Remember that feeling of trying to keep a secret from your parents? Maybe you’d done something as mild as stealing a cookie from the cookie jar, yet your heart did somersaults inside you as you tried to look them in the eye as you lied.
We’re not meant for keeping secrets, and our bodies know it.
In “Grief Can Weigh You Down, but It Doesn’t Have to Pull You Under,” Jonathan Sprowl reviews Shawn Smucker’s latest novel Weight of Memory. Like much of Smucker’s work, this story explores secrets and sadness, honesty and hope.
“Just as there is an oppressive heaviness in keeping secrets, there is also healing in bringing things to light,” writes Sprowl. “A common theme in Smucker’s writing is that his characters create more pain for themselves by holding things in, for fear of being found out, than they would by coming clean. When the truth comes to light, there is often, though not always, a holy grief that lifts the attendant burdens away. At one point, a character says, ‘Grief is hard and good. It is the disease and the medicine, all at once.’ Whether that grief will heal or consume is a pivotal matter in many of Smucker’s novels.”
Whether we’re facing a personal crisis or trying to reckon with issues of the day, sin can tempt us to stay quiet about the things that matter. But as Smucker, Sprowl, and the Scriptures remind us—in the light, we find hope and healing alike.
