My Husband's Affair - with the Church
We wait for grief to loosen its stranglehold on our hearts. We wait for signs of hope in the Horn of Africa. News that the economy is recovering. The kids to go back to school. The workday to come to a close. To get to the front of the line at the grocery store.
In Oh the Places You'll Go!, Dr. Seuss called life's waiting places "most useless." Eileen Button, author most recently of The Waiting Place, says it's in the "wobbly," in-between times where she finds the love of God. She issues a vital reminder to those who wait that "now - even the most difficult now - isn't forever." And, as a woman whose husband is the senior pastor of a growing congregation, many of Button's "difficult nows" are related to the church.
Button, a newspaper columnist, college professor, and mother of three, is the kind of writer who conspiratorially grabs readers by the arm and leads them into the realities of life behind closed doors and polite smiles. In this book, we stumble into the house with her family after a burglary. Later she paints a vivid picture of both women as she measures the awkward space that exists between her mother and herself. Her "pastor's wife" confessions are most striking as they reveal the challenges of fulfilling that role.
"She is loving and life changing; she is malicious and overbearing. She is beautiful; she is ugly. She is as light as day, capable of astonishing kindness and generosity; she is as dark as night, capable of unspeakable evil. I love her; I hate her. She is the Church," Button writes.
As must be true for many women who find themselves answerable to "the pastor's wife," Button never expected to be one. When she married him, Brad Button was a banker with no plans to enter ministry. For the past 17 years, however, he's served as a pastor in the Methodist Free Church. Like many in her cohort, Button has found that being married to a minister takes a significant toll on their family life. Perhaps those sacrifices make it all the more difficult for Button to accept being referred to as, simply, "my pastor's wife."
"After all, no one introduces a new friend with the words 'This is my gynecologist's husband.' It's hard to believe that both the pastor's wife title and the corresponding expectations remain. I don't sing, and no one wants to hear me play my clarinet," Button said. "I'm a little terrified of youth groups, and when I volunteer in the nursery, parishioners giggle or poke their heads through the doorway to make sure the kids are still alive. You might say I have a bit of a reputation."
The Seminary Gender Gap
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Chris Gates
John Piper narrated a great lesson about dying to self in an internet piece called "Few there are who die so hard." One of his points is that the 'death' of a pastor husband to his family, or his wife, may be exactly what the Lord desires in a particular situation. Unless a seed goes into the ground it doesn't do much, but if it goes into the ground and dies it produces much fruit. - How often we try to keep Christ's workers from dying, (physically, to wives, to families, etc.) when this is the exact work they are supposed to perform. Calling the church "his other woman" may better be stated as "his primary marriage." - You have not yet sacrificed to the point of your wife or children's death....like Adonirum Judson did on 10 occasions to bring God's saving GOspel to Burma. (2 wives and 8 children.) - How quick Christians are to stop irritations and annoyances at the cost of millions of lives being saved. Wake up! hardship and even the manner of a Christian's death are tools that God uses to save thousands. Don't criticize or quilt a pastor into stopping the feeding of his flock because you aren't getting enough attention. -This is God's ballgame not ours.
even one sparrow
Thank you for posting this book review. My husband and I currently do campus ministry through the CCO, but he is looking at seminaries right now and we both sense God's call for him to become a pastor. I am NOT the typical pastor's-wife-type, and when my husband and I started dating, I was going to be the bread-winner (and am now a SAHM - my, my, how things change). My way of dealing with the future difficulties of being a pastor's wife? I don't think about them, but I know they're real. God's currently working in my life and changing me, in preparation for our future, I believe (I currently live in intentional Christian community - and boy, does THAT grow a person FAST). But I am really happy to have this book on the radar, and I believe it will be on my Christmas wishlist. Sorry for the rambly-nature of this comment. :) I'm tired. Did I mention I have a two-month-old? ;)
Shelley Melewski
I foolishly endured a long-term marriage with a pastor for whom the church was both the "other woman" and also the place where he initiated at least three affairs. I pray that my experience is unique, but I'm afraid it probably isn't. Thank God for counselors who encouraged me to leave.
parth
infidelity is an accident. Only furgiveness can heal the wounds.
CONNIE SILVER
I had the wonderful priviledge of working with my husband, who is now deceased, for over 30 years in ministry. He was a pastor who went to struggling churches and with God's help watched those churches grow while lives were being transformed. Yes, there were times when he felt like throwing in the towel but he never could. His pastor's heart wouldn't let him. It wasn't always easy but God would refresh and renew us when we let Him. We came to realize later on, that the Lord was not going to reward us for the numbers we could draw to the church, but our faithfulness to Him was what mattered most. So my dear husband kept remaining faithful to his calling of pastoring and preaching the Word until the Lord called him home. One week before his passing, he officiated at a wedding...still being faithful. It's a high calling and the rewards to come far outweigh the struggles down here. It's a life worth living!
Mara
This is very interesting. I've always been friends with "my pastor's wife" (or I should say "pastors' wives" --since I've had more than three pastors since I got saved) but I've never looked at them in the same light as the author has revealed. I often forget that they too have their own struggles and pain to go through each day. I've never really put much thought on it but I guess I see them as "superwomen" rather than my "normal, average friends." I pray for my pastor all the time but I'm sorry to say that I sort of neglect the wife. Thanks for sharing. This has helped me open a new eye towards my "pastor's wife." God bless!
Tim Childs
Some Christians have a long experience of church and churchgoing and growing up in Christian communities, and some of us don't. Sometimes it seems that when we are doing 'religious' things, and busying ourselves in 'religious' things, we are missing the wood for the trees! What does it matter if a person gains the whole world, but in the process loses his or her soul? If a person is ministering to everyone else, but is depressed because of it? There are answers to be found here, and perhaps also we need to know the questions! Does God want anyone in His service miserable and worn out, for no seeming good purpose? Trying to increase your congregation is one thing, trying to make sense of your life and your true role in the world is something else! As ever, we need to get back to the gospel and find out what it is God truly wants for our lives.
Help me Jesus
Thanks for sharing. I think that Pastors can sometimes be the loneliest people in the world. So often they are viewed as almost superhuman, but here's the thing I've noticed. Very often they don't seem to have real close friends. You know, the really close friends you can tell anything too, the person you can just go round to and slump on their sofa while they make you tea, and talk about normal, everyday things. Personally, it may be a subjective observation, but I do think a lot of depression that Pastors face could be linked to simply isolation, and not having real friends. How do they get them? Well, that's a whole issue in itself, so that folks with a propensity to jealousy don't start on theme either! Blessings Dave
LARRY SAUNDERS
For me and the other pastors I know best, there have been rare occasions of hardships for the spouses, but every marriage will have ups and downs. Its terrible that there are all these horror stories out there, but I would want readers to know that many spouses thrive in their own skin. As a pastor, I work at protecting the boundaries between my pastoral duties and family obligations, as well as helping to keep my wife's boundaries protected; I essentially try not to involve her anymore than an average layperson might be involved.
Peter
I think it was back in the 1980s that I read one commentator who wrote that busyness is but a form of sloth. If that was true then (and it no doubt was), such busyness-sloth has increased by orders of magnitude since. Thankfully, even though I have been a teacher for years, and worked for three in a major NYC law firm, I have never been a "busy" person. I do not look for things to do to fill up time. Rather, I work very hard to create time for the express purpose of "shalom."
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