If I asked you how you were doing today? How would you respond. Ask me on any given day,  and I’ll answer with  I’m fine, I’m good, or I’m ok…but if I’m being honest, sometimes, I’m not fine, good or ok.

One day, I was thinking of one of my friends that I hadn’t talked to in a while. I decided to text her just to check in. I simply said, “Good morning love! How are you?”. As I waited for her to text back, I knew she was going to say she was fine, and then ask me how I was doing; you know, the usual, but she didn’t. Instead, she said that things could be better. Although I assumed from her Facebook posts that she was happy, she wasn’t, and she opened up to me about what she was going through. It was a lot, and I had absolutely no idea. Had she never been transparent with me, I wouldn’t have been able to pray for her and be there for her in her time of need.

I wonder how many of us could be better, if we were being honest. I know I could. I’m guilty of telling my friends that I’m good right after crying my eyes out about a situation. In some way, I feel like I should keep my business (especially if it involves my family) private, and in another way, I don’t want to burden other people with my issues when I know they have their own. With the distance and fakeness that social media creates between friends, we forget what they are for; to lean on and pray with. Sometimes, we get so caught up in the images of perfectly happy people on social media, that we feel the need to put up a front like we have it all together; Not realizing that their profiles only tell a snippet of their stories. We all go through storms, we just don’t make them public.

Your mental and emotional health matters, but you have to speak up about it. The next time a friend asks you how your doing, I challenge you to be honest. If you really are fine, that’s perfectly ok, but if you’re not, say so. Your real, true friends will be more than happy to talk through your problems with you, and most importantly, pray for you. They may not have all the answers, but it helps to get everything off your chest. Everybody needs somebody to lean on. Let’s stop pretending to be fine all the time.