In the final part of this message series on Good Baggage, we ask the question, where do we go from here? We look at this through the lens of the biblical story of the lame man by the Pool of Bethesda. Jesus asks him a question we are all being asked today, "Do you want to be well?"

Jesus tells the man, "Get up, take your mat and walk." In this story, the man is being invited to participate in his own healing, and I believe we also are each being invited to participate on our own healing as well. This is where we go from here.

A common way of coming to grips with the trauma of our childhood is to conclude, "Everything happens for a reason." This logic is well-intentioned, but we often say it without full awareness of what it implies about what we've been through or what it implies about God's role in it.

In this week's episode, we talk about this logic, where it goes wrong, and what a better, more bilblical notion of redemption looks like.

This week we look at the good baggage the undergirds everything else this series and my book has to offer: our passion to see our relationships go differently than the relationships we saw in our childhood. 

In this episode, we look at 3 things our childhoods taught us, and how we can leverage them for the health of our relationships now.

One of the most prevalent impacts of our difficult childhoods is codependency. When we think of codependency, we tend to think of people pleasing or approval seeking, but those are symptoms of the deeper issue. Codependency at its core, is a loss of self.

We do not have a clear sense of who we are and so we seek to be whoever we think others want us to be, or will approve of. 

Until we address this challenge, it will be difficult to do much of the work to leverage the difficulty of our childhood for the health of our relationships now. How do we being taking steps to address this struggle? That's what this message is about.

For better or worse, one of the people most affected by our childhood difficulties, will be the person we marry.

In this episode we talk with my own wife, Sharon Miller, about her experience being married to an adult child of dysfunction. She shares how our relationship has been impacted by my childhood, how she has navigated challenges, and what advice she might have for other spouses in similar situations. 

It is a MUST LISTEN if you are married to an adult child of dysfunction!

No one is born with good communication skills. It is something we all must learn. Since most of us are not taught to communicate well, we usually just repeat what we saw. 

For those of us who grew up in difficult circumstances, repeating what we saw most likely will not be good for our relationships. In this episode we talk with Shannon Plate, Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor, about the impact of our childhoods on our communication, and how we can work to communicate more effectively now.

Growing up in a dysfunctional context often causes us to bend our identity toward what will make us most acceptable and most pleasing to those more powerful than us. As children, this was necessary for our survival. But now as adults, people-pleasing is a prison. 

In this episode we talk with Karen Ehman, author of When Making Others Happy is Making You Miserable, about her journey to overcoming people pleasing, where she found motivation, and how we too can break free of this self-sabotaging cycle.

As children, we unknowingly made commitments to ourselves of who we would be or who we'd never be, what we would do and what we'd never do.

These vows play out in every one of our relationships, and until we acknowledge and understand them, they will continue to wreak havoc in our lives. 

In this episode, we talk with Steve Cuss, author of Managing Leadership Anxiety, about how we can identify these vows and disarm their power over our relationships.