Being A Youth Pastor's Wife (On Burn Out)

Being a youth pastor's wife is the most rewarding job I have. But it is also the most heart-breaking, most frustrating, most draining thing I do. It is not easy to do this "job". And for me, it is a full time unpaid job. I work 3 jobs right now to make up the income from quitting my last job, and at the end of the day I go on to chaperon youth events and lead worship for Jr. high and Sr. high youth group.

My real problem is that I desperately want to be involved with my husbands ministry. If I could quit all my jobs and just work with him, I would do it in a heart beat. I LOVE student ministries. I have worked with youth as a volunteer for 6 years (2 years on my own out of high school and 4 years have been spent volunteering along side my now husband). I'm not like one of those people who never thought they'd be a pastor's spouse. No, I knew I would be. I KNEW that the ministry of the church (particularly youth) was so important to me that God had to bring me someone who loved youth too. And God did.

But I am suffering from some burnout these days.

And to be honest with you...I'm the only youth pastor's spouse I know that hasn't identified their boundaries (If you're out there too, let me know!). One of my best friends and college roommate is also a youth pastor's wife, but she barely goes to any events. My husband and I realized we've never ever SEEN the wife of a youth pastor here in town that we frequently do events with. I feel so alone in my battle. I desperately want to be a part of this ministry, but I am wearing myself too thin.

A lot of the times I do so much because I see so many hurting kids. I think "Oh, I should really take her out for coffee...she looks like she needs to talk to someone. That's what I'm suppose to do right? I AM the youth pastors wife after all..." For whatever reason, this is the ideal of what a youth pastors spouse should be, and though taking a teenager out for coffee is something I can and have done, it's not my instinctual way of showing these kids that I care about them and love them. To be honest, I'm just more likely to give them a hug and tell them it's going to be okay.  Let me reiterate: I LOVE THESE KIDS. But if I think I'm SUPPOSE to take all the students out for coffee, it probably won't happen. Because it isn't my gift, I will probably fail at remembering to take them out. Then I feel like a failure...like I'm not able to help these teenagers I care so much for. I'm trying to make my ideals of my role as a youth pastor's wife fit into something I am not. The real problem isn't that I can't touch the lives of these hurting kids. Oh, I can. It's that I'm not letting myself be exactly who I am. They don't need or want the me I think I should be...they want the me that God made me to be.

I tried to think back on the youth pastor's wife when I was in high school. Her name is Jayme and I LOVED HER. I remember special times when she would help me learn chords on the keyboard while I was on the worship team. And I STILL HAVE postcards she wrote me about how special she thought I was. Little moments, even though she wasn't there for every event, meant the world to me. And by sometimes distancing herself from the ministry of her husband, and having boundaries, she was able to be exactly who she was exactly when I needed it.

Last week I attended a youth worker training day (that my wonderful husband helped create and run) called "Equip" and they had a phenomenal speaker named Katie Quesada there. In her message to us she said something so powerful. So wonderfully refreshing. She said:

"You are unique. The truest you, the you God created, what you are, is exactly what people need. No more, no less. What you have to offer, the way it feels most natural, is what people need."

We are unique. Do not try to be something you aren't just because you think that's what your role is. I need to be a wife, a nanny, a youth worker, a preschool teacher, a sister, a daughter, a Sunday school director. And I need to know where I am in all of those roles. I need to see me. I need to see that my work does not define me. That I am perfect just how I am in the small ways I do all those things.

I cannot be the best version of myself for these kids when I have no boundaries. I am worn thin. I am frustrated with them. I am frustrated with myself. I am frustrated with God. I do too much. When I say yes to too many things, I can do none of them well. If I want to be effective, I have to choose my boundaries. You have to say no to most things (even good worthwhile things) in order to do those few things as best as you can. You have to say "no" to say "yes".

When do I say no? What do I say yes to? I think we should say yes to the things that bring us joy. Say yes to the things that feel most naturally "you".

I absolutely love the way the message translation talks about "spiritual gifts" or as I like to call them "glimpses of God". You can read a whole excerpt here, but I wanted to point out a few parts with my own twist from my own life. Instead of listing the spiritual gifts as they traditionally appear, I can't help but see it this way:

You have God's smile

You have God's eyes

You have God's heart

You have God's creativity

You have God's words

You have God's touch

We are all unique. We are all exactly who God has made us to be. Sometimes we get a little dusty, but our heart...God's heart...is right there.

I love this part in verse 13 "Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain—his Spirit—where we all come to drink. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves—labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free—are no longer useful. (***Like "pastor's wife"***) We need something larger, more comprehensive. I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less."

We are not labels. We are precious children of God who are given special parts of God to give to each other. The first thing we need to do is remember who we are. If you need to go away and spend an extended amount of time discovering this, DO IT. When you know who you are and who God made you to be, you will naturally show God's love.

You Have to Know Their Name

After writing in my last post about words becoming flesh, and talking about Social Justice over at Sorta Crunchy for 40 Days of Community, I couldn't help but be reminded of how important our actions are when talking about social justice.

Wes and I are taking a group of 6 high school kids on a mission trip to Los Angeles this summer, and we have been meeting weekly with them to help prepare them for the trip. They have readings, reflections and bible memorization's due, all to help point them towards a better understanding of homelessness and our call to continue to work with God to bring His Kingdom to earth. We want to teach them that the Gospel is more than words, it is action (and even more than just action, it is hearing the stories of others). I thought I would research a little bit to see the demographics of the homeless in our town to share with the kids.

I decided to look up "homeless in (our town)" on google. And although I could not find any homeless shelters in my town, I did find a "Help for the Homeless Pets" here. "Wow" was all I could say. We have people sleeping in the riverbed every night and yet we have shelters for pets and not for PEOPLE.

Our town does not have a homeless shelter...and the closest one is at least a 30 minute drive. And yet we have so many homeless people living here, camped out under tarps in the riverbed.

To be honest, I'm not one to talk. I've never even been down in the riverbed. We have one place where the hungry can receive a meal, and it's only once a week and I've never served food there.

I have served the homeless before, though. I have talked with them, eaten with them, ridden the bus with them. I have. But it has been so long. In the 2 years I've lived in this town, I have only had conversations with one homeless man...and that's only because we knew him before he was homeless. I guess...it's just...that I've forgotten them. I've stopped seeing their faces, so it doesn't hurt as much anymore. I don't KNOW them anymore...so I don't think about them.

Needless to say, I'm not good at this yet. I'm really very good at articulating what needs to be done. And I know quite a bit about Social Justice..but it's the doing it that is the hardest. I'm not there yet...but I'm trying (And knowing the needs is the first step). I want to really help people, but it's hard to know where to start sometimes.

I love organizations like Compassion International, Toms Shoes and Operation Christmas Child...but where are we challenging people to be face to face with those in need? Am I challenged? These organizations are doing wonderful things...but...It is EASY to sponsor a child for 38 dollars a month. It is EASY to buy a pair of Toms. It is EASY to fill a shoebox once a year. It is not as easy to walk the riverbed where the homeless sleep on the ground. It is not as easy to eat a meal with the homeless at the soup kitchen. It is not as easy to give a sandwich to a child who has sores on her body because her family can't even afford to go to the clinic.

It is easy to give money. It is easy to separate us from the homeless. It's when you know their name that things get sticky. It's when you know that Bonnie has 3 children and lives on the street. It's when you know that Jessie can't get out of prostitution. It's when you know that Chuck can't get a job....it's then when your heart truly breaks...and its then that you see Jesus.

Here are some things to get us headed in the right direction...

• If you want a good song that reminds us of where we see Jesus, please listen to this song called "Jesus" by Shaun Groves.
• If you want a good book please read "The Social Justice Handbook" by Mae Elise Cannon.
• If you live in San Diego County please visit these places bringing heaven to earth: North County Solutions for Change, Fill-A-Belly, and Hidden Treasures.
• Please find local organizations and spend some time volunteering there!

May we know the stories of the weak. May we know the names of poor. And may we always see Jesus in their faces.

James 2: 15- 16 "If you know someone who doesn't have any clothes or food, you shouldn't just say, "I hope all goes well for you. I hope you will be warm and have plenty to eat." What good is it to say this, unless you do something to help?"

Word Becoming Flesh

My birthday was last week. I love birthdays...I mean, I LOVE THEM. Needless to say when I realized that my birthday fell during lent and I had already resolved to delete my facebook, I was devastated. NO ONE WILL REMEMBER MY BIRTHDAY!

For my birthday I ended up getting 3 cards, 1 email, 2 phone calls (This does not include immediate family which added a few more) and 10 text messages.

This is not to say that I had a bad birthday, it was very nice and those who contacted me made it very special, but I wanted to break that down because my last birthday I got 40+ birthday message on my facebook wall (with minimal phone calls no cards and no texts). This year, without facebook, there were 15 people who wished me a happy birthday and 75% of them still resorted to a text based communication. I find this so fascinating! And I also relate to it so well.

I used facebook as my primary means of communication. And now that I have given it up, I have to actually WORK in my relationships now. I have to make time to cultivate my friendships. Before lent I was completely satisfied with reading others facebook posts and commenting on them, almost as my sole means of communicating with them. See, I am a very busy person. I work 3 jobs and my husband is a youth pastor and I am highly involved with his ministry as well. It was easier and more efficient to send a text and a comment. But at what cost? I have lost the value of sitting together, sharing our hearts and lives with one another.

It really makes me think about how we choose to communicate and how that can impact the message of what we are saying (and how that communication deepens or widens our personal relationships).

The other night I was watching a video series at a Bible study and we heard the story about a man who had a hard time expressing his feelings of love to his son, so he wrote them in a letter. The commentator called this act "word becoming flesh" they did not just stay inside someone's head or heart, they were spoken. And the farther we get from internet/text based "words" the more precious those words are. The closer we get to real face to face communication, the more vulnerable we are, and the more vulnerable we are, the better we can be God's love to those around us, and receive that love back.

Note on my wall at facebook - Text message - Phone call - Letter in the mail - Going out for coffee.......I'd much rather give/receive the last 3 means of communication...but it seems like they have become an obsolete means of communication.

Shane Hipps, author of "Flickering Pixels" and teaching Pastor at Mars Hill Church says this about relationships and facebook:

"The narcissism created by these technologies [facebook] is unique. It encourages not just self-absorption, but, more accurately, self-consumption. We become creators and consumers of our own brand. We become enamored by a particular kind of self, a pseudo-self.....This heavily edited and carefully controlled self easily hides certain parts of ourselves we don’t want others to see. This is hardly new, of course. In any social situation, we seek to control the impression we give. The problem is that in real social settings, there are limits to what we can hide. At a certain point, people intuitively see through us. Eventually they get a sense of who we really are. And in this way, real friendships can function as a healthy mirror. They become an honest mirror that loves but doesn’t flatter us."

This kind of real face to face communication is so vital for us to grow and feel and live. So vitally important for us to become deeper followers of Jesus Christ.

Let us remember: God did not shout from the heavens "I love you my children, you are free from the curse." No, God sent Jesus. A real live man who loved his enemies, ate with the poor, physically died for us, and then miraculously rose from the dead. It's as real flesh and blood as you can get. God did not just speak it. He loved us too much for that. This is what we are celebrating on Easter: God became flesh and blood and died a flesh and blood kind of death and then defeated that death so that we could be face to face with God and His kingdom.

So as we continue through lent, may we act out our relationships in the fleshiest kind of ways.

John 1:14 "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth."

Reflections on Community (2)

Focusing on community through the 40 days of community challenge has been a real blessing to me and a compliment to what I gave up for lent: facebook. It's funny really...the first few days without facebook were HORRIBLE. I felt disconnected from everyone, I felt left out of certain information (because no one remembers to tell you in person if they already put it on facebook!)...it was hard. But I decided to continue on.

I started calling people (most of my family and close friends don't live near me anymore so this is the communication I have right now) to see how things were going...and one conversation in particular stands out to me. I called my youngest brother Chris (I'm the oldest of 4 kids) who turned 18 not too long ago. We ended up talking for about an hour and a half. We talked about transitions, jobs, money, housing, music and relationships. I got to really open up about my hopes surrounding future employment and moving soon (oddly enough we are in the same boat with these two topics!)

By the end of our conversation, it felt so good to SHARE LIFE with him. To support each other and know that we would be there in the good and the bad. Before we hung up I said to him "Yeah I just called you to see what's going on now that I can't read it on facebook anymore" and he said "You know...all the things we talked about I haven't really shared with anyone, especially on facebook." I'm not missing anything on facebook, really. Sure I'm missing status' like "Out to dinner" or "Watching Tommy boy!" but I'd have to actually talk to people to share in the stories of their heart anyway. You know...I just might never go back to facebook...it might have sufficed before lent to just read my brothers mundane status' and never call him...but boy...

...There's nothing better than the love of a brother.

Circa 1992 My sister Thea, My brother Jon, and myself holding my brother Chris

Community Feels

For the past few days I was hit hard with a personal issue. It wasn't one I wanted to share with many...in fact only 3 people knew (besides my husband). When it happened, I just couldn't keep it inside of me. It scared me, it made me nervous...I couldn't do it alone. I told my 3 closest friends and their words flooded me with support. No matter what happened, no matter how it went, they were there for me. They FELT what I felt. They lavished me with good words. When I found that the outcome wasn't what I had expected, I was crushed. When I told them the results, they were sad too.

Community feels. In a true community, when one hurts, we all cry. When one feels joy, we all dance. Thank God for the love of friends.

When have you felt for others? When have others felt for you?

“A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons." - Bishop Desmond Tutu

Words and Birds

My neighbors in the apartment next to me have this big beautiful parrot. I usually don't hear it very often but today the bird is out of the balcony while they are doing some cleaning inside.

I've always enjoyed birds. I've had love birds, cockatiels, and the last bird I had was a nanday conure named Jazz. He looked just like this:

I loved that bird but had to give him away when I went off to college. Jazz used to sing and whistle all the time, but he never talked. My neighbors parrot on the other hand...can't stop talking. It laughs, and says a new phrase every couple of minutes...I actually thought my neighbor was on the porch it imitates so well!

I could hear the bird say "Quit it!" "What is it now?!" "Get to bed!" several times...mostly "quit it" (Which I've heard the mom actually say to her kids quite frequently). It seemed very telling to me. What if you had something repeating the most common, most used phrases in your house? What would they be? What are the words you choose to say?

I'm sure if I had a talking bird in my house it would probably say at least these two common phrases (I'll let you guess which is the one my husband says and which one I say)

"Clean up the house!"
"Could you please get off the xbox?!"

What words are resonating in our home? What is our focus? How do our words reflect us?

I realized last night that my husband and I both have one of the same mechanisms in conflict: we say mean things. We both do it. And we both can say heart breaking things to one another. Not prime "building others up" kind of material here. At the end of a fight we say we don't mean what we said...but that damage has been done.

Last night I felt guilty about those words I had been saying. If you say things long enough, people believe they are true about themselves. I went up to my husband and grabbed his face (btw I have no concept of personal space so this happens a lot haha!) and said "I know I've said some hurtful things to you. I want you to know that I'm moving forward and I don't want to say those things to you anymore."I can't guarantee that I will suddenly stop this pattern we've gotten ourselves into, but at least I can try. And at least we can focus on other words.

I'd hope that if I had a bird in my home, it's most common phrase would be "I love you."

A Meal With Theologians (and their wives)

This weekend my husband and I went to a potluck. For the past 6 months Wes has been meeting monthly with a group of youth pastors who all work at churches (from all kinds of denominations) about half an hour from our town. They decided last month that it would be fun to get their families all together to meet each other and share a meal.

To be honest I was kind of dreading it at first. I LOVE being with people but lately I've been so busy with church, work, youth group, marriage etc that all I want to do at the end of the day is be alone. This was a very important time for Wes so I bucked up and went along.

We arrived to meet with about 5 different youth pastors and their families and I couldn't have had a better night. We may all come from different theological backgrounds, different family types, but we were all youth pastors and youth pastors' wives, and there's no one who can understand you more than someone going through the same thing.

Wes and I live in a small town where there aren't many young couples or families and there are even less people who have a similar perspectives and passions. Most of the time we feel very alone. We have a small group at our church that we love, but there is a little something missing.

At first I just stayed next to Wes listening to the guys talk about ministry and theology and life. Then one of the kids came outside and wanted me to play with her (comfort zone!) so we walked upstairs and I found all the kids and their mom's. Now, I'm not a mom (been married just under a year) but with my background working with children and my love for people, it's pretty easy for me to join the group. We started by introducing ourselves but it quickly went to some real issues that resonated with all of us as wives of those in ministry. We talked about, time management, painful ministry hierarchy, marriage, about opening up our home for someone to live in, or humbling yourself to live with someone else...it was just so good to be around a whole group of people that feel the same feelings and think the same things. We clicked.

It's funny...earlier that night one Youth Pastor was talking about how parents in his church were upset that there were "clicks" in the youth group....but you can't force people to be friends. Those "clicks" are a solid group of friends dedicated to each other. You can teach people to love each other and be kind to your enemies...but that doesn't mean they will always connect.

An important part of community is CONNECTION. Common interest. Similar personalities. You can't force people to connect. You can't force community. (But you can have meals together to discover those connections!)

I picked my best friends - the ones I share my heart with. I don't share that with everyone...and that's okay! At the end of the night our group had asked if we wanted to do this more regularly, hosting at differnet homes (and the possibility of starting a small group bible study). YES. YES PLEASE! We need a community of people dedicated to each other. Feeling along side us.

Let's just say...

I can't wait for our next meal together.