last year and half or so has had long-lasting effects on all of us. Studies have shown that reports of mental illnesses such as anxiety or depression have skyrocketed between 2019 and today. But for some, these issues are not brought on by one particular season, but rather they are something that we face our entire lives. Paul Asay is one such person. While he didn’t have the words for it at the time, Paul began facing anxiety as a child, and by the time he was in college that had morphed into severe depression. This depression has followed him his entire adult life, and he has had to struggle with what it means to be a follower of Jesus and also be chronically depressed. After all, shouldn’t the hope of Christ be enough to beat back depression for good? But through this season, Paul has learned what it means to follow God in the midst of darkness and to see Him on a deeper level because of it. Paul sits down with Davey to share some of his story and the wisdom he’s learned about going through depression, whether it be seasonal or a lifelong battle.

As a mother, Amy Sylvestre wears a lot of hats. She’s both a biological mom and an adoptive mom. She’s a heart mom, and tragically, a mother of child loss. Walking through the pain of losing your infant child is one of the worst nightmares for any parent can face, and that became Amy’s reality when her son Hudson was born with a severe heart defect. Despite countless attempts by some of the best medical professionals in the country, Hudson didn’t make it long past his birth. Through unimaginable pain, Amy has learned what it means to have a faith that goes beyond your head and into the deepest parts of your being. To wrap up our parenting series, Amy sits down with Aubrey to share her story of loss and some of the ministry that has come out of it.

When we grow into adulthood, our relationships with our parents naturally shift. For some, our parents are still close. We view them as confidants, and guides or perhaps even friends of a sort. For others of us, those relationships can become strained or even broken entirely. No matter the situation, these relationships always take work. Our relationships with our parents will never be as healthy as they could be unless we invest in them and fight to make them better. Blythe Daniel and Dr. Helen McIntosh are modeling this. When Blythe approached her mother, Helen, about writing a book about healthy mother/daughter relationships, it was clear that they had the opportunity to help a lot of people. To continue our Parenting Series, Blythe and Helen sit down with Davey to share some of their story and the wisdom they’ve learned about repairing and maintaining healthy relationships with our parents.

As we heard on our last episode, Ron and Nan Deal have walked through incredible pain in their lives, and gleaned wisdom and a deep understanding of God from that journey. But apart from their story of loss, Ron also shares his wisdom with others in his job as a marriage and family therapist, specifically focusing on blending families. Ron’s own story isn’t one of a blended family, but his work with these families throughout the years combined with his own experiences of walking with God through struggles have made him one of the foremost experts on this topic in the Christian world. Ron sits down with Davey to share some practical wisdom about blending families in this installment of our Parenting Series.

Ron Deal is a bestselling author, therapist, and speaker who specializes in family ministries and especially in blending families. But before Ron was as successful as he is today, he and his wife Nan walked through an unimaginably painful season. Twelve years ago, Ron and Nan took their son Connor to the doctor after he’d been complaining of a headache. What seemed like a minor illness turned out to be much more serious, and not long later, Connor was gone. Through incredible pain, Ron and Nan learned firsthand what grieving as a family looks like. To continue our Parenting Series, Ron and Nan sit down with Davey to share the story of losing their son and what they’ve learned through the long, hard healing journey they’ve walked through in the years since.

There are few, if any, challenges as difficult and important as being a mother. From conception to adulthood, moms are tasked with raising their children, taking care of them, and making sure they grow up in a loving, safe home where they can become the best people they can be. This task is simultaneously incredibly rewarding and unimaginably challenging. Every mom knows that being a mother comes with pains and trials that none of us would ask for.To kick off our Parenting Series, Aubrey is joined by Kristi Blackburn for a special conversation about the joys and pains of motherhood. Aubrey and Kristi’s motherhood stories are very different, but they are both intimately familiar with the challenges and pains that come with this responsibility. And more importantly, they both know how God has met them in the midst of these challenges. Aubrey and Kristi share some of their mothering stories and the wisdom they’ve learned along the way in this special conversation.

This week marks the fourth anniversary of the launch of the Nothing Is Wasted Podcast! In the last four years, we’ve seen God move in incredible ways through this ministry and this podcast in particular. To celebrate the occasion, Kristi joins Davey and Aubrey to answer some of your questions, and we update you on some big events in Kristi and Aubrey’s lives as well as in Nothing Is Wasted Ministries as a whole.Thank you for listening to and supporting the Nothing Is Wasted Podcast over these last four years. Whether you’re a brand new listener or you’ve been listening since episode 1, we couldn’t do this without you. Your listenership and support are what makes the healing that so many people have experienced in the last four years possible, and we really believe that this is only the beginning!

For many of us, our pain is a one-time event. We experience something truly terrible, and then we begin the process of healing. While we may carry the scars of that experience forever, we won’t spend the rest of our lives in the same valley we found ourselves in in our worst moments. But what if that’s not the case? This is the questions that Liuan Huska faced when she discovered that she was dealing with chronic pain. Forced to come to terms with the realization that she would never be without this pain, Liuan had to wrestle with what meant to trust that God was good in the middle of a trial that no one would have asked for or imagined. Liuan sits down with Davey to share some of her story and what she’s learned about who God really is by walking through a painful season with no clear end in sight.

For most of us, forgiveness is a tricky subject. We know in our minds that it’s the right thing to do, and we probably try to forgive minor offenses as best we can. But when we are wronged in a much larger sense, forgiveness feels like the last thing we want to do. Lysa Terkeurst is all too familiar with that feeling. Not only is she a hugely successful ministry leader and bestselling author, but Lysa has walked through incredible amounts of hurt in her own life. Through this journey, Lysa has learned what forgiveness really is and how it unlocks the door for us to heal from our own wounds regardless of whether or not we are reconciled with those that wounded us. Lysa sits down with Davey to share some of what she’s learned about forgiveness and reconciliation, and the ways they factor into bringing healing in each of our stories.

When we’re in the middle of a trial, sometimes the idea of joy can seem ridiculous. It’s a concept that’s all over our worship songs and quotable Bible verses, we hear about it constantly in stories and sermons. But in the midst of pain, how are we supposed to be joyful? That’s the questions that Shaunti Feldhahn was attempting to wrestle with when she sat down to write her newest devotional. Shaunti filled the pages of Find Joy with words that she believed the Holy Spirit had given her to help others, but little did she know that she would soon find herself in need of the very things she was writing. Shaunti sits down with Davey to share some of what she’s learned about holding onto joy no matter what circumstance we find ourselves in.

No matter how successful we are in life, all of us are just one piece of bad news away from our entire world shifting into something we can’t imagine. That’s what Robb Hiller experienced when he was diagnosed with not just one form of cancer, but three. With his prognosis extremely negative and unsure how much longer he’d be alive, Robb embarked on the most difficult journey of his life. But in the middle of the pains of cancer treatment and the fear of death, Robb learned lessons about the nature of God and all of our lives that couldn’t be learned except through the fires of unbelievable pain. Robb sits down with Davey to share some of his story and what he learned about how we can thrive by helping others even in the midst of our own valleys.

We often think of our lives as sectioned off in different parts, each one wholly independent from the other. Our mental, physical, and spiritual lives have nothing to do with each other, or so we think. But in reality, our selves are nothing like that. The physical, mental, and spiritual sides of ourselves are all interconnected, and when one suffers or thrives, so do all the others. Anne Kertz Kernion has made it her goal to share the intersection between neuroscience, theology, and psychology, and how each of these affects the others and holistically impacts our lives. Anne sits down with Davey to share some simple spiritual practices we can do to help our mental and emotional health even in the midst of trials.

When we think of greatness, it’s hard not to picture a career like Darryl Strawberry’s. For many of us, he’s a household name, and his accomplishments as a professional baseball player speak for themselves. But no amount of fame and fortune could truly bring Darryl happiness. Instead, it would take a radical shifting of everything in Darryl’s life for him to realize that he’d spent his time chasing the wrong things. Now rather than pursuing his own fame, Darryl spends his life making the name of Jesus famous. Darryl sits down with Davey to talk about how God met him in the middle of his own mess and turned him around to find a whole new purpose.

Most of us believe in God in our minds. We think all the right things, that God is in control, that he is good, that nothing is wasted. But when these beliefs only live in our head, there’s only so far they can take us. It’s when we walk through intense suffering that these ideas move from our heads to our hearts, and that’s when God truly becomes real to us. Vaneetha Risner knows this all too well. Through chronic disease, miscarriage, sexual betrayal, the loss of a child, and more, Vaneetha has come to know God deeply through unimaginable pain. Vaneetha sits down with Davey to share some how she’s learned to thrive in the midst of suffering by taking back her story.

For most of us who have walked through difficult seasons, we can probably point to one big trauma in our lives. There’s usually this one point where everything went wrong, everything shifted in ways we never saw coming, and now we’re left trying to pick up the pieces. But for Kendra Clark, those painful seasons just kept coming. In the span of a few years, Kendra lost her parents and her brother, her husband left her, she went through several traumatic medical challenges, and more. Faced with a seemingly endless cycle of trial after trial, Kendra was forced to ask, “how is God really good in the midst of all this mess?” Kendra sits down with Davey to share some of her story and how she learned to not only survive but thrive in the midst of so many painful seasons.

For those of us who are parents, seeing our children suffer or in danger is one of the greatest pains we can experience. We want to hold on to these blessings from God, to keep them safe within our grasp from any harm that could come their way. But, as Meg Apperson knows all too well, that isn’t always possible. Meg’s second child was born with a rare birth defect that led to life-threatening complications, and before her youngest was out of the ICU, her older child was hospitalized separately. With two children in two different ICU’s, Meg was forced to come to terms with the realities of suffering and to wrestle with the question, “Is God really good when all of this is so bad?” Meg sits down with Davey to share her story and some of what she’s learned about trusting in the goodness of God no matter the outcome.