Great Commission Churches

October 2007

Dear Sisters,

Would we describe our lives as pastors' wives to be "the perfect life?" "For better, for worse" we and our men pledged our lives together. Is that enough? Kelly Lewis understood during a difficult year as a couple how much her husband Terry needed her as his support-and she needed his. She found that in the hard times and the good, it's enough to do her husband good, and not evil, all the days of her life (Proverbs 31:12). It is the perfect life! So whether you're having a season that you would call "better" or one that is "worse" may you find grace in your time of need by drawing close to one another and the Lord.

In His grace,

Sandy

The Perfect Life for Me

By Kelly Lewis, Grace Point Community Church, Lewis Center, OH

Last spring Terry and I took our daughter Abby to see the movie Amazing Grace. As we were leaving, Terry asked, "Do you know who the real hero is in that story?'

Abby, like all self-respecting PKs, answered, "God." And although that was a pretty good response, Terry was actually thinking of Barbara Wilberforce. If you haven't seen the movie, when William Wilberforce had given up on his dream to abolish slavery in England, and it seemed as though the whole world was against him, it was Barbara who believed in him, encouraged him, and stood by him. I was inspired by that example and it led me to thinking about the topic for this newsletter.

I wanted to start off with a disclaimer - this article doesn't talk about three sure-fire ways to stand by your man, and it's not filled with a lot of practical to-do stuff. Rather, it's an honest look at some storms Terry and I have faced recently, along with my realization that we needed to learn how to hold onto each other as a couple through all of them.

The first half of 2007 had not been a good year for us. Without going into a lot of detail, there were some struggles in our church, some conflicts to work through, and some good friends that left. I also went through some health issues that left us feeling a little bewildered by life. It's funny, because I've always thought of myself as a person well suited to be married to a pastor. I love having a house full of people, a calendar jammed-filled with activity, partnering with Terry, and living an adventure. I guess I just never thought people would say negative things about Terry, or the church, and I never realized how much it would hurt.

So what do you do as a couple when you find yourselves staring at each other, beaten up by life, and wondering where God is in it all? It's an important question to answer, because we will all face it in issues dealing with our kids, our relationships, our church, and our finances. I think the first word that comes to mind for me is tenderness.

Terry and I just needed to be able to hold each other without words and know everything was going to be okay. It was the best picture we could have of God's comfort and tenderness toward us. Secondly, we needed to be able to separate who we were as a family from our lives in ministry, and to protect those boundaries. This is a tough one for me. There were evenings when Terry would come home and I would be full of questions: "What are we going to do about this?" "What's going to happen now?" I just had to let it go and to allow home to be a refuge where Terry could be a husband and dad and to take off his pastor's hat for a while.

I don't know how many of you have read Jan Karon's Mitford series of books, but they are among my favorites. In one of them, Father Tim's wife (Cynthia) is reading a quote that says, "It is as important to marry the right life as it is the right person." Then she adds, "I thought about it when I married you, you know - whether this was the right life for me. And it is...it's perfect."

I shared that quote with Terry and was able to tell him that despite ups and downs, I could say wholeheartedly that being a pastor's wife is the perfect life for me. Our husbands so need to hear that from us!

The good news about storms is that they eventually end. We just had a congregational meeting at Grace Point and there was such a buzz of hope and excitement for where God was leading us. On a personal note, I recently had two very positive reports from doctors and my health is great. The tendency for me would be to jump back into church life and to let it become more important than taking care of our life as a couple, but I am doing my best to remember, through both the good and the difficult times, to strive to live Proverbs 31:12 and to "do my husband good every day of my life."