I walked up to the red door with trepidation. Please God, don't let anyone recognize me today.

We had just moved, and I needed desperately to meet God on his turf. I needed a church. At the same time, I dreaded the people in a church. Dreaded the moment someone would ask what my name was and what I did. Even worse, I dreaded the people who would approach and tell me who I was and what I did.

I was working for a national ministry at the time, in a semi-public position. My name and picture were on the front pages of their magazines, and my byline showed up regularly. It wasn't much, but it was enough to make me recognizable to a certain subgroup of Christian women. Well-intentioned churchgoers would assume they knew more about me than they did. They'd ask me about my children (which I didn't have). Look around for my husband (he worked weekends while going to school full time, and so he wasn't with me). Make assumptions about my spiritual life, during a season when the holes in my faith resembled Swiss cheese.

I almost drowned in that fishbowl of full-time ministry. I watched every word I said, weighing details against what I thought people expected from my employer. I subdued my liberal commentary on the state of the world (too political) and my bubbly stories of newlywed bliss (surely these people expected me to speak out of experience). I didn't talk about the places where God seemed disappointing (how could someone who wrote about God have issues with him?). I hid a lot, protecting myself in the name of protecting the ministry.

That was exhausting, and so after a few years I gave up and fled church all together for a "sabbatical." But I missed communion, and music, and corporate worship. And so after our move across the city, I gathered my courage and ventured back toward community.

That first Sunday was refreshing. I met with God and slipped out the door before anyone met with me. But the second Sunday, the rector had barely finished saying "Go in peace" when a petite woman rushed up and hugged me. Hugged. Me. I had never seen her before.

"I was reading my magazine this week and there you were! I recognized you right away and I know all about you from your articles! I'm so excited!" Then she looked around, and I saw it coming. "Where are your kids? Is your husband here? Where do you usually go to church?"

I'm not alone in experiences like this, of course. Women in all sorts of ministry and leadership positions struggle against the expectations that come with visibility. These days I am surrounded by writers who put their names on book covers that promise answers for spiritual life, health, marriage, and more. They are approached by total strangers in grocery stores and airports and carpool lines. But almost all of them tell me the hardest place to be themselves is in the one place where they should be safest ? church.

Most of us fight the temptation to fit ourselves into a mold that will show our jobs, our families, and our choices in the best light. We are programmed to not disappoint. But in the process I think many of us have lost our authenticity, and we encourage the misconception that those who work in ministry lead holy, blameless lives. We discourage others from getting involved, because they fear others will never understand their troubled marriages, their rebellious children, their own personal doubts and frustrations.

That morning in the new church I faced everything I dreaded, spelled out in one run-on sentence of enthusiasm. But I found myself smiling instead of sighing. Watching this woman's genuine enthusiasm, however misguided, challenged me to meet her honesty with my own.

"Actually, I'll let you in on a little secret?."

Why is transparency so hard? Why can't we open ourselves up to our church community and core of Christian friends, and let them see behind the curtains? God doesn't tell us that we have to be perfect to serve. He wants us to serve in all our messiness. And more than that, he wants us to worship the same way.