On being a pastor's wife...

I was not raised in church.  Growing up, we went to church occasionally.  It was usually Easter and January.  But we never went the first week in January because my mom said that she didn’t want people to think that we had made a New Year’s resolution to go to church.  We usually went the second or third week.  So this whole church culture thing is new to me.  And this whole pastor’s wife thing is completely foreign.  And for truth’s sake, I really have a hard time with being the pastor’s wife.

I think part of it is not being raised in the church.  When I was lead into this role as being THE pastor’s wife, I struggled.  I tried to fit in that mold for a time, but it quickly became too confining.  Too bound by tradition and expectation.

Because, here is the crux of the issue...I am not my husband’s profession.

I was not created to be a pastor’s wife.  I can’t even sing or play an instrument, so I was definitely not created to be a pastor’s wife.

So when I hear a reference to me as the pastor’s wife, I cringe.  Really.  Part of my insides just shrink  a bit.  And in fact, I have a joke with some of my close friends that if they refer to me as the pastor’s wife, they have to buy me a drink.  See, not very pastor wifely of me, is it?

And here is why I cringe, when people refer to me as the pastor’s wife, my identity is no longer valid.  I merely become whatever they expect of me.  I don’t live very well in others expectations.

I am glad that I wasn’t raised in the church, because that same momma that took me to church on the second Sunday in January taught me things that the I may have never learned.  She taught me how to pray.  She also taught me that God still talks to His people.  She taught me that God answers prayers in tender ways and in mighty ways.  She taught me to be grateful for the little (and big) things.  She taught me compassion for others.

But she also taught me that God sees ME.  Not through the eyes of other church members.  Not through the career choice of my husband.  Not through the failed expectations.  But He sees me, just me.


Not as a pastor’s wife.  But the woman that God created me to be. Because I was created with an identity.  I was created to serve and pursue God in my own ways, my own time, and my own abilities, with my own dreams.  I was not created to be the pastor’s wife.  i was created to be Christie, beloved of God.  And that is who I will be.