FARGO, N.D. (AP) — Sitting in a Fargo coffee shop, Matt Valan speaks with an assurance that’s part counselor, part salesman.

What he’s selling is a message of hope and faith.

Valan’s actual occupation is pastor at the Lutheran Church of Christ the King in Moorhead, but for several Sundays, he’s delivering that message in special services called “Surviving the Unfathomable.”

At the pulpit and in the coffee shop, Valan opens up about his own experiences with hardships, doubt and despair. From contemplating suicide more than 30 years ago to coming to grips with his little sister murdering her husband four years ago, he can talk the talk because he’s walked the walk.

“By honestly and publicly talking about the struggles I’ve been through, I hope to help people survive and thrive,” he said.

“I’m not going to try to explain what I don’t know or don’t understand,” he said, referring to the question: Why do bad things happen to good people? “But I can try to explain what I know to be true, what helped me.”

As a Lutheran pastor, Valan said he was taught to avoid bringing too much of himself into services. But he decided to share more about his own life because he felt others would listen and relate to his struggles.

“I’ve lived here for 30 years. Everyone knows my history,” he said.

And if they don’t, his recent sermons have filled them in on a personal story that’s punctuated by pain and tragedy.

Valan has opened up about contemplating suicide in the early 1980s when he was failing as a rural Moorhead farmer.

“I had mistakenly tied my self-worth and self-esteem to my farming outcomes,” he explained. “That beauty emerged in my darkest hour when I realized that God and my amazing wife loved me not for what I owned or what I could accomplish, but rather for who I was.”

He’s talked about the grief and doubts he and his wife, the Rev. Kathy Valan, felt after the death of their daughter, Katie Anne, from sudden infant death syndrome in 1982.

Those feelings were publicly magnified two decades later when his younger sister, Elizabeth, died in a car crash, returning home from a 2005 Fourth of July celebration. She had just gone through a bitter divorce and lost custody of her children.

Valan’s son was also injured in that crash.

Then, one year later, his youngest sister, Cordee Jo Tungseth, murdered her husband, Steven Tungseth, in their Fergus Falls home.

Those incidents pained Valan’s father, who had been the rock of the family, Valan said. His father, Merlyn Valan, died last December.

“For the past six years, our family has had more than its share of tragedy,” Valan said.

“People ask, ’How do you deal with that as a pastor?’ ” he said.

One way is through keeping a journal. Valan regularly chronicles his days and reflections, said his friend of over 30 years, Jeff Krause.

“He’s been inspired to share something of his own life,” Krause said, calling Valan “a very giving man.”

“Matt has found meaning in his suffering,” says Krause, a psychologist in the Twin Cities. “Any time you can do that, it’s a great thing. It goes from taking energy away to giving energy back.”

Recently Valan has turned the journals into a pair of books.

One, a survivor’s guide, “Surviving the Unfathomable,” acts as the basis for his series of 11 a.m. Sunday services. Another, “Two Sisters: A Journey from Retribution to Restoration,” is more of a family history, looking particularly at what happened with his two younger sisters and trying to figure out answers to questions he’s asked himself.

“How does a wonderful Christian woman of faith wake up one morning and decide she’s going to put a shotgun to her husband’s chest and kill him?” Valan said of his sister, Cordee Jo.

He also examines how a number of men let both of his sisters down. Valan considers himself one of them, wondering what he could’ve done differently to avoid the tragic outcomes.