Nightmare on Church Street

When I married my husband, I married the “student” version of him. I knew that eventually I would have to deal with him being a youth pastor, but in the moments prior to our marriage, he was working part time and going to classes. The first year of our marriage, he taught 5th grade at a private school, and I finished up my degree. What I did, or said, or acted like, wasn’t really the concern of anyone but myself. No one paid attention to me, or expected anything of me. Life was as it always had been for me: I do what I want. I realized very quickly that after Jeff got his first ministry job, what I did and said were very far from what I wanted.


It was hard to transition at first, to being the wife of a clergy member. I had to change many mannerisms and behaviors. People expect a certain poise and class from the wife of a pastor, even though everyone told me the expectations are slightly different for a youth pastor’s wife. Wrong. They’re about the same.


I didn’t have a mentor, or anyone to talk to about it, or help me transition a little more smoothly. I was on my own.


I think it was particularly difficult for me because not only had I literally just graduated college and had to figure out life after COMP 101, but I had also moved 250 miles from everything I knew, AND became “the pastor’s wife”. It was more than just a slight change, it was a complete overhaul of just about everything I had known for a quarter of a century.


We moved from a very large city in Florida to, what I consider, a small town in Georgia - to them it’s considered a metropolitan area. The main criteria for that classification was the existence of a Wal-Mart within city limits. The first week we were here a delivery man asked why we would move from Florida to here, and laughed that the only thing to do in town was go to that Wal-Mart. He wasn’t lying.