THE PRESSURE OF CALL IN MARRIAGE
It is not unusual for a pastor to sense God’s call after s/he is married or in a committed relationship. Even if the spouse knew and verbally accepted that you were going to be an ordained pastor, few people understand what it means to be part of a pastor’s family. Helping that spouse come to terms with what it means to be part of a pastor’s family can have benefits for both the spouse and the pastor.
GOD CALLS ALL OF US
In the Reformed faith, there is the concept that all of us, not just ordained clergy, have a call from God. Let each member of the couple try to articulate what that person senses is God’s call in his or her life. In the same way that pastors can feel affected by a spouse’s lack of appreciation for his or her call, so the spouse may also need support in fulfilling the call that s/he is hearing from God, only part of which is that of being a pastor’s spouse.
THE PRESSURE OF GOD’S CALL
The second step in your conversation is to have each of you speak to how you perceive your personal call bringing pressure on the other person. Let each of you list five ways that you recognize your understanding of God’s call in your life affects your spouse. All marriages are affected by how each of us understand our purpose in life.
Next let us look at the pressures of expectations. Sometimes we live in conformity with, and sometimes in rebellion against, such expectations. Regardless, we are affected by those expectations. A complicating factor is that sometimes we assume that people expect something from us but it is more in our mind than in reality. So clarifying those assumptions can be a major step in dealing with the pressures of expectations.
EXPECTATIONS OF A CLERGY FAMILY
As a first step, let each of you take a piece of paper and write out five expectations that you assume the other person has of you as part of a clergy family. Try to be as honest as possible and willing to test out even vague assumptions that you have always wondered about.
When each of you are finished, share your lists. To keep it a mutual and interesting conversation, let one person share their first assumption, talk about whether the assumption is real in the other person’s mind, and then reverse the process and hear the first assumption of the other person. At this point, don’t try to resolve the problem of the pressure from an expectation but simply clarify whether it is just a projection or is really real. Continue in this mode until all five assumptions of each spouse has been identified and clarified.
It is interesting to note that the expectations of spouses in clergy families move in both directions. Sometimes, the spouse of a clergy carries certain expectations that as a clergy s/he will do certain things as well as the reverse. In both cases, there can be both reasonable and unreasonable expectations of each other.
MUTUAL AGREEMENT
A next step is to try to come up with a mutually agreed upon list of what each has a right to expect of each other in the context of being the family of a pastor. You may not always like what you expect but you can agree that it is acceptable. For example, both may expect that as part of being in a clergy family, there will be pastoral emergencies that can disrupt family plans. It’s not pleasant, but it is real. On Sunday mornings, a sick child is going to have to be cared for by the non-clergy spouse. You should try to make a list of at least twenty expectations as part of your conversation.
What are the expectations with respect to the spouse’s participation in the church, the role of spiritual discipline in the family, sharing with each other about what is happening in church meetings, counseling sessions, church conflict, etc.? What is the assumption of the respective roles in the context of church conflicts? How are decisions processed between the couple in the consideration of a move to another position.
WE ARE A TEAM
From family therapy, I learned that problems can either bond or divide a couple. If, for example, long hours at work are affecting the stress level within the family, a couple can either argue about the long hours, or they can join together to strategize how they can resolve the problem. When they have teamed up to solve such a problem, the result will be not only a better response to the problem but also a sense that they are stronger as a couple for having worked together.
Again, we are dealing with projections first. Let both the clergy and the spouse make a separate list of what they think the congregation as a whole expects of the clergy spouse. Obviously there are individuals who have their own special expectations, but for now try to conceive of what the general consensus would be within the congregation of the role of a clergy spouse. Since this is a private list to be shared only with each other, it is alright to bring in a little humor and exaggeration in the initial formulation of your lists.
Once each of you have complied your list, share it with each other and see if you can arrive at some consensus of both some reasonable and some unreasonable but never-the-less real expectations of the clergy spouse. Apply the team concept mentioned above to the unreasonable list and how as a couple you might respond.
