The Nothing Is Wasted Podcast

What does it look like to discover who God is when you experience profound loss at a young age? How can a teenager find their identity in Christ while navigating grief and pain? For actress and author Alena Franklin, the sudden and tragic loss of her mother, Wynter, at just 14 years old left her reeling through some of the most formative years of her life. Carrying the weight of grief while also t...

How can we begin to untangle the thoughts and emotions that are keeping us stuck or pushing us toward unhealthy forms of coping? What does it look like to embrace the God-given agency we have over our minds? Dr. Lee Warren is a practicing neurosurgeon who has experienced the depths of grief and loss after losing his son, Mitch, years ago. Through his own journey of pain and healing—as well as his...

How do we find people who can help us carry the weight of our stories? How do we learn to experience safety in community when relationships themselves have often been the source of deep pain? Author, speaker, and podcaster Toni Collier has endured profound hardship throughout her life, including caring for a parent at a young age, surviving an abusive marriage, experiencing sexual betrayal, enduri...

How can you tell the difference between big emotions that are part of the human experience and true dysregulation connected to past trauma? What does it look like to safely move the energy of anxiety, fear, and stress out of the body? Lacey Jervis helps countless women recognize the ways their physiological responses impact how they show up in everyday life, relationships, and faith. Through her w...

How do we reconcile our dysregulation after trauma when it comes to our faith? What is the connection between our physiological experience and God? It was through Lacey Jervis own experience with trauma that she began to understand the profound impact the body’s physical responses can have after loss. After losing her dad to a heart attack at a young age while she was home with him, Lacey began to...

How can we partner with the Holy Spirit in our own journey toward healing? What role does the Spirit of God play in breaking strongholds in our lives? For author and pastor Alex Seeley, it was her own experience of healing through the power of the Holy Spirit that revealed how important—and often overlooked—the Holy Spirit is in the modern Church. After walking through breakthrough from a childhoo...

Warning: This episode discusses pornography addiction and may not be suitable for all listeners. How do we break the stronghold of addiction when it becomes deeply attached to our lives? What do we do when the pain of our past resurfaces through patterns of addiction? Drew Boa didn’t fully realize how much pain he was carrying beneath the surface until his struggle with pornography began to threat...

How do you break free from an abusive cycle when it feels like there’s nowhere else to turn? How can God take the pain of the past and transform it into purpose as you rebuild your life after trauma? For former public official, TV show host, and speaker Carolene Mays, imagining the life and leadership she would one day have seemed impossible while trapped in an abusive marriage. Escaping that rela...

How do we begin to move through the pain we’ve buried for so long? And how can our willingness to be vulnerable create space for others to share their own stories honestly? Pastor Chris Durso never imagined how a single question could uncover years of suppressed pain. During a therapy session, the simple prompt—“How was your childhood?”—opened the door to long-buried memories of sexual abuse he ex...

What happens when the escape you turn to begins to take over your life? How do you begin to heal the deeper wounds that often lie beneath addiction? For author and podcaster Jonathon Seidl, the descent into alcoholism was rooted in unresolved childhood pain. After experiencing his father leaving at a young age, navigating an often difficult relationship with his stepfather, and enduring childhood...

How does God heal the mind? And what happens when faith and science meet in the middle of our pain? For decades, conversations about mental health and faith often felt disconnected. But psychiatrist Dr. Karl Benzio has spent his life exploring how Scripture and neuroscience actually point to the same truth: God designed the mind with incredible capacity for healing, renewal, and transformation. Dr...

How do you get back up after a life-shattering loss? How do you find hope when you must surrender to God the life you thought you’d have? Courtney Pray Duke was living her dream with her husband, Andrew, and their three young children when one day changed everything. As she was putting the finishing touches on Thanksgiving preparations, Andrew—an avid cyclist—went out for a bike ride. Just a few h...

How does discipleship shape the way we make sense of pain and suffering in our lives? Why is Scripture so important—not only for our own spiritual growth, but also for the growth of our children? As a military wife, Hunter Beless began to recognize her own need for deeper discipleship amid the challenges and constant transitions of military life. She started seeking out conversations with those wh...

How do you find a way forward when shame from sexual abuse threatens to keep you stuck? What do you do with pornography and sexual addiction when they’re intertwined with the wounds you’ve carried for years? For podcast host and entrepreneur Ken Freire, finding freedom from pornography and the lingering shame of childhood sexual abuse was anything but easy. The road was marked by isolation, secrec...

What do you do when you find yourself living a life that was never your plan? How do you navigate the heartache of divorce and come out the other side stronger? Author and speaker Vaneetha Risner was no stranger to suffering long before her husband told her he had met someone else and wanted a divorce. After having walked through polio as a child, losing her infant son due to medical negligence an...

What does the gospel speak into our suffering? How can the Bible anchor us with hope in our deepest pain? Author and co-founder of She Reads Truth, Amanda Bible Williams has helped countless people understand the importance of Scripture in their everyday lives. But it was through her own journey—adoption and raising a medically fragile child—that God’s Word became even more personal and powerful....

How do we make sense of the pain others have caused us in light of the choices we’ve made? What do we do when we find ourselves somewhere we never intended to be? Christian recording artist Nicole C. Mullen opens up about the pain she endured in an abusive marriage. As she reflected on her journey, she came to understand that while she was never responsible for the abuse or betrayal she suffered,...

How can the Church move from constantly referring people in pain elsewhere to becoming the first place people turn for healing? What would it look like to create spaces where everyday believers are equipped with the tools to step into the hurt of those they encounter? Social researcher Shaunti Feldhahn and psychologist Dr. James Sells recognized that the mental health crisis in our country was at...

WARNING: This episode contains conversations about suicide ideation and may not be suitable for all listeners/viewers. How do you get back up when life seems determined to knock you down? What does it look like to move toward the fire of adversity and pain in our lives instead of running from it? For author and pastor Shawn Johnson, the challenges of growing up in a home marked by addiction, battl...

WARNING: This episode contains conversations about suicide ideation and may not be suitable for all listeners/viewers. How do you find hope again when the pressure of life builds to an unbearable level? What does it look like to find confidence in God’s love instead of worldly success? Like many leaders, Pastor Charles Metcalf found himself at a breaking point. After the challenges of 2020 left hi...

How do we model the way God brings each of us into His family? How can we faithfully support families who choose to grow their families through fostering or adoption? For Pastor Andrew Hopper, adopting a child with special needs has opened his eyes to a deeper understanding of what it means for each of us to be adopted into the family of God. Through navigating complex medical needs, the pain ofte...

How do you begin to disrupt the toxic family patterns you experienced as a child? What do you do with the dissonance between the outward appearance of your life and the reality of what was? For Amy Duggar King, life was lived in two very different worlds. One appeared happy and carefree, marked by regular appearances on her extended family’s reality TV show, **19 Kids and Counting**. The other was...

How can you believe you are highly favored when you experience great loss? What does it look like to trust that God still loves you when tragedy strikes your family? Kurt and Denette Schaer had already seen how God can redeem suffering—having walked through Kurt’s infidelity and experiencing radical healing in their marriage. But even that couldn’t fully prepare them for the heartbreak they would...

WARNING: This episode contains conversations about suicide and suicide ideation and may not be suitable for all listeners/viewers. How do you experience Jesus fully after coming to Christ? How can you continue to experience Him when life is full of pain and difficulties? Naeem Fazal has an incredibly powerful testimony of how he first encountered Christ. Born into a Muslim family, Naeem experience...

What does suffering offer us when it comes to spiritual awakening? How can we experience a movement of God after walking through a season of pain? In 2023, Pastor Zach Meerkreebs was an ordinary pastor serving at a local seminary, still walking through the emotional pain from the loss of his infant daughter, Esther, three years prior. On what seemed like an ordinary day, he delivered a chapel mess...