When I was five, my eight-year-old brother would play “Scare Clark.” This game consisted of him wearing a hockey mask and jumping out of the shadows to scare me. My all-time, not-so favorite was when he would hide with said mask under my bed and wait until I was almost asleep. Then he would reach his hand up and touch my arm. Yup, that got my heart rate up! 

You can laugh, but admit it. You and I don’t need a holiday to put on masks; we wear them every day. School stress, a rocky marriage, piles of bills, health issues, anxiety. Someone asks, “Hey, how are you doing?” To avoid the conflict, we simply answer, “I’m fine.” We reason that no one would want to hear our problems. They have enough of their own.

What can we do about it? Go it alone? How’s that been working for you? Permit James to encourage you: “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective” (James 5:16). 

Confess and pray to whom? That’s why I love my church family. As one author noted, church is not a hotel for saints but a hospital for sinners. Fellow believers help us take off our masks to reveal that our current circumstances do not take away from who we are in Christ.

Things may not always be “fine” this side of heaven, but we don’t have to go it alone.