Marriage always carries both joy and challenge… but what happens when life pushes you to the edge? When trauma, illness, loss, stress, or sheer exhaustion stretch your relationship beyond its limits?

In this tender and often humorous conversation, Rachael Clinton Chen interviews Dan and Becky Allender to explore what it means to love and be loved through seasons of extremity—those times when the demands of life exceed our capacity to meet them.

From everyday frustrations to the deep pain of seasons of loss, physical suffering, and ministry fatigue, Dan and Becky reflect honestly on how marriage can expose both our best and our most broken parts.

If you're wondering how to stay connected when life feels impossible—or how to find beauty and intimacy on the other side of pain—this episode is a gentle invitation to hope.

This episode engages the topic of some difficult topics, including pregnancy loss. Listener discretion is advised.

Ever have a day where everything goes sideways and your body just won't calm down? In this episode, Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen explore emotional dysregulation: why our nervous systems spiral under stress, especially with a history of trauma, and how we can respond with mercy rather than shame.

Through humor, real-life stories, and insights from both neuroscience and Scripture, they show that dysregulation isn't weakness; it's a signal from your body asking for care and compassion. Their conversation also offers practical ways to tend to your body, mind, and soul.

Listener Resources:

• Read: Aundi Kolber's Try Softer and Strong Like Water

• Read: Resmaa Manakem's My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies

• Listen to: Self Care and Practical Grounding Techniques on the Allender Center Podcast

Download the free worksheet: Beyond Self-Care: Build Sustainable Practices from the Center for Transforming Engagement at The Seattle School

If you've ever wrestled with the long, uneven work of healing, we hope today's conversation offers courage for the journey.

Dan shares his recent reflections on the lament of waiting found in Psalm 13 and the persistent pursuit of justice embodied by Erin Brockovich as he rewatched the 2000 film. He and Rachael explore the tension between justice today and the full restoration that is "not yet," bringing these insights into the lingering impact of past sexual abuse.

Healing after sexual abuse shapes not just your body but your whole affective and relational world. When harm happens in relationships, it distorts your sense of safety, trust, and even goodness. You may notice contempt toward your own body, frustration at emotional reactions, or fear around your own desires. Hypervigilance, self-protection, or numbing can become familiar companions, and trusting others—or even yourself—can feel risky. The work of healing in adult life is laborious, requiring vulnerability, patience, and courage to reclaim desire, goodness, and the capacity to be seen.

They consider Psalm 13 as both a cry of lament and a thread of hope. It doesn't promise immediate relief. It simply says, "I trust in your unfailing love," leaving open the possibility that this is not the end of the story.

Healing is not a linear path or a once-and-done process. It's a lifelong journey of tending to what remains—the physiological, emotional, relational, and spiritual aftermath of trauma. And yet, even in the hard work, there is invitation: keep choosing life, goodness, and the beauty of your own desire.

Every small act of caring for your body, each moment of speaking truth, each return to beauty becomes a protest against despair—a glimpse of the wholeness that is coming. Healing itself is a form of justice.

* This episode engages the topic of abuse, particularly sexual abuse and child abuse. Listener discretion is advised.