Initiative, leadership and courage...

They say that being a pastor's wife is incredibly hard. I suppose that between the commitment to the community, the intensity of responsibility and the pressures that result, being a pastor's wife and dealing with all of the side-effects of marrying a man at the head of such a messed up congregation would be trying to say the least. But I've heard so many sermons where the pastor talks about his wife and the way they each speak totally honors their wife and makes me crave it anyway.

I think the statistic was if the women knew what they were getting into, 85% wouldn't have married a pastor or pastor-to-be. Maybe that's completely wrong, but that's the number I have in my memory and if it is wrong, the number is strikingly high and that's the important point.

Why would I crave something that so many women wish they could get out of?

Because the good pastors seem to have their priorities straight- first comes God and Jesus, then their wife, then their kids and then everything else. Or in the case of a pastor, first after the kids comes the church. But the wife is first among the worldly things and I crave that importance.

I listened to a part of the Q&A section of a sermon Mark Driscoll gave about whether or not a woman should pursue a man. His answer was no. "If you chase a man, you'll chase him for the rest of your life." I know that all too well. :D He goes on to say that Christian men lack courage and so many non-Christian men step in and appeal simply because they demonstrate initiative, leadership, and courage.

Christian or not, the guys I have dated have never pursued me. In my quest for importance, acknowledgment and love, I never realized their complete lack of initiative, leadership and courage. In other words, in all my pursuing and all my efforts, I never sought a real man. What kind of man lacks those three fundamentals?

I have those three fundamentals (even if my employee evaluation may say otherwise :D) and I always assumed that being a strong person deterred or intimidated men to the point where even if they did have an interest in me, they would not pursue it.

But even if I'm a strong woman, shouldn't I expect the man in my life to be stronger than me?

If strong relationships are built on respect and admiration (among other things), how can I achieve that when the beginning is already the first proof that I'm the stronger one in the couple? How can I admire a man knowing he wasn't courageous enough to step up while he still had nothing to lose? How can I raise him up in the long term when he has started off at rock bottom?

And so, here are these pastors speaking publicly, with their reputation hanging on their shoulders, saddled with the pressures that come with being empathetic to an entire congregation along with those outside the congregation, and even though they're in a respected position of authority, they lift their wives up even higher.

I can't even imagine being worthy of such an honor. I can't imagine being worthy of such open devotion.

Maybe that's why God created dogs: to always remind us doubting ladies (and maybe doubting men too) that no matter what we do, we are worthy. Every time I come home from anywhere, I'm greeted with wagging tails and irrepressible barks of excitement, and my dogs know my core person. They know who I am and where my heart is and still love me and respect me. How is it unreasonable to expect the same from another person?

Maybe Mark Driscoll is right in this case. If part of being a man is being strong enough to face rejection and to face failure, then why would I expect anything less than somebody who is man enough to be vulnerable?

And without any intention of condescension, to any men reading this: if you're ever in a situation where you're not man enough to step up, maybe it's time to re-evaluate what your priorities are. Nowhere on the list, among God, wife, kids and church, is "myself". If you're at the top of your own list of priorities, maybe it's time to fix that before you damage any more women. And that's the truth- you are damaging them. I would imagine that somewhere in your heart (the cynical part of me wants to slip in "amongst all the hollow, black and charred places", but I won't. :D), you don't want to leave behind a legacy of pain.

In the meantime, at the very least, I'm going to relinquish a little bit of the control and stop pursuing. For how can a guy be grateful to have me around if he didn't earn me?

Exactly.