When after four years Jeff Francisco began to think about leaving Hooper, Nebraska, he knew any transition would have its perils. Linda was getting along well now, her middle-of-the-night emotional crash not much more than a memory (see chapter 2). She had stabilized to the point of feeling comfortable in this little town. If she had to get used to a new setting, would terror strike all over again?
A young couple in the church said to Jeff one day, “You know, you’ve taught us so much about being open and caring for one another. But if the time should ever come that you leave our church, we’ll probably leave too.”
Jeff and Linda talked a lot about that remark. It symbolized their hunch that this congregation, given its rural traditionalism, would probably never move fully into the deep ministry to one another that was so central to their idea of Christianity. People were attracted to the two of them personally, but the concept wasn’t sticking. Would another ten years make it stick? Probably not.
Jeff put his name in the denominational hopper, and soon inquiries began to come. He finally candidated at a church in Branford, Connecticut, that already had small groups going. This would mean returning to beloved New England, and although Branford was a small town on Long Island Sound, it was less than a dozen miles from all the culture of New Haven.
The church had a parsonage but did not insist the Franciscos use it. If they wanted a housing allowance to buy their own home, the parsonage could be sold. Any arrangement was fine with the board.
Jeff and Linda, while on their candidating visit, drove by the parsonage one gray, rainy afternoon. A car was in the driveway (a member was doing repairs) so they stopped for an impromptu tour of their own. Linda was not impressed. The empty rooms seemed dull in the chilly air, and there were no lamps in the bedrooms to give a true picture. “There’s no warmth to this house,” she said to her husband. “Let’s get something different.”
That settled the matter.
They spent some time with a realtor and picked out two houses they liked. If a call were issued by the church, they would place a bid on one or the other.
The call did come through in a week or two. Jeff accepted and began planning a return trip to Connecticut to arrange housing. Since the church had a parsonage available, it was hardly obligated for this second airfare, and the Franciscos, after checking their bank account, decided Jeff should go alone.
Today, they give an urgent word of advice to other couples: “Never send one spouse to pick out a home! It can be extremely hard on the marriage.”
Jeff arrived to face a shock: Both houses spotted earlier were now sold. The second one, in fact, had gone only the night before he arrived—after sitting on the market for ten months. Suddenly he was back to Square One.
I knew I had to pull this off right. In light of what Linda had been through the last move, I really needed to make her happy.
She was not interested in the parsonage; I knew that. We had also talked about the fact that with the kids growing up now, we didn’t want a fixer-upper. We didn’t want to sink a lot of time into remodeling, as we had done in Hooper. The house had to be livable right now.
The trouble was, homes here were smaller than in Nebraska—for half again as much money.
Their house in Hooper had a tentative buyer, pending the sale of his other home. So armed with an equity figure, Jeff went to work again, shopping. He ended up this time with a realtor who was a strong talker, an aggressive type. She showed him a number of homes, including one on her own lane that was “just perfect for your family, and a great opportunity.” The yard seemed small, but then again.…
Jeff wasn’t sure. The price scared him. He called Linda at one point and said, “Maybe I should go over and see the parsonage again.” She quickly squelched that idea.
So he made an offer on the newer home, and it was accepted.
On the plane headed west, he was seized with a case of cold feet. What have I done? It really is too expensive. And it only has three bedrooms, and we have three kids. Upon landing in Omaha, Jeff shared his misgivings with Linda.
The next morning he called the realtor to back out. “You can’t do that!” she shrieked. “You’ll lose your earnest money, and they could take you to court.” That was not true, legally, but the Franciscos didn’t know better, and they certainly did not want to launch their ministry in Branford with a lawsuit. Jeff said they would stick with the deal.
Moving day arrived about the same time as the Hong Kong flu, which was sweeping the country that year. By the time the plane landed in New York on a Tuesday, Linda was almost delirious with fever. She was helped to bed and nursed through the next five days, barely making it up for her debut as the new pastor’s wife on Sunday. The next day she accompanied Jeff to the local bank to sign for a bridge loan of twenty thousand dollars, since the Nebraska house had not yet sold and they had no other down payment.
Linda remembers seeing her new house for the first time:
I thought, Wow! For us?? All of a sudden I realized Jeff, in his eagerness to make me happy, had overcompensated. I hadn’t wanted him to be burdened with an old junker, but we probably didn’t need a five-year-old house either.
I didn’t dare tell him this, though. He was already hurting, and anything I would say would simply put salt in the wound.
That caused kind of a silent rift to grow between us.
The family moved into the church parsonage temporarily, until closing day—and found it far more engaging than it had looked that gray, rainy afternoon. It was old but well cared for, and the whole kitchen had just been redone. Linda realized she could have been happy here after all.
But it was too late. Jeff and the church board were already opening the bidding process for the parsonage, and several well-connected young couples in the congregation had their eyes on it. Jeff finally had the pain of presiding over the selection of an offer twenty thousand dollars less than he and Linda were paying—for less of a house.
Meanwhile, the deal back in Nebraska kept stalling. The buyer’s home did not sell, and his contract to buy meant nothing until it did. Jeff regretted not having put a similar contingency clause in the contract he signed. “I thought I was showing my faith: ‘God always works things out; he’s in charge of moves.’ Maybe it was just naiveté.”
Jeff wanted to share his dilemma with older, wiser leaders in the church but feared it would make him look bad. After all, hadn’t they given him the option of living in the parsonage? He’d made his own bed.
Four months down the line, the church did offer to replace the bridge loan at the bank. They set a lower rate of interest and agreed to a flexible repayment schedule. Nevertheless, the Franciscos still found themselves surrounded by creditors: the Connecticut bank that held the basic mortgage, the church that held the second mortgage, the Nebraska bank with their old mortgage as long as the house there went unsold, plus the federal government, which had granted them two college loans.
The house in the small Nebraska town, although rented intermittently, did not sell for more than four years. In the meantime, savings dwindled away. The church loan principal of $20,000 went unreduced and in fact was swelled by an additional $8,000 of deferred interest. Last year Jeff finally requested no salary increase, the money going directly toward the loan instead.
It has been a financial mistake I’ve struggled with ever since. It started me on a downhill spiral of emotions and hurts and regrets that has gone on and on … until the events of the past year finally brought me out of it.
I couldn’t be honest, put my cards on the table, and tell the church, “I am really in a mess. Help me out.” As the shepherd of the church, I just couldn’t.
The anguish has been to be caught in the middle and not to see any long-term solution. Not that we’ve had to come down to eating beans and franks every night—it’s rather a deferred loss. Instead of building financial security, we’re steadily going the other direction. How is it all going to work out? I don’t know. All I can see down the road is a great loss, and we just have to absorb it.
Real estate values in Branford, as in much of the nation, peaked out about the time the Franciscos bought, and have stayed relatively flat since. So to sell their home would generate very little equity, especially in light of the high dollar Jeff paid for the house in the first place. The options are few—which is what has frustrated him from the beginning. Given Linda’s wishes, he felt his hands were tied, and once he made a disastrous choice, there has been no way to repair the damage.
What have been the spillovers of all this? How have the financial reverses befouled the marriage and the public ministry in Branford?
Jeff and Linda give a number of candid answers. They speak without bitterness now, but with realism. Linda begins:
This whole thing turned out to be destructive to our relationship for more than three years. I knew there was no way in the world I could please Jeff. Nothing I said lessened the hurt, the anger, or changed the picture for him.
Night after night he would lie awake and agonize—even cry quietly—wondering, What have I done? How are we ever going to recover? How could I have made such immense errors in judgment? God, where were you in all of this? It took a tremendous toll.
He became aloof, judgmental, driven. He clenched his jaw and went from one day to the next.
When a decision needed to be made, sometimes he would vacillate between “Let’s make this together” and “I’m going to decide.” If we tried to work it out together, it seemed more like placating; we just role-played. The spontaneity and trust and deep-founded communion weren’t there.
Jeff, the affable former youth worker whom even a busload of rowdy teenagers could not ruffle, now carried a smoldering anger. He was not the type to yell and argue with Linda or anyone else, but inside, he berated both himself and his wife. In the church, he found it hard to smile at the people who had reaped a windfall when the parsonage was sold. They had done nothing wrong, of course, but Jeff could not seem to remember that. He avoided asking them to help with Sunday school or organize a work day. He’d rather tackle the job himself.
The more I realized everything was in cement, and our finances were only going to get worse, the more depressed I became. I was missing the spark, the joy of the Lord—but still trying to be a minister. A lot of the fun and spontaneity had been zapped out of me.
I tried to find those who would be sympathetic, but what could they do? I went to the bishop and tried to share where I was, but I wasn’t direct enough to say, “Is there some way you can help the church understand we are sinking in debt? We’re just losing money hand over fist. Is there any way they might see it as a ministry to us to postpone the interest, for example?”
Who knows? The Lord makes beauty of ashes, and I hope he will. I hope I can learn to praise him more and thank him for what he teaches us through times of depression, as Isaiah 61 says.
Linda’s role as a full-time mother had to be sacrificed. She dusted off her credential and signed up to substitute-teach in the local high school. It was one small way she could help rectify the problem she felt half-responsible for causing.
It was worse than awful. The stories I could tell of what kids do to substitutes in high school these days would turn you gray. This particular school didn’t support subs very much. I hated every moment of it. I hated worse the anticipation of having to go … because it was the penance I had to pay.
And I couldn’t refuse to go … because I couldn’t let Jeff down any more. I would just totally knot up when that phone rang in the morning. I thought, No person should have to endure this. This is no way to live.
Linda breaks into tears as she describes this year and a half. She was driven to the classroom as much by her own guilt feelings as by Jeff’s insistence, but all the same, it nearly destroyed her.
Finally she landed a teacher’s aide position in the grade school her oldest daughter attended. It was ludicrous in a sense—a person with a master’s degree working for minimum wage. But at least it was a reprieve from the halls of Branford High.
With such turmoil in her days, she could hardly manage to paste on a pastor’s-wife smile for evening entertainment of church members. Jeff had grown up in a wide-open home that freely welcomed visitors.
Hospitality isn’t my primary gift, and under the circumstances, there was just no way I could be another Mom Francisco like he remembered. But I felt that whenever I said I couldn’t manage dinner for someone that weekend, I was really letting him down.
I didn’t have the energy to keep up with him. And I think if anything, he was being driven by his hurts. He seemed to be thinking, Well, maybe I’m a financial failure, but I’m going to be a success otherwise in the ministry if it kills me.
The aloneness of both husband and wife was occasionally broken by talks about their predicament. Jeff would wonder aloud whether Linda cared all that much about their debts; her words about trusting the Lord seemed glib to him. She professed a belief that God would somehow help them weather this storm, but he had trouble hearing that.
The Lord had to deal a lot with my pride. After all, there are businessmen in the congregation who have had financial pressure, too, good years and bad, and the high interest rates hit them, too. So we were just one of the club, I guess.
Outside support and friendship came Linda’s way through a women’s group at the church. Eventually, Jeff met a parachurch worker in town with whom he could be honest. This relationship grew into a vital, healing bond.
Still, at times Jeff talked of leaving Branford. How that would solve anything he didn’t know, but at least he would be rid of the physical reminders of his mistake. Linda recalls:
The first couple of times he said that, I nearly panicked. I said, “Jeff, whatever is happening or not happening between you and me—it wouldn’t be different anywhere else. If we don’t resolve it here, another location won’t help. And probably we’d go to the cleaners again if we move right now. It’s never cheap to move!”
And he’d grudgingly say, “Awright.”
I would just pray, Lord, give him and give us the encouragement to carry on.
Once in a while, he’d even mumble about leaving the ministry. I’d bait him about that … but then I’d get scared, thinking, If I’m not a pastor’s wife, who am I?
Two events helped Jeff Francisco stop living in his remorse and look toward the sky again.
The first was the sale of the Hooper, Nebraska, house. After four years, a buyer was finally found. The bottom line amounted to a $15,000 loss on their investment, but at least they were able to close that chapter of their lives.
The second was a spectacular car accident in which Linda and young Nathan were almost killed. Driving along a shoreline ridge one day, she lost control of the car and plunged forty feet down a steep slope. She barely managed to get herself and her son out before the car burst into flames.
Nathan had only bruises and cuts, but Linda sustained massive internal injuries plus a concussion. By the time she was wheeled into surgery, she had lost consciousness and her blood pressure was dangerously low. She was on the operating table four hours.
Suddenly, like a cold front sweeping the haze in front of it, turning the air crisp and clear, the accident changed everything. For the next five days Jeff had no time to think about the murky past; he was on his knees pleading with God for Linda to pull through. Though her life had been spared, the question of permanent brain damage lingered. The congregation rallied to provide child care and meals while Jeff sat hour upon hour at the New Haven hospital.
I couldn’t help thinking what it would have been like to have lost her. The message was so strong in my mind: “Love one another. Be thankful for one another. Be thankful for your kids, your wife.”
The Lord allowed the accident, I believe, to shift my focus, to help me see his graciousness and goodness and mercy, and his power—the fact that he’s in control.
Linda came home from the hospital nine days later and spent a month recuperating. In the end, she sustained no ongoing disability. When people came to visit and said, “You must be wondering why such a thing had to happen to you,” she said the question had not even crossed her mind.
I knew why. It wasn’t a vindictive thing, a punishment, or anything other than an opportunity for the Lord to teach me to trust him and praise him. He wanted me to learn more about those areas. I needed to grow there.
And Jeff and I needed to grow there together. We hadn’t been doing much praising together!
I don’t know that I would wish away these hard times. They’ve brought growth to us in ways that never would have happened otherwise. We can understand people in pain or in depression better than any clinical training would have taught us.
The ultimate irony came the day Linda went out to the mailbox and found a thirty-five-dollar traffic ticket—for crossing the center line! She came inside laughing to show her husband.
Then a sobering thought struck her. “I wonder what it would have done to you if you’d received this ticket today, and I hadn’t been here to laugh with you,” she said.
Jeff put his arm around her as he replied, “To have my wife, I’m glad to pay thirty-five dollars.”
When it comes to paying their larger debts, they have stopped worrying about them. The accident has taught them that God still knows where they are, is concerned for their good, and will not let the pressure get out of hand. The lessons of the past five years have been both practical and spiritual, creating a stronger union between them as one result.
Reflections
by Louis McBurneyJeff Francisco’s financial problems are not unusual; a significant number of ministers who come here to Marble Retreat are in similar straits. They “trust the Lord to provide” (and he does), but often they have made the Lord’s job considerably more difficult by failing to seek professional advice!
If Jeff had asked an attorney or a businessman, or another realtor, he might have saved himself lots of grief. Ministers seem to have the notion that because they’re professionals with all this responsibility as a pastor, they dare not confess they don’t know something. That can lead to disaster.
As the situation worsened for the Franciscos, they found it almost impossible to deal with their anger at themselves, at each other, at the church about the sale of the parsonage, at the real estate agent, at the economy, at God—they never really dealt with these. That is why serious depression set in.
Jeff worked all the harder to succeed at something. That may have been a good way to handle his feelings, to some degree. But the couple could have had a healthier relationship by dealing constructively with their feelings of tension and guilt through the help of a counselor, a friend, or someone else. This is another illustration of what not to do when you meet up with significant negative feelings. Don’t just try to deny them.
Linda’s ordeal of substitute teaching was again worsened by not dealing with the feelings. She didn’t feel she could talk about her anger because of the guilt involved. It seems to have paralyzed her from seeking any other alternative.
How do you break this kind of spell? You reveal the feelings. Once that happens, you are free to look at options and talk about other courses of action. It’s amazing how talking about what’s going on diffuses the impact. If Linda had talked about her feelings with her husband or someone else, substitute teaching may still have been unpleasant, but the intensity of the feelings would have been released.
However, it is true that people in stress are often immobilized, unable to see options, or move in a more healthy direction.
Copyright © 1985 by Christianity Today
