THE FINAL F: FAIL PROOF?

I was FALLIBLE, imperfect, mortal and frail. I was liable to make mistakes at any given moment, at any time. This drove me nuts. I did not like to admit that I was subject to the frailties of humanity. I was Super-Donna, able to overcome anything through the sheer force of my will. I had intestinal fortitude. I knew how to grit my teeth and bear anything. My motto was, “Never let ‘em see you sweat!” I often turned down help with a work or a project because to accept help meant I was not capable of doing it on my own.

Do you know, dear reader, how much energy one needs to keep up the front that all is well and everything is under control? I have lost count of how many nights I spent “rehearsing my misery,” going over in my head the mistakes and mis-steps of a day. I had more moments than I can count of borderline depression, days when I would declare to myself (and sometimes others), “I’m standing up, but my spirit is sitting down!” There were times when I didn’t want to pretend any more, moments when I just wanted to cry out in my distress and hope that someone would come to my rescue. But the church girl in me did not want anyone to know that she was insecure. “What will they think of me?” was always my main concern. The knowledge that I was fallible always led to self-loathing because I would never be perfect.

I remember the Sunday I stepped into church and mentally noted that most of the women wore white. Talk about things that make you go “Hmmmmmmm.” I had chosen that particular Sunday to wear a forest green outfit so I stuck out like a green sore thumb in a garden of white flowers. The mission president finally told me that telephone calls had been made to the women asking them to wear white that Sunday. How had the person making the calls forgotten to call the pastor’s wife? In spite of the fact that this situation had nothing to do with anything I had or had not done, the perfectionist in me was horrified that I was not “correct” that day. I spent the rest of the service waiting for the benediction so I could bolt away from the reminder that I was not as much in control as I thought I was.

Here is the issue that often adds fuel to the church girl’s fire: The expectations that some congregations lay at the feet of its First Lady are often unrealistic. There is no manual for the “role” of the pastor’s wife, yet there are churches that act as though there is a Standard Order of Procedures for the Pastor’s Wife and the wife is supposed to be well acquainted with the text. Surely the wife can sing, work with the children, play the piano and keep her composure while people critique her clothing, assess the behavior of her children and bad mouth her husband to her face as she smiles and pretends that all is well and nothing is amiss. The church girl, the overachieving people pleaser, steps into that place of unrealistic expectations and immediately goes into church girl mode to work and work and work and work, hoping her hard work will satisfy the unspoken demands of the congregation as well as still the turmoil in her soul. Unfortunately, the foolish church girl builds on the wrong foundation, a foundation that is fake and flawed, one that is subject to failure. It is a foundation that someday will collapse under the weight of her pretense.