When Marion Duckworth was in first grade, the Depression had just ended, and talking about anything related to sex—especially sexual abuse—was taboo. So when an older man coaxed her away from her paper dolls one afternoon and fondled her, Marion felt she had to keep her dirty secret to herself. And she did.

Marion didn't tell anyone about the incident until she was 21 and engaged. Her fiancé, John, was furious. He wanted to hunt the perpetrator down, but she pled with him to let it go. She insisted the man was too old to hurt anyone else.

What Marion couldn't tell John, though, was that she had suffered from flashbacks ever since the day of the abuse. She had no visual memory of the incident, but she could feel—vividly—the man's repulsive touch. Any lurid or sleazy image would trigger these sickening flashbacks.

One afternoon, as Marion and John perused a drug store, John showed her a steamy magazine cover, disgusted by what children were regularly exposed to. Experiencing a flashback, Marion quickly agreed with him, then hurried to another part of the store to be alone. She writes in Today's Christian:

While I pretended to contemplate Noxema, the Holy Spirit spoke shocking words to my mind. "You'll never relive these feelings again." The message rang with authority; I didn't doubt it was God's voice. I decided I'd know for sure this was a genuine miracle if the feelings never returned. They never did.

Not once through the years had I asked God to heal that memory. It hadn't occurred to me that He would do such a thing. I was too ashamed to talk about it to a Christian counselor—much less to a holy God. So I simply tried—unsuccessfully—to suppress it.

From that day forward, whenever I was exposed to some image of sleaze, I reminded myself with profound gratitude of what didn't happen. There was no flashback. Just sorrow over sin and a prayer for God's intercession in our broken world.