Why I Made My Deepest Secrets into Public Confessions

and How You Can Help Others Hear Them

Well, after publicly sharing for the first time four years ago (!!!) that I felt God was calling me to write a book… today is the day. Everyone (and their mother) now has access to pre-ordering this collection of thoughts. And it all started with a question:

Can God handle our hardest questions, biggest struggles, and secret doubts?

We instinctively assume he cannot. We figure giving voice to those things will bring shame, rejection, and distance from him. But what if our hard questions don't need to function as an off-ramp from Christianity but can lead us closer to his heart? What if he is not afraid of our doubts but instead reveals himself in them?

In Can I Say That?, I attempt to bring my (new to authorship) unique voice to those who feel unsafe or unwelcome in the church, acknowledging the incongruity between the church's actions and believers' lived experiences. As a Bible teacher and an advocate for those who have experienced abuse, molestation, and mental health crises, I hope to create spaces for readers to be radically honest and ask tough questions—Am I safe here? Why does your presence feel so lonely, God?—while pointing them to biblical, foundational truth.

I would love to invite you into the conversation, to walk along side in a sense by eagerly (and perhaps boldly) asking you to consider pre-ordering two copies today. But why two? The first one for yourself; to markup, devour and maybe even tear apart. And the other? For someone you love (or maybe havent even met yet) who also found themself in this space. Who wonders if God really is good despite the tragedy they have or are experiencing. For someone who has been deeply hurt by the Church. For someone who has felt afraid to share the deepest part of themself within faith circles. I can tell you right now, this book exists for those people. It would be the greatest honor to have you partner with me in ministry by helping others access this work.

Maybe you read that and think “so then…is this book not for me…If I am not personally in those spaces of doubt, suffering or questions?”. That is a great and fair question! My hope for those of you who stand on solid faith ground is that this book would be an exercise in empathy, understanding and training. That it would help you to know what the broken are feeling, wondering and working through so that you too can walk along side them in ministry…so that maybe…just maybe they will also come to know the God whom you have found.

At the end of the day, I imagine this book being read together, in discipleship. You with your middle school or high school small group. With your AA friends after meetings. At the homeless shelter, the LGBTQ resource center, the book you casually leave behind after dropping food off for the local strip club workers. This is a book for the unsafe. But also…for you. Because at the end of the day, I did not write this book on my own…and the themes and emotions that come up would be best to experience not alone either. This book welcomes tension, a tension that is best held with the warmth of another soul. Another soul daring enough to step into unsafe spaces or who already exists in them…who deeply wonders Is God here in this space, too?

As a thank you for the early support, we have prepared a helpful bundle of pre order gifts. These are especially great for those of you who enjoy hands on involvement while working through a book. To learn more, follow the link above.

If you have read this far, I have one final ask of you. If you have social media, would you considering sharing on there about the book? A screen shot of your book order, the reasons why you are looking forward to reading or even re-sharing the reel on our page announcing the book launch? Every time you share, our ministry gets introduced to new people, perhaps those who deeply need the hope of Christ.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for helping make this ministry possible. It is because of partners like you that I get to continue doing this work.