"A church reached out to me..." are a few of the worst words spoken in my household.

A few times in the past month, my husband has turned to me after tucking our kids in and said 6 words that simultaneously brought excitement and resentment: "A church reached out to me."

One email from a completely unknown person from an unknown church in an unknown town. And this is how every job opportunity in our church denomination (the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod) begins.

Let's review how most people get jobs.

1. Search forums, google, local ads, or job sites for a job.

2. Apply for interesting jobs that you meet the requirements for.

3. Employer sifts through applications and narrows the field.

4. Hear back from employer (or never hear from them again).

5. Interview.

6. Employer meets with committee to decide on best candidate.

7. Get offered job.

8. Accept job.

9. Start job.

Now that we're clear on what's normal, let me give you an oversimplified rundown of how pastors get jobs.

1. Fill out form about yourself and aspirations/preferences as a pastor. Mark if you are absolutely not interested in a new job, open to hearing about new jobs, or are desperate to get out.

2. Give form to District President.

3. Vacant or hiring churches reach out to District office asking to hire a new pastor.

4. District President sifts through papers from pastors fitting the general role description and gets their forms (see step one) to the church.

5. Church committee meets to look through papers. Committee narrows the field.

6. Committee member emails candidates to ask to interview.

7. Candidates agree or decline, interviews ensue.

8. Committee meets again to discuss interviews and narrow the field more.

9. Committee reaches out to first choice candidate to ask to visit. Often candidates say no at this point if they're satisfied where they are, got a bad vibe in the interview, or had other qualms.

10. Church foots the bill for candidate to travel to visit.

11. Committee meets again. Do they like the candidate?

12. Committee extends a "call" to candidate.

13. Candidate accepts or declines after a completely standard thinking period of several weeks.

14. Pastor-elect begins the slow process of leaving current church and moving to new church.

Whew.

I realize I may have left out potential meetings or committees in the standard process, but I want you to notice first and foremost that while in both situations the employer initiates the process (hey, we need to hire someone), in the pastoral call process, there's a middleman of the District Offices and Presidents. There's no direct contact between employer and candidates (I can't even call them applicants-they didn't apply, after all) until a church gets forms back from the District and gets their sights set on a few favorites. A pastor can't simply look up a list of openings and hit "apply". This is both heartbreaking for churches, who often get turned down point-blank, and totally blindsiding for candidates, who are just going about their daily rhythms in their current jobs.

More often than not, pastors are moderately content in their calls and have their form preferences set to "open". They aren't going to say they would never leave, but they also aren't looking to get the heck out ASAP. They go about their workdays without looking for jobs (because they can't-there's no direct application process for pastors) and never expect to get these emails from interested churches. Most of the time, they can turn down these advances from hiring churches without too much deliberation. But when they come home with that news, it can potentially open a huge can of worms.

Like in our house.

Our current church is a terrific fit for my husband and a meh fit for me. Read my bio and you'll see that Southeast Florida is my happy place. Oceans. Beaches. Palm trees. Read it again and you'll see I'm in the Midwest. Brown lakes. Plains. Pine trees. I love our church and the people in it, but the geography matters to me as a stay-at-home mom. The environment we're placed in is my workplace, and where we're at is not a great fit, to be honest. So when my husband got his first call to our church on Call Day (oh, that is a whole other mess to explore another day), I held back tears in case congregants were watching me on the livestream.

When my husband comes home and says a church reached out, my brain spirals.

Are we moving?

Is it somewhere cool?

Wait...do I hate it here?

I'd have to leave my friends.

Could I afford to stay home?

Do I really want to leave our house or move again?

Sometimes he tells me straight up that he's not interested and just wants to run it by me to be on the same page. My stomach drops. Guess I'm stuck here, then. The resentment mounts like an angry lion in my chest. Sometimes I pick a fight for absolutely no reason other than I'm angry it works like this.

Why can't you just have a normal job where we can apply to a place we actually want to go when we're actually ready to go there? Can't you see I'm unhappy here, just appeasing your career aspirations, orienting my entire life toward your job?

On the other hand, if he shows interest, I get too excited. I research neighborhoods, local parks, look up a livestream of a service, and in all other ways get overly invested. As we research, he might point out cracks in the church that he's unsure about. There's no school attached. I'm not sure I like the way they phrased their mission statement. It sounds like their finances are shaky. It's too urban. It's too rural. I want to brush his concerns aside in favor of getting out of here, but I know he's right in the end.

Worst case scenario, we both like it. Yes, I said worst.

This begins a months-long process of interviews, committee meetings, emails, and maybe a visit. Weeks go by between contact points and eat away at your insides while you go about your day-to-day life wondering if you're moving at the end of the year. If you're a decent guy, you also give your current job the courtesy of knowing you're going through this process sort of seriously and have to endure the tension at your current workplace as they wonder if you're unhappy there, which translates to tension with the wife as well.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say I'm not the only pastor's wife who would rather sit in the front pew with their screaming toddler during a Good Friday service than have their husband's job determined this way. Their living location determined this way. Their jobs always coming second as a fill-in-the-blank after securing a pastoral call. Working odd jobs when the ideal job isn't available for her like it is for him. We pastors' wives spend our lives in orbit around the pastoral office and its many oddities (hence the blog), and the call process is the oddest of them all, at least to me.

Every day, there's the possibility of a church reaching out to my husband that could be our next church. In the same breath, every day, we could be waiting desperately for an email that never comes to get him out of his current job.

Pastor's wives, I see you.

I see you waiting for the right call to get you out of your current one.

I see you crying over your loss of independence, your loss of self, and your loss of choice.

I see you shocked that your husband is interested in a call when yesterday you thought you were solid where you are.

I see you shocked that he isn't interested in a call that has piqued your interest.

I see you.

This process is stupid. It really is. It's unnecessarily complicated and hurts sometimes. Often.

We're in this together.

I pray that whenever I am in tears with my husband, yelling at him about how unjust this system is, I remember you and your pain as well. I cry for us all.

I hope that the next church that reaches out is the right one.

I hope that no churches reach out while you're at peace.

God will sort out the rest.

Love,

The Pastor's Wife