A woman shook my hand at the door after service one Sunday.
Big smile.
“Doing great, Pastor. God is good.”
Three weeks later, she sat across from me in my office and told me she had not felt much of anything in months.
Not grief. Not joy. Not even much of God.
She had simply gotten very, very good at the handshake.
I have thought about that conversation many times. I think about it whenever someone looks me in the eye and says, “I’m fine,” because I have learned that fine can be one of the most carefully guarded words in the church.
You can be falling apart and still show up.
You can go to work, serve at church, make dinner, answer everybody’s messages, post the encouraging Scripture and still drive home feeling like there is a weight sitting on your chest.
From the outside, very little may look broken.
Inside, you are using nearly all your strength just to keep everything looking normal.
And if you do that long enough, you can become so practiced at appearing all right that even you stop knowing how you really are.
When the Smile Becomes Protection
The smile is not always hypocrisy.
Sometimes it is protection.
When someone asks how you are doing in a church hallway, there may not be enough time, trust, or emotional energy to explain the truth.
So you say, “I’m doing good.”
Or, “Just busy.”
Or the old faithful answer, “God is good.”
And He is.
But that does not necessarily mean you are.
There is nothing wrong with being careful about where you share something deeply personal. Not everyone has earned access to the most wounded places in your life.
The danger is when nobody has access.
A mask can begin as protection and slowly become a prison.
You stop telling people how you feel because explaining it is exhausting. Then you stop asking yourself how you feel. Eventually, you become very good at managing the outside while losing touch with what is happening underneath.
You can look happy and still hurt.
You can laugh and still feel lonely.
You can worship and still be exhausted.
You can love God deeply and wonder why you feel almost nothing.
If that is where you are, hear me clearly.
You are not a fraud.
You may simply be someone who has carried something heavy for a very long time without finding a safe place to set it down.
When You Stop Feeling
One of the things that frightens people most is when they stop feeling the way they used to.
That fear can run even deeper for people of faith.
Prayer feels flat. Worship does not move you the way it once did. A song that used to reach you seems to stop at the surface. People you love are still there, but somehow you feel separated from them by glass.
Then another fear begins:
What is wrong with me?
Sometimes numbness is what happens when you have carried too much for too long.
Your mind and body can begin turning the volume down simply so you can keep functioning. The problem is that pain and joy do not come with separate volume controls. When everything becomes quieter, the beautiful things can become harder to feel too.
Years ago, while studying Psalm 23, I wrote about how the soul remembers the experiences of life and suffering.
I still believe that.
A wounded soul does not always scream.
Sometimes it goes quiet.
That quiet does not mean something inside you has died. It may mean you have been carrying more than anyone around you realized.
God Already Knows What Is Behind the Handshake
The performance may work on everyone else.
It has never fooled God.
He sees the version of you walking through the church lobby, and He sees the version sitting alone in the car before you go inside.
He sees the smile.
He sees what is behind it.
And He is not repelled by either one.
Scripture is filled with people who stopped performing in the presence of God.
David wrote, “My tears have been my meat day and night” (Psalm 42:3).
He did not edit the sentence until it sounded more victorious.
He told the truth.
Even Jesus, on the night before the cross, did not hide His anguish from the men closest to Him. He told them, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death” (Matthew 26:38).
Think about that.
The sinless Son of God let trusted people see that He was carrying something unbearably heavy.
He did not confuse honesty with weakness.
We should not either.
The First Honest Answer
When that woman sat across from me in my office, I did not give her a five-step plan.
I did not tell her to pray harder.
I did not tell her that she needed more faith.
I asked her to do something much smaller.
Find one safe person and give them the true answer to the question, “How are you?”
Not everybody.
One person may be enough.
A trusted friend. A mature pastor. A counselor. Someone who will not panic, preach at you, gossip about you, or hurry you toward a better answer.
Someone safe enough to hear the truth.
Maybe your first honest sentence is not dramatic.
Maybe it is simply:
I’m not doing as well as everyone thinks.
Or:
I’m exhausted and I don’t know why.
Or:
I haven’t felt like myself in a long time.
Maybe the truest thing you can say is:
I don’t even know what I feel anymore.
Sometimes healing begins with one sentence you finally stop carrying alone.
If numbness has lasted a long time, is seriously interfering with everyday life, or has settled into deep hopelessness, there is wisdom in talking with a qualified counselor or physician too.
Receiving help does not make your faith smaller.
Sometimes it simply means you have stopped demanding that one tired person carry everything alone.
Tell God the Same Truth
You do not have to wait until you understand your feelings before you stop performing with God.
You do not need the right vocabulary.
You do not need to manufacture an emotion you cannot currently feel.
You can pray something as simple as:
Lord, I have been telling everybody I’m fine. I’m not. I don’t even know exactly what is happening inside me, but You do. Help me.
That is a prayer.
Sometimes we think prayer has failed if we do not feel something immediately afterward.
But your relationship with God does not disappear because your emotions have gone quiet.
You can pray, worship, and trust Him even in a numb season.
And little by little, feeling can begin to return.
Not because you forced it.
Because you finally stopped requiring yourself to pretend.
When the Smile Becomes Real Again
The woman with the perfect handshake eventually smiled again.
But it was a different smile.
Less automatic.
More peaceful.
Real.
It did not happen because she became better at pretending.
It happened because she stopped pretending with the people who were safe enough to know the truth.
Healing took time.
There were conversations. There were tears. There were days when progress seemed obvious and other days when it seemed as though nothing was changing.
That is often how healing works.
The first signs may be small.
One genuine laugh.
One conversation where you do not have to perform.
One morning when getting out of bed feels a little easier.
One moment in prayer when you realize something inside you moved again.
Do not despise those moments because they look small.
Small does not mean insignificant.
You may be tired of holding your smile in place.
You may not even remember when you started wearing it.
You do not have to tear the mask off in front of everyone.
Find one safe place where you do not need it.
Tell the truth there.
Let somebody help you carry what you have been hiding.
And most of all, bring that same unedited truth to God.
He has never loved the polished answer more than the person underneath it.
One day the smile may return and surprise you.
This time, it will not be something you put on before walking into the room.
It will be yours.
This post is adapted from themes in You Will Smile Again: How God Restores Joy After Deep Pain and Heartbreak, releasing October 20, 2026. If the smile you wear has started to feel like a costume, you can set it down for five quiet mornings. Start with my free devotional, When You Can’t See How: A 5-Day Strategy to Smile Again.
A gentle note: If the numbness has settled in and stayed, that is not something you need to hide. Alongside prayer and Scripture, a trusted pastor or a qualified Christian counselor can be one of God’s best gifts in this season. If you ever feel unsafe or in despair, please reach out for help right away.
