Her.meneutics: My Husband's Affair

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« Maggie Goes on a Diet: A Story for Children? | Main | Inside the Heart of an Animal Hoarder »

September 6, 2011

My Husband's Affair - with the Church

Eileen Button's The Waiting Place describes a marriage complicated by a pastor's overcommitment to his congregation.

Jennifer Grant

We wait for grief to loosen its stranglehold on our hearts. We wait for signs of hope in the Horn of Africa. News that the economy is recovering. The kids to go back to school. The workday to come to a close. To get to the front of the line at the grocery store.

In Oh the Places You'll Go!, Dr. Seuss called life’s waiting places “most useless.” Eileen Button, author most recently of The Waiting Place, says it's in the "wobbly," in-between times where she finds the love of God. She issues a vital reminder to those who wait that “now – even the most difficult now – isn’t forever.” And, as a woman whose husband is the senior pastor of a growing congregation, many of Button's “difficult nows” are related to the church.

Button, a newspaper columnist, college professor, and mother of three, is the kind of writer who conspiratorially grabs readers by the arm and leads them into the realities of life behind closed doors and polite smiles. In this book, we stumble into the house with her family after a burglary. Later she paints a vivid picture of both women as she measures the awkward space that exists between her mother and herself. Her “pastor’s wife” confessions are most striking as they reveal the challenges of fulfilling that role.

“She is loving and life changing; she is malicious and overbearing. She is beautiful; she is ugly. She is as light as day, capable of astonishing kindness and generosity; she is as dark as night, capable of unspeakable evil. I love her; I hate her. She is the Church," Button writes.

As must be true for many women who find themselves answerable to “the pastor’s wife,” Button never expected to be one. When she married him, Brad Button was a banker with no plans to enter ministry. For the past 17 years, however, he’s served as a pastor in the Methodist Free Church. Like many in her cohort, Button has found that being married to a minister takes a significant toll on their family life. Perhaps those sacrifices make it all the more difficult for Button to accept being referred to as, simply, “my pastor’s wife.”

“After all, no one introduces a new friend with the words ‘This is my gynecologist’s husband.’ It’s hard to believe that both the pastor’s wife title and the corresponding expectations remain. I don’t sing, and no one wants to hear me play my clarinet,” Button said. “I’m a little terrified of youth groups, and when I volunteer in the nursery, parishioners giggle or poke their heads through the doorway to make sure the kids are still alive. You might say I have a bit of a reputation.”

Throughout The Waiting Place, Button refers to the church as “the other woman.” She says her husband “gets it” when she does so. “Brad is the most remarkable man. A man of integrity,” she said. “Calling the church ‘the other woman’ was a splash of cold water on his tired face, creating a word picture that he fully grasped. It may be a tough way to view the Church, but personifying her like that helps us keep ministry in perspective."

Her husband hasn’t always been able to do so. In one chapter titled “Stepping into Darkness,” Button describes a time in their lives when her husband battled depression. “Ministry,” she says, “had gotten the best of him.”

“His mistress’s voice was no longer a daytime whisper, but a 24/7 cry; he no longer knew how to escape her, and I no longer knew how to help. It felt like a dangerous time since there were many days when Brad not only wanted out of ministry, he wanted out of life,” Button said.

Brad then spent three weeks at a retreat center where he found “sleep and a dose of peace again.” In his book The Contemplative Pastor, Eugene Peterson writes that using the term “busy” to describe a pastor should not be considered a compliment, but is akin to using the word “adulterous to characterize a wife or embezzling to describe a banker. It is an outrageous scandal, a blasphemous affront,” Peterson writes.

Peterson confesses that “busy-ness” is an occupational hazard for a pastor – one with which every minister he knows wrangles. He attempts, instead, to be “drenched” in Scripture, to spend time in solitude, and to be a listener whose frame of mind is that of “unhurried leisure.” And he knows these things are much more easily written about than practiced.

During Pastor Button’s stay at the retreat center, his wife says she had to “tread water.” When people asked how she was faring, she says she “basically answered them with, ‘Listen, I can’t really talk about this right now.’ No one who’s treading water wants to be hugged.”

Perhaps readers will view “pastors’ wives” through new lenses after reading Button’s book. Instead of barricading them behind stereotypes, maybe we’ll be able to see the wives of our clergy as the fallible, wonderfully imperfect, and unique people they are and will be more compassionate about the particular strain they are under.

“My identity is found in Christ,” Button said. “Not in my husband’s occupation. God has graciously gifted us both, and we both want to use those gifts in unique, creative ways.”

Comments

I'm a pastor so my husband is the pastor's spouse. Thank you for sharing this. The relationship between my job and our life is not always easy. I recently started at a new church and we decided together that my husband is going to attend a different church. People who hear this think that we are crazy and they think that something is wrong with my church or in our marriage. The truth is I blessed to serve a loving church and our marriage is great. But as long as he is at my church he will always be first and foremost the pastor's husband. And going to another church let's him be himself and experience God and make friends (for both of us) and live in a community where is is seen as himself not as some role. And it let's me hear about someone else's sermon and have friends through his church and encourage and be excited for the ministry he is a part of at that church without having to to say things like "we can't start that ministry right now or we have to have that another day or do it another time" and most importantly it allows me to be his wife and let someone else be his pastor.

I read this book and loved so much, mostly for those "Pastor's Wife" references. It reminded me of the importance of love and grace throughout the entire congregation.

Katelyn Beaty, thanks for your thoughts as a female pastor. I'm currently a new mom reflecting on my role as a young pastor, a wife and a mother. I'm not sure if we could do the same arrangement as you have but we are definitely trying to draw a boundary around our family and my husband's identity as an individual in our church.

Jennifer, thanks for sharing this book along with Pastterson's "The Contemplative Pastor" which I first I read about in "Introverts in the Church". I really want to ensure I don't burn out but also that I don't want my family to resent the church. I think the real challenge is for the church to understand our priorities before God but that is something we cannot change or control. Not to sound all wet blanket - if anything, I'm hoping those who read this article and are not part of a pastor's immediate family will impart grace and compassion to a pastor and his/her family so they can grow and feel free to do so.

^ Sorry, I mean Jane! I misread how the comments are marked.

I have so much sympathy for pastors and their wives and family. People tend to put them up on a pedestal and forget that they are people just like us who struggle, fail, succeed, get tired, and sometimes need a break from it all. Depression is common in the leaders of churches, big and small. It always concerns me when I see one of those ultra needy people consuming the pastor's time with their problems, when they should probably be in professional counseling instead. That alone can be a huge drain on his/her psyche.

My husband is a Music Minister and that can be trying enough on our time together. I cannot imagine being the wife of a pastor. But to those who are, you have my ultimate respect. I understand your issues and your sacrifices. God bless you all.

The October issue of Church Executive (now in the mails) carries an article "Pastors' Wives Under Pressure in Husbands' Ministries" that relates to Mrs. Button's book theme--but more likely about the trials that the pastors' wives go through and often the wives don't feel they have a place to turn for help. The article lists retreats and assistance to individuals who feel udner this pressure of being a pastor's wife.

Glad to send you the link or a copy of the issue if you contact Ron Keener, editor, at ron@churchexecutive.com.

I have not yet read this book, but my heart goes out to this pastor's wife. The pain expressed in this article leaves me wondering just how this family has continued intact.

My husband has been a pastor and also a missionary. I was also considered a missionary, and was a licensed minister who worked beside my husband as his secretary, his organist, one of his Sunday School teachers, the children's church director, and a member of several of the church boards.

We worked along-side each other. Our children worked with us. Our longest church stay was a plant in inner-city Chicago for 15 years. It wasn't easy, but God blessed, and our congregation worked with us, and we had no complaints. Our children never felt "picked on". They also have life-long friendships from that ministry. Why is our experience so different? It certainly isn't because we were less dedicated or less involved. Lives were transformed. Gang members were touched and youth found a place to be accepted rather than in the destructive lives on the streets.

Being a pastor's wife is a privilege for me. It is a joy to stand beside my husband in ministry. May God help other spouses to find that place of joy at the side of their ministery partner.

I'm a pastor on my second marriage. My first wife and I married two weeks after I started serving my first church. After 10 years in ministry, I got out. I sold real estate for two years and worked in the oil field for five. During the time in the oil field, I fell back in love with the church and when our senior pastor asked me if I had ever considered going back into ministry, it didn't take long for the four of us (my wife and our two teenage children) to decide that we wanted to do that. It's now been 31 years and I've rarely regretted that decision.

But after coming to my current church 16 years ago, my "affair" began to get in the way of my marriage. I knew my marriage was in trouble, but even after working on it in the best way I could, my wife decided to leave. Not to divorce, but to leave. I decided on the divorce because I couldn't hear any message of hope for reconciliation in what she told me during the months of separation.

I met my second wife in a divorce-recovery workshop and we probably married too quickly. But we've had the support of our congregation and have been quick to visit therapists when things have gotten out of whack. One of the things I've learned is that I have suffered from depression most of my adult life. I have no doubt that affected my first marriage...it sure has my second.

But therapy and grace and love have helped. We are now two years away from retirement and I believe we have (and are) building a marriage that will sustain us through our years to come.

I appreciate the insights Mrs. Button has shared, as well as the ones I've gained from reading "The Contemplative Pastor."

You guys are reading my mail! I wrote about this subject this morning on my blog: www.anesisretreats/blog.html
I've been working with pastor's wives now for over six years in a Christian counseling agency. These women are so strong and resilient, yet incredibly ignored and beat up from all the aspects they face in ministry. It is such a hard balance beam for them to walk, the Lord led me to develop a retreat that focuses strictly on pastor's wives and the challenges they face.

Although we say we realize that pastors and their spouses are real people, in practice, we forget that they have their own struggles.

In seminary, I remember many of my brothers and sisters who were already in the ministry struggling with spiritual, emotional, and physical burnout as your review and the book reminds us. Often they feel they have no place to turn, no where to show weakness or get help--they're the helpers and guides.

I remember my pastor once said to me, "Try having a job where three-hundred people think they're your boss." The point was well made.

To pastors and their spouses: Thank you for your sacrifice on our behalf. More of us need to love and support you and your families instead of sucking the life out of you.

I think it was back in the 1980s that I read one commentator who wrote that busyness is but a form of sloth. If that was true then (and it no doubt was), such busyness-sloth has increased by orders of magnitude since. Thankfully, even though I have been a teacher for years, and worked for three in a major NYC law firm, I have never been a "busy" person. I do not look for things to do to fill up time. Rather, I work very hard to create time for the express purpose of "shalom."

For me and the other pastors I know best, there have been rare occasions of hardships for the spouses, but every marriage will have ups and downs. Its terrible that there are all these horror stories out there, but I would want readers to know that many spouses thrive in their own skin. As a pastor, I work at protecting the boundaries between my pastoral duties and family obligations, as well as helping to keep my wife's boundaries protected; I essentially try not to involve her anymore than an average layperson might be involved.

Thanks for sharing.

I think that Pastors can sometimes be the loneliest people in the world. So often they are viewed as almost superhuman, but here's the thing I've noticed. Very often they don't seem to have real close friends. You know, the really close friends you can tell anything too, the person you can just go round to and slump on their sofa while they make you tea, and talk about normal, everyday things.

Personally, it may be a subjective observation, but I do think a lot of depression that Pastors face could be linked to simply isolation, and not having real friends.

How do they get them?

Well, that's a whole issue in itself, so that folks with a propensity to jealousy don't start on theme either!

Blessings

Dave

Some Christians have a long experience of church and churchgoing and growing up in Christian communities, and some of us don't. Sometimes it seems that when we are doing 'religious' things, and busying ourselves in 'religious' things, we are missing the wood for the trees! What does it matter if a person gains the whole world, but in the process loses his or her soul? If a person is ministering to everyone else, but is depressed because of it? There are answers to be found here, and perhaps also we need to know the questions!

Does God want anyone in His service miserable and worn out, for no seeming good purpose? Trying to increase your congregation is one thing, trying to make sense of your life and your true role in the world is something else! As ever, we need to get back to the gospel and find out what it is God truly wants for our lives.

This is very interesting. I've always been friends with "my pastor's wife" (or I should say "pastors' wives" --since I've had more than three pastors since I got saved) but I've never looked at them in the same light as the author has revealed. I often forget that they too have their own struggles and pain to go through each day. I've never really put much thought on it but I guess I see them as "superwomen" rather than my "normal, average friends." I pray for my pastor all the time but I'm sorry to say that I sort of neglect the wife. Thanks for sharing. This has helped me open a new eye towards my "pastor's wife." God bless!

I had the wonderful priviledge of working with my husband, who is now deceased, for over 30 years in ministry. He was a pastor who went to struggling churches and with God's help watched those churches grow while lives were being transformed. Yes, there were times when he felt like throwing in the towel but he never could. His pastor's heart wouldn't let him. It wasn't always easy but God would refresh and renew us when we let Him. We came to realize later on, that the Lord was not going to reward us for the numbers we could draw to the church, but our faithfulness to Him was what mattered most. So my dear husband kept remaining faithful to his calling of pastoring and preaching the Word until the Lord called him home. One week before his passing, he officiated at a wedding...still being faithful. It's a high calling and the rewards to come far outweigh the struggles down here. It's a life worth living!

infidelity is an accident. Only furgiveness can heal the wounds.

I foolishly endured a long-term marriage with a pastor for whom the church was both the "other woman" and also the place where he initiated at least three affairs. I pray that my experience is unique, but I'm afraid it probably isn't. Thank God for counselors who encouraged me to leave.

Thank you for posting this book review. My husband and I currently do campus ministry through the CCO, but he is looking at seminaries right now and we both sense God's call for him to become a pastor. I am NOT the typical pastor's-wife-type, and when my husband and I started dating, I was going to be the bread-winner (and am now a SAHM - my, my, how things change). My way of dealing with the future difficulties of being a pastor's wife? I don't think about them, but I know they're real. God's currently working in my life and changing me, in preparation for our future, I believe (I currently live in intentional Christian community - and boy, does THAT grow a person FAST). But I am really happy to have this book on the radar, and I believe it will be on my Christmas wishlist.

Sorry for the rambly-nature of this comment. :) I'm tired. Did I mention I have a two-month-old? ;)

John Piper narrated a great lesson about dying to self in an internet piece called "Few there are who die so hard." One of his points is that the 'death' of a pastor husband to his family, or his wife, may be exactly what the Lord desires in a particular situation. Unless a seed goes into the ground it doesn't do much, but if it goes into the ground and dies it produces much fruit. - How often we try to keep Christ's workers from dying, (physically, to wives, to families, etc.) when this is the exact work they are supposed to perform.

Calling the church "his other woman" may better be stated as "his primary marriage." - You have not yet sacrificed to the point of your wife or children's death....like Adonirum Judson did on 10 occasions to bring God's saving GOspel to Burma. (2 wives and 8 children.) - How quick Christians are to stop irritations and annoyances at the cost of millions of lives being saved.

Wake up! hardship and even the manner of a Christian's death are tools that God uses to save thousands. Don't criticize or quilt a pastor into stopping the feeding of his flock because you aren't getting enough attention. -This is God's ballgame not ours.

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