Good morning,
I want to share a blog with you today that every pastor’s wife can relate to and could probably have written it as well. I pray it will be encouragement to you.
A few weeks ago, an older gentleman came up to me in our lobby and asked, “Has that married daughter of yours given you any grandkids yet? Tell her she’d better get on it.”
Interesting that he thought it was a good idea to ask about the fertility journey of one of our kids.
Interesting that he thought that it was a good idea for me to apply pressure in an area that is already often fraught with anxiety, waiting and wondering.
But we can just write that off as a quirky man’s attempt at connecting with our family – and perhaps expressing his delight in being a grandpa.
The real issue this brings to light though is just how UN-PRIVATE the pastor’s family life is. Regardless of how big your church is, when you sign up for the pastor gig, you sign up for living publicly.
Now, we can wrestle through why that is and whether or not it is fair. And we will. But the bottom line is that when your spouse is the one bringing God’s Word to His people and helping them wrestle with how to live out that Truth in a complicated world – the pastor’s family will occupy a more visible place in the public eye.
When I began to realize WHY this is true, it helped me work through my resistance to it.
When your husband gets up on that podium, or stage, or platform to deliver God’s Word, he is living publicly. Hopefully he is letting the people of God into how the Lord has convicted him to walk out the truths he is bringing before them with vulnerability and honesty. And hopefully, the man in front (in all his humanness, weakness and honesty) matches the man that walks through the door of your living room, when no one but your family is looking. I know this isn’t always the case and some of our husbands need to struggle with making those two men line up. But that’s the goal.
So in order for him to lead your people in their next steps of obedience, he needs to be real about his own. And often, this involves you and your family because that’s where his challenge to obedience is played out. Your conversations, adventures, conflicts and heartaches become real-life stories that your people can relate to. When he talks about you, they come to “know you”. Of course, you see the paradox here. They come to know you, but you know nothing about them. It’s a one-sided relationship. But it doesn’t minimize the closeness they feel to him, to you and to your family. The trust that your husband builds with your congregation often gets transferred to you, because you are his partner.
Do you realize what a great WIN this is?
Some of the work of building trust has already been done for you and you can jump into the deeper waters, faster, because of his vulnerability. Instead of seeing this as our privacy being violated, what if we saw it as trust being bestowed. We didn’t earn it, but it’s being given to us.
There have been times in my life when I’ve resented this one-sided relationship that people seem to have with me. It didn’t seem fair that our lives seemed to always be on display. We couldn’t go anywhere, out to dinner, grocery shopping, even on vacation without seeing people we “know”. It takes a lot of energy to be “on” all of the time, ready to run into someone who wants to say “Hi” (or more often, give their feedback about some church-related issue). But as I’ve wrestled with it more, I’ve come to a realization that has allowed me to reframe this sacrifice of my privacy in a way that has brought freedom and rid me of resentment.
The bottom line is, it doesn’t really matter if it is fair or not. Whether my “right” to privacy is something that I deserve. What really matters is that there’s an opportunity for influence that God has brought my way. I have choices.
- I can resist living an open life that others can see. I can view it as unfair because I have to sacrifice my privacy because of my husband’s job. This resistance leads to resentment.
- Or I can show up, be visible, but avoid actually revealing my heart and letting people in to see the real me. This option is attractive and I’d say is what many pastors’ wives choose, sometimes by default.
- But the third option is the best, I think. When I’ve begun to see my loss of privacy as gaining a platform of influence, I’ve gained courage to live with a new vulnerability. This vulnerability enables me to walk into conversations knowing that they know far more about me than I know about them. Instead of making me hide, this makes me bold. “So you heard about how our family is responding to God’s leading in this. How about you? What do you think God is leading you to?”
Choosing to embrace this platform of influence over protecting my privacy seems like a good idea. But what about the places where it’s wise to protect our privacy? There are places where damage can be done when people who have not earned trust are allowed to see and speak into spaces that are outside their circle of responsibility. What about those?
When I am faced with sacrificing my privacy for the sake of the gospel, whether that’s in the form of being used in a sermon illustration or finding myself on the receiving end of too many opinions, I have to ask myself some heart-level questions first.
- Is God asking me to surrender something I am trying to keep or hold onto?
- Why am I trying to protect it? Is there shame, embarrassment, or fear at the root?
- What gospel advantage could there be to my surrendering this “private” aspect of me? Are there others that could gain courage from my struggle?
Coletta Smith
See the rest of the article here:
https://alongsideministrywives.com/unprivate-the-public-life-of-a-pastors-wife/
I pray what Coletta shared with us today will be one of those blogs you keep and refer back to when you are feeling like you space is being violated.
Blessings, Rodetta
