Can't Measure Up

      The challange before me is to name the hurts done to me and to not try to find my mistakes or somehow justify another person's mistreatment of me. This is going to be hard and will be painful at times, so I'm going to start with an "easy" hurt.

     Five years ago we were packing up our Louisville house to move to Southern Indiana because we felt called to live in the community where we attended church. One day, several folks from church came over to help us load up furniture to move to storage, including our pastor and his wife. After our couches were moved out of the living room, we saw several Lego bricks and other small toys among the normal stuff you find under a large piece of furntiture. So my pastor's wife and I sat on the floor for several minutes picking out the items that need to be saved before sweeping up the trash.

     Nothing was said to me directly, but sometime later Aaron, who was interning at the church, and our pastor were meeting and my pastor raised concerns about my house-keeping abilities. He commented that he could tell that I had never swept under our couch. I feel like other things were said, but the comment about never swepping under my couch is what stuck and I still think about it sometimes.

    I felt attacked on several fronts - my ability to be a homemaker, my cleanliness, my worth as a pastor's wife. I felt like I was being compared to this crazy standard and I was never going to measure up. I was also pissed as all get out. How dare he question my ability based on what it looked like UNDER my couch?

     I won't say this started the feeling that I wasn't a very good pastor's wife, but it definitely added to it. This was just one other way that I wasn't good enough and just one more way for me to compare myself to the other pastors' wives. I worked outside the home and none of them did. They all homeschooled their kids or sent them to private Christian school and at the time my kids went to public school. They always wore dresses or cute outfits and makeup to church and some days I barely could get out the door in a matching outfit and my hair was almost always in a ponytail and I hardly ever wore makeup. My kids watched a lot of TV and listened to non-Christian music (still do) and their kids had limited screentime and only listened to praise music. And the internal list went on and on.

Photo by Crazy Cake on Unsplash

    So much of my time at our old church was spent feeling like I was on constant display. I felt like I was always being judged and that I never measured up. I never felt like I could be my full self because my full self wasn't good enough. I had to hide parts of who I was to put forth the image of what they wanted in a pastor's wife. And because I was hiding parts of myself, I never felt fully seen or known and thus always felt isolated and alone. I wanted to be liked and I wanted people to respect Aaron, so I tried hard to play the part, but it was EXHAUSTING.

     Real talk - I think deep down I felt some relief when everything blew up last year and we left the church (more about that at another time). After years of hiding, I could be me again - hot mess, sometimes foul-mouthed, awkward me. I didn't have to play a part anymore, I could be real again. I was released from the glass box that had been holding me on display for so long.

     As we consider Aaron going back into vocational, paid ministry, I will admit I'm scared. I'm scared that I will have to hide again. I'm scared that I will not deal with my issues and will just end up back in the exhausting cycle of trying to please people by hiding who I am even though all I want is to be seen and known and thus I will feel like I don't measure up and alone, so I'll hide more of myself and play the part more and feel even less seen and less known and on and on and on.

     I don't know what the future holds for us and I don't honestly know what it will take for me to break the cycle, but I'm hoping this process will help. I'm hopeful that if I can be honest and name the hurts and honestly acknowledge my fears, that I can finally be free of that pressure. I'm hopeful.