Abiding in Fruitfulness

Season 2 | Episode 3

What does it mean to live a fruitful life when the fruit you prayed for never came?

For those carrying infertility or childlessness, Christian language about fruitfulness, blessing, motherhood, and legacy can sometimes feel less like good news and more like a verdict. But the pressure to prove our lives are producing enough reaches far beyond infertility. Most of us have a scoreboard somewhere.

In this episode, Rachel Walters returns to Jesus’ image of the Vine and branches and asks what changes when fruitfulness is understood not as something we manufacture, but something that grows through abiding. Through the stories of Ruth and Naomi, Genesis 1:28, Psalm 127, the Fruit of the Spirit, and the idea of spiritual motherhood, Rachel explores the difference between faithful action and exhausting striving.

She also confronts harmful Christian language around a “spirit of barrenness” and the assumption that an empty womb says something about the condition of a woman’s soul. Fruitfulness is bigger than biology. Legacy is bigger than lineage. And you may already be bearing fruit in places you’ve been calling barren.

Abiding in Community

Season 2 | Episode 2

with Jacqueline Rivalksy

When the church tells hurting women to "start your own group," it doesn't just miss the moment - it deepens the wound. Rachel Walters and Jacqueline Rivalksy unpack why so many women carrying infertility, singleness, widowhood, or other hidden crosses feel invisible in faith spaces, and what true abiding together actually looks like.

Rachel opens the conversation with a raw theological question: if the body of Christ is meant to bear one another's burdens, why do so many people still leave church feeling unseen? 

Jacqueline, known as @hopefully_joyful_journey_, brings lived experience and hard-won insight from years of navigating primary infertility, disability, and the pain of not fitting the default mold of women's ministry.

Abiding

Season 2 | Episode 1 

When suffering lasts long enough, waiting stops feeling like a season and starts feeling like life. Rachel Walters opens Season 2 of Sacred Thorns in the long middle—the ordinary Tuesdays, unanswered prayers, and years when nothing seems to change—and asks what it actually means to remain faithful when there is no resolution in sight.

Turning to Jesus' words in John 15, Rachel explores the invitation to abide: to remain, dwell, and stay connected to Christ. But abiding isn't another spiritual task to master. A branch doesn't produce fruit by striving harder; it bears fruit by staying connected to the Vine. 

Drawing from eight years of infertility and her own exhaustion with white-knuckling prayer, Rachel unpacks the difference between abiding and simply enduring, why escaping pain can become its own form of suffering. This is an invitation to stop measuring faith by progress and discover the sacred work of remaining—even when the thorn remains too.

Living in the Sacred Middle

Season 1 | Episode 10

What do you do when the prayer remains unanswered, the suffering hasn't ended, and life can't stay on hold forever? In the Season 1 finale, Rachel Walters explores the sacred middle—the long, unresolved space between longing and fulfillment, where faith means learning to live fully without knowing how the story will end.

Drawing from the life and writing of Elisabeth Elliot, Rachel asks what it means to do something with suffering when there is nothing left to do about it. She unpacks the Christian practice of offering suffering to God—not as denial or resignation, but as a way of recognizing what hurts, accepting the reality of the present, and entrusting both the burden and ourselves to Him.

Rachel also explores the difference between passive waiting, protective resignation, and active hope: living with open hands, making real decisions for the life you have today while remaining open to what God may do tomorrow. Because surrender doesn't mean the pain disappears, and accepting God's will doesn't mean you stop grieving. Sometimes faithfulness looks like refusing to waste the life you have while waiting for the life you hoped for—and trusting God in the sacred middle.

Prayer When Heaven Feels Silent

Season 1 | Episode 9

What happens when you've prayed the same prayer for years, and Heaven still feels silent? Rachel Walters wrestles with what prayer looks like when the words run out, the answer hasn't come, and persistence begins to feel dangerously close to futility. After a third adoption door closes, an empty bedroom becomes the place where Rachel discovers that silence itself can become prayer.

Rachel challenges the idea of prayer as a transaction—say the right words, have enough faith, receive the desired answer—and explores prayer instead as relationship, communion, and the choice to remain connected to God. Through John 15, Romans 8, Job, and the unflinching honesty of Psalm 88, she makes room for lament, anger, doubt, and prayers that don't end with a neat resolution.

From breath prayers and borrowed Psalms to the difference between surrendering and giving up, Rachel offers practical ways to keep praying when you have nothing left to say. Because unanswered prayer doesn't mean unheard prayer, and persistence may be less about asking the same question until God says yes and more about the holy stubbornness of staying—even when the conversation feels one-sided.

Valleys and Mountains: Reframing Spiritual Geography

Season 1 | Episode 8

What if we’ve been reading the map wrong? Rachel Walters reexamines one of Christianity’s most familiar metaphors—the mountain as victory and the valley as suffering—and asks whether our spiritual geography has quietly taught us to believe that God is somehow closer in the highs than He is in the lows.

Drawing from seven years of infertility, three closed adoption doors, and the surprising contrast between unrest on a supposed “mountaintop” and peace in a deep valley, Rachel explores what Scripture actually says about where God dwells. Through Psalm 23, Hosea, wilderness imagery, and the physical realities of mountains and valleys themselves, she challenges the idea that the Christian life is about escaping low places as quickly as possible.

Rachel invites listeners to stop measuring spiritual health by elevation and to recognize the valley as a place of presence, growth, and even fruitfulness. Because God is not still with us in the valley as though His presence there is surprising. He is simply with us—preparing a table, leading us beside still waters, and making His home in the places we never would have chosen.

When Light Breaks In: Christmas and the Scandal of Hope

Season 1 | Episode 7

What does Christmas mean when your life doesn't feel joyful? Rachel Walters steps beyond the sanitized nativity scene to the whole Christmas story—a story of birth and danger, angels and violence, celebration and grief—and asks whether hope might be most Christian when it arrives before anything has been fixed.

Drawing from the darkest years of her infertility journey, Rachel shares the small, unexpected moments when Light began breaking through: a Christmas tree put up as an act of defiance, teenagers making cookies in her kitchen, a husband's ridiculous beard decorations, and the surprise of realizing she could still smile. Alongside these ordinary interruptions, she explores the Incarnation, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, and the biblical image of Rachel refusing to be comforted—making room for grief inside Christmas rather than asking suffering people to leave it at the door.

This episode is an invitation to hold the both/and of Christmas: joy and sorrow, hope and grief, Light and darkness. Because the miracle of Christmas isn't that everything suddenly becomes perfect. It's that God enters the world as it actually is—unfinished, wounded, and complicated—and Light breaks in anyway.

Advent: Learning to Wait Well

Season 1 | Episode 6

What does it mean to wait faithfully when your Advent lasts longer than four weeks? Rachel Walters explores the Church’s ancient season of waiting through the image of a rose blooming out of season—and asks what it looks like to live fully in the season you actually have, rather than the one you wish would finally arrive.

Drawing from years of infertility and the ache of December imagery centered on pregnancy, birth, and motherhood, Rachel reframes Advent as spiritual formation for anyone living with prolonged longing. Through Mary’s lifetime of saying yes, the Church’s rhythm of darkness and light, and the theology of the already and not yet, she shows how waiting can become more than passive endurance.

Rachel also offers practical ways to engage Advent honestly through candles, the O Antiphons, Scripture, lament, community, and small acts of preparation. Because Advent is not about pretending the darkness is gone. It is about learning to hold a candle inside it—trusting that waiting is not wasted time, and that God is present in the longing itself.

Thanksgiving in the In-Between

Season 1 | Episode 5

What if gratitude didn't require pretending everything is fine? Rachel Walters explores the tension of giving thanks while still grieving, still longing, and still waiting for prayers that haven't been answered—and introduces the Christian framework of the already and not yet as a way to live honestly in the in-between.

Drawing from profound personal loss, a life-threatening illness, and years of infertility, Rachel shares how gratitude became complicated long before it became healing. Through Scripture, the concept of liminality, and her own slow shift from forced thankfulness to genuine gratitude, she shows how faith can hold complaint and thanksgiving, hope and sorrow, fullness and emptiness at the same time.

Rachel also offers practical ways to navigate difficult holidays: expanding your definition of gifts, setting boundaries around painful traditions and conversations, honoring empty chairs, and noticing grace without minimizing grief. Because you don't have to choose between gratitude and longing. You can give thanks for what is already here while still aching for what is not yet.

Hidden in Plain Sight: Biblical Women Valued Beyond Motherhood

Season 1 | Episode 4

What if the Bible has always told a bigger story about women than the one many of us were taught? Rachel Walters challenges the assumption that a woman’s faithfulness, fruitfulness, or legacy is ultimately measured by motherhood—and turns to the women of Scripture whose lives were powerful, faithful, and deeply significant without being defined by children.

From Judith, Deborah, Miriam, and Huldah to Mary Magdalene, Lydia, Priscilla, and Anna, Rachel traces a biblical pattern that has often been hiding in plain sight: women valued for their courage, leadership, witness, wisdom, devotion, and obedience to God. She also examines how Jesus expands the meaning of blessedness beyond fertility and challenges the theological “survivorship bias” that can turn stories like Sarah, Hannah, and Elizabeth into promises that every faithful woman will eventually receive a miracle child.

This episode invites listeners to rethink legacy and fruitfulness beyond biology. Because God’s kingdom has always made room for women whose lives bear witness in different ways—and your worth, calling, and impact are not diminished by what your body can or cannot do.

Spiritual Warfare in Suffering: The Battlefield Nobody Sees

Season 1 | Episode 3

What if the hardest part of suffering isn't only what happens to us, but what begins to happen inside us because of it? Rachel Walters explores the hidden spiritual battlefield where persistent pain meets faith—and how wounds can become places of isolation, shame, bitterness, and despair if we begin believing the lies whispered through them.

Drawing from a painful Mother's Day when remaining seated in a church pew became an unexpected act of spiritual warfare, Rachel challenges the idea that victory always means the suffering ends. Through Paul’s thorn, Jacob’s limp, the wounds of the resurrected Christ, and the image of kintsugi, she explores how the very places the enemy tries to use against us can become carriers of grace in God’s hands.

Rachel also offers practical ways to recognize and resist spiritual attack through Scripture, prayer, identity, community, and the ordinary means of grace. Because sometimes victory doesn’t look like conquering the battle or escaping the pain. Sometimes it looks like refusing to isolate, refusing to believe the lie, and simply standing firm—allowing the wound that was meant to separate you from God to become a place where His light shines through.

Where Is God in the “No”?: Beyond Prosperity Gospel

Season 1 | Episode 2

What happens when the theology you were given can’t survive the reality of unanswered prayer? Rachel Walters confronts the subtle prosperity-gospel assumptions that turn faith into a formula—pray enough, believe enough, surrender correctly, and God will give you the desired outcome—and asks what happens when faithful people do all of those things, and the answer is still "no".

Drawing from years of infertility, worsening endometriosis, and the painful experience of hearing answered-prayer testimonies while her own suffering continued, Rachel searches for a theology spacious enough to hold both praise and lament. Through voices like Julian of Norwich, ancient Christian traditions, and overlooked biblical stories, she explores a God who does not always remove the thorn but meets us within it—a God whose goodness is measured not only by breakthrough, but in presence.

Rachel also offers practical ways to recognize prosperity thinking in its quieter forms, make room for anger and lament, and find Christian communities and traditions that can hold suffering without turning it into spiritual failure. Because sometimes the miracle isn't healing. Sometimes the answer isn't yes. And faith may mean discovering that even in the “no,” God has not abandoned us.

The Day Everything Changed

Season 1 | Episode 1

What happens when the life you planned begins to unravel—and the faith that once felt certain no longer knows what to do with suffering that refuses to end? In the first episode of Sacred Thorns, Rachel Walters shares how infertility became more than a medical diagnosis: it became the place where her assumptions about God, faith, suffering, and even her own worth began to change.

Drawing from years of treatments, surgeries, unanswered prayers, and the desperation that nearly allowed the pursuit of motherhood to consume everything else, Rachel traces the spiritual journey that followed. She wrestles with prosperity-gospel assumptions, well-meaning words that quietly place blame on the suffering person, and the realization that pain can become a spiritual battlefield. Along the way, she begins discovering a much older Christian understanding of suffering—one in which wounds are not evidence of God’s absence and may even become places where His grace is revealed.

This episode lays the foundation for Sacred Thorns: not a podcast about quick fixes, miracle endings, or seven steps to overcoming pain, but a place for the holy, messy middle. Because sometimes the suffering we most want to escape becomes the ground where we encounter God most profoundly—and sometimes everything changes even when our circumstances don’t.