Welcome to Ministry

When I was 15 I did the whole "write down what you want in a husband" thing that they have Christian girls inevitably do at summer camp or a youth retreat because a 15-year-old obviously knows what to look for in a forever partner. (On an immediate side note, I suggest we start asking girls and boys to start listing out what characteristics they would like to see in themselves in the future in hopes of starting to form an identity that isn't dependent on their relationship to the opposite sex.  But I digress.)

On the list were the things I knew I "should" put down like smart and funny and loves Jesus.  I listed the things I wanted to put down hidden within my thinly veiled piety such as really tall and good looking.  And I included one thing that I knew I didn't want in a husband, so in bold and underlined letters I wrote: "Not a pastor!"

I wrote that not necessarily because I had lots against pastors, I knew pastors I liked very much.  I had yet to find, however, a pastor's wife that wasn't either quiet, meek, played the organ and was in charge of Sunday School, or stern, unforgiving, legalistic, and in charge of potluck, or simply the town gossip that no one trusted but everyone talked to.  I didn't want to be any of those women.  I didn't want the exp[ectations of being a pastor's wife to define my dreams or my failures.  I saw it happen in a small town, I knew that wasn't the life for me.

So low and behold when I met Noah 14 years ago and he told me he was at seminary, my only response was, "damn."  I wasn't sure if that was because I was trying to convince myself not to date him or if it was because I had to come to grips with being a pastor's wife.  Three years later I became what my naive 15 year old self most thought she didn't want to be: a pastor's wife.

Fast forward to the next few years in Chicago, finishing seminary, forging friendships I am so grateful for and gleaning every piece of advice I could from women in ministry who had lived my future life for decades.  You wanna know what?  Pretty much all their advice was really really depressing.  It centered around loneliness, uncertainty, heartbreak, betrayal by friends and other pastors, and the fickle nature of churches, communities, and faith.  So, naturally, I was stoked to take our first call and find out how I was going to have no friends, no faith and never see my husband.

As Noah and I are embarking on our 9th married year in full-time ministry, I can tell you without hesitation that they were not wrong, but they were also not right.  You see, all of these things are maladies ministry spouses are afflicted with, but they are not always constant, they do not all affect everyone, and thankfully, they do not all happen at once.  But when we give advice to people who are embarking on an unknown journey, we have a tendency to warn them of dangers and pitfalls and hope they learn from our struggles.  Yet when we define something around its contingent of horror stories instead of its potential for joy, we take the human experience out of abundance and into scarcity.  We do this with pregnancies and marriage and multiple kids and executive careers, and in my experience, we do it with ministry all the time.

So, I am going to do my best this summer to write down the pieces of advice I was given by women that I love and respect and shine a light on the falsehoods that plague the idea of being a ministry spouse.

I'm not doing this out of some sort of hope that you'll feel sorry for me and want to babysit my kids for free, I hope you'll want to to do that without me writing a single thing down, but that's just because I like naps.  I'm doing this because I don't think there are many progressive pastor's wives out there talking about life in this particular piece of our identity.  Maybe there are, maybe I should google it, but for now I hope to give people a little window into the life and love of ministry and what it is to be inside this crazy thing called church.

Join me.  Also please keep me accountable to writing more.