Strength as the Pastor’s Wife
It happens without warning. One day you are a wife and mother; Whoosh–the next day you are a pastor’s wife. You feel like Sarah when Abraham came home and told Sarah, “We are moving! I don’t know exactly where — but let’s go.
Versatility is a must for a pastor’s wife. She is mostly girl….But there are times, such as when her husband is away and she is mowing the lawn or fixing a flat time on a youngster’s bike that she begins to suspect she is also a boy.
She usually comes in three sizes: Petite, plump, and pregnant. During the early years of her marriage it is often hard to determine which size is her normal one.
She has babies all over the world and measures time in terms of places as other women in years.
It was at Faith Baptist that we all had the mumps…In Cincinnati Dan was saved…”
At least one of her babies was born while she was alone. This causes her to suspect a secret pact between her husband and the church providing for a man to be away in an evangelistic meeting at times such as these.
A Preacher’s wife is international. She may be an Iowa farm girl, a French mademoiselle, a Japanese doll or a German Fraulein. When discussing pastoral problems, they all speak the same language.
She can be a great actress. To heartbroken children at moving time, she gives an Academy Award performance: “Arizona is going to be such fun!! I hear there are Indian reservations…and tarantulas…and rattlesnakes.” But her heart is breaking with theirs. She wonders if this is worth the sacrifice.
An ideal Pastor’s wife has the patience of an angel, the flexibility of putty, the wisdom of a scholar and the stamina of a horse. If she dislikes money, it helps. She is sentimental, carrying her memories with here in an old footlocker.
One might say she is a bigamist, sharing her husband with a demanding entity called “Duty”. When duty calls, she becomes No. 2 wife. Until she accepts this fact, her life can be miserable.
She is, above all, a woman who married a Preacher who offered her the permanency of a gypsy, the miseries of loneliness, the frustration of conformity and the security of love.
Sitting among her packing boxes with squabbling children nearby, she is sometimes willing to chuck it all…until she heart the firm step and cheerful voice of that lug who gave her all this.
Then she is happy to be …his preacher’s wife.
Special Note: I did not write this, but I found it in my files. If anyone can tell me who wrote this, I will give her credit.