When I first started writing Rising from the RUINS, I thought I was writing a book about addiction, recovery, and faith.
I thought it would be a testimony about the 19 years I spent battling drugs and alcohol, the mistakes I made, and how God changed my life.
And yes, that is part of the story.
But somewhere along the way, the book became something deeper than I ever planned.
It became a book about identity.
It became a book about broken foundations.
It became a book about the things that happen in life long before addiction ever shows up.
It became a book about how a person can spend years chasing success, approval, relationships, or even God, and still feel like something inside isn’t right.
And I didn’t plan that.
That realization happened while I was writing.
There is actually a chapter in the book called Identity Crisis, and that chapter was never in the original outline. It showed up because I finally saw something I had never fully understood before. My addiction was not the root of my life falling apart. My identity was.
That was one of the biggest moments in the entire writing process.
And once I saw that, everything in my life started making more sense.
The childhood wounds.
The insecurity.
The need for approval.
The constant chasing.
The feeling like I had to prove myself.
The feeling like I was never enough.
All of it connected.
Another chapter that was never planned was the chapter about the ripple effect of infidelity. That one was hard to write, but it became one of the most honest chapters in the whole book. When I looked back at my life, I could see how patterns repeat when wounds never heal. Things that happened when I was young didn’t stay in the past. They followed me into adulthood, into marriage, into decisions I never thought I would make.
That was a hard realization, but it was also one of the most important ones.
That is when I really understood what the RUINS meant.
The RUINS framework in the book stands for
Recognize the Ruins
Understand the Impact
Identify the Lies
Navigate the Healing
Stand in Redemption
When I first wrote that framework, I thought I was describing recovery.
Now I realize I was describing my entire life.
Ruins don’t happen overnight.
They happen slowly, over time, through things we never deal with, lies we believe, and pain we learn to hide instead of heal.
That is what this book really became about.
Not just addiction.
Not just faith.
Not just mistakes.
It became about how a life gets built on a broken foundation, and how God can rebuild it piece by piece when you finally surrender.
One thing that surprised me while writing this book is how many parts of my life had the same pattern. BMX, sound systems, trucks, business, MLM, chasing dreams, even parts of ministry. Every time I thought the next thing would make me feel whole. Every time I thought the next thing would fix what I felt inside.
And every time, it didn’t.
That is why this book is not just for people who struggled with addiction.
It is for anyone who has ever felt like something inside them was missing and they didn’t know why.
It is for people who feel like they should be happy, but aren’t.
It is for people who feel like they have made too many mistakes.
It is for people who believe in God but still feel broken.
It is for people who spent years trying to prove themselves.
It is for people who feel like life did not turn out how they thought it would.
It is for people who think it might be too late to rebuild.
One of the biggest lessons I learned while writing Rising from the RUINS is this.
Addiction was not the only thing I needed freedom from.
I needed freedom from the lies I believed about myself.
I needed freedom from the need to prove I mattered.
I needed freedom from the shame I carried for years.
I needed freedom from the idea that my value came from success, attention, or what other people thought.
And that freedom did not come overnight.
It came through surrender.
It came through obedience.
It came through facing things I avoided for years.
It came through letting God rebuild parts of me that I thought were too far gone.
Another lesson I learned is that healing is not always loud.
Sometimes it is slow.
Sometimes it is quiet.
Sometimes it feels like nothing is happening.
Sometimes it feels like you are going backwards.
But when you look back, you realize God was working the whole time.
That is why I believe this book can help more people than I first thought it would.
Not because my story is special.
But because the patterns in my story are not unique.
We may not all have the same ruins, but we all have something in our past that shaped how we see ourselves.
We all have lies we believed.
We all have pain we never dealt with.
We all have things we tried to use to fill a hole inside.
And we all need redemption in some way.
Rising from the RUINS is not a book about a perfect life.
It is a book about a real life.
A life with mistakes.
A life with regrets.
A life with broken seasons.
A life with faith that wasn’t always strong.
A life with moments I am not proud of.
A life that had to be rebuilt more than once.
But it is also a book about hope.
Hope that it is not too late.
Hope that God can still rebuild what feels destroyed.
Hope that your past does not have to define your future.
Hope that healing is possible, even if it takes time.
And if this book does anything, I hope it helps people realize this.
Your ruins are not the end of your story.
Sometimes they are the place where the real rebuilding begins.
Chris Benton
Rising from the RUINS
Coming soon on The Chris & Sandy Show
