This past Saturday, my family and I did something normal: we went to a theme park. In this current season of my life, normal requires strategy. To make sure I didn’t push my body past its limits, my family rented a motorized scooter for me to use to get around the park.

We knew exactly why I was in that seat. We knew the diagnosis, the medication walls, and the physical reality of what it takes for me to just be present. But the outside world doesn’t see your medical charts. As I rode through the crowds, I could see and sense the judgment from the people passing by. I watched all kinds of people, from the very young to the elderly, walking the park grounds, and I could feel the silent assumptions being made about an overweight woman using a scooter.

It bothered me more than it should have. It stung because, as human beings, we want our outside reality to match our inside truth. We want people to understand our struggles without us having to wear a warning label.

The mental exhaustion of navigating that public judgment is a heavy weight in itself, but the deeper toll is what happens when the park gates close and you go home. I have become an expert at managing how the world sees me, and I am realizing how much energy it takes just to maintain the illusion of being okay. Lately, I have been thinking about the severe emotional toll that comes with the mask we wear when we are walking through a valley.

I have gotten incredibly good at hiding my symptoms and masking my pain just to look normal, not just to strangers, but even around my own family. I find myself pushing through boundaries, doing things on the farm or at work that I know I should ask for help with, simply because the alternative means admitting how much ground I am losing to this illness.

The constant vigilance required to hide a chronic condition is draining. It means monitoring your facial expressions so you don’t wince, pacing your breathing so no one hears you catching your breath, and forcing a smile when every nerve in your body is screaming for rest. This internal performance creates a profound sense of isolation. You can be standing in a room full of people who love you, yet feel completely alone because no one actually sees the battle you are fighting. You begin to grieve the person you used to be, while simultaneously fighting a silent war to keep up appearances.

Even as I sit in my office at work today typing these words, the mask is on, but the reality is loud. My heart is pounding, a wave of dizziness and deep fatigue is washing over me, and my abdomen carries a dull, achy bloat that never seems to fully leave. If you walked into my office right now, you would just see a state employee doing her job. You wouldn’t see the mental exhaustion of trying to focus on emails and paperwork while my body feels like a construction site.

This masking doesn’t just complicate my relationships; it complicates my medicine. When I sit across from my doctor, I find myself at a loss for how to share the issues and struggles I am experiencing. How do you explain that something is wrong when you genuinely don’t know what normal is supposed to be anymore? When your baseline shifts to constant fatigue and pain, the boundaries blur. You start to wonder if you are complaining too much, or if this is just the price of admission for the season you are in.

I am learning that hiding our weakness doesn’t make us stronger; it just makes us isolated. The mental fatigue of pretending to be okay can be heavier than the physical symptoms themselves.

Sometimes, the hardest part of taking off the mask is allowing yourself to be seen, and helped, by the people around you. When you spend your entire career in emergency management, you are trained to be the person who coordinates the relief and sends the help. You are never trained on how to be the one on the receiving end of the mobilization.

This week, the national EMAC Program Director surprised me by opening up a nationwide t-shirt campaign for all the state EMAC coordinators and directors across the country to show their support for my battle. Seeing a post like that, knowing that a network spanning the entire nation is wearing my name and rallying behind me, left me completely breathless.

If I am being completely transparent, my first instinct was a wave of guilt. I found myself sitting at my desk wondering if I am truly worth that level of support. When you are fighting a silent battle behind a mask, a public display of love like this can make you feel exposed, and a small voice tries to tell you that you don’t deserve it.

But I am learning to silence that voice and replace it with overwhelming gratitude. This fight can feel incredibly lonely, especially on the days when the physical toll is high and the symptoms are heavy. To know that I have an entire national family standing beside me, lifting me up in prayer and sending their strength down to Arkansas, is a gift I will never be able to fully repay. No one fights alone, and this week, my EMAC family made sure I knew exactly how true that is.

In the book of Psalms, David didn’t mask his reality before God. He poured out his complaints, his physical groans, and his overwhelming fatigue with raw honesty, and only then did he find his way back to praise. God doesn’t ask us to put on a brave face or pretend our bodies aren’t breaking down. He asks us to bring the brokenness to Him, unmasked and heavy as it is.

To anyone else out there riding in a scooter, sitting in a doctor’s office, or sitting at a desk while their heart pounds in secret: you don’t have to carry the weight of looking perfect. It is okay to be tired. It is okay to need help. And it is okay if your normal looks completely different than the rest of the crowd.

We are walking through the shadows, but we don’t have to pretend the shadows aren’t dark. We just have to trust the One who is walking right beside us, holding us up when the mask finally slips.