My friend Jon Merritt is a brave, wise writer, and everyone should read the excerpt from his new book that appears in April’s Christianity Today :
I can’t tell you how many times something like this occurred. I remember those three vividly, and when I let my mind wander, I can still see the events in my mind like I’m watching an old 8mm film. I guess it doesn’t matter how many times it happened, only that it did. And it singed a part of my soul in a way I can’t explain. Now it only hurts when I press down on the injury, but at the time, I lived with a dull throb and occasional shooting pains.
With my parents and brothers, school counselors and friends—I never let on that anything was wrong. But it was. For something inside of me had been bruised. Or broken. The best way to let it heal, I determined, was to deal with it myself.
Read the whole thing here (really, read it).