I haven't opened my Bible in months.

I know.

I'm not proud of it or anything. It just happened.

I think people naturally assume that when you’re married to the pastor, faith is a very natural part of the household. I mean, you pray before meals you pray before bed, so faith should be a foundational part of life, right? Maybe in other pastors’ families this is the case, but I’ve been a pastor’s child and pastor’s wife, and in neither household thus far have we talked about faith nearly enough. Especially not nearly enough for one member of the household to have chosen faith as a profession.

I grew up as a pastor‘s kid in a small town in northern Wisconsin. Dad was a workaholic, jumping between two rural churches, preaching at both on Sundays, and trying to manage the goings on of both churches every week. This is more common than you think. Some pastors even have three churches that they manage. Maybe it was indicative of the time and of the generation that my parents belong to, but we didn’t talk about faith at all. It was completely mandatory that we pray before meals that we thank God with a scripted prayer after meals (Come Lord Jesus, be our guest ring a bell to anyone?) and that we pray before going to bed with another frankly morbid scripted prayer (if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take…cheery bedtime thoughts for a 5-year-old), but that was the extent of it. God was a checklist. God was a list of prayers to be said during the day, God was an interruption from a meal that I really wanted to have. God had to do with the end, not with the present. I feared hell but didn’t long for Christ. God was not a friend. God was not someone I could turn to in times of trouble. I don’t even think that I prayed a non-scripted prayer on my own before high school, if I had to guess.

To be fair, my family was not one that talked about emotions, either, so being emotional with God just wouldn’t have made sense. I guess in that regard we treated Him exactly like family.

But by the time I hit high school, I didn’t think much of God. I had memorized Bible verses for Sunday school and catechism classes, but everything I read said that He was supposed to be compassionate and kind and comforting and keep His promises…and I just wasn’t feeling that. I had been conditioned that God was no more than a list of scripted prayers to be repeated daily.

Sure, my dad preached moving sermons about who God is and what He was doing and what Jesus had done for us on Sunday mornings, but try to imagine how hard it would be to listen to your dad preach a sermon-or your husband, for that matter. You get caught up in the person who’s doing the preaching.

What’s with that weird hand gesture?

Did he mean to go on that tangent?

Did he forget where he was going with this?

I can confidently say that my dad talked more about God with his church than with his family. I think we were all so tired of church and God and all the inconveniences that came with being a pastor’s family that all of us harbored just a little bit of resentment towards the big man upstairs. Can you blame us kids? The church was a place where we had to act just right and dressed just right so as to not incur the wrath of the little old ladies who were seeking to tear us apart every Sunday morning. Our church owned our house and we couldn’t make any changes without consulting them first. Even my bedroom wall color was voted on by church committee.

It felt like the church was running our lives instead of God, but the two were so intermingled that we couldn’t separate them as kids, and hardly any better as adults.

My brothers both went through a period of leaving the church while they were in college. Both of them are back in the church now in various denominations, but I’m the only one that stuck it out in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod with no break.

I don’t blame them. In fact, I envy them in some ways.

I wonder what it’s like to live life without God for a little bit. I know enough about God to be scared of having Him completely absent in my life, but I wonder what it would be like to set all of the rules and traditions aside for a minute and just live life Like the Amish do for a year in their Rumspringa.

Why didn’t I leave for a while? Why didn’t I have my rebellious Pastor’s kid phase? I really have to give credit to a Lutheran summer camp that God pushed me towards. I served there for many summers, both in high school and eventually in college, and seeing other people my age being so passionate about Christ as a real person and God as an actual father really intrigued me. I wanted what they had. The notion of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ was completely foreign to me.

You'd think that by the time I was 30, I would’ve figured this thing out. You’d think that my husband would’ve coached me through the finer points of having a relationship with Christ that’s not based on rules and traditions. But both of us grew up with rules and traditions. The difference is that I resent them and want to push them as far as possible away from my adult life, whereas he appreciates them and sees the beauty in them because they drew him closer to God as a child. He’s one of those lucky people that reads the Bible and takes what’s there is truth with no questions asked eye on the other hand. I’m a bit more skeptical. Unfortunately, I read the Bible knowing in my head it’s true, but somewhere in my heart, there’s doubt. Not doubt that God exists, but that God is who He says He is for me specifically.

How can I have grown up as a pastor’s kid and not feel the love that He offers? How can I be a pastor’s wife raising pastor’s daughters and not believe that His forgiveness is really for me? How do I not feel Him in my daily life? How do I not want to read His word every day? These guilty questions begin to eat me alive. I don’t know if I’ll ever actually publish this blog post because I’m afraid to say these things out loud, let alone write them down.

I haven’t opened my Bible in months.

You can ask my therapist for a million reasons why this is the case, but I think my central idea is that I believe God is for everyone else, but not for me. It’s my job to bring other people to Him, to coach my daughters to show them Him love, but I have a hard time feeling it myself, even in the pits of life.

My labor experience with my first daughter was traumatic. I sincerely thought I was dying and so did my husband. The pain I endured once we brought her home pushed me into a postpartum depression that I wouldn’t recognize for several years. I felt alienated from her as my husband took on primary caregiver duties because I physically couldn’t get up to change diapers. I prayed and prayed and prayed for relief, for comfort, for joy, for connection with my daughter.

I love my daughter fiercely. There is no question about that.

But from that point on, there has been a rift growing between me and God. I have a hard time believing that God is who He says He is with what I’ve gone through. I have a hard time, remembering Him when depression creeps up inside my mind and holds me captive.

Everything about that first two years of motherhood was tough. She didn’t eat, she didn’t sleep, my physical recovery was long, and my mental recovery even longer. I survived on very few hours of sleep while my husband was at a new job with a new community that adored him and I was at home alone and knew no one. I asked God “where are you?” and heard no answer.

I used to open my Bible daily after working at that camp I mentioned earlier. I went through peaks and valleys, of course but I still felt this pull to open it up to see what God had to say. Now it feels like a chore. Now when I open the Bible and read it, I get angry because I feel like God‘s lying to me. He promises rest, He promises comfort, but I feel neither.

And before you say it, I know there are stories of people who have suffered far worse than me in the Bible and in modern history. I don’t think I’m unique, but I think the pain that all of us feel is unique.

I go to church on Sunday and I don’t hear a word of the message because I’m too busy trying to wrangle my kids and keep my anxiety and check because people whip around to watch me whenever they cry out or make a mad dash for their dad at the front of the room. I try to convince myself to get in the zone and focus on God when I go up for communion or when I sing a song, but my mind wanders to my grocery list.

I’m so lonely.

When I interact with a fellow Christian, they’re scared to interact with me because I’m too “holy”.

When I tell a nonbeliever my husband’s job, I get iced out on the spot.

When I cry out to God while folding yet another pair of 3T shorts, I hear silence.

When I ask my husband why, he goes into “pastor mode” and I feel left behind, not up to par with his faith level.

Today I met with my therapist and she encouraged me to write all of this down and get it out. I asked her how to end it. I don’t have a solution, or hope, or call to action. Frankly, my thoughts are already fairly disorganized and chaotic. I don’t have a happy ending to share about how God busted into my life and showed me the way.

I’m just here, lonely. Distant even from God.

She said, “maybe that’s how it ends-that there is no ending.”

Not every story has an ending that wraps up nicely. Maybe this one will someday, maybe I’ll have to wait to have it out with God face-to-face and have my Footprints in the Sand moment. (I see you, pastor’s kid. You know exactly what I’m talking about.)

But it’s happening. And sometimes it’s important to share the present moment without the neat ending.

Now I’m going to go open my Bible because I want Him in my present, not just my ending. Maybe I’ll get angry or sad or hear nothing, but I’m going to try because those feelings don’t have to be the end either.

Get yourself a good therapist, and we’ll meet back here later.

Love,

The Pastor’s Wife