Good Baggage - by Ike Miller (Paperback)

About the Book

We've been told that our difficult childhoods made us bad at relationships, but what if our baggage isn't all bad? Discover how to better understand the impact of your past and identify the tools it has given you for healthy, thriving relationships now.

Book 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.

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

About the Author

Ike Miller (PhD, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) leads Bright City Church in Durham, North Carolina, a church he planted in 2018 along with his wife, Sharon Hodde Miller. He has written about the intersection of theology, mental health, and family of origin issues in outlets such as Christianity Today and Missio Alliance. After confronting the impact of his own childhood, including a family history of substance use disorders, Ike has developed a passion for helping others who grew up in difficult circumstances to better understand how those environments continue to impact them and their relationships now.