For clergy, it’s unsettling to realize sometimes the helper needs help

Several weeks earlier — before the surgery that cured my first problem but unexpectedly created the spinal cord injury — when I was living with unbearable nerve pain that seemed to have no cure, my friend Jakob called me one afternoon to ask a brave question: “As your friend, I need to ask you: ‘Are you considering taking your own life?’” My answer formed slowly: “No, but I now understand how people get to that point. And if I get there, I promise to call you.”