Any spouse of a highly visible or public figure has pressures and expectations placed on her; however, I believe ministry wives especially are both burdened and blessed by our fishbowl life.
Ministry wives are stressed by the expectations of the congregation, perhaps to be a leader, a musician, a counselor or a socialite. Often there are unspoken expectations that are shaped by the predecessor-pastor’s wife. If that’s not enough, ministry wives also have to deal with the expectations of husbands. They may want us to be supportive, be a sounding board, be a hostess, be patient, and to handle things like a single parent most of the time. Worse yet are the pressures we put on ourselves! We drive ourselves to be thin, have a “House Beautiful,” a Martha-Stewart lifestyle (but on a shoestring budget), and of course be the Proverbs 31 woman.
Well, Helen S. Somebody tried to meet the challenge. She wanted to be the best ministry wife ever. Helen Somebody’s mother-in-law was a ‘real’ Somebody. She spoke at conferences, wrote devotionals and still managed her home beautifully. She did everything for her husband, without a complaint. Helen’s own family was a disgrace to the Somebody’s.
At first Helen’s family tried to minister to the Shamedbody’s, but their lower-class lifestyle made things too complicated. Subconsciously, Helen was out to prove she was no longer a Shamedbody, but a Somebody! So she read etiquette books, took a cooking class and ran the checkbook into the ground trying to look the part. Helen led a weekly Bible study in her home that took many hours of preparation. The cleaning and baking were overwhelming. The public speaking anxiety gave her chronic heartburn. She hated doing it, but still she pressed on. Helen believed if she could do something, she had to do it, no matter how stressed, angry or ill it made her. After 10 years of this she started to resent church and hope for the flu or a headache so she could avoid it. Then she’d be angry with herself for her limitations. She’d feel shame that things took her so long and were so hard.
Outwardly it seemed Helen was becoming a real Somebody. That is, in everyone else’s eyes except her own and God’s. People would stop and compliment her. She’d get requests to speak. Her husband was proud of her, but secretly in her own heart she wanted to die or become a farmer’s wife. When she finally looked into God’s eyes, she was surprised to see sadness and compassion. He led her to His Word where it says, “Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7b). He also showed her in 1 Corinthians 12 how the body of Christ has many parts and one part cannot say to the other they aren’t needed, but rather each one is valuable and has their own gift. They are meant to work together – Helen didn’t have to do it all. In fact, some of the parts that seem weakest and least important are really the most necessary (vs. 22). God told her she already was a LOVEDbody, He had taken away her shamedbody and He didn’t even see the status of the “Somebody’s.”
Helen was struggling with what psychologists call ‘our ideal self.’ It is an image we create in our head of what we should be like. We then continue to try to measure up to that false image and condemn ourselves for falling short.
Like the stress and discord caused in an orchestra if the conductor’s wife believed she must be the first-chair violinist when she’s really better at being the lighting director, so does a church need the ministry wife to simply be the way God made and gifted her to be. This should be good enough.
However, this would require inserting proper boundaries on our egos. We need to let go of our pride (which is the force behind our self-critical pressures to attain status). Our pride may take the form of a grandiose dream of what we wish we were capable of or entitled to become. Applying a godly ego boundary would involve dying to our self-made dreams and ideals, so we can willingly submit to anonymously serve God in the way He has gifted us. To do this, we need to know ourselves well enough to make a realistic assessment of our gifts and weaknesses, often through trial and error. We can then purposefully pursue what we do well, i.e., what we are called to do.
It’s true that we all have to step out of our comfort zones sometimes to do those things that have to get done. However, the danger to our health lies in chronically pushing ourselves to do things that we think would make us a “Somebody” when it’s not how we were made. That’s a foot chronically trying to be a mouth.
If God’s will is our sanctification and if He made us and gifted us, then He is responsible for who we are, for our identity. Doing what we are gifted and called to do may be tiring, may be heart wrenching, may be hard work, but it fits. The stress is different than when we are trying to be Somebody we are not. Picture a morning glory vine, which is made to climb a trellis. The stress of being a Somebody is like trying to twine a sunflower through the same trellis – it would surely crack and break. The same thing can happen to us!
