I Want to Quit!

 

I wrote this article years ago for a magazine named Quiet Waters Compass. Quiet Waters, a wonderful ministry to pastors and wives, is now led by our dear friend Scott Thompson. And though this article was originally intended only for pastors’ wives, I think it has applications for all women: women in ministry, women volunteering at churches, women working at parachurch organiztions, and women…well, women simply trying to live godly lives. If you are a pastor’s wife in need of more resources and help, please don’t hesitate to google Quiet Waters. Or reach out to  me. We’re all in this together, we’ve felt many of the same hurts and angers, and we need one another.

You are not alone.

 

 

I’d had it. My husband Craig was exhausted, spent, used up—and so was I. People were cranky. To be completely truthful, we were cranky. The pay could never match the invested education, time, and nearly constant drain of emotions. And the hassles, stresses, frustrations, and hurt feelings were pressing and poking and suffocating me from every angle. So I decided I’d quit this job. Sounds reasonable, considering those conditions, right? Should be a simple procedure. Resign, pick up my paycheck, pack my belongings, and move on. Unless you happen to be a pastor’s wife, and then the scenario changes just a tiny bit.

Take resigning, for instance. When quitting a “normal” job, you’d write a logical, rational letter written to your boss, the manager, or whoever’s your direct supervisor. But can you imagine composing such a thing and calmly handing it to your congregation’s ruling body? Dear Members, it might begin. I regret to inform you that I can no longer continue my duties as your pastor’s wife. Therefore, I am resigning effective immediately. If you think changing the design of the wallpaper in the church’s kitchen created a major fuss, just hand one of those babies to your board of elders or deacons.

And what about picking up your final paycheck? The one that has your name on it, I mean. Oh no, you say. Our church hired him, not me. Right. That’s what I always said too. But just tell me what happens when you don’t show up at church for a week or two. (You’d better be deathly ill.) Or when you decline to speak at the women’s retreat. (Got one fantastic excuse?) Or—the worst offense of them all—YOU SAY NO TO TEACHING AT VACATION BIBLE SCHOOL. And heaven help you if you don’t play the piano! Now, tell me again that you’re not expected to earn a portion of your husband’s paycheck.

But isn’t it a calling? you ask. Won’t spiritual certainty carry a pastor’s wife through anything? I heard no audible voice but Craig’s when over thirty years ago he nonchalantly asked me how I’d feel about being the wife of a missionary or pastor. That was Craig’s subtle prelude to popping the “big question.” I told him I’d go wherever my husband went. Easy to say. Not so easy to do. And sure, I’ve known the rewards of this life: The blessing of serving God full-time, the joy of watching people grow, the fulfillment of a job with eternal benefits. But all those years ago, in my naiveté, I certainly never envisioned feeling the depths of pain that accompanied the joys of the pastoral life. That was not supposed to be part of this glorious calling to serve God full-time.

You may have felt the romantic call of this lifestyle in college or seminary too and probably shared your husband’s vision of leading a flock and serving Christ faithfully as “pastor and wife.” Those wonderful feelings may have followed you to your first church—even beyond, now and then. But let’s face it: Pastoring is one tough job. I don’t know about you, but no one prepared me for that reality. No one warned me about the myriad of totally unromantic emotions I’d have to deal with on a weekly basis. The hurt that followed criticisms over Craig’s leading. The defensiveness after listening to unsolicited comments about our sons. The stress of conflicts and people issues.

For a while, I handled it all the best I could through denial, self-imposed martyrdom, withdrawal for protection, probably a little bit of healthy processing (otherwise I’d have been in a padded room years ago), and a good deal of God’s grace through the natural healing of time. But what was left composted until that pile of unprocessed feelings created a mound of unhealthy emotional garbage.

How did I reach this impasse? Maybe it was the emphatic “no” from our Sunday school small group when we asked them to consider dividing into two groups to add newcomers. We’d assumed after four long years of teaching on spiritual growth—how it works outward, how the need for servanthood floats into every area of our lives—they’d enthusiastically agree. Hadn’t they heard and taken in one thing that we’d taught? I suppose they’d never understand how discouraged I suddenly felt. Or was it the passing, flippant comment to Craig after he’d preached in all five services (yes, five) one Sunday: “You should consider being a pastor!” Just because Craig wasn’t the senior preaching pastor, couldn’t people grasp that he was a pastor in every sense? Could that man ever know how much that comment wounded my soul? Or maybe it wasn’t any one thing, but instead everything that seemed to point out that we judged we weren’t really making a difference in anyone’s life anymore. So I cried and I pleaded and I demanded of God: Why then…please tell me, why are we doing this?

I wanted to quit.

 

Our Options: Endure or Embrace

I had fun with this for a while, joking with other pastors’ wives on staff about my secret wish to take a hike. But deep down, it wasn’t funny; the hurt and weariness were real. So after a season of struggle, I came to the conclusion that I had two options. One choice is that I could become the unwilling partner—a wife who functions like the little boy who was forced to sit down and yet still insisted, “I may be sitting down on the outside, but I’m standing up on the inside!” Oh, but we pastors’ wives would never do anything like that, would never have an attitude like that. Would we? Listen, I’m a vet, okay? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to Sunday evening church out of duty, grumbling all the way. How many times I’ve smiled sweetly from the choir loft when I was actually so angry at Craig that I wanted to throw my music folder at him. How many times I’ve responded kindly to a mean-spirited comment that made me feel angry or crushed by the pain of undeserved criticism.

Am I advocating that we suddenly become militants who act out each and every emotion that we feel? Of course not! (Although just once I might enjoy throwing something at Craig!) Nor am I saying that we can reach a point when we delight in attending every church activity, when we won’t have to purposefully decide not to respond with an unkind retort, or when family arguments don’t affect our worshipful attitude at church. There will always be times when I must choose to act in one way when my feelings scream otherwise.

However, every time I subjugate an emotion and then don’t eventually process it, I have a proportional downward shift in my attitude. My passion for ministry—my ministry—slowly erodes. Maybe most disastrously, I could suppress and bury those intense feelings so deeply that I lose touch with the reality that they even exist. The result: I become severely depressed, lonely and burned out. And that’s when I really want to quit my job.

Our other option as pastors’ wives? Admitting and recognizing these emotions: insecurity, loneliness, rejection, fear, anger, uselessness and weariness. Why didn’t I include other emotions that are also a significant part of ministry, emotions like joyfulness, contentment, happiness? Because we have no problem admitting to their existence. Instead, usually those are the only emotions that we permit ourselves to legitimately have! Once we give ourselves permission to feel what God designed and expressed himself (Did you know that? Did you know that Jesus felt all those “uncomfortable” emotions too?), then we can begin to process them as he also designed, becoming supportive, involved participants in ministry. For only then are we realistic about all this demanding life entails.

One more ironic twist to the emotional dilemma: For some reason, we judge that recognizing a feeling’s existence will make it blossom and grow, somehow encouraging it to feed upon itself until we’re consumed by its force. Actually, the opposite is true. When I’m angry, hiding and denying the anger will only make it worse. As a matter of fact, medical studies seem to indicate that not only do we suffer emotionally for not processing anger, but our bodies bear the effects physically, too. Headaches. Muscle tension. Increased susceptibility to infection. All kinds of problems result when we don’t own up to our anger, see it for what it is, and process it in a healthy way. In our efforts to always be the “ever-happy, spiritually mature Christian” (a creature who does not exist, in my opinion), we have created one fine mess in relation to handling our uncomfortable emotions. And God never intended a bit of it!

 

The Decisive Road to Emotional Health

Step one, therefore, is this: I must admit that I feel angry. Lonely. Weary and all the other emotions that we—and too much of the Christian community—judge unacceptable. Unfortunately, denying that they exist when they’re present, as stated before, is dangerous. Craig and I have counseled a number of pastoral couples so out of touch with their feelings that the unthinkable happens: an affair, involvement in pornography or other sexual addictions, divorce, or just plain drop out. But admission is merely step one, and we must then have the strength of character to move on to the next step.

Often—and I risk sounding sexist by saying this, but I believe it to be true—we women feel things more deeply and are more aware of our feelings. I’ve felt such anger at myself for being this way. Craig can be hurt and then poof!—it’s handled, gone. Me? I’m still struggling with the processing a good week (or more, much more if the pain goes deep) later. In my eyes, I come across as less spiritual. Less able to handle the frustrations and pains of life. But a counselor once pointed out to me that feeling deeply is actually a gift. When I listen to Chopin, I experience the music more deeply. I feel more glory in the rich colors of an autumn sunset. I also feel the knifelike thrust of criticism throughout every inch of my body. Yes, this is indeed a gift. One with important ramifications.

We who feel so deeply tend to get stuck at precisely this point: We concentrate on the feeling rather than the choice. Because we’ve been lectured for years by many that certain emotions are wrong (anger, jealousy, all those bad guys), we then feel guilty for what we’re feeling. So we tend to concentrate on the emotion, trying to somehow mystically change it from a bad feeling to a good one. The more we focus on that bad feeling (and it remains, stubbornly, quite fixed) the guiltier we feel; the more it remains stuck, the more frustrated we become. And the vicious cycle goes on and on as we spin in place, slogging through a tremendous amount of time and stirred-up emotional energy that accomplishes virtually…nothing.

Why is this so, and especially when our hearts earnestly yearn for change? Because attempting to change or stop a feeling is nothing more than an exercise in futility. The simple core truth is this: We don’t get to choose how we feel. It’s just not a matter of choice! Think about that a moment. If we could pick what feelings we were to experience, who among us would choose to feel hurt? Or anger? If emotions were offered in a catalogue, I doubt that any of us would immediately thumb to the section titled “The Uncomfortable Feelings: Buy Two, Get One Free Holiday Sale!”

Emotions simply happen. They reveal much about our core—who we are, how we view God, how we see ourselves in relation to God. In this way they’re signals and should be recognized, looked at and viewed for the perspective they can reveal. If we could only learn to view them—especially what we consider unacceptable feelings—as positive tools. Those emotions are valuable assets to measure and evaluate all that makes up me: a litmus test, so to speak, to give feedback on my innermost self.

Unfortunately, some introspective personality types can also get stuck at this point. When this happens in either personal self evaluation or in clinical counseling, psychology and psychiatry may be labeled “psycho babble” because they have emphasized emotions and emotions alone. But then the skeptics and critics often err in that they “throw out the baby (psychology and psychiatry) with the bath water.”

I agree that evaluating feelings, looking at them until we reach the clichéd “analysis of paralysis,” is a self-centered approach to Christianity. We should look at our feelings, but not as an end in itself. Instead, using feelings as signals is just that: They’re guidelines that direct me towards the uniquely designed pathway for my spiritual growth. Toward becoming more Christ-like. And ironically, negative feelings are often the very tools that God uses to direct those paths. This process is not selfish introspection; on the contrary, work that we do in conjunction with the Holy Spirit (and let me be clear to emphasize that this is work) is “examining my heart and mind” (Psalm 26:2-3) as a means to spiritual growth. I’m about the work of discovering who my God is and who he is not.

 

Seeing God Through the Fog

Hear this very clearly: I’m not intimating that my feelings validate God. God revealed who he is through his written Word, the Bible. Here we find accurate God concepts. Discovering and evaluating my negative feelings will expose the inaccurate God concepts by which I’m living, and then the intersection of these two will reveal where I need to make a decision. For this is the next phase of processing our feelings: I must decide to believe God’s Word. To believe God himself! At the same time, I must choose to discard the inaccurate God concepts that have controlled my feelings, my attitudes, my motivations. Only then do I have true freedom in the power of the Holy Spirit—and power is definitely the right word, for we women can be freed from paralyzing self-recriminations, nonproductive guilt, and life-draining emotional baggage by learning to put our energies into the decisions and choices that make us powerful followers of our Lord Jesus Christ.

An example? Several years ago, due to a financial crisis, Craig was laid off from a ministry into which he had poured his heart and soul. He was devastated. I’ll never forget the sight of his slumped shoulders that afternoon when he walked in the door, quietly giving me the news. And me? I felt furiously angry towards the organization (for hurting my husband like that), rejected and useless, like we’d been simply thrown away by God. Those were my feelings, whether or not they qualify as spiritual, correct or justifiable.

For several days I struggled with an intense desire to simply sleep since it provided the only escape from my pain. I’m the type of person who normally rises with a good amount of energy to face the day, but I recall dragging myself out of bed, dreading facing not only the day but also the emotions that day would bring. I couldn’t wait until I could once again crawl back into bed to hide underneath the covers. I cleaned house, fixed meals, and interacted with my family, trudging through all with detached, robot-like movements. In between, I cried. Despondency blanketed my heart and soul in a fog of despair. Heartache can be a touchable thing.

And then I clearly saw that I had a decision to make: I could continue to drown in those feelings, deny that they existed, and play the spiritual role which some dictated was the correct response, or I could determine not to concentrate on the feelings but learn instead what inaccurate God concepts were being signaled through those emotions. At the same time, I set my chin and tenaciously decided that I would also choose to believe God is a loving God. Can you see how concentrating on this choice would eventually bring about growth? Gradually, the feelings themselves changed.

Easy choice? Absolutely not. And the final step was of paramount importance in processing those negative feelings: I had to call upon the power of the Holy Spirit to give me the courage and ability to decide to believe him (I literally prayed this, every single morning), to believe in his future plans for us, and eventually, to forgive.

Did you catch the difference? Do you see the power in centering on the choices rather than the feelings? Here there is great potential for spiritual growth, and here we discover true freedom. For when we’re no longer helpless victims of our feelings, we have the power to choose: To forgive, to heal, to stay at that ministry.

I might even choose to stay a pastor’s wife.

I never was much for quitting anyway.