Notes to My Younger Self

On Saturday mornings, our church has a ministry at a local nursing home. A few of us takes turns leading a simple service, and there is usually a very small group of residents in attendance. This past Saturday, I had the opportunity to give the devotional to a group of elderly ladies there. They listened with rapt attention as I talked to them about the last four verses of Psalm 92, where the Psalmist says that the righteous - those who have their righteousness in Christ, as saved believers - can still be fruitful and flourishing in old age.

Sunday morning found me in my usual place of teaching my Sunday School class of teenage girls. They range in age from 12-17, and listen to me with varying degrees of attention. Most of the time I go away with the feeling that they didn't get it at all. Sunday School and church don't rank high on their list of priorities. Yet, they are at such an important point in their lives, where they are going to be making many major decisions in the next few years. I long for them to have their lives rooted and grounded spiritually and to be growing into Godly womanhood now, before those decision-making times come.

These past few days, I have been thinking a lot about these two groups of ladies. One group is at the end of their lives - most of their life is behind them, and they are now facing limitations in both their mental and physical abilities. The other group is just beginning. They have their whole life in front of them. And in between those two groups of ladies, a whole lot of life takes place. As I was thinking about this, I asked myself this:  if I could go back and give my younger self some advice, what would it be? Today in this post I am going to talk specifically about things I have learned as a pastor's wife. In the next post I will talk about advice to younger women and mothers, in general. But these lessons I have learned as the wife of a pastor can apply to everyone.

I did not marry a pastor. He was a successful businessman for 15 years before the Lord called Him to preach. When we started out in ministry, we had been married 20 years and had 3 children. I was scared to death about being a pastor's wife. And even though I knew it was going to be hard, it's interesting that the things I thought were going to be the hardest, aren't. Things like loneliness and needing to be flexible because your husband is always "on call", and difficult counseling situations are not the hard things. God is always faithful. He has helped me adjust to those things over the years. The hard things are when your sheep wander away for greener pastures, usually for silly or wrong reasons, or worse, when they never even tell you the reason. When the people whom you pour your life into make wrong choices and go away from the Lord. When your husband is discouraged. When people are upset at your husband for no reason, and so by association they are upset with you too - just because you are his wife. If I could give a couple pieces of advice to myself as a younger pastor's wife, they would be these:

1. What you are is more important that what you do. You can always be doing more. You can never please everyone. Everyone will have a different opinion of what you do or don't do. You are responsible to please the Lord, your husband, and no one else. I always have to remember I am serving the Lord, not the church. Eph. 6:7 - "Not with eye service, as men pleasers, but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart."

2. You can't give out what you don't take in. Saturating yourself with the Word of God is so very important. Trying to give what you don't have is like trying to pour water out of a dry bucket. It won't work! My most important priority has to be my personal time with the Lord in His Word. My most precious possession is my Bible and my stack of journals that contain all the scriptures, wisdom and lessons the Lord has taught me.

3. The most important job of the pastor's wife is to be the wife of the pastor. Sounds elementary, but only you can be your husband's wife and your kids' mom. I need to be his wife and helpmeet first.

4. This one was given to me by my mentor and dear Pastor's wife, Mrs. Bobbie Yearick: You can't help people if you get into the pit with them. Yes, I need to have compassion and I need to do what I can to help them with the problems they have. But I need to make sure that I am guarding myself and my emotional, spiritual and physical health.  I cannot get so caught up in people's problems that I get down and depressed myself, and neglect my own responsibilities. I am not the answer to people's problems. God is. I'm thankful for that!

Whether or not you are the wife of a pastor, I hope these pieces of advice to my younger self are a blessing and a help to you.

Till next time,
Kathi