How to be mad at your pastor but not at your husband

My husband is my pastor. He's also my husband.

The person who runs most of the goings-on of my church is my husband.

The person who delivers most sermons I hear on Sundays is my husband.

The person who heads up meetings that make major church decisions is my husband.

The one leading most of the Bible studies I have attended lately is...you guessed it, my husband.

Sometimes I get really frustrated with my church. I get mad about the way something is run, or how an event went, or what needs we're not meeting with our ministries. Sometimes I'm absolutely livid toward my church, if I'm perfectly honest. I think that’s natural, since churches are human institutions and impacted by sin.

But am I mad at my husband? Nope. Sometimes I'm mad at my pastor, though.

One time, my husband and I attended a leadership conference together. Supposedly it was designed for pastors and their wives to grow in their respective roles. (Yeah, whatever. But I learned a lot about being a doting pastor’s wife. *insert eye roll*) During one session, we were given a deck of cards with values and traits on them. We sorted through individually to pick out which resonated with us the most.

My husband selected things like, "stability", "filling the gap", and so on. These cards were echoed around the room during sharing time. Many pastors had selected a few of the same cards. It makes sense-it's a role that demands some common traits for success: selflessness, etc.

I waited and waited during sharing time for my top card to be called out. An hour of discussion went by before the speaker finally asked if any of us held a card the room at large had not read out yet.

My stomach hit the floor. My poor 6 month postpartum pelvic floor shuddered in the effort to not pee my pants in terror. But in the spirit of really trying to invest in this conference, I raised my lone hand. The whole room swiveled toward me in their conference room seats, clutching their cards about service, gentleness, and humility.

Mine?

Break the molds.

I’ll be the first to admit it: I’m a hard person to have in a church setting. I examine every inch of traditions and ask the questions no one wants asked: "Why are we doing it that way? Wouldn't another way be better?"

I am a threat to stability and tradition.

Which can sometimes be viewed as a threat to my husband and his job.

There was a day when I came home from church in a towering temper about the nursery at church. I had finally gotten myself and my first infant daughter organized enough to attempt dropping her off in the nursery while I went to the Bible study my husband was begging me to attend to support him. I had arrived to an empty room with the lights off. No nursery volunteer. To make matters worse, as I looked around for the volunteer, a child got left with me by a parent who assumed I was volunteering. I spent the hour I had planned on listening to my husband's study babysitting a bunch of kids whose names I didn't know and whose parents I couldn't find. There was no sign-in process or even name tags, and as a former teacher, my skin crawled and I was sweating like a pig at the thought of how unsafe this could become. Too many emergency response drills from my teaching days, I suppose.

My husband came home to a wife ready to rage and storm and scream.

Why did people assume I was volunteering without checking with me?

How could our church not have a sign-in?

How could he expect me to drop off our precious girl in a place with so few safety precautions?

Did this church even value young families?!

And where in the heck had the volunteer been?

My husband's face hardened. He asked tight-lipped questions to get the full story and made a brief note on his phone as he did for most church-related matters in his off time. I was basically hyperventilating from anger at this point, tearful and sweaty and breathless.

"Well?!" I almost screamed.

"Well what?" He asked, freaking stoic as ever.

"Well WHAT IS THEIR PROBLEM?" I bellowed. (Mind you, I was only getting a few hours of sleep per day at this point. I wasn't exactly operating at my prime...)

We stared at each other.

"I'm sorry I've disappointed you and not met your needs." He finally said without a drop of sarcasm or insincerity.

I deflated on the spot. I think I actually shrunk an inch. What? This isn't what I was going for.

Thus began a long-overdue discussion (and several therapy sessions) about the areas of church he oversaw (which, whoopsie, included nursery) and how I had spent the last few months attacking his hard work when he came home on Sundays. He was personally defeated and felt like a failure, when all I wanted was change in the church.

I wasn't mad at my husband. I was mad at my pastor. I wanted to vent to my husband about my church without bringing his role into it. But how do you untangle that mess when they are one and the same? He’s my partner, after all, and any other woman in my shoes would have ranted to their husband the entire drive home. Maybe she would send an email to the pastor and try the nursery again next week.

But I’m not any other woman-I’m the pastor’s wife.

I bet you're waiting for an answer, right? Sorry. I don't have it. Feel free to click out of this now.

Pastors' wives are in a really tricky spot here. Our worship life will always (at least until retirement) be firmly connect to our husbands and their work. Our spiritual care will always be in their hands, to some degree. While having another pastor in the church can help slightly, that only means that the other pastor is our husband's coworker. Seeking them out for spiritual care, counseling, or comfort isn’t much more palatable than your husband. You know too much about the man and his work habits, for better or worse. You’re in too deep.

When I complain about a church issue, it's going to hit a little deeper for my husband than the average Joe. Maybe it's a mistake he personally made. It happens to the best of us. Maybe it's a work frustration he shares, too, but he’s coming up against brick walls with his attempts to fix it. Maybe he feels inadequate as a spiritual leader and head of the household when I feel so spiritually dry. Maybe he totally disagrees with my "break the molds" approach and feels I'm attacking his way of worshipping and leading our church in their faith walk. Whether I'm asking about the candles or why we sing the Kyrie, or what the point of Confirmation is, it's all pretty personal for him.

Sometimes I have to temper my words. That's right, burn it to the ground and break the molds me has to rein it in a bit. I have to think whether what I'm about to ask could come off as an attack or a mere query. Is what I'm about to complain about something that my husband oversees? How can I phrase this more charitably?

Sometimes I tell him straight up that I need to speak to him as Pastor for a few minutes. I try to speak with a bit more formality and esteem, and this help me mind my tongue but also helps him hear the words from a church member, not his wife. Like a weird roleplaying situation. Then I tell him that as his wife, I'm proud of how hard he's working for the life of the church and for our family's spiritual walk. It's why I go to him with these concerns in the first place.

I often write that being a pastor's wife is no different than being an ordinary member, but I guess this is one way in which the role is very distinct. Pastors' wives give up a bit (or more than a bit) of classical spiritual care by having their husband as their pastor. We have unique struggles in our faith because our spiritual leader is also our life partner. The two don't always mix well.

The pastor's job is a heavy one. He bears a lot of weight as the spiritual leader of so many individuals. He bears a lot of weight as he leads his wife and family, too, those people he most wants to feel the warm embrace of Christ. It's not just public speaking on Sundays. It's a delicate balancing act between maintaining an identity as an individual and as a leader.

So, sometimes I’m mad at my pastor.

Sometimes I’m mad at my husband, too.

But in my case, the hardest part is disentangling the two.

Love,

The Pastor’s Wife