Before the First Word

Not A Shell: Rethinking Biblical Self-Denial

What if the version of self-denial you were handed was never what Jesus meant? In this episode, Christina traces the distance between biblical self-denial and the quiet self-erasure that has shaped so many believers — examining the original Greek and Hebrew, the jar of clay, the incarnation, and what the body knows when something is off. This is not a conversation about rejecting Scripture. It's about understanding it rightly. Because the calling God has placed on your life requires the person He made. Keywords: biblical self-denial, Christian identity, faith and mental health, theology and embodiment, Christian psychology, incarnation, spiritual formation, fasting, turn the other cheek, self-abandonment, Christian podcast, trauma and faith, somatic theology, Protestant church, Christian women, faith and wholeness, The Wednesday Project

The Way Back

At some point, something breaks. Not because you failed — but because you're human, and so are they. In this closing episode of The Wednesday Project's relational theology arc, Christina explores rupture and repair across every kind of relationship: parents and children, siblings, close friends, partners. But before repair is possible, something else has to happen first. Drawing from Colossians 3, Luke 15, and nervous system research, she asks what secure attachment actually looks like in motion — and why the capacity to repair with another person begins with having first been repaired with. The relationship isn't lost in the rupture. It's revealed in the repair. Keywords: rupture and repair, attachment theory, nervous system, Christian relationships, relational theology, prodigal son, Colossians, James, forgiveness, co-regulation, trauma-informed faith, The Wednesday Project, psychology of the soul

Before the First Word

What's really happening beneath the surface of your hardest conversations? In this episode, Christina explores why even the people we love most can miss each other — and why that doesn't mean something is broken. Following Love Without Collapse, this conversation names what walks into the room before a single word is spoken: two nervous systems, two histories, two stories already in motion. Drawing from Psalm 139, Matthew 7, and James 1:19, this episode offers a reframe for every relationship where care and history travel together — couples, friendships, parents and children, colleagues. And it begins with the most honest question: what are you carrying in? Keywords: nervous system, relational rupture, Christian relationships, Psalm 139, Matthew 7, James 1:19, attachment theory, emotional health, misattunement, self-awareness, embodied faith, secure attachment, identity in Christ, trauma-informed faith, co-regulation

Love Without Collapse

What does it actually look like to stay connected to people without losing yourself? In this episode, we move from understanding into practice. Following Why Rejection Still Hurts, Attachment Is Not Idolatry, and Secure People Still Feel Pain, this conversation explores the pattern many people quietly live inside: relational collapse. The instinct to adjust, over-function, or disappear in order to preserve connection. Drawing from 1 Corinthians 13, Genesis 2, and Galatians 2:20, this episode reframes what love actually is — not self-erasure, not performance, but two selves staying present to each other. And what makes that possible is not trying harder. It’s being anchored enough that you don’t have to disappear to keep the relationship alive. Keywords: relational collapse, love and identity, Christian relationships, 1 Corinthians 13, Genesis 2, Galatians 2:20, attachment theory, emotional health, people pleasing, over-functioning, self-erasure, nervous system, embodied faith, secure attachment, identity in Christ

BONUS EPISODE: The Holiness of Being Human

This episode is released in honor of my mom's birthday — a woman who overcame more than most, who carried a cloud, and who always had oil close by. She is perfected in Christ now. This one is for her. We all walk around with some version of a cloud — the wounds we carry, the limits of our nervous systems, the ways our survival has shaped what we can and cannot give. And sometimes that cloud makes it hard to see clearly: the love that is present, the light that is there. In this episode, we sit with what it means to be perfectly imperfect in faith. We look at what neuroscience tells us about state-dependent perception, what Paul means when he says we see in a mirror dimly, and what it looks like when God's power is made perfect not around our weakness — but in it. A reflection on imperfection, grief, and the holiness of being human.