Articles & essays
Words for what we do not know how to carry.
Personal and practical writing about grief, estrangement, fatherhood, faith, and the slow work of becoming—offered from inside the story, not above it.
Grief, Estrangement & Fatherhood
Guidance from inside the story.
These articles name the experiences families often carry quietly. They are grounded in lived experience and written to guide—not diagnose, condemn, or turn pain into another fight.
Ambiguous loss · estrangement · hope
How Do You Grieve a Child Who Is Still Alive?
When your child is living but no longer part of your life, grief has no funeral and no clear ending. It is still grief—and you do not have to pretend otherwise.
Parent-child contact · ambiguous loss · healing
What Is Parental Alienation—and What Does It Do to a Parent?
The phrase can bring relief and start a fight in the same sentence. Naming the experience responsibly means protecting children, admitting complexity, and telling the truth about what the distance can do to a parent.
Emotional abuse · boundaries · becoming
How to Survive Narcissistic Abuse Without Losing Yourself
When control, blame, and the rewriting of reality have made you disappear from your own life, healing begins with learning that you are allowed to exist again.
Custody · responsibility · protecting children
A Father’s Rights During a Custody Battle: What I Wish I Had Known
A father’s rights matter. Exercising them wisely requires more than love or outrage—it requires clarity, restraint, honest counsel, and keeping the children from becoming evidence.
Fatherhood · surrender · enduring love
Ending the Custody Battle Did Not Mean Abandoning My Children
I gave up custody to end the battle for my daughters’ sake. Ending the fight did not end my fatherhood, my hope, or my love.
Pastoral care · ambiguous loss · faithful presence
How the Church Can Support an Alienated Parent
The church does not have to decide the custody case to care for the parent. It can recognize the grief, pray honestly, protect the child, encourage responsibility, and stay.
Stay on the road
Continue the unfinished journey.
Receive new essays, CREDO episodes, and reflections on grief, faith, fatherhood, and grace.
Selected essays
Words for the
long road.
From Hymns for the Unfinished
It Is Well With My Soul
What an old hymn taught me about grief, forgiveness, and receiving the peace of Christ.
From Hymns for the Unfinished
Where Grace Takes Root
A weed in a broken West Texas porch, and the grace that grows where nothing should.
From Hymns for the Unfinished
Stickers In My Boots
What my grandfather taught me about toughness—and what Christ taught me about needing help.
From Hymns for the Unfinished
The Men We Pretend to Be
Why so many men perform strength—and how grace begins when the real man finally allows himself to be seen.