The Lie of “I’m Fine”

Let’s set the scene. You open up the social media feed of your choice, and there are videos playing that somehow know what you are walking through. It always knows. You know the videos. It’s where a guy is speaking away from the camera, with the right music playing, talking about what is really happening when people ask him how he is doing, and what his response was, and what he really meant. Truthfully, it wasn’t all that long ago that I realized I had become really good at answering questions that nobody was actually asking.

How’s work? Good. How’s the family? Busy but good. How’s marriage? Okay. How are you? I’m fine.

The strange thing is that I wasn’t trying to deceive anyone. At least I don’t think I was. I had started believing that most people weren’t really asking because they wanted to know. They were asking because it’s what we do. It’s part of being polite. We check the box, wait for the expected answer, and move on. As long as I kept showing up, solving problems, paying the bills, getting through another week, and doing what was expected of me, I assumed I was or would be okay. I never stopped long enough to ask whether simply functioning was the same thing as actually living. There is a major difference between surviving and thriving. I was barely surviving.

Looking back, I think that’s one of the easiest traps for a man to fall into because, quite honestly, we have been conditioned to believe that how we are truly doing doesn’t matter, or if we do open up, that it is somehow seen as weakness, or, depending on who you open up to, emotional manipulation. And then it’s followed by, “You should see a therapist.”

We slowly become managers of our lives instead of participants in them. We manage calendars, responsibilities, finances, conflicts, schedules, expectations, and everybody else’s needs and emotions. Many times, we become slaves to chasing others’ emotions. Somewhere in the middle of all of that, we quietly disappear. We don’t notice it because nothing catastrophic happens. We don’t wake up one morning unable to recognize ourselves. It’s much slower than that. We just stop asking ourselves honest questions because honest answers might require us to live a changed life.

I’ve had times in life where I knew exactly what everyone else needed from me, but I couldn’t have told you what was happening inside my own heart if you had asked. I knew what projects needed to be finished. I knew where the kids needed to be. I knew what conversation needed to happen next. I knew how to sit and listen to what my wife needed in that moment. I got really good at solving everyone else’s problems, yet I had become strangely disconnected from my own soul. It wasn’t intentional. I wasn’t running from God, and I certainly wasn’t trying to avoid Him. I was simply living at a pace that left very little room for Him to say anything I wasn’t already too busy to hear. Looking back, that’s a terrifying realization because I didn’t even know it was happening.

The frightening part is that nobody would have noticed. From the outside, I looked responsible. I was still doing all the things and making sure I was still showing up. If you had watched my life from a distance, you probably would have assumed everything was pretty freaking good.

The problem was that I had started believing the same thing.

I think we tell ourselves we’re fine because admitting otherwise feels uncomfortable, or we don’t have it all together. If I admit I’m tired, I have to ask why. If I admit I’m frustrated, I have to look beneath the frustration. If I admit I’m lonely, I have to face the possibility that I’ve spent years surrounding myself with people while allowing very few of them to actually know me. It’s easier to say, “I’m fine,” than it is to begin pulling on those threads.

I’ve also realized that “I’m fine” can become a way of protecting ourselves from disappointment. If nobody knows what’s really happening inside us, then nobody can misunderstand us, reject us, or let us down. We convince ourselves that staying guarded is a strength when, in reality, it’s often fear wearing a different name. I used to think I had become an introvert. Looking back, I don’t think that’s what happened at all. I think I became guarded. It’s easier to keep conversations on the surface when you’re afraid someone might ask the one question you don’t know how or want to answer honestly.

But God has a way of refusing to let us stay there forever. Not because He wants to expose us, but because He wants to heal us. Looking back, I don’t think God was trying to add something to me as much as He was removing what never belonged there in the first place. He was patiently peeling away the version of me that had been built by fear, expectations, disappointment, performance, and years of believing I had to hold everything together. Somewhere underneath all of that was the man He had been forming all along.

I’ve noticed that some of the moments where I sensed God working most deeply in my life weren’t the moments when I had everything together. They were the moments when I finally stopped pretending that I did. They were the prayers where I ran out of polished words and simply admitted I didn’t know what was happening or know how to pray it anymore. I had to learn how to cry again, for real. I had to learn what these emotions were and be okay with having them. For years, I thought those emotions were the problem. Looking back, they weren’t the problem at all. They were simply revealing places in my heart that God had wanted to heal for a long time. Oddly enough, those moments never pushed God away; they seemed to invite Him closer.

The older I get, the less impressed I am by the image of having it all together. I’ve spent enough time trying to carry that version of myself to know how exhausting it is. I’d much rather become a man who is honest before God than a man who appears strong before everyone else. Maybe that’s where healing actually begins. Not when life suddenly gets easier, or my prayers start to get answered. Maybe it begins the day we stop answering a question with words we’ve stopped believing. “I’m fine.”

That is where the anchor begins to go deeper.