The Fishbowl for the Pastor's Wife

A few weeks ago I met the new wife of a previously-widowed friend. In making polite conversation, she learned that I was a pastor's wife. So she was interested in why I attended Bible class at my father-confessor's church. I acknowledged that there were some pretty nice things about being "just one of the laymen" without being The Pastor's Wife. She was trying to be understanding and sympathetic, thinking about the experience of some other women she knew who were married to pastors, and thinking that would be my experience too.

She talked about how it's hard to live in the fishbowl. I explained that doesn't bother me tremendously. After all, I blab all about our lives on the Internet here anyway. And I know that in this rural area, everybody's life is fodder for the gossip mill; it's not unique to the pastor's family.

She suggested that it's hard for kids to live up to the expectations of being pastor's kids. I don't think my kids had too much of a hard time with that. For one thing, the only thing I impressed on them was what they did or didn't do because they're Christians. No special standards for the pastor's kids, except that we wouldn't allow them to volunteer to mow the church lawn. Now, my kids WERE held to some standards occasionally because we didn't want to give homeschoolers a bad name. "You be polite today. We don't want people to think poorly of other homeschoolers just because of some dingbattiness today on our fieldtrip."

Next my friend's wife suggested that it's hard for pastors' wives because they're expected to do so much at church. But I don't. My husband is the pastor. I have enough to do with my own activities. I am careful not to do more at church than I would if I were married to the plumber. So that's no big deal for me either.

What I like about going to Bible class somewhere else is being free to ask questions in Bible class. I don't have to worry about the stupidity of what I ask, or the depth of what I ask, or the peripheralness of what I ask. I know that my questions don't reflect on the pastor there like they do here (though it's probably not the same in all congregations), and that provides a certain level of freedom to receive God's word without worrying about what people think.

That's the fishbowl that worries me. Not whether my house is clean. Not how my children behave. Not how involved or uninvolved I am in church activities. Not my lack of stylishness. But that people may think my beliefs, my confession, my thoughts, my struggles, are reflective of what their pastor thinks. They may be the same; they may not. But given that people will assume my thoughts are likely to reflect the pastor's thoughts, I do not say much at church here. That's why the freedom to participate in Bible class out of the fishbowl can be so helpful.