Secrets Fit for the Grave by Dee Stewart

When Books Come to Life

Before I blogged I was a journalist. I reported about Christian apologetics and how it affected the Christian worldview. I featured entertainers who were Christian, but didn’t necessarily believe that their art and faith needed to mix. I wrote articles about people who overcome obstacles because of their faith. Sometimes I even wrote about my life: single parenting & dating, domestic violence, my heart condition, and my concerns about my daughter’s future. I’ve shared challenges, heartbreaks, and fears…some secrets. But not the juicy kind, the kind that made reporters and tabloid bloggers famous. No. I kept my meaty secrets to myself.

Likewise, as a journalist I’ve witnessed some secret shames that affected the laity concerned and people of great Christian faith. I’ve had to keep secrets; withhold from exposing those secrets to our readers and listeners because the telling would not just hurt the one possessing the secret but many in a trickle down effect, whose outcome– when you look at the whole– seemed more befitting to keep the secret close to my heart or put away in a secret box maybe to be shared in a memoir once I’m older or by the parties involved.

So I know secrets. I keep secrets not just for me, but for many. That fact is a part of who I am and it is not a secret.

But when I read Xavier Knight’s God Only Knows(Grand Central Publishing) all the secrets that I have kept begun to whisper to me. “Out of all the secrets that you have which ones are you willing to take to the grave and why? ”

Why did this book trip me up?

This novel is the story of four women who have kept a dark secret since their teenage years. This secret if revealed would threaten their professional lives, their physical lives, and in some cases their romantic lives. Yet they took that chance, and to their chagrin realized that the secret had begun to tear at their souls.

And this was where my drama began. Am I willing to keep a secret that could ultimately separate me from my peace, my contagious joy, my only love-God? What would that feel like for me, and did I want to risk it?

My answer to the question for all the secrets I have (save one) up until before I read God Only Knows was yes. The reason: I didn’t see how sharing the secret would help anyone. But the book ignited something in me that would no longer allow me to feel at ease with that answer.

What if the secrets I kept gave someone else freedom and peace?

I decided to do a little investigation of mine own.

Don’t laugh. :) I went to Facebook and posted the same question and I went to Twitter and set up a poll. Here are some of the responses I got?

My conclusion?

I’m still not ready to share any secrets that I have, but in the future I will be quick to put myself in anymore situations where I’m stuck with someone else’s secret or worse I’ve found myself making another horrible mistake. Your thoughts…You can leave them here, on twitter or at my facebook page.

Dee Stewart is a book critic, writer and owner of DeeGospel PR, a boutique literary PR firm in Atlanta. You can find her on twitter and Christian Fiction Blog.