If people could see the battles that go on in my head, I think they'd be shocked.

From the outside it usually looks like I have it together. Inside, there's often a fight. I've wrestled with anxiety most of my life, and I've had seasons of real despair — stretches where the distance between how I appeared and how I actually felt was wide enough to be lonely.

I'm not telling you that for sympathy. I'm telling you because it's the reason this work lights me up.

When I get to watch someone come out from under the weight of their own anxiety — when that voice in their head finally loses some of its authority — there is almost nothing I'd rather be part of.

I'm not writing to you from the far side of this. I'm writing from inside the same work.

How I got Here

I came to this the long way around.

I studied psychology at Taylor University, then earned my MA in Counseling Psychology at Trinity International University. I trained and practiced as a clinical counselor — years of it, much of that as a marriage therapist, sitting with people on the hardest days of their lives.

I'm an IBCC Certified Human Flourishing Coach, with additional training in neuropsychotherapy, DiSC, Symbis, and conflict resolution. I serve as executive pastor at First Baptist Church of Elgin.

What it adds up to is this: I've spent a long time at the intersection of what the research says about human beings and what Scripture says about them. I've never found the two at war. I keep finding they confirm each other in ways I didn't expect.

What I believe about this work

Faith is not what's missing for most of the people I sit with. They already have it. They've been praying, reading, and showing up for years — and they're still carrying something they can't set down.

What's missing is resilience. And resilience is not a temperament some people were issued and others were denied. It's a capacity. It gets built out of four things you actually control: your attention, your thoughts, your motivation, and your action.

You can't control the weather. You can control how you sail through it.

That conviction is what the P2 Resilience Course was built on. It's also why I do this instead of something easier.