On June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof, a young white man, attended the Wednesday evening Bible study at the predominantly black Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. An hour later, Roof pulled a concealed weapon and killed nine African-Americans as they prayed, including Myra Thompson, the wife of Reverend Anthony Thompson. Myra's murder devastated Anthony, yet he chose to privately and publicly forgive the shooter.

On June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof, a young white man, attended the Wednesday evening Bible study at the predominantly black Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. An hour later, Roof pulled a concealed weapon and killed nine African-Americans as they prayed, including Myra Thompson, the wife of Reverend Anthony Thompson. Myra's murder devastated Anthony, yet he chose to privately and publicly forgive the shooter.

Aging is a season of loss on many levels. Married women fear losing their spouse or outliving their children. In fact, today there are 13.6 million widows in America, and about 700,000 women become a widow in the U.S. each year. Single women who have never married can fear being alone in the last years of life. In this conversation with Sharon Betters, seventy-two-year old Jerdone Davis frankly shares some of the emotional challenges of anticipating aging alone, including addressing how we can prepare for this season while we are younger and how can we handle the fears of being alone, especially in the last season of our lives. No matter your marital status, Jerdone’s recommendations for preparing for the last season of life will encourage you to be intentional in taking steps to make things easier for loved ones after your death.

This conversation between Annie Chapman and Sharon Betters will help guide daughters-in-law and mothers-in-law through the sometimes difficult maze of “sharing” a man. Annie Chapman is the author of The Mother-In-Law Dance and knows from experience how challenging it can be to get along with your mother-in-law.

Christine Runge Weiss, Founder of Faith Wears Pink, an online support platform for women battling breast cancer, shares how she learned she had breast cancer at the age of forty-four. Her diagnosis followed wave after wave of personal crises. In this conversation with Sharon Betters, herself a breast cancer survivor, Christine offers hope and practical help to breast cancer warriors. One evening she realized she was helping over twenty women with their questions, fears, and the unknowns of their journeys. She decided they all needed a way to talk to each other so she started a “Breast Friends” Facebook page. She eventually changed the name to Faith Wears Pink and as of today over 1000 women have connected through this platform. Faith Wears Pink not only connects breast cancer warriors but also gives gifts to women read more…

How do you face each day after a diagnosis of ALS or Lou Gherig’s disease, knowing you will not survive longer than eighteen months – two years? Pastor Dale Meader joins Sharon and Chuck Betters to answer this question and more as he describes how each day reminds him he cannot beat this read more…

In this interview, Jan Dravecky speaks candidly to Sharon Betters about how her husband Dave’s loss of his arm to cancer plunged her into a deep depression. Dave was a pitcher for the Giants when he received the diagnosis of cancer. Living with cancer is painful, but even more painful on a world stage. Jan’s body, heart, and soul finally cried, “Enough” and Jan found herself on a long, hard journey to find her way out of deep depression.

In this inspiring podcast former baseball star, Dave Dravecky and Dr. Chuck F. Betters talk about how cancer destroyed Dave’s successful baseball career and Dave’s struggle to deal with not only the loss of his career but understanding his true identity.

In this informative but at times disturbing interview, Darby Strickland draws from years of not only studying the impact of abuse but her interaction through counseling abused women. Darby is passionate about equipping local churches to be a safe place for the abused.

In this sometimes emotional conversation, Doug shares with Dr. Chuck F. Betters some of the ways his brother’s death affected him and how grief for a child is different than the grief of an adult. It’s our hope that Doug’s story will help parents understand the grief of their children a little better and also encourage those who have lost siblings at a young age.

In this Help & Hope podcast, Dr. Betters talks with Bill Condon, who knows what it is to not only experience chronic pain with no hope of healing, but also the devastation of the losses that often accompanies chronic pain. Bill explains how depression took him into such a dark place he not longer wanted to live. Yet in the middle of debilitating pain, Bill’s story is one of hope.

Our culture deifies strength—and sadly, the church does too. Who has the most successful ministry, the largest congregation, or the godliest family? Our misplaced faith in human strength is a false hope with no basis in Scripture... read more.

In this conversation with Sharon Betters, Miho Kahn and her husband share the story of Miho’s journey into a world of drugs, violence and abuse. Miho transparently shares her journey and how she found peace and direction in a personal relationship to Jesus.

Perhaps one of the hardest pains for a parent to endure is when a child makes dangerous choices that are sure to lead to life-changing consequences. Judy Douglass, author of When You Love a Prodigal, knows this anguish first hand yet her story focuses on how parenting her son Josh drove her to the heart of Jesus where she learned truths about herself and the life-transforming power of God’s grace… learn more.

Gary Episcopo joins us on the Help & Hope podcast to share how God used his love for motorcycles and the brotherhood and comradery of motorcycle clubs to lead him into a life of demonstrating the love of Jesus to the one percenters or outlaw gangs. Growing up and even into adulthood, Gary struggled with many of the same temptations of these men and women and his understanding of the deep mercy… learn more.

Jessica shares her own story of how pornography drew her in when she was a middle schooler and how she found solace and acceptance through the internet and eventually chat rooms. Jessica describes the secrecy of her addiction and how it led to shame and guilt that she didn’t know how to break. Then, a woman acknowledged to a group of young adult females that pornography addiction was a woman thing, too. Suddenly, Jessica had hope that the chains of addiction could be broken. Jessica shares her journey as a means to offer hope to others. Learn more…

Marriage can be difficult, but adding a child with special needs adds a new level of challenges. In this wide-ranging conversation, Steve Demme shares his passion for helping to strengthen marriages, and in particular, wants to offer help and hope to fathers.  Even more specifically, to fathers of children with special needs. 

Neglect. Rejection. Sin. Conflict. Change. It’s difficult to attend church when you’ve suffered some of your deepest hurts. Megan Hill understands that church can be hard. In this conversation, Sharon Betters and Megan talk about why church hurt can be so devastating, the root of church hurt, people in the scriptures who experienced church hurt and how they responded to the priceless gift of community, and reasons to pursue life in a local church even when it hurts. Megan gently leads wounded people on a pathway to peace as she encourages us to explore the source of our struggles, find ways to express our sorrow…

Children raised in the same family sometimes grow up with very different responses to life. Such is the story of Julie Malone and her beautiful daughter, Allie. Julie and her husband, Tim loved their lives as parents and Tim’s ministry to teens. But their idyllic life would take a turn into a foreign land of broken places. Julie says,

“I am very thankful for my childhood as I came to know and love the Lord as my savior at a very young age. I really never knew a day without Jesus in my life. I married Tim, and we had 4 beautiful little girls. We were raising our kids to know Jesus. We were a close family. Life was good. But Tim and I often wondered how and when real suffering would enter our lives…

Did you know 40 million adults suffer from depression, and 4 in 10 US adults have developed high levels of stress and anxiety since the start of the pandemic? 58% of those are young adults. Clearly, we have a mental health crisis in America. In this conversation, Christopher Cook, author of Healing What You Can’t Erase and host of the WinToday podcast, is no stranger to deep depression. He uses the acronym SEED to help us understand the 4 steps to uncovering the root causes of anxiety and replacing lies with truth. His goal is to encourage us to…