Ken Gross

I was born in Bassingbourn, Cambridgeshire in the UK. My father was in the RAF and stationed at Bassingbourn Air Force Base. Once he had served his 3 years, he and my mother went back to London, where they both grew up. It was while living there that I contracted tuberculosis.

As a result of having this disease my parents were forced to release me to a sanitarium for treatment. I lived there for 21 months, with my parents visiting me, according to them, about once every three weeks. This classifies me as an abandoned child; and this status meant several things. The most significant of these was a complex attachment disorder which resulted in something currently labelled as relationship addiction. This disorder gave me the trajectory of life that resulted in some dysfunctional behavior. However it also resulted in me seeking answers to the issues of life, and my deep interest in belief systems and recovery work. In the context of authorship, these things led me to applying my own belief system, which is Christianity, to all I see around me, but most importantly to recovering from the losses of life.

Historically, I grew up most of my early life in a small town called Welwyn Garden City, in Hertfordshire about 20 miles north of London. I worked in the water industry right out of high school, and went to college part-time, eventually ending up with an honors degree from the University of London. I then left England in 1978 and went to work for an oil company in Saudi Arabia. It was there I worked to acquire an MBA from the University of Oklahoma, I finished that and was awarded it in 1985. From there I left the oil industry behind and joined the financial services industry in the US, and I’m still currently working in it. I live in Katy, Texas, and I’m currently enrolled in the Houston Graduate School of Theology.

Sometime in 2008 I received a calling to initiate a ministry that combined my skill set or talents, my giftings, my life story, my experiences and my beliefs. The end product of following this calling is a ministry called Merimnao (www.merimnao.org) which serves the needs of the local churches and community in the area of ministering to brokenheartedness. I am currently the managing director of that organization.

My books focus on the subject of Christian recovery. In Christian recovery we emphasize helping people apply Christian principles to their problems. Examples from within the ministry are divorce, grief, sexual purity and sexual abuse. The first three books I wrote go together as a series called Emotional Prisons. Emotional Prisons is based on the hypothesis that our problems in life are largely due to our inability to correctly resolve our difficult emotions (such as shame and guilt) and this leads us into various traps. These traps could be religion, drugs or sex, but they can also be perfectionism, working too much and people-pleasing.

I also write a blog www.applyingmybeliefs.wordpress.com in which I often write about Christian recovery matters or subjects of interest where I try to apply scripture to everyday life.

My latest three books are all workbooks designed to be used by a counselor, mentor, sponsor, coach or other spiritual advisor with the individuals they are working with.