Our society is in a battleground like never before. The threat of pandemic, the fallout from lockdown, and now the cry for justice and equality within our nation. Throughout our nation and even our world, we combat the fears of running out of life necessities, falling ill, and facing injustice. Anxiety is at an all time high. Yet, for the pastor’s wife the anxieties don’t stop there. How can we help the people to whom we minister face these times? How do we maintain unity? What if we are just not enough? As my husband said last week, none of us took seminary classes on “Pastoring Through a Pandemic”. Particularly, within the small-town context the pressure to be a support and burden-bearer through all of these anxieties is multiplied when you might be the only ministry couple at your church. How do you work through the anxieties of the world and then combine that with the regular anxieties of the ministry? 

Anxiety is a part of life for all of us. At some level each person has to deal with it, some more fiercely than others. In my own life it has been a constant battle. As a child of God, a mother, a friend, and a pastor’s wife, anxieties come in waves which overwhelm me; taking my breath away and seemingly tossing me to and fro until I’m thrown to the sand exhausted and bruised. This has been an unwelcome, yet very real, physical and spiritual cycle throughout my life. It is a battleground beaten down through unwelcome repetition.