Welcome to The Nothing Is Wasted Podcast. Conversations designed to help you as you live,

learn and lead through pain. And now, the host of The Nothing Is Wasted Podcast,

Davey Blackburn.

Hello, welcome to The Nothing Is Wasted Podcast. I'm your host, Davey Blackburn.

And I'm your co-host, Audrey Samson.

Today's conversation is with Don Barton, who might be hands down the most positive, optimistic person you've ever met.

Yes, she is definitely a half-glassful kind of woman, very encouraging.

And I love when people are half-glassful types of people. That's kind of my bent as well.

And there's certain personalities, I feel like, you know, Aubrey, we've talked about this a little bit before,

but certain personalities that seem to be more well-equipped to walk through pain because they're optimistic or maybe they kind of have that like strong mentality.

Yeah. And I just wonder, with optimism and faith and the convergence of those things, what are your thoughts, how much does optimism play into our ability to walk through and navigate pain well?

I feel like that's a really good question.

I wonder if it's not optimism, because optimism can sometimes come across as cliche or like...

Yeah, yeah, so it's not quite optimism. It's hope, right? It's hope in Christ.

And kind of having the long-term view that no matter what we face, no matter what toil and snare or walking through,

no matter what valley of the shadow of death, we're walking through that God is with us, that we fight our battles from victory not defeat.

That's great.

That we fight what we're up against from the resurrection, not from destruction.

And so I think there is something really biblical about, I mean, you know I'm passionate about lamenting and crying out in grief.

Absolutely.

That's what my second book is about.

But in every lament, there's that word yet or that word, but, right?

...