Well, I'm honestly not even sure what I want to say here except that journaling some of our journey to get here was helpful and I have really liked being able to look back on it. So here we are, 2 years and almost 3 months after moving our family across the country to serve in a church that is no longer ours. For the first time in my entire married life (actually my entire time knowing him) my husband is no longer working and is not serving at a church. That is pretty mind blowing to me.
We were exhausted and something had to give. 7 months ago the global pandemic grounded life to a halt as we knew it and we both had to attempt working full time while managing our five kids, their remote schooling etc.. with essentially no help or support because our family is across the country. R. worked for 150 days with absolutely not one day off producing the online service for what was then our church. He did it without complaint because that's the kind of person he is. For the last two years he has worked so incredibly hard without opportunity to grow in creative leadership like he had hoped he would. He never got a chance. He was managing too many other responsibilities that took precedence over creativity. He was disappointed but hoped eventually he would get a chance. After 150 days of not taking a break he in a nutshell was informed he wasn't doing enough to be a magical unicorn. A magical unicorn in a lot of churches is one who can lead creatively while also holding the full time job of 3 other technical roles and do so with $0 of a budget. So instead of destroying our family by adding another 20 hours a week to his already 55-60 hour work week, he resigned.
I'm so beyond proud of him. I am in love with my husband on another level right now because he chose us over something that has been called ministry for all of these years we've been married but honestly never felt like ministry. It felt like some sort of unappreciated unbalanced torture that nearly ruined our relationship all in the name of Jesus and advancing the gospel. There I said it. That is pretty much how I have felt for the last 15 years. I have felt like there was never room for my children and I in the world of technical and creative church production. I've seen other wives struggle in the same way. Our husbands work three times harder and longer than every other church employee with zero recognition, missing important events in the lives of their children for the sake of something more "important".
I believe God has something different for us and I'm prayerful that something is here. We uprooted our whole lives to come here and I feel like digging in my heels right now because leaving doesn't feel like the right next step. I guess we'll have to see.
More than anything I pray God will strengthen and encourage my husband and land him somewhere, where the people at the top; the ones who make all the decisions. see what he brings to the table and values that along with the commitment he makes to both his work and his family. While we hang out here in the wilderness place, may God be working that out on his behalf.
