Exposed

My Move Story

My Husband, before we moved, was the youth pastor at a church in CO. My husband LOVES the Lord. I mean LOVES!!! With everything he is and has, he loves God. When he first was asked to serve as the youth pastor we were SO excited. He knew his calling was to be in ministry and finally a door opened up.
Ok now fast forward 5 years later. When a person in the family is in ministry, it is expected that the whole family get in ministry. That is NOT the way it has to be…we didn’t know that then. Not only was my husband working normal office hours, but being a youth pastor I don’t think that senior leadership realized that youth pastoring happens outside of “normal” office hours because youth has school. Pile on top of that a man’s own family, and then on top of that, required after hour prayer meetings, required after hour conferences, evangelism outreaches that he was to be in charge of (after hours of course), required after hour…well you get the point. Not a lot of time left for those at home. Being a Pastor is hard.

So being a Pastors wife isn’t always the easiest thing in the world either. I’m just going to be real honest here because I can, and those of you that are Pastors wives or PK’s know what I mean. It’s not the fault of the Pastor. God called them into this type of work, ministry. But there are those people who watch with judgmental eyes waiting for you to mess up. Those with the “well because you are a pastors wife you should…” Man I would really like to tell them what they could do with their “should”, but being a Christian woman I will hold my tongue and lift it up in prayer :). Who are they to judge or tell me what I “should” Look like, speak like, dress like, act like, give me a freakin break! That is called false obligation and you do NOT have to live up to that, or even try to. Ok done with that rant for now.

I have heard it said that the more a man is involved in ministry, the more the woman disappears. Now that is not true in EVERY ministry for sure, but in this one it is, or was I should say, I wouldn’t know now. But that was my experience. So, because the job required so much of my husband and because I am a good wife and backed up my husband, I was working a full time job, and I was working a full time “volunteer job”, and I was a wife, and a mom. Whew! now that is a lot to handle. Not only that, but because of the job requirements of my husband, I was basically a single mom who happened to wear a wedding ring. Under the pressure of it all, the false obligation (you have to look like this…we expect your life to look like this… you can have this, but you can’t have that…) I cracked! My whole personality disappeared. I was a walking corpse. I mean really, I never stopped loving God, but in the whole thing of this eating away at my life, I didn’t know my husband anymore and he didn’t know me, I didn’t even know me! Actually, it wasn’t ok to be the “me” that I was, and I didn’t know how to be anything different. The pressure of raising kids by myself under the watchful demeaning eye of the religious Gestapo was just too much. Everything, the life inside of me, my thoughts and opinions, my spark…it all just died out. I was just animated skin and nothing more. The only thing that gave me life was when I was with my kids and “my kids” the youth group. They knew me and loved me and let me love them and that was all. It was so easy to regenerate there. But even that after 5 years of pouring out and “single parenting” and not living up to the standard of all of the “should’ers” whom my wonderful husband didn’t know, but by default he became one of, I left my husband, and I left ministry.

I am so sad to say it, and so hurt by that time. I left him with the purpose of never looking back at him, or ministry. In my thoughts I was leaving all the “should’ers”. All the expectation that I would never live up to, all the things that we were told had to be laid aside( God didn’t say it people did), All the confusion of feeling guilty for being lonely and angry that ministry was invading my time with my husband, all the not being able to ask questions because I should have already “known”, all the “you of all people should…” Leaving behind all the demeaning remarks for who I wasn’t, leaving it all behind, to walk into whatever hope there was of resurfacing the person under the burden of all of that crap. That is a whole other story in and of itself which I will get into one day which will include the wonderful people who reached in and pulled me out of the pile of crap that was laid upon me, and showed me Jesus…the real Jesus not the fake rule book one that held me prisoner for so long.

My husband is a Great Pastor. He is a Great Preacher too. One of the other things he is great at and is a hobby of his is fighting. He is an amazing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu fighter. But the fight to win me back was the fight of his life. Never has he had to fight with such force and never will he face another fight like that one. I won’t get into the details of that time, that is for me and my husband, but I will say that he won the fight, and I am wholeheartedly his, now and forever. Now for us and our marriage this was great and miraculous. God resurrected our marriage from death. He restored our union, and gave us new ground to stand on. We were free from religion and false obligation. But remember…there are still the “should’ers” that were at my husband’s workplace that were not on board with this whole thing. So what did we do? We prayed…hard. We cried out to God to deliver us out of that place and if it meant we quit ministry than we sadly would have, but, we cried, God if ministry is where you have truly called us let us work together in it and we will again try it, but this time honestly, Not with man’s law and ways but with your guidance, word, and love of people. And awesome God opened up a door for us.

When we moved from Co. I was super nervous. We had a house to sell in a down market. We had about a week before our kids would start school and I knew NOTHING about the school system, and I was leaving my family who had been my rock. My whole everything was connected to having family close by. And I was moving. We sold what we could and packed up the rest and moved into a host home. Our stuff is in a 2 car garage that they were so kind to offer us so we wouldn’t have to rent storage and here we would live until our house sold. Not only that but we were leaving that ministry and entering another with “church hurt”. To those that have had a church hurt you know how painful it is, and how incredibly scary it is to go back into the possibility of it. But if we are not hurtable how can we truly offer our whole hearts and honestly Love? That is another thing for another time also… But it was petrifying to face the possibility of another hurt like that.

When we were first hired into ministry (this was back in CO) we were told that we couldn’t have friends because friends wouldn’t respect our position as pastor. So we lived by that (which fed into my lonely times which were many). Well moving into a host home was incredibly scary as we were VERY private people. But the Wilders welcomed us in with open arms. Our house still hasn’t sold and it is almost a year later. We are still at the Wilders. Our stuff is still packed up in the garage. It has been hard to break the habit of not letting people close, but they have been so patient with us as we cautiously let them into our hearts and into our hurts. They were like a healing balm to us. They give us covering both physically and spiritually, They feed us both physically and spiritually. When Bart teaches my spirit feasts just like my mouth does when he smokes chicken YUM! And my talks with Barb not only help to sharpen my prophetic view, but also encourage and help build me into the woman that God is creating in me. It is EXCITING! I have never been this exposed or this excited in my life. It is both terrifying and liberating! We have made so many friends and it is wonderful. In fact I went out and did Kareoke with some of them this weekend and had a blast!

I love my life. God has used my own experiences in my hard times to help in ministering to others who are going through them ( Disclaimer- God did NOT make that time happen as he is NOT a child abuser, but He will not waste it either. I am willing to be exposed and let Him use it for His glory and He does. That is all.) And finding freedom in passing on living up to expectation of people, but rising up to what God has created in them.

My Husband is now a Sr. Pastor and we LOVE the place and People God has delivered us into. We walk out this life together with only His word as direction, no false obligation. We are fierce fighters against religion, and fierce fighters for relationship with Jesus. Our kids are growing healthy, happier and more free than I have ever seen them. God is so good!

So this move for me has been exposing, correcting, sharpening, liberating, loving, and probably the hardest and best thing I have ever been called on to do. When God calls he makes a way. The way may not always look like we think it is going to or want it to. But Gods way is the way that is going to call out the very essence of your entire being and call you to live in a way that honors the “you” that He created you to be. And by honoring the “you” you also Honor the God that created you.

I encourage you to live God’s way. Not the bound up path people tell you is God’s way, but get to know Him yourself and live for and with Him. He will change your life for the better. He will put the pieces into your life that you think are missing and guide you into a fulfilling existence. He will not shame or use shame to make you think one way or another, that is man’s tactic. God will love you with the most overwhelming love that you never knew you always wanted. God is Love. If you have experienced church hurt, than I encourage you to get in front of God and ask Him to guide you to a safe place to heal and a safe place to worship. Ask Him to lead you to a body of believers that will accept you and love you. Not love you despite your mistakes or habits or whatever, but including them! with the freedon to just love like God, to just love like Jesus, and to live in the power of the Holy Spirit!

Last night is going to go down in the books as one of the most memorable family nights for me. I can’t remember when we sat down together as a family and laughed so hard! We moved here a year ago and I don’t think that we have had a time like this in the whole year we have been here. Man O Man what a blast. We were eating a late dinner and just hanging out and I don’t even know what sparked it but we were talking about the “times when…”
The thing about it was I was there for a lot of these stories. I had witnessed them personally but hearing the experience through my kids’ eyes and in their words made it all new. Like the time I started the car and my son (then about 2 or 3) started crying…I thought the car noise scared him, turns out he was sitting in the back playing with buttons and he pressed something and thought he started the car, his next thought was aw crap mom is gonna kill me so he started crying. Or when I sent the kids out to walk the dogs and my daughter saw prairie dogs out in the fields so like any big sister she gave the leashes to her brother and once the dogs caught sight of the prairie dogs they dragged him several yard across the grass while she pointed and laughed at him and he couldn’t even scream he was too busy being dragged like Indiana Jones! Or when so-n-so waited at the top of the stairs only to fart in the face of the other one…Or when the girl thought she would be cool and lean out of her window to wave to a friend and she fell out of it onto some bushes! HAHAHA My kids were FULL of stories and we didn’t end up going to bed till past 11:00. I absolutely LOVED hearing all about them! When we were winding down my daughter said “mom you didn’t say much” and I laughed it off cause she was right I didn’t. not that I don’t have stories of my own, I just realized that I hadn’t really heard theirs
You get to be older and start to think, what do these kids know, they haven’t experienced…whatever. But that is SO not true. They have experienced plenty in their lives they just never get a chance to talk about it or tell it. At 11 years and 14 years old my kids have stories to tell about their experiences. And they are GREAT. We all were laughing so hard we were literally crying! We as a family in ministry are always out doing… We do things together, but we are always out doing. I forget to remember to check in and see in all of our doing what are we experiencing? To just sit at home and talk was the most refreshing thing I have been given in a long time. I know it was Fathers Day, but, I can’t help but think that it was a gift to me. To get to hear my kids stories, to get to hear their lives, to get to experience what they did through their eyes. I like how they see things. I realized that my kids are growing up. But it felt good to hear that the growing has been fun for them.
All you moms of tweens and teens, I encourage you to just start a “remember the time…” conversation with your kids, and then listen. Listen to what was going through their mind at the time. Listen to the things they don’t mind telling you now but if you found out then they were sure it would mean instant death. Kids are HILARIOUS! That night really was a bonding/uniting experience for us Vidals. I hope it is the same for you.