By Geri Scazzero

I spent the first nine years as a pastor’s spouse feeling like I was in the back of a runaway bus going down a steep, winding mountain road at 80 mph. Although I did not want to admit it to God, or myself, I was angry, depressed and exhausted.

Before we planted New Life Fellowship Church in NYC, my husband Pete and I spent a year in Central America. During that year we took a trip from Costa Rica to Nicaragua.

We boarded a big, old, shaky, 1957 Greyhound bus.
During the three hour journey through the mountains, the driver sped and careened around narrow curves without guardrails like he was maneuvering a little sports car down an empty stretch of open highway. The bus felt out of control, and there was nothing I could do about it. I finally got down on the floor and put my face in my seat so that I wouldn’t be able to see when we went over a cliff. I crouched and waited for the inevitable crash.

That moment, thankfully, never came and we made it miraculously out of those mountains alive. Little did I know, however, that this frightening bus ride would become a metaphor for my life as the spouse of a pastor.

After Central America we returned to New York City and began planting New Life Fellowship Church in Queens. Over the next several years the church grew and so did our family. God was doing many wonderful things yet something was very wrong. Outwardly I kept up a very good pretense of being superwoman but on the inside I was miserable. I lived like a single parent because the church got the best of my husband’s time, energy, and focus.

Like that bus in Central America, I felt like my life was out of my control but this time my husband was the driver. I had no idea how to slow things down. I felt once again at the mercy of someone else’s bad decisions and life choices. The pace of our lives was exhausting, and there were no brakes anywhere in sight.

Finally, we did crash. I said, “NO MORE.” I had had enough of single parenting and giving up so much of myself for the sake of the ministry. I left our church. I told my husband I wanted a marriage, a father for our children, and a church that brought me life, not death.

This one act of declaring myself unleashed a revolution in me, our marriage, our church family and churches around the world. That decision launched us on a journey we call today Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. We discovered that it is impossible to be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally immature. God would lead us into a deep-beneath-the surface spirituality where real transformation could happen.

As I speak with the spouses of pastors, elders, deacons, and leaders – regardless of race, ethnicity, denomination, or age – most are unhappy, tired, and stressed. They are committed to Jesus and their spouses. The problem, however, is there is little time left over – for loving themselves, their spouses, or others. Many secretly would love to be out of the ministry. Almost all want to do it differently.

The demands of being married to a leader are enormous and complex. It is very difficult to maintain and nurture your own life, let alone an intimate, fulfilling marriage in the midst of caring for a church family.

The apostle Paul understood this. In fact he made it one of the prerequisites for leadership in the church, arguing that if the life of your marriage and family is not healthy, how can you lead God’s family (1 Tim 3:4-5)?

The following are a few simple, but powerful, principles to stop pretending everything is fine and begin to change your life.

To be continued next month…