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(OPINION) As I’ve mentioned fairly often in this space, I spent five years as a nearly around-the-clock caregiver to my first wife, Renee, as she died of cancer in the early 2000s.

I loved Renee with all my heart. Her illness was devastating — to her, of course, but also to our son, our extended family, our church and me.

The fact that we were Pentecostals didn’t help us in this case. If anything, it hurt. Our congregation, our kin, Renee and, more than I’d like to admit, I myself, were all steeped in the health-and-wealth gospel that was huge among Pentecostals at the time.

Health-and-wealth theology said we must accept nothing but a miracle for Renee. We had to proclaim endlessly that she would recover. God was obligated by our faith to heal her.

But she wasn’t healed. She withered away until there was almost nothing left of her. I grew ever more exhausted. I became clinically depressed. For the first time in our 20-plus years of marriage, Renee and I started having problems between us. We were worn down to raw nubs.

I couldn’t admit these things publicly. I was a pastor. I had a role to maintain. I had to “stand in faith,” as we said.

As our lives disintegrated, out of the blue the Herald-Leader asked me to start writing a periodic column on faith and values. I’d left the newspaper’s staff several years earlier to pursue the ministry full-time.

I agreed to try. But when I sat down to write, I had no idea what to say. I had no insights. I prayed hard. I couldn’t string two sentences together.

The only words that would come — whether they were from the Spirit or the smoldering rubble of my soul, I don’t know — were these: “Just tell the truth.”

Just tell the truth. If I couldn’t do anything else, I could do that, I figured. With some trepidation, I started writing candid pieces about our situation. Renee’s illness. My struggles with caregiving. How God’s apparent absence was battering my faith. How guilty I felt because I couldn’t fix any of it.

A true miracle then occurred, although not the one I’d hoped for. 

The miracle was that my email inbox exploded. The responses rolled in by the hundreds and ultimately the thousands. From Kentucky. From other states. From foreign nations.

Probably 90% of the emails I received were from fellow caregivers desperate to tell me their own stories of fatigue, loss and night terrors.

Often, these folks would end by saying something like: “Thank God for your honesty. I suffer head and neck pain from wearing a fake smile. Please keep writing. You’re saving my life.”

I realized I wasn’t a villain or necessarily even a failure; I was merely human. And despite my shortcomings, I was helping these other people. They were helping me, too. I learned that the truth, even when it’s ugly, packs a wallop. The truth indeed sets you — and others — free. 

I’m repeating this story because we live in an age when nearly everybody seems to be trying to curate nearly everything. All eras may have been like that, since human nature rarely changes. But with social media, the preening and posturing are way more visible.

Every family on Facebook is smiling heartily, dressed to the nines and living their best possible life. As teenage audiences watch raptly, attractive, self-confident influencers on TikTok unbox the trendy clothes they just bought, in what are called “haul” videos, you’d think everybody in the world had it all together — except you.

That’s partly why anxiety and depression are soaring. We’ve got more stuff than ever and less contentment. We’re trying to measure up to a pack of bald-faced lies that greet us every time we look at our phones.

However, this column really isn’t about social media per se. As I said, Facebook and Tik Tok didn’t invent preening and posturing. 

This column really is about the rewards of declining to live under the bondage of false pretenses and unrealistic expectations. It’s about learning to tell the truth to yourself and about yourself.

I’ll close with a few thoughts that might help you break free:

— God loves you as you are, flaws and all. God’s opinion is the only one that matters.

— Hardly anybody has it together. You’re not the only messy person. Behind their facades, nearly everybody is a blubbering, bumbling mess.

— When you quit pretending to be someone you’re not, you liberate yourself to become — and accept, and even love — the person God meant you to be, without regard to what others think.

— God doesn’t use lies for his ends but deals in the truth. When you accept the truth about yourself, God actually makes something beautiful from the very defects you tried to hide. 

— If you become honest, then yeah, you’ll lose some friends. There are folks who don’t want to associate with the imperfect. Say a prayer of thanks when they leave. Those are friends you’re better off without. Their departure is the Lord’s blessing on you.

— The happy paradox is that as you become real, as scary as that can be, you meet a battalion of kindred souls. Other scarred and messy people — they are legion — will be drawn to you.

Paul Prather has been a rural Pentecostal pastor in Kentucky for more than 40 years. Also a journalist, he was The Lexington Herald-Leader’s staff religion writer in the 1990s, before leaving to devote his full time to the ministry. He now writes a regular column about faith and religion for the Herald-Leader, where this column first appeared. Prather’s written four books. You can email him at pratpd@yahoo.com.