10 Things I Love About Being Married to the Pastor's Wife!
10 Things I Love About Being Married to the Pastor's Wife
After being married to the pastor's wife for 15 years, I think it's time I spill the tea.
She's my buoy. 🛟
She has spent thousands of Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings at church. She has moved for ministry, taken vacation days for youth trips and retreats, and even let me move her into a parsonage that I'm pretty sure hosted the first Nazarene potluck.
Every Wednesday there seems to be something I forgot.
Shoes.
Balls.
Some bizarre sermon illustration.
And somehow she still answers the "Can you bring me..." text.
Being married to a pastor's wife is a strange life.
She Holds My Hand
Holding hands.
Whether it's NYC, a youth retreat, a Wednesday night or Friday Night Lights, eventually somebody catches us holding hands in front of the students.
We call it making purple.
Our students see a lot of Pastor Jon. They see me preach on Wednesday nights, lead retreats, show up at games, sit in the stands, pray with students, teach Sunday School and spend a ridiculous amount of time hanging out with teenagers.
I love that sometimes they also just see us holding hands.
And I hope when they catch moments like that, they're seeing a picture of the kind of partnership they might want someday.
She Shares the Calling, Not the Job
We started dating right after she switched from youth ministry to accounting at Trevecca.
By the time we knew we were in this thing for the long haul, she was already serving in youth ministry with me.
She knew what she was getting into.
At least we thought she did.
There are student struggles, family situations, conflicts and hard conversations that I have to carry because I'm the pastor.
She doesn't need every detail just because she's married to me.
Sometimes she needs to be involved. Sometimes loving her means not asking her to carry something that isn't hers to carry.
My calling belongs to our family. My job doesn't have to become her job.
She Gives Me Room to Hear God
I was once passed over for a job I really thought I wanted.
I was devastated.
I thought I understood what God was doing.
Then it didn't happen.
She didn't immediately tell me I should stay.
She didn't immediately tell me I should leave.
She didn't try to fix it.
She listened.
She gave me room to be disappointed without letting disappointment decide who I was going to become.
Slowly, she helped me keep becoming the person God was calling me to be instead of letting the outside noise win.
She Knows Who Hurt Me and Still Loves Them
A pastor's spouse sees more than most people realize.
She sees the good, the bad and the ugly.
And then she has to see the people responsible for all three on Sunday.
She has watched people love us well. She has also watched people disappoint us and hurt me.
Sometimes that hurt becomes hers too.
Watching her do that has helped me stay soft in moments when it would have been much easier to become defensive.
She Knows When Ministry Has Had Enough of Me
Ministry never tells you you're finished.
There is always another student. Another sermon. Another thing that could be better.
Sometimes the dangerous weeks are obvious.
Everything goes wrong.
But sometimes the dangerous weeks are the great ones.
The event goes well. Students respond. Something starts growing.
And now it's midnight and I can see ten more things we should do next.
Sometimes everything went wrong.
Sometimes everything went right.
She gives me incredible freedom.
"I've got the kids. You do your thing."
But eventually she also knows when it's family time.
The job will still be there. God will have it there when I'm ready for it again.
The strange part is that the freedom she gives me to do ministry makes me want to come home even more.
Her Spiritual Gift Is Surviving My Ideas
While working on this article, I tried to think of a terrible idea she had successfully talked me out of.
So I asked her.
She told me there aren't any.
Not because I haven't had terrible ideas.
Apparently she has just never successfully talked me out of one.
Fair.
She Has a Whole Life of Her Own
One of the things I love most about being married to the pastor's wife is that being the pastor's wife isn't the only thing she is.
She started as an accountant and worked her way up to being a controller.
She can go from high-level executive meetings to putting on a youth ministry shirt and spending a weekend with teenagers.
And neither version is fake.
She has her own friends.
Her own opinions.
Plenty of those.
She serves because she wants to serve, not because somebody handed her a list of things a pastor's wife is supposed to do.
And sometimes she loves getting to walk into women's ministry and just be a regular lady in the room.
I love that about her.
She Taught Our Kids How to Love Flawed People
Our kids have grown up around ministry.
That means they have gotten a close-up view of real, flawed people.
People who are wonderful one day and difficult the next.
And they have watched their mom love them.
They have watched her choose grace.
They have watched her show that people matter more than things and relationships matter more than self-interest.
I think that may be one of the greatest gifts ministry has given our family.
She Doesn't Let Us Float Alone
When you're young in ministry, you spend a lot of time thinking about what's next.
The next Wednesday. The next retreat. The next student.
Fifteen years later, I find myself looking around more.
And somehow there are people everywhere.
Students became adults.
Students became friends.
Church people became our people.
And some of the people we poured into started pouring into people of their own.
At some point ministry starts feeling less like two people trying not to drown and more like one of those lazy rivers where everybody starts connecting their tubes together.
Some people float beside you for a season.
Some stay connected for years.
And then every once in a while, you get invited to a wedding.
Those weddings hit me differently now.
I get to see baptisms. I get to stand there and watch someone publicly say that Jesus has changed their life.
I love those moments.
But at a wedding, sometimes I look at two people standing there and realize I'm seeing something different.
Someone who was once a teenager in our youth ministry is building a marriage. A home. Maybe one day raising kids who will know Jesus because their mom or dad decided years earlier that they wanted to follow Him.
Suddenly all those Wednesday nights look different.
We weren't just helping teenagers survive high school.
By the grace of God, we got to be a small part of shaping people who are now shaping people of their own.
And somehow, we got to do it together.
She's My Buoy 🛟
People sometimes call a pastor's wife his anchor.
That has never sounded quite right to me.
An anchor keeps you from moving.
She has never done that.
She has never kept me from going deeper when I believed God was calling me deeper.
She has gone into the water with me plenty of times.
She has also known when she needed to stay above it.
And when I've gone too deep, stayed too long, or simply didn't have the strength to swim anymore, she has been there.
She helps me stay afloat.
I've spent this entire article calling her "the pastor's wife."
There is no Pastor Jon without Kari.
Fifteen years later, we're still holding hands.
We've picked up a whole bunch of other rafts along the way.
And I'm pretty sure she's still wondering what I'm going to forget and need her to bring me this Wednesday.