Wendy warmly welcomes the winsome and wise Amanda Held Opelt for an honest conversation about grief, faith, and what it means to love like Jesus in a fractured world.

Amanda, an author, speaker, and songwriter living just outside Boone, NC, opens up about the sudden death of her older sister, writer Rachel Held Evans, at age 37.  Wendy and Amanda  reflect on Rachel's legacy of authenticity, willingness to be honest about doubt, and gift for inviting deeper consideration of  what it means to follow Jesus in this day and age. Amanda describes how her journey of grief following her sister's death led her to explore grief rituals that different cultures have practiced for centuries. The fruit of that quest became her first book, A Hole in the World: Finding Hope in Rituals of Grief and Healing. 

The conversation then turns to how to hold conviction with grace in a polarized, meme-driven culture, and exploring how humanizing the people we disagree with matters more than winning the argument. 

Amanda also previews her forthcoming book, Provisions: Finding Home in the Food Folklore of the Appalachian Table (out this November), and talks about healing her relationship with food and body through Appalachian tradition, plus the baking-as-prayer retreats she co-leads with food scholar Kendall Vanderslice.

Find more from Amanda on her website [https://amandaheldopelt.com/]and Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/amandaheldopelt/?hl=en], and follow her monthly Substack [https://amandaheldopelt.substack.com/] for updates on her writing.

#AmandaHeldOpelt #GriefAndHealing #RachelHeldEvans #FaithAndDoubt #ChristianDeconstruction #AHoleInTheWorld #Provisions #AppalachianCulture #EmbodiedFaith #SurvivingSaturday

This is What it Means to Be Held... and to "Hold Fast"... With Grace - Amanda Held Opelt

In this episode of Surviving Saturday, Wendy sits down with Jenny McGrath, a psychotherapist and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, for a powerful conversation about religious trauma, purity culture, faith, embodiment, and healing.

Jenny shares her journey from growing up homeschooled in Colorado Springs and being shaped by the purity movement, to becoming a missionary in Uganda and eventually rethinking her relationship with Christianity, her body, and systems of power. We explore how trauma affects the body, the impact of purity culture, Christian faith and deconstruction, community, and what it means to find freedom from oppressive systems.

Jenny also talks about her upcoming book, Anatomy of a Missionary, and her work through Indwell Movement, [https://www.indwellmovement.com/] helping people who have experienced religious trauma develop a healthier relationship with their bodies.

#DanAllender #NarativeFocusedTraumaCare #ReligiousTrauma #PurityCulture #SomaticExperiencing #ChristianDeconstruction #TraumaHealing #Psychotherapy #FaithAndHealing

From Missionary to Counselor to Somatic-Healer--The Journey of Jenny McGrath!

"Though she be but little, she is fierce..."

This compact complement, from Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice, could really apply to either of the women whose conversation you get to listen in on for this one.  

One has to be fierce to come alongside people who have suffered often unspeakable evil, and to help them find their voices. 

Abusers come in all guises and wield a wide range of weapons to prey on their victims. Some are powerful people with fancy titles before (or smarty-sounding letters after) their names.  Others are caregivers or confidantes who wore masks of kindness and care to build trust, only to end up shattering innocence and compelling complicity. 

One thing most abusers have in common, though, is their diabolical expertise at silencing their victims. Part of the insidiousness of sexual or spiritual abuse is how effectively perpetrators cover their tracks, and leave victims terrified of naming (not just to others, but to themselves) the harm they have suffered. Offering a listening ear to people with such wounds is both delicate and demanding work, not for the faint of heart.

But it takes altogether "next level" fierceness to create safety for victims to reconnect with their bodies and other parts of themselves that they have shut down or shunned, out of shame or chagrin. And then to invite them to healing, wholeness, and the goodness and life that they were made for? Well, that's just off the charts.

That's the kind of work that Wendy's guest Rebekah Vickery does as a therapist in private practice, as well as a teacher and facilitator for The Allender Center. Diving in to the deepest waters, traversing the densest jungles, navigating the most mind-effing mazes, to seek and save the lost and forgotten. Deploying her next-level kindness, wisdom, and creativity to break her clients free from the places they have been imprisoned for far too long. And fiercely naming the power--in all its forms--that has often been co-opted for evil rather than good.

Now, all that makes this episode sound waaayy darker than it actually is. But you, dear listener, know us better than that!  Wendy and Rebekah's friendship and affection for one another shines through as they compare notes on their own journeys to escape imprisoning thought processes and systems of power. And there's actually a heck of a lot of laughter.  (Spoiler alert: Rebekah's "rapture story" alone is worth the listen. :-) )

UPCOMING WORKSHOP OPPORUNITY: Wendy and Rebekah are part of the teaching and facilitation team for The Allender Center's upcoming virtual Story Workshop for Spiritual Abuse & Healing, May 1-3, 2026. (Click here [https://theallendercenter.org/event/story-workshop-for-spiritual-abuse-healing-may-2026/] for more info and to register.)





A Conversation with the Fierce and Formidable Rebekah Vickery

Quick thought experiment: If someone says the word, "desire," what's the very first thought that pops into your head?

Was it any of the following:

 * Romantic love? 
 * “Say what?” 
 * The U2 song off their woefully underappreciated Rattle & Hum album? (IYKYK)
 * Nice to have,  but more like a luxury.
 * Desiring God by J.I. Packer? 
 * Sex? 
 * A psalm saying something about   God giving you the desires of your heart?
 * Lust? 

Or did you maybe start to crave ice cream? Or a beer? Or a day off?

Was it the concept itself that you thought about, or an actual desire that you first noticed?

And even though this prompt asks about a thought, did you have any kind of feeling at the same time?

What else did you feel, if anything, when asked to think of that word?

The wide variety of possible responses that ordinary folks might have (or that one somewhat out-of-practice would-be writer/podcast producer can think up in a few minutes) suggests strongly that our relationship with desire is, well… complicated.

Author and therapist Jay Stringer is not afraid to think about desire. Or to research it. Extensively. 

Nor is he at all daunted to talk about his newest book that comes out in March, Desire: The Longings Inside Us and the New Science of How We Love, Heal, and Grow . Download this one and put it on repeat, cuz it's that good.

Destigmatizing Desire:--Our Discussion About Desire with Jay Stringer (Part Deux)

C.S. Lewis famously wrote in The Weight of Glory, "It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

You may have heard that quoted in a sermon before.  You may even have read it in the original text, or maybe even considered it on some deeper level. But I mean, really, what would it be like to live as if that concept were actually TRUE? 

Our friend Jay Stringer, an NYC-based psychotherapist and author, has spent a great deal of time thinking and writing about our relationship with our desires, and what if anything God might have to do with them. In his first bestselling 2018 book Unwanted, he suggested that paying attention to various forms of brokenness in the realm of sexual desire (whether through addiction or avoidance) might tell us something important about ways that we need to heal.

The overwhelming positive response to that book, and the boatloads of people who felt safe naming difficult things about themselves and their relationship with sexual desire in particular, let Jay know that he was on to something. But as it turned out, the challenges people spoke or wrote of were both broader and deeper than his initial theme.

That piqued Jay's curiosity about the concept of desire in general. Jay heard story after story of desires of all kinds being denied, deferred, derailed, defiled, demanded, discarded, or distorted. (And okay, probably some other verbs that do not start with the letter D). 

And that led him to do a decidedly deeper dive into desire, in the form of yet another thoughtful survey regarding how people relate to desire in five key areas of their lives.  But Jay's work isn't merely facts and figures reduced to words on a page.  It's a wise, kind, thoughtful engagement with the stories of regular, relatable people who have wrestled with what they desire, and why, and whether it's too much or not enough.  And to his delight and surprise, once again, Jay's own dance with desires provided ample grist for the mill as he wrestled with this topic.  

The result--which works to all our collective benefit-- is his new book, Desire: The Longings Inside Us and the New Science of How We Love, Heal, and Grow, coming out this month (March 2026). We hope you will genuinely enjoy this preview, ideally using more than one of your senses, and that it will whet your appetite for Jay's kindness and insights in the book.  (Or at least for part 2 of our interview.)

From "Half-hearted" to Infinitely Joyful--Digging (Into) Desire with Jay Stringer (Pt. 1)  

We all have stories about how we first learned about sex. If asked when and how you were told about it, and by whom, what or who comes to mind? Were you given "the talk" by  a parent, or a youth group leader, or maybe your Health teacher at school? Or maybe you were surreptitiously given (or found left in your room) a book or a brochure to read, and perhaps with an invitation to "come back with any questions." Chances are, if you grew up in a Christian family or church context, there is likely some element of shame, fear, or at least discomfort with the topic.  (So kudos if you happen to still be reading.)

And if you were alive and anywhere near evangelical Christianity in the late 1990s, you may remember the iconic cultural phenomenon of "courtship." The surprising catalyst of this movement was then 21-year-old Josh Harris, author of the Christian bestseller, "I Kissed Dating Goodbye."  Harris' take on how to honor God while pursuing a suitable marriage partner practically flew off the shelves, catapulting him to "stardom" and launching him into a career as a public speaker and as a pastor.

Here's the thing, though. Like all 21 year olds, Josh grew up, and unsurprisingly encountered challenges in his professional and personal life that defied simplistic answers. The church where he pastored blew up, spectacularly, and his marriage imploded as well.  

The resulting crisis of faith led him to enroll in seminary, where another strange thing happened:.  When the subject of his book or his preaching and speaking career came up, several of his classmates had stories of how the book had impacted their lives... And, uh, not in a good way. 

People whose faith and humanity he respected told Josh that the messages in his book had conjoined with broader messages in Christian subculture about sexuality, lust, and protecting one's "purity" at all costs. And the cumulative effect had left lots of them feeling tremendous shame.  Shame for the mere fact that they had sexual thoughts. Or for the fact that they had little idea what to do with sexual desire when there was little courting opportunity to be found. And many described having found themselves,  once married, horribly ill-informed and unequipped to have a sex life at all (let alone a fulfilling one).

How Josh responded was courageous. He listened--first to these seminary peers, and then to  people he had encountered or ministered to directly, and ultimately to hundreds more people who had thoughts as well (through an online poll).  He was troubled by what he heard. 

What he did next, though, is nothing short of extraordinary.  He re-read his book and reexamined it, based on what he had learned through life and by listening to hours and hours of feedback.  

And then he retracted it--even had it unpublished.  He has since dedicated a significant portion of his time to walking back the harm his words had worked. 

He's not minimizing what he did, or making excuses based on his youth or background. And he's not cashing in on his repentance, either.  Instead he is amplifying the voices of several gifted Christian authors and speakers who are leading the way in unpacking the legacy of the evangelical church's teachings on sexuality.  

We are honored to have Josh as our guest.  On March 1, he'll be joining Charlotte's own Stephanie Stalvey, author of the forthcoming graphic memoir Everything in Color: A Love Story at Warehouse 242 for a talk on recovering from the aftereffects of purity culture. But here's a chance to get to know him beforehand, in the privacy of your own headphones.  

We hope you will listen, and maybe share this special episode with a friend or two, if nothing else just to see what kinds of honest, relationship-building  conversations it might spark.



 

Kissing "Purity Culture" Goodbye?

Here's a fun thought experiment:  Imagine you are in line at a coffee shop or helping with a newcomer's lunch at church, and you spot a person who seems really, really familiar. Once you look past the questionable fashion choices and the "what exactly were they thinking?" haircut, you realize that this person you are meeting is in fact a younger version of yourself, from 20 or so years ago.  

After the initial shock wears off, and you recognize your younger self, what would you do? Would you introduce yourself fully to yourself?  Or would you exercise restraint so as not to freak them out?  If you were to sit down for a chat, what do you imagine that conversation would be like?   What would you want to say? And how do you think the younger you would receive your thoughts?

That's where we start with this one, good people.  But there's oh so much more.  

What do we make of the suggestion that our bodies "keep the score" of the difficult circumstances, lesser "small-t" traumas, and downright harm that we have experienced throughout life?  If that notion is true, or at least a potentially helpful therapeutic concept, what do we do if we realize that "the score" sometimes was decidedly not in our favor? What does healing look like, when the harm was experienced so long ago, and yet its aftereffects linger with us (sometimes in very problematic ways)?   

What if we can't remember the details of what happened, and we aren't even sure it should be a big deal?  Or what if we can describe some events thoroughly, but only from a place of sheer emotional detachment, because "the past is in the past, and what can you do?"

And what does any of this mean for our relationship with God?  If we have befallen harm in our families of origin-- and most of us have, to at least some degree-- how do we reconcile that reality with our view of God? Where was He in those darkest moments?  And if He is "the same yesterday and today and forever," and he has the power to overcome evil with good,  why didn't He do it then?

Spoiler alert:  we don't offer answers to these questions.  We can't.  

We can, however, offer a safe place to wrestle with them, honestly.  And not just with our minds, but with every fiber of our bodies and hearts. As well as a picture of a God who we can dare to hope is with us and for us, even in the midst of our confusion, doubt, and pain.  

The Complexity of the Self (or selves) and the Perplexity of God...  

Just in time for Snowmageddon(-ish?) 2026, we are back for Season 3!   

So, it's, uh, been a minute...  There may be a few things going on--in the world at large, in our lives for sure, and likely for all you good folks as well. 

That predictable flip o' the calendar is often a time that prompts reckoning, reflection, and maybe even recon for the coming year.... Some folks seem to jump in to the new season with glad abandon,  harnessing newfound energy, racking up resolutions, and plotting plans aplenty.  

Others of us, though, may not quite be sure how we feel about another trip around the sun, the way things are going now... I mean hey, if winter is the season for hibernating, how about we just extend that idea for a bit and stay in bed a bit longer, both physically and metaphorically?  

Well, however you happen to look at the turning of the clock and the changing of the seasons, you are welcome here.  

Join us for an intimate conversation about naming the darkness, coldness, and emptiness of Winter, yet without letting it totally take us out. Could it be that  this kind of season might also be a uniquely meaningful place of preparation and formation?  What if, rather than leaving us to burrow in the covers or wander aimlessly, God is a God who might just surprise us in the most unexpected places with his playfulness and delight? 

As always, there's a little something for everyone (including a brand new original poem from Wendy!).  

And after you listen, please drop either of us an email to let us know what YOU think:  What is wintering like for you, right now in this moment?  And what are you willing to consider maybe thinking about possibly daring to hope it might become?

Wintering in the Wilderness... and the Surprising Playfulness of the God Who Meets Us There

What if poetry isn’t just for English majors and literary journals—but for anyone trying to make sense of their story?

In this episode, Wendy sits down with longtime friend, counselor, and poet Sue Cunningham to talk about the unexpected ways poetry has shown up in their lives—and how it’s helped them make sense of their stories. They talk about the moments that drew them toward writing, the wounds that made it feel out of reach, and the slow return to creative expression as a form of healing, honesty, and hope.

Sue shares how a flyer on a coffee shop bulletin board led her back to poetry, and Wendy reflects on a college experience that nearly convinced her to give it up for good. They also reflect on poetry as protest, as presence, and as a way to say things that are too complex—or too sacred—for ordinary language.

This conversation is gentle, grounding, and full of quiet encouragement. Whether you consider yourself a writer or not, it just might help you see your own story a little differently.

Connect with Us!
Follow @nurturecounselingnc [https://www.instagram.com/nurturecounselingnc/] on Instagram
Visit nurturecounseling.net [https://www.nurturecounseling.net/]

Sue Cunningham: Finding Poetry in Unexpected Places

Feedback is one of the trickiest things to get right in any relationship—especially the ones that matter most. In this episode, Wendy and Chris unpack a recent exchange that gave them a front-row seat to what helps… and what hurts. From tone and timing to defensiveness and shame, they name the subtle dynamics that shape how feedback lands—and what it takes to create space for honesty without sacrificing connection.

But this isn’t just a conversation about communication techniques. It’s about the deeper stories underneath our reactions: the expectations we bring into marriage, the ways we want to be understood, and the fear that we’re being dismissed or judged. With curiosity and vulnerability, Wendy and Chris explore how even casual feedback can stir up old wounds—and how intentional language can start to heal them.

Along the way, they offer clear, practical tools: simple shifts in phrasing, a framework for checking your own heart before speaking up, and some laugh-out-loud moments from their own learning curve. Whether you’ve been married for decades or just want to get better at saying hard things with love, this episode will leave you feeling both seen and equipped.

This conversation is real, warm, and incredibly useful. It’s about the gap between intention and impact—and the courage it takes to close that gap with kindness.

Connect with Us!
Follow @nurturecounselingnc [https://www.instagram.com/nurturecounselingnc/] on Instagram
Visit nurturecounseling.net [https://www.nurturecounseling.net/]

 The Feedback Loop: What Helps, What Hurts, What Heals

Join licensed clinical mental health counselor Wendy Osborn and her husband Chris as they share intimately about their journey  through three decades of marriage, and the healing and growth God has br

The "Surviving Saturday" Podcast · Zencastr

The "Surviving Saturday" Podcast

Join licensed clinical mental health counselor Wendy Osborn and her husband Chris as they share intimately about their journey  through three decades of marriage, and the healing and growth God has brought them individually and as a couple in the process. From a storybook beginning right out of an 80s rom-com, though times of disappointment, heartache, seemingly unresolvable conflict, loss, and grief, their story forms the backdrop for considering how God uses struggle to draw folks closer to the real Jesus. Surviving Saturday is all about holding tenaciously on to hope in the darkest days-- in between the crucifixion on Friday, and his resurrection and ascension on Sunday.  

Brought to you by Nurture Counseling [https://www.nurturecounseling.net/], PLLC in Charlotte, NC, a counselling teaching and training center in Charlotte NC committed to helping families flourish, one story at a time. 

Special thanks to singer/songwriter extraordinaire BIll Mallonee for the licensing rights to use one of our favorite tunes about relational trainwrecks, and the road back to forgiveness, redemption, and renewal of hope.  You can find this tune and more of his music at https://www.billmalloneemusic.com/ or on the Bandcamp app.