Practicing What I Advise: How Writing Became My Journey of Healing

People occasionally ask me how my doctoral dissertation connects with my books. At first glance, they seem quite different. One is an academic dissertation, another is a historical account of war, another explores trauma treatment, and my newest book is a personal memoir. Yet to me, they all tell one story.

They tell my story.

More importantly, they tell the story of how God has used writing—not only to teach others but also to heal me.

My doctoral dissertation, Putting the Pieces Together: Narrative Therapy and Theological Reflection, was more than a requirement for earning a degree. It became a framework for understanding how people make sense of brokenness. I explored the intersection of narrative therapy and theological reflection because I had come to believe that healing begins when we are able to tell our stories honestly and see them within God's larger story of redemption.

I didn't realize at the time that I was also putting together pieces of my own life.

Years of ministry, military service, and pastoral care had exposed me to the heartbreaking realities of trauma. As an Army chaplain deployed to Iraq, I walked beside soldiers carrying wounds that were often invisible. I listened to stories of loss, fear, courage, and sacrifice. I also carried my own experiences home.

Writing became one of the ways I processed what I had seen and lived.

That journey led me to write Mosul, a book that recounts the realities of war through the eyes of a fictional character who lived alongside soldiers in one of the most difficult chapters of the Iraq conflict. While readers may see it as military fiction, military history or personal reflection, for me it was also an act of remembering. Writing those pages helped preserve stories that deserved to be told while allowing me to reflect on how those experiences had shaped my own life and ministry.

My next book, Trauma Treatment Using Narrative Therapy and Theological Reflection, grew naturally from the foundation laid in my dissertation. It represents years of research, pastoral ministry, counseling, and lived experience. I wanted to offer more than theory. I wanted to provide pastors, counselors, chaplains, and caregivers with practical tools for helping people whose lives had been disrupted by trauma.

But there was something else happening while I was writing.

Every chapter I wrote challenged me to apply those same principles to my own life.

I have often told people that writing can be therapeutic. I believe that because I have experienced it firsthand. Writing does not erase painful memories, nor does it eliminate grief. What it does is help us organize what once felt chaotic. It helps us find meaning where there once seemed to be only confusion. It gives us language for emotions that have lived silently within us for years.

Writing allows us to reclaim our story rather than allowing trauma to define it.

That truth became even more personal as I wrote my newest book, Refined by Fire: An Army Chaplain in Iraq.

Unlike my earlier academic work, this book is deeply personal. It is not simply about Iraq or military service. It is about faith tested under pressure. It is about witnessing suffering while searching for hope. It is about discovering that God often does His deepest work in us through the fires we would never have chosen.

Looking back, I realize this memoir is the culmination of everything I have been writing about for years.

People sometimes assume that authors write because they have everything figured out. My experience has been exactly the opposite. I write because I am still learning. Every book has asked more of me than it has of my readers. Every manuscript has required honesty, vulnerability, reflection, and sometimes painful self-examination.

In many ways, each book has been part of my own healing.

When I encourage people to journal, reflect, or write about their experiences, I am not simply sharing professional advice as a counselor, chaplain, or scholar. I am inviting them to practice something that continues to shape my own life. I have learned that healing often begins when we stop hiding from our stories and begin writing them with courage, honesty, and faith.

Narrative therapy teaches that we are more than the worst thing that has happened to us. Christian theology reminds us that God is still writing our story, even in seasons of suffering. Those two truths have guided my scholarship, my ministry, and my writing.

They have also guided my life.

When I look at Putting the Pieces Together: Narrative Therapy and Theological Reflection, Mosul, Trauma Treatment Using Narrative Therapy and Theological Reflection, and Refined by Fire: An Army Chaplain in Iraq, I no longer see separate projects sitting on a bookshelf.

I see milestones.

Each one represents another chapter in God's work of refining me, teaching me, and reminding me that healing is not a destination but a lifelong journey.

If there is one lesson that unites everything I have written, it is this: our stories matter. They deserve to be told honestly, interpreted faithfully, and shared courageously. When we write our stories, we often discover that God has been writing alongside us all along.

But because every page reminds me that I cannot ask others to embrace the healing power of writing unless I am willing to practice it myself.

In the end, I am not merely writing about healing.

I am living it “one page at a time.”