On Being Mrs. Pastor

Practicing Sunday Morning

2011-09-17T10:20:00.004-05:00

Last night my husband and I took our three boys to church to practice for Sunday morning. There's no special performance; we were just practicing the usual Sunday morning procedure.

Sunday school started last week. We went to church for fellowship time (eating and talking) which is followed immediately by classes. When it was time to take the kids to their classes, my 5-year-old had disappeared. I walked all around the building looking for him and 10 minutes later saw him in the hallway crying with his preschool teacher. He didn't want to go to class and so hid in his preschool cubby.

My husband could tell something was wrong because he saw me searching and looking worried but he was starting class for the adults and couldn't help me parent. He would help if I asked but this kind of thing happens nearly every week.

So for practice we sat in the sanctuary and talked about the parts of the worship service. They were most interested in talking about the offering and what poor people might buy with the money we give them. I didn't tell them yet that we are the poor people benefiting from the offering. Then we practiced waiting for Mom before leaving the sanctuary and walking down the hallway and telling Mom before you leave a room.

Looking forward to seeing if anything goes more smoothly tomorrow.

How have you helped your kids learn how to behave at church?

Sunday School Teaching

2011-09-02T14:52:00.003-05:00

Are you a Sunday school teacher? Would you be if you were not married to the pastor? It's that time of year - Sunday school starts up next week at our church and the teacher-recruitment phase is in full swing. We've only been here a year but it looks like gathering teachers does not come easily.

So more than once someone has looked longingly at me and described the openings. No one has asked me exactly, just hoped in my direction that I would volunteer.

I'm not going to.

There is no chance that I will teach on a Sunday morning any time soon because I am a mess about 50% of the time just showing up and listening. Give me any responsibility apart from my kids and I might melt into a heap of crazy again.

I don't say all that to these folks. I just say I don't think I'll be able to do that. Thank you for teaching my children. It means a lot to me. I pray for you and I will say thank you and I will tell you how important your investment of time is for our family. God bless you, teachers.

Reconsidering, As Always

2011-08-22T09:05:00.002-05:00

It's been a year since we moved to our current congregation. A good year. This church loves our family.

I am still haunted by the crazy at our last church. I have the occasional nightmare. Sunday mornings are usually stressful for me and I think it's a holdover from the anxiety I felt there.

It seems a few new readers have joined us here lately (welcome!) and I am so gratified. It is simultaneously heartbreaking and reassuring that so many people relate to my experience.

Sometimes I think it might be time to stop adding to adding to this blog. Maybe it would be good for me to move on. Other days I am so thankful for the support and encouragement I've been given here that I want to keep it going. And, of course, being the pastor's family has its peculiarities even in a healthy congregation.

Parsonage

2011-07-22T11:00:00.002-05:00

I think I've mentioned before that we are living in a parsonage now. Mostly I love it. It's a nice house, well-cared for, and I'm generally happy not to be responsible for fixing things.

However. There's always a however. The nuances of "my" home belonging to the church (which means it belongs to everyone and no one in particular) and being across the parking lot from the church building and drawing from the same tightly-squeezed budget that everyone is trying to stretch so salaries can be paid... I don't have to repair the roof but there are other things to think about.

There are things I would be trying to do to this house if I owned it but that's not for us to decide. The church budget doesn't have any wiggle room right now so any money spent on our house -- especially for major improvements -- seems like it is taking away from something 'more important'. Sometimes it's like living on a commune, but we're the only ones whose personal living space must balance with the greater good.

Any of you live(d) in a parsonage? How do you handle the gray area around what is good for your family and what is good for the church?

Control Freak? I Believe That's Me.

2011-07-05T20:16:00.003-05:00

I had an unexpectedly good morning today. I wasn't expecting it to be bad, but I really felt quite well. I went for a bike ride (big deal when you have three kids) and made a lot of phone calls that have been on my to-do list for weeks. When I picked my two older kids up from day camp I was feeling quite in control of my life.

I love to feel in control of my life.

An hour later my son was having a tantrum and the afternoon spun away from me in a hurry. Kids going crazy. Mom yelling and going generally berserk. I roll my eyes at my crazy kids and wonder how they can be so disrespectful and then finally it occurs to me that maybe there's a better way to handle this.

I just have a very hard time giving them space and letting them act like obnoxious little kids. Most of it is normal and we'd all be better off if I could ignore it.

The main thing seems to be that I want to be able to make things right. My oldest child is seven years old and for seven years I've been trying to find just the right schedule, sleep pattern, nutritional balance, way of talking about feelings, so on and so forth .... that will make our lives happy and bright.

Meanwhile - the negotiations for selling our house are going just haywire enough to make us uncertain the deal will make it all the way to closing. And I am changing my eating habits in an effort to lose weight. It's motivated by my recent bout with cancer and an urgent desire to minimize the risk of another chronic illness. Lingering side-effects from chemo are complicating my efforts.

So, you know, I'm working hard to do everything right. And things are still going wrong. I am alarmed by how easily I topple over the edge. Tonight I left the house because I kept wanting to cry. It reminded me of the unrelenting sadness of depression.

I suppose I could be encouraged that leaving the house for a while is helping.

Get Rid of the %$#! House

2011-07-01T10:08:00.003-05:00

We have been trying to sell our house for a year. A YEAR. A long year of paying the mortgage every month.

Great news: We sold the house!

Bad news: We haven't closed yet and the list of things we need to spend money on just keeps growing and growing and growing.

We're losing money on the house, of course. We're selling it for quite a bit less than we paid for it. And the inspector found a few things that we needed to repair. And the buyer has a government loan so the government has another list of things that need to be repaired. And in the meantime the water heater exploded. Blah, blah, blah...

It's not a desperate financial crisis. We *can* pay for these things. We're not going hopelessly into debt. I am very thankful for that.

It is an emotional crisis. I just want to be cut off from all the responsibilities connected to the church my husband was serving there. At every setback I want to call the sr. pastor and tell him a bill is in the mail and by the way I'M STILL MAD AT YOU! We have paid so much in time, money, grief, mental & emotional & spiritual health because of the abuse in that church's leadership.

It makes me realize how powerful the undertow of depression is and how close I am to the shoreline. Most of the time I feel like my mental health is safe but when these stressors -- the ones connected specifically to our last church -- stack up, I feel like I might go under. It takes a lot of conscientious effort to keep my head up. God has been merciful to hold me together so far.

DOXOLOGY

2011-06-22T11:20:00.003-05:00

One of the things God has taught me and my husband during these creepy years is how important it is for the pastor to be a pastor - spiritual caregiver - rather than a business manager. It's hard to do. There is a lot of business to be done in a church and it's a trick to stay focused on pastoral care there is a budget crisis or a building project.

The DOXOLOGY program has been very helpful on that front. It's helped my husband think more clearly about his role as a pastor, it's helped me understand what he's doing and why (anyone else ever feel just a tiny bit resentful of church?), and it's given us some time to think about our own spiritual needs.

We'll be at the DOXOLOGY reunion in early August. Anyone else?

Flashbacks

2011-06-06T20:42:00.003-05:00

Hi again! I stopped writing for a few months because I didn't feel compelled. This is mostly a diary for me and you get to read along. I need my diary again today.

Dear diary,

Today -- and for the last few weeks -- I've been having flashbacks of the two miserable years we spent at our last church. I've had weird little run-ins with people I associate with that time and seeing them brings back vivid episodes of dysfunction.

This morning my husband mentioned talking to some people from that church and I almost immediately became morose. By the time he'd left for work and my oldest was on the school bus, I could feel the dark mood closing in. I felt an intense urge to eat, cry, or go to bed and sleep all day.

Thank God for the mental wellness to see that and to find an alternative. I called a friend and asked to spend the morning at her house. My two younger kids and I went there and by lunchtime I was good as new. The mood had passed. The rest of the day was balanced and pleasant.

What a distressing bout of crankpot-ism. We've been gone nearly a year and I hardly think of that place or those people anymore. The shape of my life has much to do with what happened there and I've (mostly) accepted that. I have not accepted the emotional intensity those memories still hold.

Boo.

Nesting

2011-04-09T11:56:00.002-05:00

I'm in an awkward transitional phase these days. Trying to figure out what I'm about. I've been sick for a long time and that's dictated my personal agenda: Take care of yourself. Get better.

Now that I'm basically healthy what do I do? In the short term, I think I'll be trying to make our place feel like home. We moved here 9 months ago but I still feel unsettled.

My husband and I have been married for 15 years and have moved five times. There was one place we lived for several years consecutively and I remember feeling so connected there. Our house felt like ours - we'd painted, remodeled, planted things in the yard. We'd collected a nice network of friends inside and outside our church. I really want to have that here.

When Church Makes You Crazy, Part 3

2011-03-22T13:33:00.004-05:00

I expected to finish this list last week but my life just isn't going as I'd planned lately. The most recent mishap was a wood splinter that pushed itself under my fingernail. On the index finger of my dominant hand. I thought I pulled it out but now that the finger is swollen and complaining, I think I missed a piece. Going to the doctor tomorrow for what may be a very unpleasant repair job.

Anyway - here's the conclusion of my strategies for coping with a church that makes you crazy.

Coping Strategy #4: Get Professional Help. By the time we moved away, I had the support of a psychiatrist, a therapist and a pastor. I needed all of them. Most of our life is connected to church so a stressful church setting means a stressful life. I desperately needed the relief and perspective that these people gave me.

My pastor gave me two essential things: the words of Jesus applied directly to my life and the words of an experienced churchman. I never imagined that church could be threatening. He understood how betrayed I felt and helped me hold on to the hope of Christ even when the church made me want to throw up my hands and give up.

I needed the psychiatrist because I needed medication for my depression. I've been told that constant stress can lead to depression. Other occupations have the benefit of divisions between home and work that cushion exposure to stress. I don't think we're the only clergy family that finds it difficult to maintain those boundaries, so stress oozed all over our lives.

Seeing a therapist helped me get some perspective on my situation. I had a hard time seeing my life with any objectivity and she offered different ways of thinking about what was happening in my life and how I could respond to it. I also needed the safety of the therapist's office, where I could say anything that was on my heart. Every other part of my life seemed fragile but her office was a sturdy place to tend my bruised heart.

Coping Strategy #5: Expect Blessing. I had a friend who kept saying that to me and I often thought she was being kind of a ninny. Do you not see what is happening to me and to my family? Don't you see that God is letting us wither here?

Later I began to replay the phrase and consider that possibility that God would bless us. It is hard to be hopeful when everything looks bleak, but because of Christ we always have reason to hope. Like the woman who touched the hem of Jesus' robe, trusting that He could heal her even though she'd been suffering for years. She expected blessing.

A large crowd followed and pressed around him. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.
At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?”
“You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ”
But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.” (Mark 5:25-34)

When Church Makes You Crazy, Part 2

2011-03-17T13:31:00.003-05:00

Coping Strategy #2: Find a Lighthouse Friend. One of the tragedies of being the center of conflict in our church was that I was terrified of everyone - not because I thought everyone was out to get me, but because I had no idea who I could trust.

The church leaders who had interviewed my husband and called him to be their pastor turned so quickly when they disagreed with him that I feared everyone in the church would feel likewise if they knew me. I tried to be bland and agreeable but after a while I felt like I was disappearing. I needed the freedom to express my thoughts honestly.

I decided it would help to find one person with whom I could be honest. I was acquainted with a woman who seemed trustworthy, mature in her faith and sophisticated enough about church to handle my church politics saga. I asked her to be my lighthouse friend: to let me tell her all that was happening so that when I saw her on Sunday morning I would not feel alone.

Most Sunday mornings we did not speak beyond a pleasant greeting but seeing her and knowing she understood how hard it was for me to be at church was a light in the fog of my fear and anxiety.

Coping Strategy #3: Avoid the Building. APart form Sunday morning I completely avoided church. I didn't stop by to see my husband. I didn't drive by on my way to the grocery store. I changed my routes so I never saw the church building except on Sunday morning.

All my associations with the building were negative and it was draining for me to see it and arouse all those feelings.

When Church Makes You Crazy: 5 Strategies

2011-03-12T14:22:00.005-06:00

We spent a couple of years at a church that literally made me crazy. The church leaders abused my husband and I felt scared every time I went in the building. The stress of that situation caused an episode of clinical depression that persisted until we moved away.

While we were there, I found a few strategies to help me cope with the situation. Mostly I wanted to never go to or think about that church, but I felt that I had a few obligations as the pastor's wife:

Attend worship most weeks.
Bring my children to Sunday school. (This one had more to do with stability for my children than obligations to the church.)
Speak kindly always. Speak of church politics as little as possible.

Given those parameters, I found about five things I could do that helped. I'll tell you about one of them today and describe the others during the rest of the week.

Coping Strategy #1: Worship Elsewhere. I went to our church on Sunday mornings because I believe it can be confusing and discouraging for the congregation if the pastor's wife never attends. I barely considered it "worship" in the true sense. I didn't hear the senior pastor's sermons as messages from God but as reminders of his duplicity. Every hymn and prayer was clouded by my stress and anxiety.

I visited other churches as I was able, usually on a weeknight. It was such a relief to sit in the pew and feel like I had some privacy with God. Even in a happy church I feel self-conscious about being the woman everyone can identify.

Eventually I built a relationship with a nearby church (I'll call it "Bridge Church") where I attended a weekday Bible study and made a few friends. During the months after my husband had left our last church and before he took the call to our current church, we attended Bridge Church. In retrospect, I would say that was an important part of my re-learning how to feel safe at church. I think most of our friends at Bridge Church knew something had gone terribly wrong for us. I never felt judged, no one ever pried into details. We were welcomed, hugged, made to feel loved and valued.

The pastor at Bridge Church advised me to "do nothing." He told me we needed time to heal and to receive love and care with no obligations. He was right about that and it was a precious gift.

Church Secretary

2011-03-11T10:48:00.002-06:00

It's starting to sound like a little theme - budgets, secretaries.... what's next on the list?

I had an odd conversation with the church secretary this week. Since we live in a parsonage next door to church, our mailbox is next to the church mailbox. I go to church at midday to pick my kids up from preschool and so I usually take the mail to the secretary. She is pleasant but not chatty, so it's nice to have a reason to say hello every day.

Last week I brought her the mail and stood over the recycling bin sorting our personal mail. I tossed in a few women's clothing catalogs that don't interest me.

I went down the hall to get my kids and when I walked past her office again she said, "Haven't you heard the rule? When you get fun catalogs you bring them over here so we can look through them!" She was flipping through the catalogs I'd recycled. "I always liked picking up mail for [the previous pastor's wife] because she got the best catalogs!"

I found this awkward. I don't care if she likes looking at catalogs, but it wasn't a collegial "Ooh! don't you love looking at this stuff even when you're not going to buy it?" The implication seemed to be that we have money to buy more expensive clothes than she can afford. It could be true; I'd have no idea. But it was weird.

I think I'll sort my mail at home from now on.

Church Budgets

2011-03-09T09:57:00.003-06:00

There were a couple of meetings at church last night about budget problems. I know, crazy! A church with financial challenges! I don't know the ins and outs of it, but judging by the number of church members who are out of work or who have moved away in the last several months because they found work elsewhere, I suspect the difference between income and expenses is significant.

My husband tries to keep his hands off the money situation but it's hard to stay uninvolved when hard choices will need to be made. We were both braced for bad news last night.

But then he came home early from the meeting. And he was smiling. It was a very strange experience.

The church council has a plan and is still trusting God to make up the shortfall. To me, the most important part of their plan was: Pastor, don't worry about this. We want you to teach us and care for our spiritual needs. We are responsible for figuring out the budget.

I love these people.

Travel with Kids

2011-03-08T10:37:00.002-06:00

I have hardly gone anywhere (apart from moving) for the last year because of surgery and chemotherapy. I suppose my travel before that was kind of limited because depression sapped my energy. Anyway, it's been a while since I took the kids to visit either set of grandparents.

This weekend, we went. It was just me and all three kiddos on a 6-hour drive. I used to think that was manageable. I think I used to be crazy.

They are pretty good travelers but they are young and sitting for several hours is boring. We stopped for running around, we rotated their seats around the van, we had books and toys for entertainment. But still there is so much coaching and negotiating and I-can't-pick-that-up-I'm-driving!

I wonder if it's me. I did not feel creative about playing I Spy in the car or planning helpful stops en route. I just wanted them to leave me alone so I could drive in peace. How do other people travel with kids? Lots of pastors' families drive long distances to visit relatives. There must be a reasonable way to do it.

Reminders of Grace

2011-03-02T11:05:00.004-06:00

I think that Christians who appreciate the gift of grace, no matter what denomination, are always glad for reminders of it. Lutherans see God's grace in baptism. When we remember that we are baptized we are reminded that God has come to us in spite of ourselves.

I happened on an odd little way to remember my baptism recently. My online checking account uses a picture that is associated with my account as a security measure. I see it every time I log on. I had to choose a picture from the credit union's photo library and happened on one of water droplets. I labeled it "baptism".

Now whenever I go to pay bills I am reminded of God's grace. I love it. I don't normally think about God's generosity when I'm paying bills. God has a delightful way of turning things upside down.

The Parsonage

2011-02-28T09:49:00.003-06:00

We live in a parsonage. My husband has been a pastor for ten years and this is our first time in a church-owned house. I think I love it.

When we left the seminary I was dead-set against going to a church with a parsonage. I pictured a sad, neglected house and fights with the property board when the toilet broke.

What I live in right now is a lovely, well-cared for home that has plenty of space for our family. Someone else cuts the grass and shovels the snow. Posh!

The main drawback of being in a parsonage is that the fishbowl effect is magnified. Everyone at church knows where we live. Everyone in our neighborhood knows we are the pastor's family because this house has belonged to the church for decades. My husband jokes about "the compound" - as in, "Today I never left the compound. Home, church, home, church." The church is on one edge of the parking lot and our house is on the other.

I've heard that living in a parsonage can blur the line between home and work but for us, it has made the boundary between more clear. When my husband needs to work he can always get to church, so he rarely works at home.

Ten years ago this would have been an unhealthy situation for us. I would have been too sensitive to being so easily known. I would have felt self-conscious most of the time. Now, however, I am comforted by the congregation's care for us and usually like the easy movement between home and church.

That we are here now reassures me that God knows our needs and He provides for us with wisdom we could not understand. May He lead me to trust Him more.

Where I'm Reading This Week

2011-02-25T14:57:00.003-06:00

It seems Friday-appropriate to share some blog posts I've especially appreciated this week.

At CLUTCHtalk, a blog designed especially for pw's, there is a series in progress on survival tips for the new pw. Today's tip is out of my league (how to be prepared for surprise overnight guests), but tips #10: Be Real and tip #9: Refuse to Gossip are right up my alley.

A facebook friend pointed me to this post at Steadfast Lutherans. It has an excellent list of ways a church can support and encourage the pastor's wife. The writer makes a good point about the church's responsibility to help the pastor balance his vocations of husband, father, and pastor.

I recently found the Pondering Pastor's Wife blog written by a woman who has experience in a very stressful church. She wrote here about how hard it is to unlearn the habits and expectations she developed there. I appreciate knowing that someone else has moved from an abusive congregation to a loving congregation but still expects disaster. It will be good when we learn to expect grace and mercy.

Happy reading!

Depression Symptoms: Recurrent Thoughts of Death

2011-02-23T20:46:00.004-06:00

Sometime last year I was driving on the highway alone and when the possibility of a fatal car crash passed through my mind it did not upset me. That was distressing. When I stopped later, I called a friend. I didn’t tell her the whole story, just that I was sad and needed to talk a minute. Reconnecting with the outside world (highway driving is like cocooning) adjusted my brain enough to shake off the mood.

When I described this episode to Therapist, the phrase “suicidal ideations” came up. Me? Really? Suicide? No way. Labeling my thoughts suicidal ideations alarmed me. It was hard to grasp that the urgency I associate with being suicidal related to me.

I cannot imagine that I would ever end my life. I readily imagined, though, how comforting it would be to go on a long vacation and come back in a year or so when the hard part was over. Therapist told me that a healthy person might feel uncertain, unhappy, anxious, but still that "this is my life so I will get through it." I was so wrapped up in my own crazy world that wanting to disappear seemed reasonable. Wise, even.

I get it now. Depression made my world so small and dark that death seemed comforting. I think that telling someone what I was thinking was the most helpful step. As soon as I saw the concern and anxiety it aroused in a friend, I realized the danger. I still felt like there were a million other people who could, and should, take care of my life instead of me but I held onto the assurance that God had given me to my family and that He was with me through my depression.

To read all the posts in the depression symptoms series, go here.

What's My Responsibility?

2011-02-22T09:44:00.003-06:00

A Bible study for moms is meeting at my church this morning and I am not there. It's an established group that meets on a regular schedule and, mostly because I've been sick, I have been only once.

It's a fine group. The study is fine. It's not a group I'd be likely to spend much time with were I not the pastor's wife. And there's the rub: what is my responsibility to the women of our congregation as the pastor's wife?

I am the most widely-known woman in the congregation. Some people assume that, because I am married to the pastor, I am "better" at being a Christian than most. This morning when I dropped my kids off for preschool one of the other moms was teasing me about not going to Bible study this morning. "She's the pastor's wife and she's not going to Bible study?" I replied, in the same light tone, that there is no correlation between being the pastor's wife and being a "good" Christian. She thought that was pretty funny.

It happens that the time during which this group meets is the only time I have to be alone. All my children are at school for only 5 hours each week. I treasure those hours! I'd rather not subtract two of them for a group Bible study.

This situation represents a question I am constantly asking myself. What is my responsibility to the congregation? I appreciate that I have a unique position from which to encourage the women of the church. I want God to use me for that purpose. I also want to take good care of myself; to make choices that sustain me.

What would you do?

3 Things I Try NOT to Say Sunday Morning

2011-02-20T16:58:00.003-06:00

1. "My husband says..." If my husband wants someone to know what he thinks, he can tell them.

2. "Sure, I can be on that committee!" The energy of worship and fellowship time can make volunteering for a project seem simple, but it almost never is. Better that I take the time to consider an opportunity before I make a promise. Generally, I think of my role in the church as participatory and supportive rather than leading. My husband leads and organizes a lot and neither the church nor our family needs much more of that from me.

3. "I'm fine." I long for church to be an authentic community. I struggle to be honest, not to vomit the details of my personal life but to be honest when I am miserable or delighted. How can we "rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn" (Romans 12:15) unless we know each other's joys and sorrows?

Mavis Staples

2011-02-19T12:05:00.001-06:00

Mavis Staples won the Best Americana album Grammy award last weekend for her newest release, You're Not Alone. She's been recording gospel music for decades and apparently this is her first Grammy. This album is stunning.

I like it because I hear pain and hope in her voice on every track. The title song, which you can hear in the video below, makes my heart cry every time. It's about compassion and knowing that someone else has hurt deeply, too. Staples has the rumbling, earthy voice that makes me feel what she's singing. And she is 71 years old. Awesome.

Praying for the Pastor

2011-02-17T12:05:00.002-06:00

I've been thinking of asking someone at church - the elders? the prayer group leader? - to arrange for someone to pray for my husband, with my husband, on Sunday mornings. I feel a little strange about this so I haven't done it yet.

Then I read this post on the blog A Different Story. She explains better than I the seemingly unseen weight on my heart on Sundays.

I know everyone brings grief and joy and sorrow and blessing to the worship service. But if someone else wants to tell the pastor about it, he will listen with the ears of a spiritual guide. If I want to tell the pastor about it, he'll get all wound up and stressed. That is, surely, why clergy families need pastoral care too. We also need all the spiritual care our congregations can provide.

Personal Devotion

2011-02-15T10:04:00.002-06:00

I could use some help from you all.

I understand the value of daily, personal study of the Bible and prayer. I understand this as an invitation from God to give Him my burdens, to be encouraged and strengthened through the Holy Spirit.

I do not have a daily practice of doing these things. I want to. The main thing that inhibits me is how exhausting it can be.

Reading the Bible or praying used to be a mechanical, intellectual endeavor. It took some time management and study skills but no emotional engagement. Lately it has become something entirely different. Any time I read even a short passage and ask God to show me what is there for me that day, it turns into a heart-wrenching, tearful conversation. The subject varies - it might be recognizing something about God's character, or a conviction about some failing on my part. It doesn't matter. Everything is tender and tear-prone.

I don't want to have these emotional episodes every day. I appreciate them. I'm glad that God is opening my heart to Him. But I just want to get through the day without drama.

If there have been times in your life that were like this, how did you handle it?

Time to Myself!

2011-02-12T15:14:00.003-06:00

Last Saturday you all patiently endured my lament about needing to get away from my peeps (aka children). This week has been MUCH better. Everyone went to school on all the appointed days, which means I had a couple of hours alone on each of THREE separate days. Today I've been out of the house on my own for most of the day. I am feeling much better. Thanks for your encouragement.

I also had to go see another doctor this week. Nothing bad - I'm following the prescribed path. I needed to see another specialist who will do the necessary tests to be sure that the cancer is all gone. I was surprised by how distressing the visit was. When I tried to schedule the procedure - which requires some anesthesia, so I can't drive myself, so my husband needs to come with me, so someone else needs to take care of the kids, so on and so forth for ever and ever amen - I fell to pieces.

When I finished chemo I'd started thinking that we were done. I'm realizing now that "done" is not a useful concept in my life. If I pass this test, which I fully expect to do, there will be another next year. And the next year. For the next 2-3 years I am at the highest risk for recurrence. For 5 years I will continue to see the oncologist. I'm sure the anxiety will wane, but right now that seems like a long time.

God is much less attached to closure than I am.

Backstory

2011-02-09T14:10:00.002-06:00

Now that we are in a church where my husband is the only pastor, I am discovering a new burr in my pastor's wife vest: every sermon and every Bible class comes with baggage. I often know what happened this week that inspired the particular angle he takes on the scripture reading. Sometimes he's funny or off-beat and other people think he is so witty and I think I've heard this story/joke a dozen times before.

It's like being at a dinner party where your spouse is amusing and surprising everyone else and it's old hat to you. A dinner party every Sunday morning. He is funny and smart and witty. I'm glad other people appreciate his creativity. But some days I am very aware of the drawbacks to being married to the preacher.

Do any of you pw's have the same feeling?

Pharmacy Round 1, 2, 3 ...

2011-02-05T21:35:00.003-06:00

My husband and I have spent most of this week at the doctor's office or the pharmacy. We took a break for the storm event of the decade. (Like many Lutherans, we live in the midwest.) Our community was at a standstill for a couple of days.

Highlights:

Friday - school nurse calls to tell me oldest child has ringworm and needs doctor's note to return to school on Monday. Schedule appt. with pediatrician and am advised to use Tinactin.

Saturday - husband to urgent care (sinus infection)

Monday - oldest to doctor, who says yes this is ringworm and treat it with Tinactin. (I spent the whole morning and $20 on this.)

Tuesday - storm arrives

Wednesday - life on hold for storm. No school. Crazed children trapped in my house.

Thursday - middle child to dr. (strep)

Friday - youngest child to dr. for follow-up on ear infection. It was in just one ear, now it is in both.

It's the kind of week that makes me feel like I will never be free of my children. I do love them. I love that my oldest is interested in chapter books now. I love that our middle child always has an answer when I ask if he had a dream last night ("I was on a pogo stick shooting bad guys with a water gun"). I love it when our youngest complains that his brother is "saying too many words. I want a turn!"

I also want them to LEAVE ME ALONE! Anyone want to meet me in Hawaii for a couple of weeks on the beach?

Depression Symptoms: Substance Abuse

2011-01-28T07:00:00.004-06:00

Several months ago I was working on a series of posts about my experience as it relates to the formally recognized symptoms of depression. There are a few still to go.

I’ve seen enough movies to know that alcoholism is associated with depression (Crazy Heart, anyone?) but have not thought much about it except in the abstract. I was surprised when, in the middle of my own depression, I discovered that drinking is an effective anesthetic.

The denomination in which I grew up is historically a tee-totaling crowd. I picked up on that undercurrent and drank little even through college. I became accustomed to social drinking during our years at the seminary. Odd, I think, and problematic, but that’s for another time.

I remember clearly the night I realized I needed to guard against excessive drinking. My family was out to dinner, celebrating a major achievement in my brother’s career, and we shared a couple bottles of particularly yummy wine. It crossed my mind that I would like to stay there and keep drinking and forget the unrelenting sadness of my life.

I told my husband about it that night. I’ve found that telling my secrets takes the power out of them. This one seemed particularly shameful to me. I don’t think I ever told it to anyone else or ever spoke about it again with my husband.

The urge to drink too much came and went throughout my depression, but I think that having spoken about it aloud helped me stay aware of how our unhappiness could have been multiplied by alcohol abuse.

To read all the posts in the depression symptoms series, go here.

Authentic and Awkward

2011-01-26T08:00:00.000-06:00

Our church has been praying for me every week during my chemotherapy. I am thankful for their prayers on my behalf, though it has been uncomfortable to see my name on the prayer list every week for as long as we've been here. I feel like I get so much attention just because I'm married to the pastor that I don't need any more.

On Sunday the prayer was altered to thanksgiving that the treatments are done. Lots of people spoke to me afterward to express their happiness for me. I was asked several times, usually with a mood of eager optimism, how I am feeling.

You'd think that would be a simple question. A year or two ago I'd have told all those kind people that I'm feeling much better, thank you. They all want so much for me to be well, for my life to be happy. I'd hate to disappoint them.

I'm trying to teach myself to be considerately honest and sometimes that's uncomfortable. When people asked how I'm feeling I told them I'm relieved to be done, but I don't feel very well.

Every time I felt a little like I was hurting their feelings. We'd have a very brief awkward moment in which we all took in the disappointment that happiness and ease has not yet arrived and then we'd part.

Being honest is awkward. We are all in a hurry to be done with pain and living alongside other people's sadness is hard. It is also much more helpful to all of us than polite lies. Now those people know me a little bit.

Blogs by Pastor's Wives

2011-01-24T13:16:00.002-06:00

Every week a few people visit this blog for the first time because they saw it listed on the blog withpurpose. Blogger Amy has compiled quite a list of blogs written by pw's. It's a good place to start if you'd like to connect with other women whose lives are intimately connected with church communities.

When Can I Stop Needing So Much?

2011-01-21T10:10:00.003-06:00

Chemo is finally done. ALL done. It will be a few weeks until I can have a test to ensure the cancer is gone and I fully expect it will be.

The depression is also gone. Every day that I make plans or march happily through an ordinary day I remember how miserable it was to be unable to do that. I recently wrote to a friend that I feel like I'm waking up after missing the last three years of my life. It feels SO good.

This morning I read a post at Church Whisperer about self-reliance and it reminded me of an unhappy thought that has crossed my mind several times in the last weeks: I am eager to be able to take care of myself. I have been depending on so many people to take up the slack - care for my kids, feed my family, encourage me when I cannot come up with any encouraging thoughts on my own - and I'm tired of it.

I feel weak and needy on Sunday mornings. I know there is strength to be gained from worship and from conversation with the kind souls there but I want to stay home and hide until I can show up on Sunday feeling put together. Everyone else seems to have it together. They don't look like enduring an hour in the pew with their kids is going to make them cry or strangle someone.

I KNOW, of course, that weak and needy is precisely how God wants us to come to Him. I know that less of me and more of Him is good. My pastor suggested once that my need is a gift to the people who are able to help me.

I suppose I am not the only one who is torn between what I know is good and what I feel like I want. Must it be so complicated?

One To Go

2011-01-04T09:59:00.005-06:00

I've missed you! Even though I haven't been writing, I've been thinking of you and praying for you.

The end of chemo is in sight: one treatment to go. Next week. Boy am I ready to be on the other side of this. When I'm not miserably sick, I have trouble sleeping because I want to make plans about what I'm going to do when I feel well. Even if I limit the plans to my own house (I don't - I also have writing plans, reconnect-with-friends plans, travel plans, places-to-go-with-kids plans, cooking plans....), the list is long because I started chemo a week after we moved in. I could spend a week rearranging closets and bookshelves and kitchen cabinets.

I probably won't, but I could.

When this started, I didn't realize how pervasively disordering cancer would be. I was protected by naivete. I thought it would be like going to the dentist, or getting the car fixed: time-consuming, but limited in its effects.

Instead, I've been focused on just getting through the day, making it through all this treatment. When it is finally done next week, then what? There are still side effects that will limit me for a few months. And I look different. I lost so much hair that I now have a buzz cut. My son says I look like our previous neighbor, a lovely woman who is a lesbian. My son is inadvertently contributing to my little identity crisis.

And then there are all the family and friends who have walked with me through these crisis months. They've been praying for us, encouraging me, taking care of my family, counting down the weeks until I am done. When I have the last treatment it will appear that it's all over and I can go back to normal life. I don't think there will be any going back. I'm not sure how, but I feel like my life will seem different. I imagine the pace will be slower for a while, I might be a little more introverted, perhaps more cautious.

As eager as I am to be done with chemo, I am apprehensive about the transition that accompanies it. Change, even good change, is disorienting.

See You Next Year

2010-11-27T21:26:00.003-06:00

I'm putting mrs pastor on hiatus until January. I'm deep into chemo and it's wearing on me. I expect to have my last treatment around the middle of January and every day I make new plans about what I'll do when I can stop doing this (muddle, muddle, collapse, muddle).

God bless you and your Christmas celebration. See you in 2011.

Bonhoeffer

2010-11-17T10:49:00.003-06:00

There are a zillion things I would like to write about, but I lack the energy to compose anything. Chemotherapy drains me to the very bottom. So I'm sharing an excerpt from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together. The emphasis on the last sentence is mine.

Our righteousness is an 'alien righteousness,' a righteousness that comes from outside of us . . . the Christian is dependent on the Word of God spoken to him . . . God has put this Word into the mouth of men in order that it may be communicated to other men. When one person is struck by the Word, he speaks it to others. God has willed that we should seek and find His living Word in the witness of a brother, in the mouth of man. Therefore, the Christian needs another Christian who speaks God's Word to him. He needs him again and again when he becomes uncertain and discouraged, for by himself he cannot help himself without belying the truth. He needs his brother man as a bearer and proclaimer of the divine word of salvation. He needs his brother solely because of Jesus Christ. The Christ in his own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of his brother; his own heart is uncertain, his brother's is sure.

I am finding this to be absolutely true and difficult for me. If I must depend on God, please let me depend on God only! But God has designed us to need one another. Dang it.

A Place of Mercy and Grace

2010-11-01T10:23:00.007-05:00

The pastor who preached at my husband's installation is familiar with the miserable situation out of which we came. After the service we spoke briefly and he assured me that there would be challenges at this new congregation, "but I pray this will be a place of mercy and grace for you."

I think of that often. So far it seems to be so. The general mood of the place seems to be confidence in God's work among and through the congregation.

A couple of weeks ago we had a visiting pastor. His sermon referenced the parable of the pharisee and the tax collector from Luke chapter 18:

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

How often, in our last congregation, I felt like the tax collector! It's strange for me to say, since I grew up attending church and have, as far as anyone else could tell, a well-behaved life. But there I constantly felt inadequate.

The tone of the sr. pastor's sermons, conversations, aspirations for the congregation seemed to be that the members of our church were set apart, closer to God than others. I would not have been surprised to hear him say in a sermon, "God, I thank you that the people of this congregation are not like other people. We follow your laws and deserve your attention. Help us make other people more like us."

It sounds so appalling that you'd think some among us could have rioted, but in practice it is insidious. It happens gradually, it's hard to identify exactly what's going on, and then one day you wake up and realize you feel less than. Less good than other people in your church. Less obedient. Less worthy of any blessings.

Being now in a congregation that, to my eyes, seems loving and merciful and humble causes me a different kind of pain. I am ever more aware of how lacking mercy and humility our last congregation was. I grieve for the years we spent there and for the dear people who might be misled by what is happening there.

Comparative Suffering

2010-10-30T03:16:00.006-05:00

A few weeks ago my brother called me on a weekday afternoon - not a customary time for us to chat, but not unheard of either. He caught me in the middle of putzing with my kids; we were going outside to play for a while, then out for errands. Things were not quiet for me to give him my undivided attention. Our conversation was brief. I poked around a bit to see if there was a particular reason for his call but he didn't give one.

Later he told me that he called because he'd been having a particularly hard day. Familiar frustrations, but sometimes they build up and you want to tell someone about it. I get it. But, he told me, when I answered the phone and sounded happy he wondered what he could possibly have to complain about. That is: she has cancer and she sounds ok. How can I complain?

He's not the only one who has said something like this to me. I periodically get notes from friends who tell me I am inspiring, or that when they feel frustrated with their lives they think of me and are motivated (guilted?) to buck up.

Comparing my suffering to someone else's is not helpful. I'm inclined to do it myself. There are always people whose lives look more difficult than mine - someone with a more tenacious cancer, a deeper depression, a different challenge altogether. Comparing my pain to other people's pain is one strategy that intensified my depression.

Pain is pain. There is no way to measure my pain against yours. For a long time I felt guilty for becoming clinically depressed because I thought I "should be able to handle this." Other people's lives are hard and they don't go crazy over it. They just plug away and handle it. Why can't I?

That line of thinking was entirely unhelpful. My life was (and is) icky and painful to me. I am profoundly disappointed by it in many ways. I need a lot of help to cope with it. Thinking I should not need help didn't make anything better. Now I have support of all kinds - spiritual, emotional, logistical - and I still feel like I'm scraping by one day at a time.

I am not a hero. I'm not stronger or better than anyone else. I do not pull myself out of bed every day because I have such an admirably tenacious will to succeed. God is kind to keep me afloat when I think I will drown. I cannot explain God's grace but I know that I live in it.

I have never supposed that God compares my pain to anyone else's or to His. He loves me and cares about what I feel and what I need today.

This Old House

2010-10-23T16:32:00.004-05:00

Stopped by our old house today to check on things and it was like a torture session. The house looks fantastic. It smells good. If I saw it now I would definitely buy it again. Too bad no one has requested a showing in the three months it's been listed. All that loveliness for no one. And we're still paying the mortgage.

It's creepy to me to visit our old neighborhood. In some ways, I was so content with it. I liked our neighborhood and our house and our neighbors. The few years we lived there were also the most painful, oppressive years of my life so far. Poor house. I will probably never think of it fondly. More like an attractive prison.

Talk Therapy

2010-10-22T08:11:00.003-05:00

The last week and half has been pretty discouraging to me. I'm so tired of chemo and of hoping that things will be better in a while. Last Christmas I was so deeply depressed and I remember the effort it took to get through the holiday telling myself that "next year will not feel so miserable."

Christmas is going to be hard this year. I've already written my family to tell them I won't be able to give them gifts this year because the energy that would require is beyond me. I am, once again, looking to a holiday season through which I need to tell myself, "next year will be better."

Yesterday I spent an hour with my therapist and it was so helpful. Airing all my anxieties and griefs to someone who can give them a context and affirm that everything I feel is connected to reality was deeply reassuring.

I've discovered that, on the heels of major depression, feeling sad is frightening. If it persists for more than a day I begin to worry that I'm headed to that desperate place again. I do not EVER want to go back there, where sadness is everything. I do not yet trust my ability to judge whether my sadness is connected to my circumstances or is taking on a life of its own.

In depression, I felt sad for no apparent reason. Even if everything was going well I felt sad. Healthy sadness has a reason. Chemotherapy, a house that will not sell, lingering anger toward sr. pastor, knowing I will be sick during the holidays - these are reasons to be sad.

Today I feel better. I will try to think only about today and leave the coming unpleasantness alone until I have to deal with it.

Visine in My Purse

2010-10-20T19:39:00.003-05:00

This is a guest post by a fellow pastor's wife who has dealt with depression. Her experience differs from mine in how her emotions were affected. Depression made me feel too much; the writer of this post seems to feel too little.

I carry Visine in my purse and I am not a sufferer of dry itchy allergy eyes.

I have been told that I was in the stage of my depression/anxiety journey called blunting.

blunting: a decrease in the intensity of emotional expression from the level one would normally expect as a reaction to a specific situation.

I toss between settling into being blunt or tweaking and self talking myself into a more "normal" state of being. This is the tricky thing about being me.

Do I

A. Wean down and possibly panic....or

B. Add a few more mg and resemble a zombie...

The answer for now is neither Neither A nor B. It is VISINE!

I have somewhat enjoyed my stay in the land of blunting. For a time I was very satisfied not feeling happy or sad. It was refreshing to not deal with emotions at extremes. While trying to tweak medications and leave the land of blunting proves difficult I am now realizing I have forgotten how to react to situations happy and sad. It takes a lot of energy.

So, you ask..Where does the Visine fit in to all of this? I was having coffee with a friend and telling her about my recent endeavor to leave the land of blunting. I would like to again be able feel the strong emotion of happiness and not just the thoughts of being happy. This for me involves a very long process of tweaking meds. The part that is hardest for me is THE FUNERALS. See, I am also a PW (Pastor’s wife) and I know for a fact the very first time I realized I had no emotion was at a funeral of someone I really knew, really enjoyed, and was really going to miss. Everyone around me had tears flowing from their eyes and audible sobs as I sat there. I began to feel very self-conscious of what I must look like to the mourning families at all the funerals I attend. I must look like a stone cold hard woman. YUCK that is not really me.

My very dear friend looked at me and said: “Just put some Visine in your purse! Before you walk into church squirt a little in each eye, let the make-up run appropriately and grab a tissue.”

So, instead of trying to rush through the process of medication changes I am now at a much slower steady pace thanks to the Visine in my purse!

Gaaaahhhh!

2010-10-19T20:20:00.002-05:00

It has a been a rough week. I had a chemo treatment a week ago and am starting to feel like I'm just crummy all the time. I have these stupid side-effects with me every day, like so many yippy dogs nipping my ankles and barking that it's-not-even-a-bark little noise. They won't do any permanent damage but they can irritate the bejeebers out of me.

Meanwhile, Husband is having a rough go. I think he hoped (as did I!) that moving away from our old congregation would provide nearly instant relief from the pain we felt there. It didn't. It's starting to look like we might need to organize our entire lives around getting well for a few months. I'm physically ill, he's emotionally/spiritually ill. It's very, very, very hard to acknowledge that we are profoundly limited right now.

I happened upon a little book about cancer and skimmed it for interesting bits. The author described someone's experience with cancer and noted that he thinks "toxic stress" in the patient's life contributed to the development of cancer.

I'm pretty sure the author is not a physician, and I think he's just musing there, but it planted the idea in my mind that perhaps I would not have developed cancer if I'd not been under severe stress. That is, "Did sr. pastor give me cancer?"

Gaaaaahhhhhh!

Of course I have no idea and it's kind of a stupid thing to ponder, but every few weeks I discover new layers of anger over his incredibly, stunningly self-centered behavior. I had so few conversations with him and all of them were about him. What is that? How does that happen? Someone told me that the definition of narcissism is thinking that everything you say or do is right because you are the one saying or doing it. I cannot fathom seeing the world that way.

Cancer vs. Depression

2010-10-12T12:32:00.003-05:00

So many times in the last month I have told my friends, who are surprised and delighted by my mental and emotional health, that I find cancer much easier to cope with than depression.

Cancer sounds ominous and miserable, as it is, but it is not messing with my brain or my heart. My cancer is, as cancers go, manageable. My prognosis is very good; I am plodding through several months of chemotherapy, but I know when to expect it will end and that helps me cope with bad days.

Cancer is also a public illness, where depression is largely private. Everyone in our congregation knows I have cancer and they have some idea how to talk to me about it and how to help me. They bring me meals, they care for my children, they pray for me. I can talk about feeling crummy or being sad that my hair is falling out.

Depression was a completely different experience for me. I felt isolated and always uncertain with whom I might talk about my depression. Mental illness is hard to understand. For someone who has never suffered from depression it is hard to figure out how to be helpful.

In the midst of depression I lacked perspective beyond my own experience. The world seemed dark and hopeless and I found it hard to understand the hopeful things other people said to me. It felt like they were talking in fairy tales and I was living in the real world, a dark tiny world of endless sadness.

The couple of times that I felt vaguely suicidal, usually in the form of wishing someone else who was more competent could live my life for a while, my therapist told me that was not normal. Healthy people, she'd say, see unpleasant circumstances in their lives as a challenge, but one they take on because it's their life. I could hardly imagine it. Who would want to live the life I was in then?

Now I understand it. I hate cancer, but it is part of my life and I will cope with it the best I can. God's grace is sufficient, one day at a time, and someday this will end.

Therapy

2010-10-05T10:27:00.003-05:00

I have followed with interest the blog of a pastor coping with depression and coming to terms with needing a therapist. When I needed the care of a therapist, one appeared before me as if by magic. Her counseling style and personality seemed perfectly suited to my needs. It rarely occurred to me that I'd been spared the arduous process of choosing a therapist.

Then we moved. While my depression has lifted and a million things about my life seem better I am not confident enough to be apart from the care and attention of a professional counselor. The upheaval of moving, coaching kids through a move, cancer, a new congregation, approaching winter.... it seems ripe for a repeat appearance of my Great Foe, depression.

Finding a therapist is hard. On my list of considerations:

Location

Insurance coverage/cost

Therapeutic style

Christian perspective

Gender (I am more readily at ease with a woman)

It doesn't work to ask around about a good therapist the way I do about dentists and hair salons. Recommendations for mental health care require a little discretion. My husband identified a couple of good people to ask, as did I. Some of our inquiries were fruitless - generated no names or suggestions that did not suit us for various reasons. He finally found someone who referred us to a useful list.

Then I sorted through the list and eliminated most of the names off the bat. Some have specific areas of expertise - family conflict, teens, etc. Others had religious affiliations that are inappropriate for me: buddhism, new age, or branches of Christianity with which I am not comfortable. One Christian counseling office near us posts its intake form online. I browsed it and noticed this item: "Does the client consider him/herself to be born again?" I understand that question to refer to an understanding of the Christian faith with which I do not identify. I don't want to battle off theological questions in pursuit of good mental health.

During my husband's vicarage year - an internship during seminary - we visited a therapist together because we felt overwhelmed by loneliness and stress. Being far from family and friends, in an unfamiliar and challenging situation, was sometimes confusing for us. The counselor we saw was not helpful. She couldn't figure out what our problem was, so she spent half and hour talking to my husband about nurturing his inner child when he preaches. It was very weird.

I landed upon a Christian counseling practice with an office near my home. My schedule is so full of doctor visits and child-tending responsibilities that travel time could seriously limit my ability to see a therapist as often as I could need. I judged from the web site that the practice is overtly Christian but respectful of the fact that clients are looking for mental health care, not theology lessons.

I described my first appointment as "auditioning a new therapist." It was important to me to remind myself that establishing a therapeutic relationship is my decision. I felt perfectly at ease with this therapist and appreciated the questions she asked at my first appointment. I discovered that she is also married to a pastor and recognizes everything I describe about my anxieties related to that role. Her affiliation is with a different denomination, but every reference to Christian faith falls inside of what I think of as Apostles' Creed Christianity: things we all agree on. She has not asked me if I am born again.

In the course of writing this blog, I've made friends with other pastors' wives who realize they would benefit from professional counseling. For some of them, identifying a therapist who meets their criteria is an arduous process. I pray for them, that God will provide what they need and give them eyes to recognize it when they see it.

Distressing Dreams

2010-09-29T19:32:00.003-05:00

Last week I had a steady stream of weird, vivid dreams. The first two had to do with my children being in danger and I could not protect them (in the first of the two, I knew we were all going to be brainwashed).

Then I dreamt something involving me in Alaska on a trip with wolves, sleds, and overnight camping in the middle of winter. I like camping, but not in the winter. I'm not interested in a personal relationship with a wolf.

The most recent was a long episode of some people trying to burn down my house. They were kind of mellow about it - turning on my oven, lighting small fires around the house, trying to start a bonfire on the roof. I followed them around putting out the fires and trying to talk them out of arson. It occurred to me to call 911, but I thought the fire dept. would be annoyed that I called for help before there was a really big fire.

I've decided that those dreams involving my children are residual anxiety about the congregation we just left. Everything about our current situation seems good and safe for my kids.

The other two, in which I seem to be taking on challenges above my pay level and delay asking for help... well, that's me in a nutshell. I have become pretty adept at asking for help these days because I must. It's the same reason I wound up talking to a therapist and a pastor in the last couple of years. The pain in my life was too much to bear and I had to get help somewhere.

I have a long habit of imagining that people will think poorly of me if I ask for help. I imagine other people thinking that I should be able to handle things on my own. I can't think of a time when that has actually happened, but real life and my expectations are taking a long time to meet.

I've also noticed that I picture myself requesting/accepting help from now until I finish chemotherapy. Then, I tell myself, I will be well and whole and energetic and independent and help other people. I hope that most of the above will be true, but I also hope that I can sustain my willingness to ask for help when I can use it.

Gracious Insomnia

2010-09-26T00:53:00.003-05:00

It's the middle of the night. I've been having a lot of strange and distressing dreams this week, including tonight. Earlier this week they were vivid dreams in which my children were in danger and I could not rescue them. I can't remember tonight's dream, but when I woke I was thinking about the sr. pastor at the church we recently left.

Being now in a congregation that is warm, loving, and gracious is helping me interpret what was off kilter in our last church. I now realize how legalistic the place felt to me. I have often thought that sr. pastor seemed pharisaic, and when I woke from my dream tonight that was on my mind again.

I respect for the pharisees for their effortfulness. They desperately wanted to get it right so that God would love them. I think that's what motivates sr. pastor. He knows the Bible like no one I have ever met. He can whip out a verse for any situation. He works hard to make things happen and wants to align the universe in such a way as to please God.

At other times I have recognized how sad this is, but tonight I feel how tragic this is. The poor man has memorized the Bible and missed the point. God wants to embrace and comfort him and then use him to share God's gracious love with others. He is missing out on the blessing of God's grace because he is working so hard to do right.

Tonight that seems to me an even more desperate situation than a major depression.

The congregation where my husband is now the pastor has expressed no expectations except these two: That God has brought Husband here to care for them and that God is working among them.

It is a stunning blessing to be with people who trust God so thoroughly. It makes me realize that in our last congregation it felt like there were specific expectations about what Husband would be or do, and when he disappointed those the leaders' confidence in God's faithfulness waned. Husband was accused of not listening to the Holy Spirit and of lacking pastoral judgment. I described this accusation to someone recently and she reframed it as "spiritualizing controlling tendencies."

While we were there, those accusation bred doubt in our hearts about our relationship with God and Husband's call to serve as a pastor. Now those same accusations cause me grief for them. How sad, how desperate, to have so little confidence in God's faithfulness.

The pastor who preached at Husband's installation reminded me that there will be challenges and seasons of frustration or unhappiness here, but that "it seems this may be a place of mercy and grace." What else could I possibly hope for? We are weak and broken and sinful, living among people who are likewise. Mercy and grace is what I most crave.

Sitting with Sadness

2010-09-23T16:23:00.002-05:00

One of the things I've started trying to attend to as a parent is letting my kids feel sad. It's hard. I want to talk them out of feeling sad or frustrated, to move the frame so they just see the happy things. The other day my son lost two rounds of Candyland and he was despondent. He sobbed for about ten minutes. I wanted to say, "Really? Candyland? Buck up, mister. It's no big deal." But to him it was a huge deal. Losing is very sad for a competitive six-year-old. He sat on my lap and I made soothing sounds and waited. After a while he stopped crying and started talking about something else.

For most of my life I have distracted myself from things that are sad. It's much easier for me to be angry, or feel guilty, or tell myself it's not worth being sad about. That's one of the things I learned from talking to a therapist. My therapist doesn't take it personally if I feel sad. Most of the time, she'd nod her head and say something like, "Of course you're sad! Life should not be this way!"

The problem with sadness, for me, is that there is nothing to do about it. It just is. And it hurts. The only thing to do is feel it, say it, complain to God about it, expect it will end sometime, and wait.

Goodbye Depression!

2010-09-21T15:51:00.003-05:00

I am DEEEEElighted to report that my depression seems to have wandered away. The last time I checked - last spring - it was still holding tight. Then life went completely crazy and I stopped checking every day to see if I was better. Now things are settling into a routine in our new home and I notice that the parts of me I've been missing for so long are back.

For example:

I enjoy being with my kids. I cannot remember when I last thought it was fun to be the mom at my house. I have been simply enduring the work of parenting for a couple of years. I could see that they were happy and imagined that could be fun for me, but it wasn't. Now I enjoy their silliness, their creativity, their incomparably adorable little faces. Even their tantrums and sassy attitudes are ok with me. I'm the mom, they're supposed to act that way, and I can handle it.

When I am trapped in bed by the exhaustion that comes with chemotherapy, I think about the things I want to do when I feel better. Some are short-term: on good days, I like to write, to read, to cook, to play with my kids. Others are long-term: when this chemo is over, I want to plan a vacation. I want to paint my bedroom. I want to have new friends over for dinner. We live in a parsonage and I've enjoyed imagining an open house for the congregation this spring. A year ago, such a thought would have overwhelmed me.

My husband is not as perky as I. He has been adapting to or trying to prevent incomprehensible, unpredictable unkindness for two years and it will probably take a while to process and cope with that. I understand that, and I miss him, and I am waiting for him to come back to me. I am sad about that. A year ago, I was desperate to fix it. Now I am comfortable with knowing I cannot fix it. I can be next to him, love him, share myself with him, pray for him. These are my roles in his life. God will heal him. It is good for me to feel safe and content even when my husband does not.

If you've ever been depressed, or desperate to heal the pain of someone you love, you'll recognize how revolutionary that is.

I cannot say how thankful I am to be well. It surprises me every day. When I notice that I am happy, in the moment, free of pervasive fear or anxiety, I marvel at what God has done. In the midst of depression, I really thought this would never happen.

Honesty Is Working

2010-09-13T20:00:00.002-05:00

Last week I wrote about a note I put in the church bulletin explaining my cancer treatment and related fluctuating energy level. It was a little awkward to explain so much about my life to new acquaintances, but I guessed the benefits would outweigh the awkwardness.

Last Sunday I had the opportunity to visit with a lot of people after worship. No one mentioned my note explicitly, but I could tell many of them had read it and that it helped them know how to talk to me and how to offer help. Lots of people asked if this is a good week -- that is, are you feeling well today? It is so much easier for me to establish comfortable connections with people when they have a context for understanding my varied behavior.

Tomorrow I will have chemo again, and on Sunday I will probably be tired and not too interested in chatting. I will likely rest in my husband's office while the kids go to Sunday school. Me hiding in his office while everyone else is in Bible study could be pretty confusing. But since most people know I need to do that sometimes, I don't think it will be an issue. My husband has even said my note has helped him answer questions about how I'm doing.

Thumbs up for this little project.

Managing Mrs Pastor

2010-09-09T19:14:00.003-05:00

I started writing this blog a little over a year ago for entirely selfish reasons. At the time I thought I was a rare specimen: a miserable pastor's wife. Writing about the conflict at our church and my depression helped me cope with it. I thought a couple of people might read it but that I'd mostly be writing to myself.

Turns out that unhappiness among pastor's wives is not so rare! It is deeply satisfying to me to be connected to so many other women who are supportive, empathic, and hopeful in Christ. It also requires a fair bit of energy.

A while ago I set up my computer with two users: me and mrs pastor. When I talk about the blog I usually talk about mrs pastor in the third person. I'm not sure why, precisely, but I feel like I can manage all the weight associated with this stuff better when I keep a little distance most of the time.

I love that some of you write comments and send me e-mail and facebook messages. It is always encouraging and I am happy to chat about our lives. Some days. Sometimes several days go by and I don't log on to mrs pastor because I don't have any energy to cope with my feelings or anybody else's.

Thanks for being a part of this. You make a big difference in my life.

Experimental Honesty

2010-09-06T09:25:00.003-05:00

The last time my husband took a call, our three children were between 6 months and 3 yrs. old. We were in the midwest and it was the middle of winter. I didn't get out too much.

I assumed that people in our new church would understand that managing my little gang was a full-time task and it would take me a while to get to know them. We went to worship on Sunday morning and tried to stay for some of the fellowship time, but it was intimidating to be in a crowd of people I didn't know while my children wandered off.

I fretted about the tension between parenting and being involved in church as I thought a pastor's wife *should*. Once or twice my husband told me that some people seemed confused about why they never saw me. SERIOUSLY? It doesn't take much creativity to imagine that a new community, a bunch of little kids, and a husband with a new job = all I can take.

Now, my husband has taken a new call once again and I am in a compromised position once again. This time it's cancer treatment, and it seems like everyone would know because they've been praying for me all summer and are bringing me meals every couple of weeks. But I have learned not to assume. So I wrote this for the church newsletter:

Dear [church] friends,

What a blessing it is for us to be here with you! You have shown us such kindness and care. I am thankful for you.

Thank you especially for your prayers, concern and thoughtfulness for me during my cancer treatment. I have finished 3 of 12 bi-weekly chemotherapy treatments. On the weeks that I have treatment I tend to feel very tired. On those Sundays I love to be in worship but may not have the energy to visit much. Your prayers and patience during these months are a generous gift.

With praise to God for His ministry here,

[mp]

Nobody has said anything to me about it, and I don't really expect that they will. I feel more at ease just knowing I've made an effort to let them know. It's awkward to tell a couple hundred people I just met about a part of my life that makes me feel so compromised, so distant from the self I know. I've tried fear and anxiety with a congregation and that turned out badly, so this time I'll try trust and see how things go.

Tempted to Be Weary

2010-08-23T20:06:00.005-05:00

My birthday is coming up in the fall and the schedule for my chemotherapy indicates that I will spend my special day attached to the pump of toxicity. Noticing that scheduling quirk caused me to reflect on the circumstances of my last few birthdays:

three years ago: preparing to sell our house and move as Husband took a new call
two years ago: the week we realized Husband needed a medical leave for severe depression
last year: at the hospital with my 3-year-old son and his ruptured appendix

A strange little tradition I've got there. I could find other formats to fill in with timelines of discouragement. Some weeks I feel like the frustrations, large and small, accumulate endlessly and I am tempted to be weary. I feel sometimes that I have suffered enough and have earned the right to throw up my hands and give in. Who can endure this? Who keeps paddling against this flow of bad mojo when the current does not slow?

God is so gentle with me. He has not once whacked me on the head for thinking these things. He reminds me that I'm not paddling, I'm sitting in the canoe and He is paddling.

The other night, while Husband was at a meeting, my youngest son vomited several times. It lasted for exactly the two hours that I was alone with the kids. I was nearly overwhelmed with the feeling that I could not continue, that life was becoming too much for me. God brought to mind the passage from Isaiah, "Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint." (40:31).

I have never understood that "they will run and not grow weary" because God strengthens them. I now think of this every day. Life is so hard right now, and every day I am tempted to think that I cannot stay in the canoe. God reminds me that He will keep me here and give me what I need today.

I expect that next year my birthday will be free of crisis. I know that it might not be. It is possible that some circumstance even more distressing than those of recent years is waiting for me there. My hope rests on knowing that God will be there either way.

Making Friends

2010-08-17T09:49:00.003-05:00

Several readers have commented, in various settings, on how difficult it can be to have a good friend within the congregation where your husband is the pastor. I remember being advised by someone at the seminary that we wives ought not to have good friends in the church.

I understand the potential for friendship with church members to go awry, but I would not be content or feel at ease in a church without any close friends. So far, God has provided me with friends in the churches Husband has served.

The women with whom I have been closest are women who have personal experience in church work themselves. One is the daughter of a pastor, another was a teacher in a church school and had several church workers in her family. Their experiences gave them a more-sophisticated-than-average understanding of church politics and the stresses of a clergy family.

In both of those congregations, there was conflict. Sometimes I think my friends disagreed with me or with Husband. In every case, we were faithful to and supportive of each other.

I have my eyes open for God to provide an equally satisfying and supportive friendship in our new setting. I don't mind that this will take time. There is no substitute for a friend who knows the context of my family's life - the congregation - and who is unsurprised by my family's profound imperfections and who trusts God to be faithful.

En Garde!

2010-08-11T22:30:00.002-05:00

I am drowning in offers of help.

Is it ok to consider that challenging?

My life is entirely too much for me these days. My life has been too much for me for a long time now. I mentioned briefly in one post that I have cancer. I recently began a six-month course of chemotherapy. For some reason, being diagnosed with cancer and hearing I needed chemo did not knock me off balance. It seemed of a piece with depression - another long, ugly illness that will be resolved eventually.

Now that we have moved and I've started treatment, I am losing my balance. The move is, big picture, great for our family. In the short term it is incredibly stressful. Everything is new, we have no routine, the kids are excited and confused and uncertain. The chemotherapy is an enormous wrench in the gears of trying to get settled. The primary side effect for me so far is severe fatigue. It looks like I'll be alternating good week/crummy week for a few months.

When someone loving and capable offers to help, I am confident that God loves me and is going to provide what we need to get through this. I also wonder if I am going to pay for it later.

What I need most is help with my children. A stunning number of people in our new congregation have offered to spend time with the kids while I cope with treatments. I am sifting through the offers. A few people appear very needy themselves, so I smile, thank them for the generous offer, and never call for help. Almost everyone else seems fine, but there are so many ways that inviting virtual strangers into the intimate connection of caring for my children can become awkward. Do they expect a "special" connection with the pastor's family? If I ask for help once, will it be offensive if I do not ask again?

I am in no position to return any favors. Not only do I need substantial tangible help, but I lack the emotional energy to tend to other people's needs with any depth or consistency. I am in a tunnel of my own family's needs.

We all depend on God's grace at all times, but that dependence is not always evident in our everyday lives. Right now, my dependence on grace is acute. It makes me feel fragile, exposed. I trust God. I'm not so sure about His people.

Here We Are

2010-08-04T12:48:00.003-05:00

The move is done. We're in a new home, getting acquainted with a new congregation, trying to remember where we packed our toothbrushes and underwear.

In the last week, we have been given:

chocolate chip cookies

brownies

zucchini bread

tomatoes

a french silk pie

a pan of chicken enchiladas

banana bread

bundt cake

Today someone rang my doorbell at a very reasonable mid-morning hour and I was still in pajamas. (Life is just like that around here sometimes.) It was a woman of my mother's age holding a loaf of bread. That I was not in streetclothes was only briefly awkward as we introduced ourselves and shared pleasantries.

Happily, I find I am not skeptical about any of these gifts. I do not accept them wondering at what point the giver will feel disappointed in me and turn away. I accept them as expressions of God's generosity and the congregation's delight in our arrival.

Is There Good Paranoia for a Pastor's Wife?

2010-07-24T14:58:00.004-05:00

My last post, about negotiating relationships with church members, sparked some particularly interesting comments. Here are some highlights:

"We don't want to be completely paranoid, but we do have to remember that the congregation is full of sinners." (Susan)

"I learned as a pastor's kid that the people who were the nicest to us when we moved there were going to be the first ones to betray us later on. As a pastor's wife, I now live a life of distrust, fear, anxiety and paranoia. But then I ask, if everyone really IS out to get the pastor and his family, is it paranoia? The reality is, Satan is after the one who distributes God's means of grace--the pastor. His family is fair game too. Our problem is, how do we deal with this reality without going nuts?" (Kathrine)

"We've been here almost 7 months, and we haven't had anyone accuse us of anything we haven't done, spread lies to try and undermine [my husband's] authority in the church - heck, even try to be underhanded with each other! There are some really good churches out there - I'm praying you have found yours. I know finding ours has gone a long way in healing my kicked and beaten up heart." (MamaOnABudget)

Clearly, a lot of pw's find this tricky territory. I can relate to the paranoia Kathrine describes. That's precisely how I felt in the midst of the conflict at our last church. We had been so deeply hurt and the feeling that my husband was under constant threat put me on guard with everyone in the church. In retrospect, I can see that it was a very small group of people that had any grief with us. Let's say there were 500 people in the church -- 10 were angry with my husband, 100 were very supportive of him, and the other 400 had no idea what was going on in the church office.

Like Kathrine, I felt like those 10 people were "out to get" us. Now it doesn't seem quite that way. In fact, I believe now that they felt threatened by us. Somehow we posed a threat to something they considered essential about the church. They weren't out to get us; they were trying to protect themselves.

Susan is wise to point out that the church is full of sinners - including us and our husbands. I'm praying to be part of a church where we all freely acknowledge our sinfulness. That's one thing that was clearly absent in the leadership of our last church.

MamaOnABudget, how blessed I would be to live among a group of Christians who trust each other and their pastor! Perhaps we will. It has lately occurred to me that the goal of life is not to escape suffering. I want to escape it, and I will exert tremendous energy to avoid pain, but I am beginning to understand that when I cannot see past the misery God is still trustworthy.

Same PW, New Setting

2010-07-19T14:24:00.006-05:00

We've spent the last few weeks packing and I've been tossing out cards and small gifts we received from people at our old congregation who have since stopped speaking to us. I am reminded of what our arrival was like - the families who most enthusiastically welcomed us, who were most concerned with our comfort and well-being. To a one, they are now absent.

Those cards and gifts were not for US, they were for the family they expected us to be. I did not betray them; they were betrayed by their own expectations. Because I do not express my Christian faith they way they think I *should* they choose not to maintain a relationship with me. That hurt deeply at first but now it warrants a shoulder shrug. Their loss.

It's a troubling pattern to consider as we prepare to greet a new congregation as our home and family. I am tempted to stand back and keep everyone at arm's length until I can get the lay of the land. What are your expectations? Do you want to know me, or do you want me to be someone you already think you know?

Some people say it's good to trust people until you have a reason not to. That may be wise; it is definitely risky. For me this is one of the biggest challenges of being married to the pastor.

Targeted Encouragement

2010-07-14T13:45:00.002-05:00

I was at Target today and a lovely woman from our old church recognized me. She asked after my health, knowing I'd had surgery but not sure why. I gave her the brief update - I have cancer, surgery went well, the prognosis is good, I will have chemo. I don't like telling people I have cancer because it is always startling for the hearer. She was alarmed and concerned and kind.

Then I told her that we're moving soon because Husband took a call. This lady must be more than 80 years old and it was so fun to see her face light up as she bounced a little and clapped with joy. She told me how much she misses Husband, "and I'm not the only one!"

God sends the most unexpected spokespeople to encourage me.

Anxiety Fatigue

2010-07-08T12:55:00.003-05:00

We're deep in the midst of moving activity and my anxiety is spreading like the toy cars and dinosaurs my kids leave on the floor. There are so many unresolved pieces and there is no way to settle them quickly. A big one is that I will need several months of chemotherapy and it needs to start right around the time we are moving. That should be settled this week after I meet with my new oncologist, but in the meantime it's keeping me agitated.

I'm not sure what to do about all this. Moving requires a lot of energy and is necessarily unsettling. Focusing on God's steadfastness gives me confidence that the floor is not falling out beneath me entirely. I am not in despair. Faith in Christ does not resolve every contingency of this life, though.

I've been thinking of the Israelites wandering the desert and relying on God's daily provision of manna. I've always heard that episode described in terms of the miracle of God's provision and how Israel learned to depend on God every day. A miracle it certainly was. I'd guess it was also frustrating and anxiety-inducing.

Why Me?

2010-07-05T09:44:00.003-05:00

I'm having an upside-down "why me?" spiritual/existential dilemma.

Plenty of things are going differently than I'd like. I feel, in fact, like I've been living for quite a while in the field where the sewage line dumps. It smells nasty and walking anywhere is slow going. But this is also where the most gorgeous, rare flowers grow. They are phenomenal. Brilliant colors, delicate petals, some tall & stunning, others more demure. Why am I blessed to be among these lovely things?

Lots of people close to me seem overwhelmed by the number of things that have gone badly for us in the last couple of years. Some expect me to be bitter and angry. I understand what they mean and why they'd expect that. It's hard to explain all the amazing loveliness that has come with it -- the love, gifts, generosity, prayers -- from every corner of my life. Everyone goes through miserable stuff sometimes, but I'm not confident that everyone gets the kind or quantity of support I am now receiving. I sometimes feel guilty about it.

Crazy

2010-06-29T12:05:00.003-05:00

A few weeks ago I wrote that a congregation had called my husband. He has accepted the call. That is (of course!) good news. It also has the potential to make me completely insane.

By the end of the summer, we will have packed and unpacked our entire house, live in a new community, my kids will be in new schools, we will all be getting acquainted with a new congregation and a new schedule, and I will be visiting an oncologist twice a month for therapeutic poison-drips. Nothing on that list appeals to me. Every bit of it has come to me unbidden.

Here's the crazy part: I am not freaked out. I am, today, entirely calm. I feel content about accepting the call and making the move. I feel confident that God is guiding us there and that He will provide what we need as we need it. I am almost rolling my eyes at myself as I write this because it sounds so pious.

I feel like I am witnessing my own death and resurrection. I surrender. I give up on trying to figure out my life and make it work right. I'll focus on today and thank God for giving me the grace to trust that He will provide everything I need when tomorrow gets here.

Adrenaline Rush

2010-06-24T19:13:00.004-05:00

I have had a surprisingly pleasant week. My life really, absolutely sucks a lot right now. In the (roughly) two years I've been dealing with depression, though, I've found that the adrenaline rush of a crisis alleviates depressive symptoms. For a while.

Going to the hospital, finding out I had a tumor, focusing on coming home, then coming home and enjoying the rush of love, encouragement and support from friends and family buoyed me for several days.

This afternoon I started to sink again and could almost feel the clouds descending. The vague notions I've had this week of chemotherapy, a likely move (still considering that call!), and the weight of all the work and decisions that lie between here and there looks like TOO MUCH. A lot too much.

Medical Woes

2010-06-20T22:17:00.004-05:00

I've been in the hospital for the last several days. I came with pain that made me think appendicitis. I was right on that point, and had surgery to repair it. The surgeon also removed a "large" tumor nearby. Sounds like I'm headed for six months of low-level chemo in the near future.

This is what I've been telling God: "Well, look! Here's something else. Cancer. Good thing you are bigger and more powerful than this mess because it is a MESS. There are entirely too many piles of sh** around here and I cannot cope with them all. I fully expect you can and that you will hold onto me and all of it and just dole out what I need one day at a time.

"You also know that in a few days I'm going to stand up and start pointing and barking orders and trying to get a handle on all this for myself. Please forgive me. And be gentle with me. This is very, very hard."

I can see already that there are going to be some interesting comparisons between dealing with cancer and dealing with depression. People are much better prepared to support a friend with cancer.

Presence

2010-06-14T10:33:00.003-05:00

I recently read a book that dealt primarily with a grown man's memory of the year he was 11 and his uncle died suddenly, violently. The movement of the story is the assembly of his memory, his childhood understanding, and his deeper adult understanding of what happened.

The most affecting scene is of the 11-year-old boy, Andy, sitting in the living room with his father and grandparents one night when all three adults separately and simultaneously weep. It is a stunning image of raw, private grief. It's a difficult and confusing thing for the boy to witness.

As an adult, after his father has passed away, Andy wonders why he never asked his father more about the uncle's death:

Why, as I got older, did I not ask my father for his version of these events? Now that he is dead, it is easy to wish that I had asked. And yet I know why I did not. I did not want to live again in the great pain I had felt in the old house that night when he had wept so helplessly with Grandma and Grandpa. I did not want to be with him in the presence of that pain where only it and we existed.

I did not want to be with him in the presence of that pain where only it and we existed. I know exactly what he means. How I have feared being in the presence of pain and the way the world shrinks to a horrible, tiny place where there is nothing but grief.

But isn't this the tremendous gift of Jesus? There is no place on earth where we are alone with pain. God is always with us, present in the deepest, most isolating pain. His presence is what I need most.

Prayerfully Considering

2010-06-08T16:29:00.002-05:00

A church has called Husband to be its pastor. I think that this should be very exciting to me. It is kind of exciting, but right now it seems more overwhelming. Taking a call requires a lot of energy. Staying here is unsatisfying and will eventually be financially impossible, but it's a grating kind of anxiety rather than a decisive challenge.

In the last few weeks I've finally started to believe that we need to move away from here. Proximity to our last congregation makes it difficult to feel separate from the trauma we met there.

We have, like most clergy families, moved lots. Every previous move was sad but I looked forward to discovering what I would love about our new home. I don't feel that way this time. When I imagine moving I feel exhausted about getting acquainted with a new community, new people, new schools....

Can a move still be good even if it makes me want to hide?

What Kind of Woman

2010-06-07T18:54:00.003-05:00

A couple of women I recognize, from a book by Wendell Berry:

The female world turned on an axis held at one pole by Aunt Judith and at the other by Minnie Branch--Aunt Judith, with her bred-in dependency, her sometimes helplessness, ill with fright and self-regard, childless and forever needy; and Minnie, who was fearless, capable, hardy, fecund, unabashed, without apology or appeal. Minnie could cook and keep house for what amounted to a small hotel, split firewood, butcher a hog, raise a garden, work in the field, shoot a fox, set a hen or wring her neck.

I have little in common with either of these characters, but I act often out of fear of being as weak as Aunt Judith and desire to be as invincible as Minnie Branch. Imaging myself always in terms of these two poles makes me constantly dissatisfied and a little crazy.

Depression Symptoms: Withdrawal

2010-06-02T09:00:00.000-05:00

Social Withdrawal

I knew I was doing this. I saw it happening before I even realized I was depressed. It seemed like a reasonable response to the stress in my life. As I began to feel overwhelmed by my family’s needs my circle of concern quickly shrank. I stopped trying to get involved at our new church. I stopped calling friends to check in. I avoided situations where I’d meet new people.

One day I was in the downstairs playroom with my kids and realized I was purposely hiding from the world. I dreaded leaving the house. I felt like I couldn’t handle questions or attention from other people. I think I was struggling for some control over a situation that had spun quickly, wildly out of my grasp.

/+/+/+/

Though I am much better now I still have to coach myself into social situations and often feel spent afterwards. The phone is most difficult for me. I’d rather be face-to-face or communicate in writing than talk on the phone. I imagine it has to do with the difficulty of deciphering interpersonal cues on the phone without the benefit of body language and context.

A few weeks ago I had plans to meet a friend out for the evening and had to call at the last minute to cancel. I don’t remember what preceded it, but I was terrified about leaving the house and navigating a lively evening out. I called her in tears. It was embarrassing to admit I couldn’t leave my house. I spent the rest of the evening on the couch under a heavy blanket.

/+/+/+/

I have come to believe that the way sr pastor treated my husband was abusive. We often described it as working with a terrorist -- there was no pattern or predictability to his “attacks” except that there was always another one coming sometime.

Being abused disrupts a person’s sense that the world is basically safe. I became persistently, sometimes intensely, fearful of being with other people. I came to expect to be rejected.

Personal rejection seemed ok back when I thought most people liked me, but the constant flow of judgment, disapproval, anger, and punishment from sr. pastor to Husband (and by extension, me, as much of this related to our family) made me to feel that rejection was normal and acceptance rare.

To read all the posts in the depression symptoms series, go here.

What I (Don’t) Pray For

2010-06-01T10:50:00.001-05:00

God pointed out something distressing to me today. I write down some of the people I want to remember to pray for and all of them are people who do not live in my house. I neglect to ask God’s blessing on the people closest to me! It’s shameful.

The reason for the omission was immediately clear to me. Every intercessory prayer on my list is a person or situation over which I am sure I have no control - people who are sick or grieving, or who are on the periphery of my life such that I care about them but have no influence over them.

My family, however, is *my* responsibility. I take care of my kids and participate in the important aspects of my husband’s life. If something is not right with one of them, I take steps to make it better.

The layers of my illusion that I have control are stunning. I’ve written down the names of my kids and my husband because it seems I need to be reminded that God is responsible for them and He’s invited me to express His care and love for them.

Low Mo

2010-05-24T16:49:00.005-05:00

I keep hoping I can stop writing reports of being surprised by my own depressive symptoms. Not yet! I think that I can stop writing about them when they stop surprising me. I continue to be an optimist so when things look up for a week or two I'm primed to think: CURED!

The psychiatrist I've been seeing thinks I'm doing very well and approved me to gradually decrease the dose of my anti-depressant. I have no philosophical objection to medication for mental health, but it would feel good to stop taking it. It's a sign of independence and improved health.

/+/+/+/

For the first part of May I felt quite well: motivated, more energetic, even-keeled. I've been making steady progress toward some good routines - sleeping on a regular schedule, for 8 hours instead of 10; personal devotion; some exercise. I haven't really tried, I've just felt like doing those things. All very good.

Then I got moody and bored with everything. Low on motivation. That stupid episode with Voldemort threw me off. Husband is still having a difficult time and I am sad for him and I miss the man I remember. I spent a week or so feeling like life could just waddle along without me and I'd watch.

/+/+/+/

Last night I finally figured out how to explain this stuff to Husband. I want to tell him about this kind of thing but I also want to protect him from more bad mojo. Protecting is something I do as a parent for my children and I'm not his parent. I'm his partner.

As soon as I described all this moody weirdness aloud to him I felt entirely relieved. Suddenly I wanted to make some plans for the next day.

/+/+/+/

Depression is mysterious to me. Painful & tenacious.

Voldemort

2010-05-19T11:44:00.003-05:00

My husband recently made some sort of morbid joke about sr. pastor and actually said his full name out loud. It was startling to hear his name again. Immediately I felt anxious, angry, prepared to defend. So weird.

I told someone about this and he joked that it's like speaking Voldemort's name aloud in Harry Potter.

Where To Look

2010-05-12T20:19:00.002-05:00

On facebook I posted a link to this list of 10 ways Christians tend to fail at being Christian. Someone commented that maybe “we should all make a list and look very carefully for ourselves in it.” I don’t have time for that! I’ve got my hands full detailing other people’s self-righteousness!

For the last couple of weeks I’ve had a decent routine of personal devotion that is really good for me. It’s generous of God to give me a disposition toward this habit. I have found, though, that every chapter I read leaves me thinking about sr pastor and how destructive and misguided his efforts are. Stupid brain. I don’t want to be thinking about him, even to consider in detail his misunderstanding of the Christian life.

I am of two minds - maybe I’m being sinfully distracted from God’s message about himself and me, or maybe this is a necessary step in making sense of (and discarding the lies of) what’s been going on for the last couple of years. I’m not sure how to distinguish between the two.

I have exerted a lot of energy trying not to judge sr pastor & co., but realized that I have to judge their actions so that I don’t take responsibility for all this misery. “Love the sinner, hate the sinner” is much more complicated than it sounds.

Feelings vs Depression

2010-05-11T08:27:00.002-05:00

In the last week or so I have felt: happy, sad, motivated, proud, angry, disappointed, uncertain, annoyed, content, silly, tired, appreciated, loved, challenged, smug, chastised, relieved.

I have not felt despairing, hopeless, or desperate.

Isn't that nice?

Exposure

2010-05-09T14:47:00.003-05:00

After my last post, a reader wrote me with this thoughtful question:

How do you keep people from your previous congregation and even the sr pastor from reading your blog? Are you ever afraid they will identify you by what you write? I think you are so brave to voice your troubles. I don't know that I could do that.
I have thought about this a lot and people close to me have listened to me fret about it for, cumulatively, hours and hours. Below are some of the things I've decided upon that allow me to write this blog.

It is certainly possible that someone from my old congregation has or will come upon this blog. The majority of them would not ever recognize that I am writing about their church. The people who have hurt me, sr pastor included, seem so unaware of themselves that I would not expect them to see that I am describing their behavior. If they do, I'm not sure what they would do about it. Apart from my description of the conflict I don't think there is anything here that identifies them specifically, so they'd be accusing themselves.

This is why I guard my anonymity so carefully online. I have no interest - ABSOLUTELY NO INTEREST - in identifying the people or the congregation I am describing. I cannot imagine any benefit that would come of that and I write primarily for my own benefit. Describing my experience helps me understand it, cope with it, trust God with it, compartmentalize it. I learn by writing. When I start a post I usually know what I want to write about and have an idea what I will say, but often discover something in the process of explaining myself.

I started this blog almost a year ago and a miraculous, unexpected second purpose has turned out to be creating a community of churchworkers and families who hurt. I thought there might be half a dozen people who would read this. I don't know how many readers I have, but it's more than that. The affirmation, encouragement, and spiritual care I receive from your comments and notes is one of God's great provisions for me.

Cycle of Abuse

2010-05-06T11:14:00.000-05:00

Several years ago I volunteered at a domestic violence center and learned about the cycle of abuse. It involved the abuser repeatedly working to separate the victim from support systems (usu. family, friends), to control choices and behavior, to undermine the victim’s sense of autonomy and capability so that the victim becomes more dependent on the abuser.

I found this outline of the cycle of abuse on a domestic violence web site. It’s alarming how similar this looks to what happened at our last congregation. I’ve crossed out the elements that do not apply to the conflict with sr. pastor. As it happens, that’s every item that has to do with repentance.

Incident

Any type of abuse occurs (physical/sexual/emotional)

Tension Building

Abuser starts to get angry

Abuse may begin

There is a breakdown of communication

Victim feels the need to keep the abuser calm

Tension becomes too much

Victim feels like they are 'walking on egg shells'

Making-Up

Abuser may apologize for abuse

Abuser may promise it will never happen again

Abuser may blame the victim for causing the abuse

Abuser may deny abuse took place or say it was not as bad as the victim claims

Calm

Abuser acts like the abuse never happened

Physical abuse may not be taking place

Promises made during 'making-up' may be met

Victim may hope that the abuse is over

Abuser may give gifts to victim

The “incident” was always some episode of sr. pastor aggressively asserting control. He was surprisingly creative about doing it, but in every case his objective seemed to be to force compliance at any cost. He did crazy things and then refused to talk about them, manipulated every confrontation so that he did not accept responsibility. He was unpredictable and blamed (privately and publicly) Husband for anything that went wrong.

Other people on staff at the church have indicated that they are discouraged, unhappy, frustrated by our departure, but that they feel they cannot say anything.

Writing this is hard for me because I am furious that Husband - we - have been treated this way. It has caused immense pain to our family. It has sown doubt about things we ought never have to doubt. Everything about this is antithetical to my understanding of what pastors are called to do. I’ve been trying to write this for weeks, but thinking about it still makes me so sad and angry.

Now that we have left that church, I feel confident we will heal. I am thankful that God provided us with a way out. I continue to feel distressed, however, by the effect of this pattern of control on the church. It turns the congregation’s energy and identity toward a few particular rules of Christian living and away from God’s love and mercy and justice and a relationship with him in Christ. I cannot imagine why God allows this to continue.

Comfort

2010-04-27T07:54:00.006-05:00

Recently I heard a sermon on this passage from 2 Corinthians:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.

I like that command/promise value pack. God comforts us. He has, he does, he will. He expects us to care about other people who are hurting because we know how they feel and have experienced God's care for us. My understanding of the words "compassion" and "sympathy" is that they involve shared experience. I have compassion for someone who feels lonely, hopeless, or rejected because I have felt those things, too.

I assumed mature Christians would behave this way toward others.

When the conflict with sr pastor outgrew his relationship with Husband and began to involve our parenting decisions, I decided I should talk directly with sr pastor. I was hurt deeply. I felt like he had judged us and felt insecure about being at church.

I carefully, thoughtfully worked out what I wanted to say to him and how to say it in an relationship-building way. I decided to approach him as my pastor, asking for his help finding my place at the church. My imagined worst-case-scenario was that I'd cry and lose control of myself. I tried to remember that authentic tears generate sympathy and connection and that would certainly be good.

Things started out well. I described my frustrations and asked for his help. He offered brief, practiced answers that I suspect he has given often to similar requests. Then I thought aloud, "The last year has not gone the way I'd expected..." and started to cry. It was a profound understatement of how difficult things had been for my family.

This is the moment when I'd have expected 1 Corinthians to kick in. As a pastor -- in theory, my pastor -- I thought he would comfort me with the comfort he had received through Christ.

He didn't.

Instead he picked up the thought and turned it to himself. "Things haven't gone the way I'd expected either! When your husband came I thought..." and he began listing his frustrations with my husband.

I was speechless. What a crazy mess. This pattern repeated over and over in interactions we had with sr pastor. It is so painful, feels so unkind. It also makes me hurt for him because he seems unable to see beyond himself.

This post was inspired by a recent item from the Church Whisperer. "We are surrounded by pain and sorrow and dysfunction and incapacitation. Without something to offer in opposition to that pain, without a heart that breaks for hurting people, our mission fails."

Wilted Lily

2010-04-23T11:22:00.002-05:00

On my Easter lily day I told my husband after dinner, "It's been nice to have a good day." I wanted to be sure I appreciated it. Glad I did that quickly - the bloom has faded.

Yesterday I was in tears and so tired and couldn't find a pleasant thought to ponder. We were traveling to visit out-of-town family and highway driving is a hard time to adjust a mood. My mind kept wandering back to themes that make me feel sad or desperate. I am so exhausted. Why do I have to take my job (parenting) with me everywhere I go? I really, really, REALLY want a vacation. I probably NEED a vacation. How can we make that happen? Who could watch the kids for several days? What if nobody can? This will never end.

The only "true" part of that is me being tired. I'm sure we can work out a time to get away. The catastrophizing path in my brain is just so familiar.

Finally, Easter!

2010-04-21T15:22:00.002-05:00

Feeling Easter-lilyish today. Hopeful. Like I've been wearing sunglasses on a cloudy day all this time, and now the clouds have cleared and my glasses are off and I have to squint because God is shining so brightly in my heart.

No event has inspired this -- Husband is still unemployed, life is still very similar to what it has been for a while. But I feel different.

I even created a new label on this post: hope. Over 100 posts so far and this is the first time it's occurred to me to use "hope" as a category. Thank you, God, for today.

Depression Symptoms: Worthlessness

2010-04-19T13:00:00.002-05:00

A profound sense of worthlessness

About a year ago I pasted these two pictures of myself into my journal.

The black-on-white image shows how I have experienced my self for most of my life. The boundary between me and everyone else was permanent and easy for me to see. A task like listing 10 words to describe myself seemed simple. Among people who believe or see things differently than I did, I might have remained quiet but identified points of disagreement and felt easy about living with them.

This chalk-on-sky-blue expresses how I have experienced myself for much of the past year. I am not vivid against the background. I blend in, find it difficult to distinguish the difference between myself and the people around me. A finger rubbed against this image blurs it, and friction made me feel like I was disappearing.

I love my husband and children so much and, as our small world came to seem dangerous, I devoted myself entirely to protecting them from pain. I couldn't do much but I wore myself out trying. I felt isolated with my kids and tried to fulfill every caretaking responsibility as creatively and energetically as ever. Eventually I felt lost, inadequate, and resentful. I felt myself disappearing inside of all that they needed.

Children are miserable sources of identity. They hardly know that I am separate from them so they do little to reinforce my boundaries. My response to the conflict at church, my husband's depression, and my own escalating fear and anxiety was withdrawal. It was a destructive cycle. I was losing a clear sense of my self and withdrew from almost every relationship or activity that reinforced my identity.

Much of the past year has been devoted to establishing relationships and routines that help me see myself. Now I have several friends in town who know me well and with whom I feel completely at ease.

Writing this blog has been incredibly helpful. It is a perfect combination of describing my experience for my own benefit and getting feedback from readers that helps me see myself and my experience through someone else's eyes. Thank you all for caring for me that way.

To read all the posts in the depression symptoms series, go here

Recovery Week

2010-04-17T19:50:00.003-05:00

I've been quiet this week because I suddenly realized how completely exhausted I am. Husband is done. He is no longer pastor at our former church. It is such a relief.

It is not, however, the finished-your-final-exam kind of relief I'd hoped for. It's more of a bad-guys-finally-stopped-chasing-you relief. Several times I longed for a week's beach vacation where my only responsibilities would be moving from bed to beachtowel and back again. I feel spent.

I went on a women's retreat this weekend. I was with a group of several dozen Christian women who did not know me. It was a lovely group -- diverse ages, warm, caring, and open to new friendships. I felt safe among them and realized it's been years since I felt safe in a church group.

God encouraged me through the Bible study and through several different women I met. I was proud of myself for finding a way to be kind & respectful toward our former congregation while also being honest about my sadness. Today someone even described me as "vulnerable," which is not a word I've ever known anyone to use about me.

I feel hopeful and realistic. We have passed an important landmark but the road is still long.

Being the Pastor's Wife

2010-04-13T10:10:00.001-05:00

At the seminary, I recall a very conscientious effort to help wives of students develop a sense of community and mutual support. It seemed like a good idea, since we were all in the same oddly-shaped boat. It didn’t work out too well for me, though. I felt always on the outside – not German enough, not pious enough, not sweet enough, not “Lutheran” enough – to fit in. I grew up in another denomination and would still be there, I suppose, except that I love a Lutheran man whom God has called to be a pastor. During those first few years I struggled just to understand and accept the Lutheran interpretation of baptism and communion and to figure out how to use the hymnal.

As the years go on, it is a happy surprise for me that the core of Lutheran doctrine is so liberating, so clear about the nature of my relationship to God in Christ. The more I understand the freer I feel to depend on and grow in relationship with Him.

I still feel like I’m on the outside. The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod seems to have a particular culture and I do not feel like a part of it. When I wind up in groups where everyone else has two degrees of separation from every Lutheran who ever lived, I am lost. My uncle didn’t teach your cousin religion in high school; my grandpa wasn’t the pastor who officiated at your husband’s sister’s wedding.

I am stranded on a bridge: too Lutheran to be anything else, and too uncomfortable with the Lutheran cultural identity I’ve encountered to feel I belong inside of it.

Generally speaking, all of this is ok. Depressive episodes of self-doubt notwithstanding, I like myself. I do not, however, assume that other people will like my particular amalgamation of orthodox and non-traditional, reverent and irreverent, conservative and liberal.

The spiritually wise choice is to let this conflict nudge me deeper in God’s Word and an identity that rests solely on Christ. That sounds simple but it isn’t.

Keys to the Kingdom

2010-04-11T21:44:00.003-05:00

In the worship service this morning we prayed that God would work through pastors to fulfill their vocation so that "the joy of God's people would overflow." It struck me as a beautiful and, right now, sad image of the task God has given to pastors. Pastors seem to have tremendous influence to nurture or to destroy the faith that God gives.

Riled Up

2010-04-08T20:27:00.002-05:00

Since I stopped attending worship at our old church I have avoided the place entirely, even driving past it. Today I offered to help a friend by dropping off one of her kids at church and didn't even think about the fact that I avoid going there. I figured it would be ok. I didn't need to go inside the building or talk to anybody.

Turns out, I don't have to go inside the building to feel agitated by being there. I spent about five minutes in the parking lot, spoke to only one person and that conversation was pretty innocuous.

Afterward I felt wound up and agitated, like I'd had three too many cups of coffee. If I'd sat still and thought about it I would have cried.

I expect this. I understand that I have a conditioned fight/flight response to this church. An acquaintance put it succinctly: "Even people who don't believe in God believe in B.F. Skinner."

I understand it and I hate it.

Depression Symptoms: Sleep Disruption

2010-04-08T10:08:00.002-05:00

Waking in the early morning hours and not being able to go back to sleep; insomnia

Excess sleep, fatigue

Sleep disruptions of both sorts have bothered me, though I’ve had more trouble with fatigue than insomnia. For the last many months I’ve discovered that when I feel apprehensive, or obliged to do something that seems overwhelmingly difficult, I get sleepy. I suppose it’s a practical defense mechanism. Understanding the connection between fatigue and anxiety is new for me. A few days ago I had counseling appointment and knew it would be helpful but dreaded it. I really wanted to stay home in bed. Understanding the fatigue is helping me fight it. Having an idea of why I feel so tired sometimes helps motivate me to fight the urge.

Periodically I’ve had trouble with waking at night and not being able to get back to sleep. For a while when I was obsessively anxious about the conflict at church I’d wake keep rehearsing the series of offenses and trying to find ways to solve them. This wasn’t ordinary lying-awake-to-solve-problems stuff. It was pointless and I felt I could not stop it.

I still wake sometimes at night fall into unhelpful patterns of thought while I lie in the quiet darkness.

Maybe I’ve done something horribly wrong.

Maybe I don’t belong in the Lutheran church.

God, am I totally missing something?

I’m swimming in an ocean of misery, mistakes, pointlessness and I can’t see the shore.

I’m just starting to learn how to deal with this. I have to open my eyes and shake my head to get out of it. I realized I also need something else to think about. At first I tried praying, but my mind wanders easily from prayer back to self-doubt. Then I tried rehearsing scripture. A phrase from Ephesians 3 came to mind, “I pray that you ... grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.” I started to think of God’s love as the ocean, wider, longer, higher, and deeper than I could ever understand. I was swimming in an ocean of his love, an absolutely safe place to be. That’s a good thing to ponder in the middle of the night.

To read all the posts in the depression symptoms series, go here.

Depression Symptoms: Weight Loss/Gain

2010-04-06T10:17:00.001-05:00

Significant weight loss or gain

First it was weight loss, then gain. “Loss of interest in most things” included food. Even when I was hungry I didn’t care enough to eat.

Predictably, perhaps, that phase was short-lived compared to the overeating phase. I have a long history of eating for reasons that have nothing to do with hunger, but have generally balanced it with episodes of attention to eating and exercise so that I don’t actually gain too much. Now I am at risk of not fitting into any of my clothes.

The hardest part about this has been that I feel lowest at night, after dark, when I tend to be in the house with little distraction and unlimited access to food. Some nights I have been just trying to stay awake until a reasonable bedtime. I didn’t want to sleep ten hours every night.

Along with a lot of the other symptoms, this seems to be getting better lately. I’ve had more motivation in the evening and am more often able to do something. Read, clean the kitchen, talk to my husband. It takes a lot of energy and self-talk to get started, but doing almost anything generally lifts my mood.

To read all the posts in the depression symptoms series, go here.

Easter Worship

2010-04-04T21:47:00.002-05:00

I didn't make it to church this morning.

That's not a confession, it's a lament. It's a miserable irony of depression that the things I want most are the most difficult to do--sometimes they seem impossible. The good I want to do I do not do...

I absolutely planned to go this morning. I'd talked to the kids about it and checked on whether the nursery would be available. Then I woke up this morning with visions of my impatient children, overflow crowds, and all that holiday hullabaloo that can feel so lonesome.

Yuck. This is such crap. I kind of feel like I've missed out on the most important day of the year.

Depression Symptoms: Loss of Interest

2010-04-01T09:58:00.002-05:00

Loss of interest and enjoyment in most things

One of my favorite things about my life right now is that I can walk my kids to school. The school is just a few blocks from our house and when the weather is nice it seems like such a picturesque life: happy little kids running and laughing on the way to school.

Last spring I’d be on this walk and realize I didn’t care. It was good that my kids were happy, but I didn’t have any feeling about it.

Other things that had reliably lifted my mood in the past became completely uninteresting - sunshine, being with friends, planning short trips to visit family. I seemed incapable of happy anticipation.

Everything became a matter of routine and discipline. I ate because I was feeding the kids and knew I should eat, too. I went outside because it made the kids happy. I spent time with other people because that seemed to be a good thing to do.

Losing interest in everything meant losing all intrinsic motivation. Everything I did was for some external reason. I noticed that Therapist was sometimes very expressive on my behalf, as though to show me how I would feel were I to have feelings. I’d describe some small event that seemed good and her face would light up and she’d bounce up in her seat as she talked. It is strange to need someone else to express feelings for you.

Since my husband and I have both been dealing with depression, we have not been able to provide this helpful emotional feedback for each other. Emotional blandness seems to be even more persistent for him than for me, so we are only occasionally able to cheerlead each other through low patches.

This spring is noticeably different. Sunshine lifts my mood; my children’s happiness is contagious. The church I attend now is a happy place for me and the smiles and handshakes I’m offered buoy me. It’s like I’m waking up. I’m still drowsy, but I am confident that God will open my eyes and get my heart rate back to normal after a while.

To read all the posts in the depression symptoms series, go here.

Depression Symptoms: Crying

2010-03-30T10:08:00.003-05:00

I am was not a crier. Every once in a while my husband would get a shoulderful when I felt overwhelmed, but mostly I kept my emotions under control.

When husband took medical leave, I cried uncontrollably for a week. I couldn’t do anything because I was crying so much. I didn’t want to go anywhere or talk to anyone because I feared I might burst into tears. Bursting into tears is embarrassing and awkward and, I thought, inappropriate. Even my kids, who are 99% self-centered, were worried about me.

I made it through that week and regained my composure. I thought things were going to get better after that. For a couple of months, they seemed to be. Then some fresh stupidity came about at church and I realized peace was not on the horizon. The crying started again and I couldn’t stop.

The constant crying is what prompted me to see a therapist. It was such a weird feeling. I appreciate a good cry, the kind that relieves stress and afterward I can see clearly things that had seemed foggy. This crying was different. It was like a nosebleed that can’t be stopped. Just when I’d think it was over, I’d start sobbing again. I couldn’t shake it off. I didn’t feel better afterward. I just felt sad.

Taking medication and talking to Therapist both helped this symptom a lot very quickly. Sympathy and perspective were the first two things I got from therapy. I’d closed my world down to a tiny, isolated place where it was hard to not feel desperate.

I’ve learned to talk to some people about how I feel. Writing this blog is a tremendous help in dealing with feelings I don’t understand and feeling like I’m part of a community. Just knowing that people close to me understand things are hard relieves a lot of stress.

To read all the posts in the depression symptoms series, go here.

The Ninny Report

2010-03-29T20:07:00.003-05:00

This is so immature of me, but sr. pastor is still making me bananas and I need to whine about it. Today the staff was all together for devotions and sr. pastor gave a briefing about the candidates the call committee is considering to fill my husband's position.

And my husband was in the room.

And no one on the staff has said anything about his leaving, or we'll miss you, or we wish you well. Several public announcements about calling a new pastor, no public announcements about saying goodbye to THE ONE WHO IS STILL SERVING THEM!

He is such an idiot about dealing with people.

Depression Symptoms: Sadness

2010-03-28T21:13:00.006-05:00

Recently I posted a list of the symptoms of major depression. I thought it might be helpful (to you and to me) if I describe how each of these symptoms has affected me. I’ve read the list of depression symptoms dozens of times in my life, but it was almost meaningless to me until I started living it.

A persistent, sad, empty mood

Two weeks of persistent sadness seems to be the standard measure for depression. I used to wonder how anyone could possibly feel sad for two weeks straight. Two days, maybe, but then you just have to get a hold of yourself.

Now I understand. I have felt sad for months at a time this year. I have been paralyzed by it. I have felt like I was drowning in sadness. Moments of hope or optimism sometimes felt like slippery things floating past me in the ocean, things someone else knew how to grasp but I just watched them go by.

At one point, Therapist was trying to help me imagine when it would be time to talk seriously about my husband resigning for the sake of our mental health. She suggested if I could not remember the last time I was happy, it might be time. I actually thought, “You mean I should be able to remember the last time I was happy?”

To read all the posts in the depression symptoms series, go here.

What Depression Feels Like

2010-03-24T09:00:00.001-05:00

I've heard someone describe depression as "feeling like you've never had a good day in your life." It's true.

A few days ago I was completely wasted. I could not make myself get out of bed. I knew that lying in bed does not make depression go away but felt overpowered by vague and persistent feelings of wanting to surrender. At times like that, how I feel and what I know are completely unrelated. I feel like nothing good exists for me, but know that there is lots of good in my life.

I could not think what to do except hope that the next morning I would feel better. Blessedly, I did.

Days like that remind me why the relationship between the psychological and the spiritual is so hard to define. Days like that feel like Satan is working overtime, like I might never again be in the light.

If someone asked me why I go to church I might say it's because of days like that. I need to practice knowing that Jesus is with me, that God's promises are reliable, so I can see them in the dark.

What Happened?

2010-03-23T11:28:00.002-05:00

We have gotten some very kind notes in the last week from friends who want to support and encourage us. It's so good and helpful and hard and I love them for it.

One friend asked, as many have before, what happened to create such conflict in our congregation. I tried to describe how it started here, but really I have no clear answer. The energy, the hours, the tears, that have been poured into trying to grasp the conflict so that something could be done to resolve it are incalculable.

I have theories and I can talk for hours about what I think is going on, but that only agitates me and arouses my anger. I feel like it would help if I could answer this question in some short, understandable way.

Telling the Truth

2010-03-21T09:00:00.003-05:00

This has been the best week I've had in a long time. I've felt good from breakfast til lunch every day. Things go downhill after that, but maybe I'm just rebuilding stamina.

This week I finally mailed a belated "Christmas" letter to our friends and family. I wrote mostly about our fantastic kids but included news of my depression and my husband's unexpected break from ministry.

Sending that letter was hard. I want people who love us to know what is happening in our lives, but that was a lot of self-revelation in one mass mailing. Discretion has been a guiding ethic in my life so far and learning to balance that with relationship-building emotional honesty is exhausting.

Sunday

2010-03-15T15:34:00.004-05:00

Going to a new church is making me realize just how much I have hated going to church lately. En route yesterday my kids were acting crazy in the car, and I remembered how that used to put me over the edge on Sunday morning. Yesterday, it seemed fine and I knew they'd quit as soon as they unbuckled.

At our new church, lots of people smile and shake my hand and it's easy for me to say, "I'm new here. Could you tell me where to find...? How to ...?" There is a kids' church during the sermon, so we found the person who manages that and she showed us how it all works. When it was time for them to leave the service, my kids just got up and followed everyone else and were happy as could be.

The sermon addressed, in part, our identity. Does your identity rest in Christ, or in obedience, or right doctrine, etc. I tried to apply this only to myself, but my mind kept wandering to sr. pastor. My experience of him suggests that his identity is in something like being right. Technically speaking, that's not my concern anymore since I don't need to see him. But it is very hard to stop judging him.

Thankfully, there was also confession & absolution during the service.

Oddly Reassuring

2010-03-12T22:25:00.006-06:00

I happened on this thoughtful article about Christian faith, ministry, and depression from a magazine called Just Between Us. No new information for me, but lots of things that I can't hear often enough.

The section on major depression helps me feel less freakish. It's good to see that everything I feel overwhelmed by is common to this disease. I'm not dealing with all of these symptoms, but enough of them at various times to feel like I'm totally losing myself. I am comforted and alarmed every time I read a list of depression symptoms and recognize myself.

Major Depression. This is severe clinical depression, an illness. Your physiology, thinking, and emotional state are disturbed. It is disabling and interferes with your ability to function and think normally. It can be experienced at one time in your life or at repeated intervals. It can go on for months or for years, if untreated. The symptoms need to be constant for two weeks or longer to be diagnosed as major depression.
The symptoms include:
a persistent, sad, empty mood
crying or inability to cry
loss of interest and enjoyment in most things
significant weight loss or gain
waking in the early morning hours and not being able to go back to sleep; insomnia
excess sleep, fatigue
loss of energy
social withdrawal
feeling agitated
a profound sense of worthlessness
feelings of inadequacy or shame
loss of sexual desire
difficulty thinking and concentrating
indecisiveness
recurrent thoughts of death or dying, possibly with suicidal plans
substance abuse

Bitter Root

2010-03-11T14:32:00.002-06:00

A lot of things are going well. I think I said that in my last post. It’s true. I’m going to a new church where I am able to worship without layers of anger, I’m making some plans for the near future, and I’ve been trying to focus my attention on stretching out good days.

But I also had a counseling appointment this week. It took me a solid 24 hours to come down after that. It was a very agitating conversation and I left feeling like every nerve in my body was standing at full attention.

Being away from church has made a huge dent in my day-to-day anxiety level, but the intense negative feelings I have about what’s happened there did not evaporate. I bumped into a church member earlier this week and had a short conversation with him. He kindly expressed his sadness at our departure and offered to help if we need anything in the months ahead. It seemed like a perfectly appropriate and reasonable conversation but I was catapulted into deep distress, sadness, a steady mental rehearsal of every painful episode.

Therapist drew a comparison with post-traumatic stress disorder to help me understand what was going on. It sounds like a primary way of dealing with this is to talk about it. Ugh. I hate talking about it. I hate thinking about it. I hate being angry. Even writing this is making me feel agitated again.

“I will not let this bitter root grow in me • I will not let you leave that legacy • But it gets so hard when pain is all I see” (from the song “Tornado,” Sara Groves)

Fruit of the Spirit

2010-03-09T10:39:00.002-06:00

The acts of the sinful nature are obvious...hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy... But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Galatians 5:19-23)

Good things have happened in the last week. Sunday I attended a new church. I think “our church” is now “my former church.” What a relief. For the first time in months, I listened to the sermon without meditating on the failings of sr. pastor. I heard God talking to me about Himself and me.

Here’s what I heard: you are not bearing the fruit of the Spirit, mp, you are bearing the fruit of you. Nursing anger and wishing for disharmony at your former congregation comes from you. Let Me live in you, and I will fill your heart with love, peace, and patience.

Ouch. And thank you. And let me think on that.

**************

Evenings tend to be difficult for me. Along about 9:00, the kids have been in bed for a while and I can feel pretty blue. I settle on an old recording of unhappy thoughts -- what if? why didn’t he? why us? will this ever be over? Urgent to escape that unpleasantness, I take a moment to select some distraction: eat something (good feelings), watch tv (mind numbing), read a Psalm (reassurance), go to bed (escape). Of these, reading a Psalm is the one that takes a fair bit of discipline. I do not choose it most often because it doesn’t involve escape. Praying = thinking & feeling, two things I’m basically trying to avoid.

Last night, as it happens, I made it through Psalm 37. It was reassuring, challenging, painful & hopeful. Am I the only one who finds this difficult?

Baffled

2010-03-02T11:06:00.001-06:00

Depression has turned the part of my brain that houses self-worth into mashed potatoes. I don’t recall ever having a profound problem sustaining a sense of personal value. Periodic anxieties and doubts, yes; generally overcome with logic and affirmation. Now I have whole days and weeks when I cannot come up with a clear sense of why anyone cares that I am here.

I can talk myself through this. My kids need me. My husband loves me and depends on me in many good and meaningful ways. I have friends who care for me. One friend of many years has spent 4 days in her car during the last year just to come see me when I have been at the bottom of the well. God keeps showing up when I’m about to completely lose it.

That list is an intellectual exercise that would usually light up my internal sense of value. These days the wiring is loose, and my You-Matter Lightbulb doesn’t always turn on.

I’m not clear on when the brain-mushiness will subside. It also screws with my decision-making ability. If I’m trying to decide about something and don’t trust myself, I replay something Therapist suggested, or something a friend said, and then try to weigh that against what I see. It’s weird to rely so heavily on that.

I have a dear friend who says that when she prays for me she says, “Ok, God, game on! Whatcha got? I know You’re going to do something exciting with them.” It’s really nice that she tells me this. I feel such an overwhelming sense of dread and uncertainty, and her confidence and enthusiasm about God’s work in us is a hopeful little platform for me to stand on.

Espionage

2010-02-26T07:15:00.003-06:00

And now, a little spying. A few days ago my husband was talking to someone from a local congregation that is interested in having him help them out for a while, and maybe to call him eventually if they can gather the funds. An elder from our congregation was in the same coffee shop and apparently eavesdropping on their conversation and thought there must be something untoward about. The elder didn't speak to my husband, but he reported the conversation to the senior pastor.

Are they a bunch of teenage girls?

The End is in Sight

2010-02-24T05:31:00.005-06:00

It's very early in the morning. Still an hour or more before the rest of my family wakes up but I can't sleep.

On this blog I've tried to capture the emotional essence of my experience without describing events in specific because, really, who cares? This isn't a historical account. Today I just have to cut to the chase.

My husband is resigning from our congregation. The meeting a couple of days ago was with the church council to discuss his intention. The council members seemed to get it - why he is leaving, what their responsibility is to us as we go, that this is a big risk for us. The senior pastor and congregation president, on the other hand...

Were I to write a novel about church conflict, I could not invent a scene to more clearly express the interpersonal and managerial ineptitude that plagues this congregation. My husband described briefly how the congregation president and senior pastor have made it clear that they require we leave the church. Responses from council members were varied, but all compassionate and involved. Cong. president said little until confronted and senior pastor sat in the back of the room reading a book. Bizarre is kindest description I can muster.

The very good news is that there is an end date. The bad news is that I do not feel relieved. I am &%#)!# angry. I don't know what I thought was going to happen. I suppose I hoped that senior pastor would make some small gesture of regret, apology, compassion. He has known of my husband's intention to resign for several weeks and continues to be all business. Sometimes I imagine that he might try to say goodbye to me in some noble, we-wish-you-well sort of way and I might smack him. It seems so satisfying in my imagination.

Thank You

2010-02-22T22:12:00.003-06:00

Thank you for your prayers. The meeting went as well as we could have hoped. From my husband's report, it sounds like he was able to speak honestly and that most of the people present seemed to hear him. Praise God.

Urgent Need for Prayer

2010-02-22T14:12:00.003-06:00

My husband has a meeting tonight with several members of our congregation. It is very important that the conflict be discussed honestly, but we have reason to believe that many of the people he'll be with are in extreme denial about the intensity of the conflict between my husband and the senior pastor.

It is physically painful for me that I cannot alleviate the anxiety or stress of this for my husband. I rely on the confidence that God will be at that meeting and that He works in the hearts of all the people there. Please pray that everyone there tonight will speak the truth in love and hear the truth in love.

Stress Contagion

2010-02-20T22:54:00.004-06:00

The last several weeks have not gone smoothly for me at church. A series of problems involving the kids -- sickness, tears and pleas for me to stay in Sunday school, multiplied misbehavior during worship -- has disrupted my plan every week.

I am an excessively self-aware parent. I regularly evaluate my own behavior and attitudes and try to decipher how I am affecting my children. I have purposely avoided analyzing our Sunday morning misadventures. There are so many reasonable explanations: they are young, there are three of them, it is winter, they are tired, I am tired.

I'm losing patience with these explanations, though. I'm pretty sure the stress I feel on Sunday is getting them wound up. I don't have any idea what I might do about it. Sunday is stressful. I want desperately to be at church and to be glad I'm there. No matter what I pray, or read, or try to think about during worship, the underlying conflict erupts somewhere.

The weeks ahead promise to be more complicated than the last few months. We are developing plans to move away from this situation and transition brings anxiety and conflict up from the locked closet in the basement.

This week someone reminded me of how "late" Jesus was when his dear friend Lazarus became sick. Lazarus was dead by the time Jesus got there. If Jesus had shown up when people thought he should, then the miracle of Lazarus' resurrection would not have happened. I cannot fix my Sunday morning stress, but I can try to be patient and trust God for the outcome.

This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God's glory so that God's Son may be glorified through it. John 11:4