The sickness that struck Greg and Kara Pacynski at the very beginning of their marriage was not enough to devastate in itself; a two-week hospital stay, and Kara’s kidney infection was under control. But the baggage both husband and wife brought along turned the situation into a major blow.
They had met during Bible college days in Dallas, drawn to each other initially by their common interest in foreign missions. Greg was volunteering his time, however, with the youth group at a nearby church, and after graduation, a staff position was offered. He stayed on, waiting until Kara would finish school the next year.
The longer they dated, the more Kara learned about this handsome young man’s past. His father, a former pastor in Idaho, had left church ministry when Greg’s mother, a schizophrenic, finally had to be institutionalized. Greg was ten years old at the time, and there were two younger brothers and a three-year-old sister. Their father had since served as a missions board representative for the Mountain States. Greg says:
Basically, I was raised in a home without women. My mother never really functioned as a mother to us; I didn’t have any role model of a wife.
I told Kara once that I didn’t feel I knew how to love, because I’d never seen it in my parents’ relationship. We almost broke up over that remark! I wasn’t a feeling-oriented person at all. Just the facts.
Greg’s father, a man of principle and ambition, was most pleased that his oldest son was following his steps into the ministry. In some ways, he saw in Greg the replacement of his own work cut short. When Greg began edging toward the choice of a life’s mate, his father was eager to size her up.
He found in Kara a goodhearted young woman who would do well in the parsonage, he thought. She did tend to wear her feelings on her sleeve, though, and to press her point a bit strongly at times. In a letter, he urged his son to check this carefully. “Make sure she’s not the kind of woman who’ll put your ministry on the shelf someday,” he wrote, with obvious reference to his own disappointment.
Kara still remembers the day she and Greg were walking off-campus and he mentioned his father’s letter. “He knew I was as dedicated to the ministry as he was,” she says, “so it wasn’t a big conversation or anything. But a fear was planted within me that day that I’d ever do something that would ‘put Greg on the shelf,’ ministerially speaking.”
Just before engagement, Kara and her future father-in-law had an honest talk. She mentioned an earlier comment of his that had hurt her, and he assured her he had meant no ill. But later he wrote his son again to say, “If you’re going to spend your life with somebody so sensitive, you may have a long row to hoe.”
Says Greg:
My dad had a way with words!
I made the mistake of letting Kara read that letter, which only piled on more baggage. Every time she wanted to express her feelings on anything, she began to feel she was fighting my dad. What he had written didn’t bother me; in fact, I was attracted to her because of her warmth and expressiveness. I didn’t particularly agree with Dad. But she thought I did.
The wedding went beautifully in Kara’s home church in Colorado, and the happy couple drove off to a honeymoon week of skiing. By the next Thursday, Kara was not feeling well. She could not tell if the exhilaration of married life had overloaded her system or what. She felt tired and was running a low fever.
They left the mountains on Friday for the two-day drive back to Dallas. Her symptoms worsened. By Monday evening, her temperature stood at 104.6 degrees, sending Greg into near-panic. He knew very little, he felt, about a healthy woman, let alone one who lay still and burning, her lips cracked, and a low moan in her throat.
He ran to the apartment downstairs, where a nurse lived. She came up, began to bathe Kara’s face and neck with cool washcloths, and after observing for an hour, said, “You really had better take her to a hospital.”
A hospital? Greg had not even been in a hospital to have his tonsils out in junior high; he’d walked out of the doctor’s office and gone home. One time playing basketball he had broken his nose, gone to have it set by a doctor, and returned to the gym the next day. The only hospital he had known was the state institution where they’d taken his mother.…
I remember sitting by Kara’s bed the next day just shellshocked. Lord, is she going to make it? What’s happening?
I finally had to just release her to the Lord. I remember praying specifically, I don’t know what else to do, God. She’s yours.
The infection inside Kara’s body was soon identified and brought under control with antibiotics. By the second Sunday, she was ready to be released.
Greg had to miss teaching his teen class in order to come get me. Here I was, being a hindrance to his ministry already in the first two weeks of married life. I was just overcome with guilt.
But talking about it would only make matters worse, I was sure. This was my problem, and I felt I just had to carry on, “sacrifice all” for the work, and try not to fulfill my father-in-law’s prophecy.
Her mother came from Colorado to help Kara, who was weak and would need lots of rest in the coming weeks. Kara’s plans to attend North Texas State and begin work on a master’s degree had already been scotched. Greg, relieved to see her health coming back, turned quickly to the excitement of his youth group and was away from the apartment long hours at a time, including many evenings. He was also enrolled in graduate school.
After her mother went home, Kara remembers sitting one day all alone in a rocking chair (“the one piece of furniture we owned—everything else was donated by people in the church”) and staring out at the traffic in the street below. “I had this overwhelming feeling that not one soul in the world had any clue how lonely I was. I couldn’t do any of the things I had planned on doing. I was totally worthless.”
Eventually she regained enough strength to begin working part-time in the church office. That provided a little money and also gave her fleeting glimpses of her husband. By January, she was healthy enough to begin school, which brightened her spirits considerably. Soon she was able to pick up the pace and begin matching Greg’s stride by coaching a Bible quiz team, sponsoring the group’s newspaper, and leading a girls’ discipleship group.
The Pacynskis survived that first rugged year and gradually learned to share more openly with one another. The more Kara contributed to their joint ministry, the more she laid aside her early fears of derailing her husband’s career. Greg became more expressive about his true feelings, and the influence of his father was placed in a larger context. The couple decided they would not feel compelled to agree with him at every turn but would strive to remain on friendly terms. That, in fact, is what has happened throughout almost twenty years of married life to date.
Reflections
by Gary CollinsThe extended-family problem here is twofold: what the father expects, and what the daughter-in-law thinks he expects.
There is a lot of evidence these days to show that sickness is related to emotional tension. I’m sure Kara’s recovery was lengthened by her worry about whether she was hindering Greg’s ministry.
He, on the other hand, displays the typical seminarian attitude when he says, “I wasn’t a feeling-oriented person at all. Just the facts.” His father’s judgment that Kara would do well in the parsonage is almost a commercial assessment: his son ought to acquire her as a good supplement to his ministry (she’d look nice around the house!). It reminds me of Nebuchadnezzar telling his servant to find Jewish lads who, as the Living Bible puts it, “have read widely in many fields, are well informed, alert and sensible, and have enough poise to look good around the palace” (Dan. 1:4).
All this sets the stage for problems.
Kara has been handed a script to follow, and she is hooked. Only later does she come to recognize she does not have to follow the lines others have written for her. She escapes major damage by regaining her health, proving her value in youth ministry, and most importantly, beginning to communicate about what is really going on.
When my wife and I were raising our children, our parents would come to visit occasionally. We have a fine relationship with them, but they would still make comments once in a while about “the way people raise their kids today.” I got very up-tight about that, because the message I heard was You’re not doing it right.
Then one day, I thought, Wait a minute. I’m a big boy now. I’ve gone to school, gotten a job, I make my own money, I’m keeping my marriage together, we have children—I don’t have to let my parents control me anymore. I’m on my own.
Parents, church boards, and others can manipulate us, sometimes without even being aware of what they are doing. If we don’t go along with their standards, we feel guilty.
My phone rang one day ten minutes before I was to teach a class, and a stranger’s voice said, “Did you write a book called How to Be a People Helper?“
“Yes,” I said.
“Well, I’m getting a divorce; tomorrow is the final action. What can I do to prevent it?”
I talked to the man for five minutes and, as you might expect, got nowhere trying to defuse a situation that had been building for years. So then he said, “I don’t think you’re a very good people helper. You can’t even help me when I’m in a crisis,” and he hung up!
For two days I walked around feeling incompetent. Finally a colleague said, “What’s the matter with you?” I described what had happened. He replied, “That guy hooked you in an area of sensitivity and dragged you down.”
Older pastors and their wives don’t worry so much about the imposed expectations of others, but younger ones do. That’s what happened to Linda Francisco in chapter 2; the minute the chairman’s wife said, “Well, don’t you have teacups?” Linda jumped up to follow the script. This is important to this lady. I must produce what she wants. Oh, no—I’m not a very good pastor’s wife.
In the case of the Pacynskis, as soon as the health crisis was over, Greg quickly retreated to “the excitement of his youth group.” He began to forget Kara and her needs.
Fortunately, she was able to get out and be useful on her own. His inattention was not as destructive as it could have been. God gives each of us gifts, not only in the church but in the home as well. We need to encourage one another, build one another up, and stimulate one another’s gifts. Even pastors and their families can forget this.
As we look back over these several families in the early years of ministry, the major issues seem to be: self-worth, communication, expectations that come from self and others, idealism, insecurity, educational differences.
I do not want to say these years are terrible. There is a balance between unhealthy optimism and unhealthy pessimism. Too much warning immobilizes people. On the other hand, people can get swept up saying, “I can if I think I can!” and that’s unrealistic.
The start-up years in the ministry have good and bad points. The Lord never promised it would be easy; we must take up a cross and follow him. But he doesn’t put us in places where we will spend our whole lives being miserable, frustrated, and just surviving until transfer to another parish, retirement, or death. We walk between two extremes and must face the future with healthy realism because we trust in the sovereign, living Lord.
Copyright © 1985 by Christianity Today
