At first your spouse is supportive but she can easily tire of shouldering most of the responsibility for the home front. I know many other professions are demanding but most lack any awareness of a hint of a divine connection. Knowing that you are called by God does have a special satisfaction; though it does not pay very well. At least a doctor’s spouse has some extra money to ease the stress of loneliness and to care for the children’s needs.
Marie and I don’t fight a lot, but when we do, it is often about money. When the prosperous business-man, who, despite his high income, doesn’t give as much money to the church as we do, complains that the church budget can’t afford a raise in the pastor’s salary, it doesn’t contribute to a pleasant atmosphere at home. It doesn’t feel good to come home after a long day of responding to other people’s needs and find your daughter in tears and your wife stony-faced because she has just had to explain that we can’t afford to send her to camp this summer with her best friend or to provide her with her personal i-phone.
It stung the night Marie lashed out and said, “When God called you to the ministry, did God explain that you were being called to be poor and to deny your family members the comforts of life?”
I didn’t help matters by piously suggesting that there were many people in the world who were far worse off than we were. Her response was sweet but deadly.
“Oh, Charles, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize that the purpose of denying you a raise in salary was to raise the economic level of the impoverished of the world. Silly me, I thought it was a choice between you and the congregation’s plan to re-decorate the parlor for the third time in ten years.”
