Good Baggage: How Your Difficult Childhood Prepared You for Healthy Relationships - Softcover

Ike Miller

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1540902862 ISBN 13: 9781540902863

Publisher: Baker Books, 2023

Synopsis

Baggage has gotten a bad rap. We think it's all bad. We think it makes us less likely to have good, healthy relationships today. But baggage isn't just the bad stuff that happened to us in the past. It's the lessons we've taken from the pain we carry. It's how what we've been through has actually made us stronger and more capable than we imagine. And it's how we're going to make our current relationships work.

Far from minimizing past pain, pastor Ike Miller shows you how to go through the baggage you carry from a difficult childhood and pull out the good stuff. The intentionality you've developed. The empathy you've gained. The trust you value so highly. Miller shares from his own past in a dysfunctional family impacted by alcoholism and divorce, and his present as part of a healthy and loving family, to illustrate how to stop letting your past sabotage your present.

You'll find no platitudes or pat answers here. Rather, you'll discover untapped riches of experience and knowledge you already have that can make your relationships thrive and change the course of your life and legacy.

About this title

About the Author

Ike Miller (PhD, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) coleads Bright City Church in Durham, North Carolina, a church he planted in 2018 with his wife, Sharon Hodde Miller. He is the author of Good Baggage and has written for outlets such as Christianity Today and Missio Alliance. Ike has a passion for helping people see how the deep truths of theology meet us in our pain and lead us into the better life God offers.

From the Back Cover

Stop letting your past sabotage your present

We think our baggage makes us less likely to have good, healthy relationships today. But baggage isn't just the bad stuff that happened to us--it's the lessons we've learned. What we've been through has made us stronger and more capable than we imagine. And it's how we're going to make our current relationships work.

Far from minimizing past pain, pastor Ike Miller shows you how to go through the baggage you carry from a difficult childhood and pull out the good stuff. You'll find no platitudes or pat answers here. Rather, you'll discover untapped riches of experience and knowledge you already have that can make your relationships thrive and change the course of your life and legacy.


"Ike so brilliantly and thoughtfully lays out a road map to show how difficult circumstances can, if healed properly, actually become a superpower."--from the foreword by Jefferson Bethke, New York Times bestselling author of Take Back Your Family

"As someone who has spent decades working through my own childhood trauma and its impact on my relationships, I wish I had read this book earlier. Ike not only inspires us to believe that change is possible, but he also offers actual practices and exercises that lead to healthy relationships."--Christine Caine, founder of A21 and Propel Women

Edition details

• Publisher: Baker Books
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1540902862
• ISBN 13: 9781540902863
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224