June is the month of weddings. My Facebook feed is filled with beautiful pictures of love. Couples getting married and couples celebrating their years of wedded bliss. I read beautiful sentiments of love and adoration from wives and husbands. I see pictures of young love with their whole lives stretching before them and you can see the fairy tale dreaming in their eyes.
Yesterday was my turn. My turn to celebrate 18 years of being married to the guy who loves me best. As we shared publicly our love and commitment to each other and received warm “happy anniversary’s” from loved ones, I could not help but think about the countless people who hurt over broken marriages, unrealized dreams and pain of the past. Many of my friends are battling major hurts in their own marriages. So if I could sit with you this morning and share with you from my heart, this is what I’d say.
I have been a pastors wife for 17 years. I was a young 19 years old when I married and my husband accepted his first pastorate. Looking back, I realize I knew nothing. Seriously, nothing. I knew how to stand at the back of the church dutifully by my husbands side and shake hands with sweet people who really didn’t know me. I did this for many, many years. Throughout those early years in ministry I tried really hard to be a supportive, strong, encouraging leader in our churches. I really wanted people to like me. So in order for people to like me, I needed to dress the part, serve in every area effortlessly and make sure they didn’t know any of my deep struggles and God forbid they know any of my sin. It was exhausting and lonely and I was stuck.