Oh, I’m at it again.  Falling behind on writing and forgetting to post.  Then I wonder why nobody’s reading this thing anymore.  Gee, why would that be the case?  I’m alive and well, just been busy and traveling again.  This trip was actually planned, believe it or not, well in advance.  My grandparents celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary last weekend (technically the date was October 2, but they had the party on the 10th.  We traveled to Nebraska and saw my dad’s whole side of the family, pretty much.  It’s weird how much his siblings’ families have fractured over the years.  I have six first cousins on that side, five of whom were at the party, plus me and my sister.  But I hadn’t seen any of them since we were kids, really.  I can’t actually remember the last time I saw any of them.  All of my dad’ds sibblings have been divorced (two of them have two divorces behind them, the other one).  My aunt is actually on husband number 4 as her 3rd husband died a couple of years ago.  Most of this was details that I was already aware of.  But my oldest cousin is separated from his wife, and while one could attribute that to being the child of divorce, his parents didn’t actually split up until he was long out of the house! I just share all of this as facts, however, knowing that the circumstances behind marriages ending are as various as the stars in the sky.  I don’t pretend to know what these families have gone through, as I hardly know the individuals involved!

That’s one of those things that is weird for me.  I barely know some of my family, and I guess this should bother me more than it does.  But we’re separated by geography and circumstances and just plain not knowing one another.  I can’t imagine what their image is of me and my sister, since we were not only pastor’s kids but also married pastors.

On top of all of this, my sister and her husband drove down for the anniversary, left the party early to drive home to South Dakota, and his last Sunday was the 11th.  The moving van came Monday morning and they moved into their new house in Wisconsin Wednesday.  So despite my life feeling a bit busy, I’m experiencing nothing compared to the chaos that is my sister’s life right now.

Meanwhile, I am determined to get back into a routine (I think I’ve written that before…).  Today’s Friday which is always a weird day to try to get things done, but since I have to put together my lesson plan for Sunday’s Bible study and also plan a skeleton idea of worship for November 1st so the praise team can practice on Tuesday, I guess it won’t be a typical Friday for me.  Monday will include a staff meeting and a dentist appointment (the 8th one this year, I think, or is it 9th?).  But I can handle it, I’m just going to bring my stuff to work on for worship and Bible study and stay in Hudson for the day.

As for the title of this post, it’s from an episode of Gilmore Girls.  The characters are talking about how funny the words “Oy” and “poodle” are.  Since I saw my grandma’s poodle this week, it seems appropriate.

I thought for a long time this summer that we just weren’t very busy.  Stuff was moving slowly, we had lots of time on our hands.  Now that school has started again I’ve realized that we’re actually quite busy.  Invitations from members keep coming up, lots of activities to get involved with at church, and several Bible studies besides.

For example, last week we had the following activities: on Tuesday, I went to a women’s Bible study in the morning.  Wednesday came with apple picking with one member and dinner with members that evening (the dinner was actually cancelled last minute but still counts as a scheduled event).  Thursday my husband had men’s chorus in the evening and Friday we had dinner at a member’s house.  Saturday we went to a party at another member’s house, and Sunday we hosted our first small group meeting.

Now we’re at today – we are getting together with some people from church to plan some stuff for Friday (more later on that).  Tomorrow is the make-up for the dinner from last week, then Wednesday I have choir and Thursday he has men’s chorus.  Friday we’re having a house warming party for the church and his family and some friends.  Whew!  I haven’t even thought about Saturday or Sunday yet, but next week we fly to Nebraska (again, I know!) for my grandparents’ 60th wedding anniversary.  Such a lot going on.  In the meantime, I’m trying to get household stuff done even though my washing machine is possessed (or at the very least, broken).  Currently the power is off, and I can open and shut the front-loader door, but the indicater light says that the door is locked, something that should only be true while a cycle is running and prevents me from opening the door.  This is in addition to the fact that it doesn’t want to start sometimes without being unplugged to reset it (although we can’t reach the plug since the washer and dryer are in a tight-fitted closet, so it requires going down to the basement to turn the breaker on and off).  I’m so frustrated with this machine!

I think I’m one of the slack-est bloggers around.  I keep thinking I will do better with blogging on a regular basis, but truthfully my life isn’t always interesting enough to blog about.  That and then things get busy with travel (again!) so I end up letting this thing sit for days and weeks at a time.

Let’s see, where did I leave off?  It’s been over two weeks and last time I posted I was worried that I was starting to wallow in depression.  I would imagine that some of you have wondered if that’s what’s going on with me.  In truth, I still feel a little of that coming on, but I’m doing ok.  I tend to have what I call a “vocational crisis” about every year or two.  One of the things that has helped me in recent years is the book Pathways to Purpose for Women by Katie Braselton.  So I grabbed that off the shelf and am reading it for probably the fourth time.  While I’m not one to jump on the Purpose Driven Life bandwagon, she’s actually a staff member at Saddleback and part of the Rick Warren group.  This is a different take on being purpose-driven, though, where it breaks down the journey to vocation into reasonable steps and is geared specifically toward women and our particular needs.

In the meantime, just when I was getting settled back into a routine at home, I got a call from my mom two weeks ago Sunday to tell me that Arlene had passed away.  Arlene was my grandpa’s first cousin, but they were raised together so she was basically my great aunt.  The other family connection is that her husband is actually my grandma’s first cousin, so the family tree kind of doubles back on itself.  When I was growing up, we didn’t do a lot of holiday stuff with my dad’s family.  I haven’t seen any of my first cousins since we were kids.  On my mom’s side, we have no first cousins.  Mom’s only sibbling, a sister, doesn’t have children.  But we did stuff with mom’s family every holiday (Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, sometimes other times throughout the year).  So Glenn and Arlene, their two daughters, and their families, were the cousins that I knew best.  This group, plus us, my grandparents, and my aunt, was the extended family I knew and loved.

Arlene has been sick for the last few years, possibly Alzheimers, and was in a nursing home for the past year or so.  She started to decline in the last month, so I wasn’t surprised to get the call.  Thankfully I found an inexpensive flight and headed back west for the third time this year.

On top of all of this, my sister’s husband just accepted a call to a new congregation.  They will be moving from South Dakota to Wisconsin in a few weeks.  So while in Nebraska, I helped her and my mom prepare for a garage sale (she held it at my mom’s house because it’s a bigger town and easier to sell things).

So many transitions.  The year is starting to heat up, with lots of activities at church.  I’ve been teaching Bible study for a couple of weeks now and it’s going well.  I’m also going to be temporarily heading up our church’s praise team, something that scares me as well as makes me excited.  Busy, busy, busy!  Yet not much that sounds interesting enough to blog about regularly.  I’m going to try to get back to my focus of pastors’ wives.  It’s what my life is and will be, and I hope to keep sharing what little wisdom I have related to it.  Thanks for sticking with me!

My husband asked me yesterday what I feel God is calling me to do, since he read my post.  The thing is, I don’t know what it is He is calling me for right now, because I haven’t been listening to Him much lately.  Don’t get me wrong – I’m in worship sometimes twice weekly.  I hear the sermons and find something every time that’s meaningful to me (not just because it’s my husband preaching, either: I’ve actually heard three other people preach in the last month).  I read from the Bible almost every day.  I’ve been preparing for teaching a Bible study starting this Sunday.  I follow a few other Christian blogs.  It’s not like God hasn’t been talking to me.  But I’ve been too scared to really listen and ingest what He’s saying to me.

As a Lutheran, I’ve been taught to be cautious about direct revelation.  Everything we need to know God has revealed to us in His Word.  However, I know that God continues to reveal Himself to us through that Word.  There have been many times in my life where I’ll be reading or hearing the same verse of Scripture I’ve heard a hundred times before, and God will open my eyes to understanding it in a new way.  Some people call it conscience, others intuition.  I know it’s the Holy Spirit guiding me.  That’s what the life of sanctification is all about – being transformed daily into the image of Christ.

But lately I’ve been tuning out the little pokes of the Holy Spirit, or I let them wash over me and then move on with whatever I was already doing.  I know this is a dangerous place to be.  I’ve been here before, and depression is right around the corner.  Satan is good at what he does, convincing me that it’s no big deal until I’m so far steeped in self-loathing that I can’t see the sun.  But I know God is better at what He does – reminding me that I am first and foremost His child.  Every time I’ve been in that dark scary place, God has lifted me out.  Right now I know He’s teaching me how to avoid falling into it in the first place.

Despite my good intentions to go to that exercise class today, I stayed home.  I spent a lot more time in front of the television and playing computer/cell phone games than I would like.  And I could spend the rest of the week beating myself up for that.  I tend to fall into these vicious circles of being lazy, then feeling guilty for being lazy, which makes me feel even more lazy…. you get the picture.  But I’m going to cut myself some slack.  After all, I don’t really HAVE to do the things on my list.  I just don’t want to get into the mind set that I will never do them.  Instead, I’m going to give myself today as a pass, and pick up on things tomorrow.  And hey, I finally got a burst of energy twenty minutes ago or so and finished a lot of my bare minimums (including writing a blog post).  So that is something to celebrate.  In the meantime, I’ve been pondering a couple of other peoples’ blogs today, particularly this one about being brave.  I think that might be part of my problem, I’m too scared to go out on a limb and listen to what God is calling me to do, let alone do it.  Gee, do you think God is calling me to listen right now?

I spend a lot of time by myself.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing in my mind, though I do know that it wears on me after a long time.  I tend to be introverted, so I enjoy the peace and quiet.  In fact, last week was so hectic that I’m looking forward to having a little down time in the next few days.  It helps me reenergize for those times when I have to be around big groups of people.

At the same time, I know it’s not good for me to spend too much time alone.  I get a little bit depressed when I do that.  The good news about that is I’m finding ways to start filling my time with connections.  I’ve realized that the summer around here will be pretty laid back.  Not much goes on because a lot of people from church travel.  All of the “stuff” slows down that we fill our time with.  So I may have to be more proactive in filling summer days than I will during the school year.  This post-Labor day, I am looking to my new-ish weekly schedule.  I find that I have an exercise class three mornings per week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday), a Bible study on Tuesday morning, and the potential for two to three evenings a week to be filled with rehearsals, small group, and meetings.  I still have all day Thursday unaccounted for, plus my afternoons.  Why did I think I needed to find a job to fill my time?

I think it’s because I need to have the people connection.  I read an article the other day about telecommuting, talking about how every four hours you should log some face-to-face time with someone, even if it’s just saying hi to the neighbor.  I think I will be covered with my out-of-house stuff, plus walking the dog around our neighborhood.

But all of this has gotten me thinking about how I’m “connected” to a lot of people on Facebook (178 friends as of this writing!  Why?), through reading others’ blogs (I follow somewhere in the ballpark of 15 other blogs, give or take), and sharing my own stuff via this blog (with a handful of readers) and my facebook status (which sometimes gets a comment or two).  Despite all of those supposed connections, I know I’m not really connected to a lot of people.  I know that those of you who read this care about me, as do quite of few of those facebook friends.  But I do know that getting out there and just being with people is the real key to friendships.  We spent the weekend with some friends from our old church who drove down to visit, and it was nice to just socialize for a while.  Sometimes even just being quiet with another person is better than me blabbing my endless thoughts over the internet.  It’s probably why I haven’t joined the Twitter phenomenon yet – I don’t see the point in sharing my status with the world ad naseum.  Yes, I do the status thing on facebook, but that’s merely an occassional thing and not what I see the purpose of that site to be.

Anyway, that’s my rant about this online thing.  I enjoy it, don’t get me wrong.  But I can see the falacy of always being connected.  How ironic, given that I just got an iPhone next week and can facebook, blog, email, or even twitter if I wanted to 24/7, no matter where I am.  It’s probably a good thing I’m realizing this now.

I’m sorry I fell behind on posting stuff this week.  Lots of things happening in my life, all of which left me pretty busy, so busy in fact that I can’t really remember much from Monday or Tuesday, except that Tuesday evening we had dinner with some member and then chatted with them at our house for several hours into the evening.  Next came Wednesday.  That morning was pretty basic, just me getting stuff done around the house, working through my to-do list.  Then I left at 3pm and didn’t return home until after 9.  Thursday was similar, except I left the house around noon, was home briefly to eat dinner, and then left again and didn’t get home until closer to 10.  Yesterday I tried to get a few things done in the morning, followed by an outing with members that lasted from 1 until bedtime.  Whew!

So that sums up the busyness, but I left out two critical pieces of events that transpired this week, but due to their order of importance I’m going to share them in backwards order chronologically.  First, I got an iPhone on Thursday.  We knew we were going to switch cell phone carriers anyway, and AT&T actually paid to get us out of our Verizon contract (I have no beef with Verizon, have loved them for six+ years, but they just don’t have great reception in our area).  I was frustrated because I’ve used a Palm phone for two years now, loving its planning features and to-do list.  I didn’t particularly like any of the AT&T phones except the iPhone but couldn’t justify the extra $30 a month when I’m not working and don’t REALLY need it.  But then we learned from the church secretary that the congregation actually meant all along to include my husband on the church’s cell phone plan, which already is used by the retired visitation pastor, and his wife pays the $10 a month for her line to be added on.  So our numbers got added to it, too, and despite the fact that we’re paying $30 each for our two iPhones (of course Travis got one!) and the $10 for my line, it’s still going to be close to $50 a month LESS than we were paying for a plan by ourselves!  Thank you Gloria Dei!

The second, and more important event that happened this week, is that I’m actually not unemployed anymore (or soon won’t be).  I had mentioned that I was interviewing for the Praise Team director position at our church.  They called me in for a second interview on Wednesday, and I talked to them about my concerns for my limitations.  Because the current director is leaving, I mentioned that I wouldn’t be opposed to taking on the position temporarily while they continued to look for someone with more musical ability to help coach the instrumentalists.  After a brief interview and some private conferring on the part of the team, they offered me the position of Interim Praise Team Director!

There’s something exciting about this, getting to help with planning and leading worship.  In addition, the Interim part of the title gives me a better sense of freedom with this job, that I don’t really need to prove something to the church in order to keep the position.  Everyone knows it’s temporary, which means I can just DO my job.  I tend to get anxious when I’m working about expectations of others, and this really frees me from that burden.  Not that I won’t do my job, don’t get me wrong.  I take it very seriously.  But if someone is bothered by something I do because its “not how we’ve always done it,” I can just shrug and say, “take it up with the permanent person when they’re hired.  This is how we’re going to do it for now.”

The job actually doesn’t start until probably October, to give the current director a chance to have a last Sunday leading and plan for it.  I’ve been filling in when he can’t be there from time to time anyway, including this coming Sunday.  It’s exciting, and I’m looking forward to helping set a new vision for contemporary worship at our church.

Every job has it’s perks and priviledges along with its downside.  Lawyers get status and money along with often times being regarded and snakes by the general public.  Writers get to control their own hours and get their message out but may be unknown and unpublished for years.  Pastors are no different.  I know lots of pastors, including my husband, who find immense joy in getting paid to share the gospel of Christ with people.  My husband also has some flexibility in his schedule, being able to have doctor’s appointments or even take a weekday off to spend time with me.

The downside of this is the demands the job does place on a pastor.  Sometimes the downside includes a paltry salary that belies the years of experience and education he may have (thankfully that is not currently true for us).  For example, when I was growing up, my dad’s payscale was such that mom became the coupon queen.  If something wasn’t on sale or we didn’t have a coupon, we didn’t buy it.  Period.  We grew an enormous garden and our food budget was supplemented by the farmers who gave us beef, pork, chickens, eggs, and corn.  It was a treat to go to Hardees for fast food, one that didn’t often happen.  Mom would scour the grocery store ads for the best deals and spend an entire day driving from store to store, purchasing necessities at the lowest possible prices.  Even with all of that, my parents racked up a lot of debt just to keep afloat.  Some churches just can’t afford to pay their pastors very much.

The time demands on a pastor can be great or small, depending on the circumstances.  For example, during a “normal” period my husband can work anywhere from a 40-hour to an 80-hour week, depending on meetings and extra church services.  Throw in a funeral, wedding, or special season (Christmas, Easter) and he hardly has a moment to breath.  He’s gotten better at managing his time since we moved, which has helped with the time spent at work, and he also has the benefit of another pastor at the church who is responsible for visiting the sick and shut-ins of the congregation.  When an 18-year-old from our congregation was killed in a car accident (almost two years ago), I hardly saw my husband for a week.  He was meeting with the family, counseling teenages at the high school, being present at visitations, and providing care to as many individuals as possible who had been affected by the loss.  I spent my time filling in the gaps at home and church, making sure the bulletins were ready and the unrelated-to-the-funeral ministry still took place. I didn’t mind not seeing him during that time – he was needed more somewhere else.

I guess that’s one of the ways I know I am called to be a pastor’s wife.  There’s the whole “Duh, I am one, God’s not going to call me to something that separates me from my husband” factor.  But more than that, God provided me with the means and ability and gifts to fulfill this calling.  I can handle the long stretches of time when he’s needed elsewhere.  I don’t mind picking up the slack at home when necessary.  While I’m not a huge fan of ALWAYS doing the cleaning, I stay on top of laundry like a pro.

There will always be those downsides to ministry (I didn’t even address the whole “complainer” issue that comes with the territory, more on that later).  But the perks are wonderful.  Knowing he is doing God’s work is extremely satisfying for my husband.  Even though he’s a worrier by nature, he lets that go when he’s preaching.  When he’s “in the zone” on Sunday morning, he’s at his happiest.  And he would rather do a funeral than a wedding.  Why?  Because at a funeral, people are desparate to hear the gospel of Jesus.  Weddings tend to be all about the couple and not much about God.  Ask your pastor.  He’ll probably say the same thing.

Please note:  nothing in particular drove this post other than my thoughts on how we all fall into this trap.  I didn’t have a fight with Travis last night or get frustrated for something he did today.  That does happen from time to time, but was not the driving force of this post.

The problem with putting someone up on a pedestal is that they will eventually fall off.  I think that’s often a problem in marriages in general and in pastoral marriage in particular.  Women (me included) go into it with rose-colored glasses, assuming because their chosen spouse is training for or already serving the Lord, that they will be the perfect husband.  Not only that, but he will also be the perfect pastor, and will never mess up except in little, tiny, unnoticeable ways.  But really, once he signs up to be an under shepherd to the King of Kings, all of that pesky sin gets wiped away, right?

Ha!  To all of those pastors’ wives out there who still live in this fantasy, get a grip.  Regardless of whether or not your husband is a pastor or a janitor, an elder in the church or unemployed, he is a sinful human being.  Unless you come to terms with that, you will be severely disappointed.  Here’s the thing: there will always be church members who will elevate their pastor’s status to sainthood, no matter what, because he is a man of God.  I knew a congregation once whose pastor was preaching horrendously false doctrine (even by some very loose standards) and yet half of the members defended their pastor to the end.  It just happens.

This isn’t to say that it is the job of the pastor’s wife to cut him down to size, either.  No, it’s just a matter of seeing reality for what it is.  Husbands and wives disappoint each other.  Every marriage book ever written will address the issues of men and women being cut from different cloths, how being raised by families with different values and experiencing different things as your grow up can shape you into the person you are, often different from the person you married.  That’s a good thing!  How else will we grow and learn from each other in marriage?  But if you assume perfection in your spouse, you will definitely be disappointed.  It’s a guarantee.

Maybe your husband will fall into the trap of pride.  It’s pretty common.  Look at Jesus’ disciples, arguing over who would be the greatest in the kingdom.  And they walked with Jesus personally for three years!  If they were overcome by pride, isn’t it possible that a pastor today can be, too?

Maybe he is trapped by busyness.  No, that isn’t a sin in and of itself.  But some pastors get caught up with doing ministry at the sake of everything else:  family, health, sleep, even personal prayer.  They confuse putting God first with putting their job first.  It’s an easy trap for men to fall into.

Maybe his sins are much deeper, more personal, and potentially damaging.  Will you still love the broken man who is healing from scars that you cannot even imagine?

Sometimes all three of these, and many more, exist in a pastor.  That is probably the most dangerous combination of all, because pride keeps him from getting help and busyness helps him ignore the pain.  Those pastors caught in this trap have often had very public downfalls.  But the point of all of this is to realize that pastors, like everyone else, are sinful human beings.  They need the forgiveness of God just as much as the rest of us.  As their wives, we have a choice in how to respond.

We can ignore the sin, pretending it isn’t there and attempt to live in the fictional world we’ve created for as long as possible.  Probably won’t work for long.  We can lash out and become accusatory, treating our husbands like traitors for not being perfect and embarrass him publicly by behaving like petty school girls.  Or we can lovingly wait for the appropriate time to address what we see is a problem.  This goes for everything from the cliche annoyances like toothpaste caps and dirty socks to the bigger issues I mentioned before.

Regardless of what the issue may be, we are called to pray for our husbands.  That is why I find so many of the marriage books to be entirely appropriate, even when they don’t address my specific situation.  Yet they do talk of respect, love, sex, encouragement, and care, all of the things that are needed by all men, whether or not they are in the ministry.  And let’s be honest:  any Christian man has a ministry to do, to tell others about the love of Christ.  He might not be paid to do it, but it is still part of his calling.  I’m trying to remember that every day.

After stressing because my doctor wants me to exercise, and knowing our health club membership is going to waste, and feeling like I should do something about my elevated blood pressure, I finally started to attend an exercise class.  It’s this dance-style class that feels like a mix of aerobics, tae bo, and going to a dance club.

Here’s the thing, I tend to be pretty heavy on my feet.  Some of that I think has to do with the fact that I haven’t really been super-active ever, and when I did attend dances I weighed less.  And my muscles just aren’t used to bouncing around like that.  So I felt very klutzy the first time I went, on Friday.

I debated with myself whether or not to go back.  For most of the weekend I fully intended to go, and then last night I thought, “oh, well, I’m not going to.”  But then this morning, sometime between the waking up phase (when my attitude is “I don’t wanna do anything!”) and breakfast, I decided to go back.  It was a little easier today, still felt kind of lost a couple of times, but I realized that part of it is that they probably have two hours worth of material and switch it up from time to time.  The instructor switches song tracks which gives a slight break every four to five minutes, enough to take a swig of water and maybe mop off your forehead.  Yes, I sweat a lot!

It’s made me think a lot about what I need and don’t need for this new wave of physical fitness.  I think I need to get some new athletic shoes (my feet were hurting, and not in a this-is-a-hard-workout kind of way).  I’ve known that for a while but put it off because I tend to spend the money on new activities and then fail to commit to actually doing them.  I also need some other gear, but I’ll spare the male readers the descriptions of why a quality sports bra is necessary.  The female readers will know what I mean.  Maybe I should also get one of those sweat bands to wear around my head?  We’ll see about that one.

But I don’t need to go out and get a bunch of fancy workout clothes.  The women in the class dress in a variety of ways.  A very few wear the latest trendy spandex-laden garb that really only looks good on the perfectly toned bodies.  Some just go for t-shirts and cutoffs.  A lot fall somewhere in between.  I have plenty of t-shirts, and some decent yoga pants.  Maybe someday I’ll upgrade from wearing the gym shorts that used to belong to Travis before they shrank in the wash (that’s the story I’m sticking to, not that I’ve gained a few pounds around the middle or that he used to be skinnier).  But for now they work fine.  I’m trying to pay attention to what I need versus what I want.  It’s a hard lesson to learn sometimes.