Disconnect

Through the years, I've had the opportunity to see what it is like to be part of a preacher's family, without actually having been married to, or the child of, a preacher.

One event I remember, is that in college, my best friend was a preacher's kid. One summer, I was invited to go on the family vacation to Hilton Head, SC with them. They knew that a member of the congregation was very sick, but her dad decided to go anyway. He went for one day, had to come back home the next, preach the funeral the next, and made it back to Hilton Head for the last full day of vacation. :/

We have several family members that are preachers.

Through the years, we've had the privilege of being friends with pastors and their families (both of our own church and outside of our church).

I am in constant awe at how the family has to share their husband and daddy. However, what I experienced Sunday was unlike anything I've ever felt, or imagined feeling. I can't say that I liked it. :/

Long, very convoluted, story short, our pastor resigned last Wednesday night. He gave no notice, and my husband was chosen to fill in on Sunday morning. He is not a preacher. He has not been called to preach, and he made it a point to tell the congregation that he was "teaching," not preaching.

I had watched him prepare on Saturday. I knew roughly what he was going to address. Yet, while he was on stage (looking fine, I might add, though it is a bit non sequitur ) he became the "preacher" and I was just a member of the "congregation." Though we were still married, for the first time in our married life, his role for that 30 minutes or so was not as "husband."

I felt totally disconnected from him.

It was weird.

I became (and still am to some degree) a bit clingy. (I think he liked it at first, but is growing a bit weary of me hanging on to him all the time, now).

What I realized, though, is that the preacher's wife deals with that multiple times a week. For the women who can realize it, and for the pastors who know it, they can make a conscious effort to "reconnect" immediately.

But, if it is not realized, the disconnect carries from Sunday afternoon to Sunday night, and on Monday morning, each goes to work, or to do what they do, and they still have not reconnected.

Service after service.

Week after week.

Month after month.

Over time, the disconnect become "normal."

That's not cool. Or healthy.

If kids are in the house, I suspect it could be the same thing.

My prayer for all of my preacher friends, and their spouses, is that they connect each day, each week. That his wife is still his first ministry, and that he never forgets that. That his kids know him as daddy, first and foremost, and as preacher secondarily.

And, I continue to pray that the strain of the ministry in the church doesn't become a strain in the marital relationship.