Learning to read in first grade astonished me. Merely by little marks of ink on a page, Roald Dahl was able to fill my mind with everlasting gobstoppers and giant peaches and tyrannical principals. Writing my first story later that year – about fishing with my dad – I realized that I could do it, too. I’ve been writing ever since, alongside whatever else I’m doing, and find it even more mystifying now than I did then.

Ten years later, I studied English Linguistics (BA) at LSU and then theology (MDiv) at Gordon-Conwell in Boston, MA. These years of formal study birthed in me an enduring desire to unite truth and beauty.

After coming home from Boston I went into counseling ministry, where I have worked ever since. As a companion on the path of redemption, I’ve had a front row seat to the complexity of the human condition and the many surprising ways that grace finds its way in. Counseling teaches me to pay attention to people – their words and lives and, above all, their hearts – and requires me to make meaning of it all. Counseling, in other words, teaches me how to tell a good story. Writing gives me time and space for this, keeping me from burnout and alive to goodness and truth and beauty. Writing and counseling, it turns out, pair well together.

Lastly, I’m an elder in my church (Grace PCA) and have been married to Jessica, a school principal, since 2010. We have three lively children and have lived in our hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana since 2014.