Faith & Feelings

What do you do when it feels like God broke His promise to you? Grief and pain come to us all, and sometimes they come through shattered dreams: when life crumbles, and with it, the God you thought you knew. In the disorientation and confusion of what grief can be, we can experience a death without a funeral. Those unseen, unclear deaths of ideals, expectations, hopes, and even versions of ourselv...

What do we do when something unexpected happens, and life suddenly curls up into the frightening mark of a question? When we’re standing on shifting ground, how do we live this question well? In this episode, my friend Iris joins me to share about an injury during high-school that nearly resulted in the loss of her leg. She puts language to the panic, powerless, and self-contempt that can come whe...

I often wonder if, in our Western context, we’ve so fused the American dream with the risen Christ that when suffering enters our lives and does not leave quickly, all we know how to do is hide, judge, or despair. Prolonged, continual experience of weakness, pain, or loss often places us in a position that feels vulnerable and unsteady. How do we keep on living with pain that has no foreseeable en...

One of the hardest questions to answer in life is not “Does God exist?” but “Is God kind?” Sometimes, unspeakable things happen at the hands of others. Experiences of spiritual abuse in particular shatter our ability to trust ourselves, God, others, and the world around us. When the hands that harm us embody the words and face of Jesus, it can feel as if we’ve been given the raw data that God is n...

So many of us have experienced a before and after.   A "before” you knew that life was fragile…and an “after.” When you can’t go back. You can’t un-know. You are changed. In some ways, grief will always be accompanying us. Where is God in this? And what do we do when, like David expresses over and over again in the Psalms, we feel a sense of divine abandonment or betrayal?  In this episo...

Sometimes suffering lasts…and where is God in this? How do we find joy, hope, and love when life becomes undone? These are two questions that I’ve sat with over the last few months. In this episode, I set some groundwork for our next series “When Life Doesn’t Make Sense” and give you a glimpse of some of the guests I’ll be hosting on the podcast over the next several weeks. In many of our Christia...

There’s a myth that is easy to buy into: that obedience to God will equal an easy life. In our modern context, many of us have absorbed an understanding of faith that requires life to work out…but what happens when it doesn’t? In this next podcast series called “When Life Doesn’t Make Sense,” I’ll be hosting conversations with wise, deeply authentic, and kind people about their stories o...

What does it mean to love someone who has hurt you? In today’s episode I’m joined by my friend Ashley Volk, who received her certificate in narrative-focused trauma care from the Allender Center. In her experience over the last few years in facilitating Story Work groups, she has identified 7 important questions to consider when engaging with someone who has hurt you. We unpack each of these quest...

To wrap up our first series on the podcast, I’m giving you the microphone to ask me your questions. I love hearing your voices whenever I can, and I think this will be a lot of fun. I’ll do my best to offer some solid and thoughtful responses, if not answers.   LINKS + RESOURCES FROM THE EPISODE: Get Faith & Feeling's weekly resourcing email Open Path Collective 16 Weeks to Finding S...

The experience of anxiety is often coupled with a felt-sense that withdrawing and hiding is our safest option. It can have a crippling effect, reshaping the way that we engage in relationships and even the way that we inhabit our bodies. Of course, the goal is to move through our anxiety into a calmer, more regulated state. But do you know that there is an incredibly wise & kind part...

Triggers can be a confusing word. At its heart, triggers are reactions to past trauma. They are not just about remembering past pain, but reexperiencing past pain as if it were happening in the present. But what do we do when we are triggered? Although there are no skills that can make a person stop themselves from ever being triggered again, there are skills that allow us to cope until we are les...

Triggers can make us feel like we’re on fire when there is no flame. But what actually is a trigger? Being triggered is not the same as being uncomfortable. Being triggered isn’t just about something rubbing you the wrong way. When someone is triggered, it means that they are having a strong, reflexive reaction to something that wouldn’t ordinarily cause that response. At its heart, triggers are r...

The anxiety that you feel today is not random. Anxiety in adulthood is often rooted in unprocessed stories of trauma… stories that our minds may have forgotten or suppressed but that our bodies still remember. As I talked about last week, our present anxiety is often trying to tell us some really important things about the story of our lives up to this point. But if you decide to begin reflecting...

Have you ever wondered where your anxiety comes from? Many people are unaware that patterns of anxiety in adulthood are often rooted in unprocessed stories of trauma. Trauma has a tendency to hide, but the symptoms don’t lie. Our anxiety is often trying to tell us some really important things about the story of our lives up to this point. In this episode, I explore the questions “What exactly is t...

Worry and anxiety are often blurred together as the same thing. But do you know that they actually have distinct differences? In fact, our ability to differentiate worry and anxiety is essential to be able to process them in a productive and healthy manner. I explain how worry and anxiety are different, and how they go together within the larger context of your nervous system. What I&nbs...

Anxiety can feel debilitating. But what actually is it? What’s happening inside of us when we feel anxious, and why do feel it? Anxiety is often our body’s way of alerting us to important, unfelt emotions. It’s always trying to tell us something. Whether you’re wondering if you have anxiety, want to understand it more, or long to better support a loved one, this episode is for you. I unpack how to...

In this episode, I share my heart behind Faith & Feelings, an interesting way that I prepared for the podcast, and what you can expect moving forward. You'll also hear some of my story behind hitting a wall (emotionally, spiritually, and physically) at 18, and why I slowly began to realize that prayer and therapy were never intended to be on opposite ends of the spectr...

Faith & Feelings is a podcast designed to help you untangle & honor your emotions, authentically practice your faith, and integrate both into your everyday life so that you can experience the goodness & delight that comes from living in relationship with yourself, God, and others. Join author and clinical counseling grad student Taylor Joy every Monday, where she’ll share therapeutic i...