Faking It - Part 3

I have this recurring nightmare.

It's Sunday.  I go to church.  I'm keenly aware of my own inadequacies.  I look like myself, like I always do.  But when I walk in to the entryway and see all the people chatting before the service, something is wrong.  All the women look like Barbie dolls and all the men look like Ken dolls.  Plastic smiles abound. Blank stares.  Perfect bodies, perfect smiles, perfect clothes.

I try to get them to talk to me.  They won't.  There's no relationship, no frame of reference at all.  I look at my clothes: rumpled.  I go to the rest room and look in the mirror - yellowed teeth, acne, and greasy hair.  I want to talk to someone about real things but all I hear are perfect conversations about perfect families and perfect kids with perfect Grade Point Averages.  Nobody seems to have any problems.

I know it can't be true.  I run from perfect person to perfect person, begging them to come outside their plastic shells and talk about what's real. Surely someone can relate to my pain; surely someone is struggling too.

But all I hear are the condemning voices telling me, "That's not speaking in faith!" and then these Barbie and Ken people talk about fashions, curtains, private schools, and the stock market. They wax poetic about this conference or that speaker, this singer, that skiing trip.

All attempts at conversation about real feelings, real relationships, are met with disdain. 
 

Where AM I anyway? doesn't anyone understand what it means to connect with each other and quit faking it?

Thankfully I wake up.

I ... DID wake up.  Didn't I? or did I?