"I haven't seen you around for a while....."

Sometimes others say it better than I could hope to.....or just as well as i could hope to......

“I haven’t seen you around church in a while,” he says to me.

I knew this moment would happen. My church wasn’t big enough to be anonymous, and I realized the time would come when I’d casually run into one of the leaders and my secret would be confronted. Here we were at a local grocery store, standing in line together.

Even though I was aware this run-in would eventually occur, I hadn’t yet spent the time to formulate an answer.

It wasn’t for lack of time.

It was for lack of energy. Lack of motivation. Lack of will.

And even lack of faith.

Depression has been a demon I’ve dealt with for most of my teen and adult life. And I’m not alone. The National Institute of Mental Health indicates more than a quarter of American adults are afflicted with some type of mental illness like depression or anxiety disorders.

I’ve been to psychologists, psychiatrists, Eastern medicine practitioners, Christian counselors, group therapy and even inpatient treatment. I’ve been misdiagnosed, over-medicated and, at times, left to my own vices. I’ve tried to fix myself with healthy things like exercise and clean dieting—and not-so-healthy things like alcohol and drugs, and self-injury.

My friend’s statement has left me a little shell-shocked. What am I supposed to answer? How much of my problems do I disclose? Do I just come out and say what the last three months have really been to me?

I look into my friend’s eyes and think: I wish I could tell you that. I wish I could tell you how alone I feel and how desperately I need you to just sit with me, to hold my hand, to share some tea with me and listen, even if it’s only about how sad I feel today. If only I could tell you how weak my faith becomes and how easy it is to believe the lies that say I’m not valuable to this world because I’m not as strong as everyone else. I wish I could tell you that I want to be like you—to be able to push through grief and heartache and fear that seemingly have no cause and to come out of it praising and worshiping the way you and your friends do.

But I can’t.

I’m too afraid.

I don’t know how you’ll respond.

And I don’t want to be any lonelier than I already feel.

As I finally determine how to respond to my friend, I take a deep breath and simply say: “Yeah. I’ve been really busy with work and I haven’t been able to make it to church lately. Maybe next weekend?”

He looks back at me and says, “Great—I hope so!” and smiles.

I smile back, but only because I’ve kept my secret safe for one more day.

So many times I’m asked by church leaders, “How can I make my church a safe place?” The only answer is, “You.” You have to be a safe place. You have to first live transparently with others (and by this, I don’t mean air your dirty laundry … use discernment, but be open and vulnerable—even if you are the pastor). By living transparently, others will follow suit. When we share our brokenness with others, we are showing the world there is a God who heals.

After all, if we were perfect, what would we need the cross for anyway? How can we show hope and miracles to a world that is seeking them when we pretend everything is just fine?

My friend Len shared with me that, in Eastern cultures, when porcelain breaks or cracks, they don’t restore it like we do in the West. They don’t try to remove any evidence of breakage or cracks. They do just the opposite: apply a lacquer that highlights the crack with gold. In other words, they feature the cracks with gold, which actually adds to the value and gives the piece a story and a unique character.

May God apply that gold to us, so others may see the cracks in our story and the redemption of His nature, whether we are a Superstar, someone who is Very Broken or a person in The Middle.

Anne Jackson is a writer, speaker and social change activist who lives in Orange County, CA. She is the author of Mad Church Disease: Overcoming the Burnout Epidemic (Zondervan) and Permission to Speak Freely: Essays and Art on Fear, Confession and Grace (Thomas Nelson).

This article originally appeared in Neue magazine, a sister publication of RELEVANT.