Confessions of a Pastor’s Wife

I have a confession to make. I didn’t start out in life with the intention of becoming a pastor’s wife. “Pastor’s wife” simply wasn’t one of the options that came up when I was a little girl and people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. Never did I hear a little girl say, “I want to grow up to be a pastor’s wife,” or “I’ve wanted to be a preacher’s wife since I was five years old,” or “I’ve always aspired to be the wife of a minister and head up the altar guild.” Nope, that choice was never on my radar.

When I first met my husband, he was a dashing fighter pilot in the Air Force. I naturally assumed he would do what all other military pilots did once they retired from the military—fly for the airlines. I could live with that—being kept in the lifestyle to which I would have liked to become accustomed. Free travel to exotic places along with big bucks. Who wouldn’t be content with that?  Seriously, who could have blamed me for assuming that becoming Mrs. Airline Pilot was in my future? Well, if I were totally honest, everyone could blame me since my husband had told me right from the beginning, he had no desire to be an airline pilot. But I figured the man could always change his mind, right?

Instead, when my husband retired from the Air Force, he felt the call to go into the ministry. Being a fighter pilot required a great deal of ego, and although my husband was generally a humble man, he was, after all, God’s gift to aviation. So naturally, he assumed God was calling him to serve as a bush pilot on the mission field.

I wasn’t sure what my role would be. Staying home and sweeping the dirt floor of our hut? Hauling water from the river two miles away? Taking care of our water buffalo herd? However, God had other plans. After over twenty years of flying hazardous missions in high-performance jets for the military, my husband endured not one, but two aircraft accidents right after his retirement. To add to the insult, both were during his short stint as an instructor pilot for the aeroclub.

In the first accident, he walked away without a scratch. Exactly one month later, he experienced engine failure, and the plane smacked down hard in a corn field, snapping off the landing gear after my husband overextended his glide to make it across a pond to the field. The hard landing broke his back.

“If God hasn’t spoken to you,” I informed him, “He’s spoken to me loud and clear. God has called you into another line of work!”

But a pastor? Worse yet, me a pastor’s wife??? Surely my husband had misinterpreted God’s call. There was no one more unsuited to the role of pastor’s wife than me. From my perspective, pastors’ wives were—how to put it gently—simply a little different from normal women. In the churches where I grew up, the pastors’ wives wore their husband’s rank more visibly than the Mrs. Colonels in the military. They were given celebrity status and surrounded by their groupies, who trailed after them, eager for the crumbs that fell from their hallowed tables.

The saintliness of the pastor’s wife was a given by virtue of the fact that she lived with the paid professional holy man. Some of his holiness surely must rub off on her, right? She could be counted on to know all things theological, as well as to head up every committee, every event, every fundraiser, and every meeting. With an iron fist cloaked in piety, she discharged her duties, and her words were law because she was the “preacher’s wife.” Her job description on her income tax return stated “Mrs. Pastor.” But holy halos, this job description most certainly did not define me.

First of all, I already had a career, one in which I was quite fulfilled, and it didn’t require the title of “Mrs.” Second, I had no ability—let alone desire—to head up anything. Third, as an introvert, I was not comfortable being a social butterfly, which a pastor’s wife is expected to be. Lastly, I simply wasn’t holy enough. There. I admit it. Although I had learned the hard way over the past several years that God most certainly had a sense of humor, surely He had made a mistake this time. I was just not pastor’s wife material.

Nevertheless, God called my husband into the ministry after he married me. And if nothing else, I learned that if God was calling a person to do something, one better listen, or risk ending up in the belly of a fish (or worse).  So, I accepted my husband’s calling with as much good grace as possible, praying God knew what He was doing and would equip me when the time came. Plus, I had one redeeming feature, my ace-in-the-hole, the one non-negotiable requisite requirement for the perfect pastor’s wife—I played the piano. Being musically inclined covers a multitude of sins, such as not volunteering to cook Wednesday night fellowship suppers or heading up the youth mission trip.

So, here I am many years later. The church hasn’t run my husband off yet because of his less-than-perfect, non-pastor’s-wife-material spouse. If God is using me in this way, it only proves His sense of humor in calling the least likely people.