How are you?

"How are you?"

These three simple words have been washed over and transformed into a standard empty greeting.  Their meaning changed from an honest inquiry into a person’s well being, and into a vague and nonspecific set of words to be carelessly flung at any passerby.  A simple acknowledgement, and then move on.  

        Where did the depth go?  

                Where is the caring; the love? 

I have a friend of many years who up and messaged me those three underrated words: “how are you?”.  This message originated from a flight below me.  I retrieved my phone and began the standard reply of “fine, and you?” before something stopped me.  These words were nearly hidden in the meaning that often is for the meaning that was intended. 

This was not an empty question.  It’s response deserved an equally full answer. 

This friend of mine could simply have walked up the stairs and asked in person.  In fact, we had conversed among a group of friends not an hour earlier.  So why ask?  Or rather, what was it he was asking?  This was not an opinion of the day, a passing thought amongst a firestorm of passing emotions. 

No. 

This question written was a question to my spiritual state of being in a format allowing for my thoughtful contemplation and complete and honest answer.  This was a question to the health of my walk with God. 

A question of accountability. 

I was struck by this. 

My answer to those three words was perhaps the first honest recount of my spiritual life that I had given in some time. 

                                It was raw. 

Again, I was struck by the simplicity of the words ‘how are you’, and the complexity of their answer are. 

        This is accountability. 

                            The real. 

                                        The raw. 

Answers that you can’t always speak out loud. 

After a few years of our back and forth exchange of the words ‘how are you’, and their variations, we have maintained an accountability that I can say has pushed me a lot.  To my knowledge, we have only spoken in person to this degree a few times.  Partly due to busyness, and the privacy indicated by our very personal struggles, and partly because to talk like this face to face removes some of the evaluation and reflection we are allowed by writing, evaluating, and rewriting. 

I wonder what it is about us that makes us want to bottle up any sign that we are actually human and put on a facade of these others around us.  Why pretend we are different from anyone else in our own weakness? 

As Christians we have read that in our weakness Christ’s strength is made perfect.  

“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’  Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me”.  2 Corinthians 12:9

So why would we try to hinder perfection?  

So what would you say if someone asked you how are you?  No really, how are you?