I was six years old the first time I learned that truth could be dangerous. My father’s voice thundered through the walls, and I knew the sound meant someone was about to pay for honesty. That night, it was me. I had told him I broke the lamp in the living room. I thought telling the truth was what good boys did. Instead, I tasted the sting of his belt and the silence of a cold bed. Something inside me broke. From that day on, I learned to hide, to cover, to lie. Not because I wanted to be bad, but because I wanted to survive. Decades later, as a grown man sitting in a pew, I still carried that boy inside me, longing for a place where truth wouldn’t hurt, where honesty didn’t mean rejection, where love was stronger than fear.