Pastor's Wives

I am submitting my thoughts and ideas in humility because I have not been a pastors wife very long and we have a very small little church and really I know nothing!!
But this article did stir a passion and so many thoughts inside of me!! One of my first reactions was sorrow that so many pastors wives felt that pastoring was their "husbands calling". How can it be his calling when we are joined as one flesh through marriage? I also felt such sorrow that they referred to the church as their husbands "mistress" and of the divorce rate. I was not a woman who saw myself marrying a pastor or ever becoming a pastor's wife, in fact on my wedding day I joked about how I would never be a pastors wife (God does have a sense of humor). But for my husband and I this call of God was ours, not because we both do equal amounts of "pastoring, teaching and preaching" but because we are one, joined by God and so whatever he is called to do I am as well. Although for us I believe us to be more of a ministry team due to some of our feelings about what pastoring does and doesn't look like for us. Pastoring is not my husbands profession, it is our life lived out day to day, Steve can not choose a different profession because we do what we do because Jesus asked us too not because someone hired us and we can not live our lives any differently and feel like we are fulfulling what we were placed on this earth to do. I am glad that pastors wives have found a place to help with lonliness and isolation, I have also felt very lonely at times after arriving in the city to plant a church and leaving so many friends and family at home, but this feeling drove me more into Jesus and allowed me to realize that as lonely as I can possibly be I will never exerience what some on this world will. I will always have someone in my corner. Through these feelings of lonliness and isolation I have become more aware of why Steve and I live the way we do and why we will continue to, because our neighbors, co-workers, cashiers and waitresses experience a lonliness that I no longer know, they live through the same things I do in my life only without the one hope I have. for me thus far it is an honor to be a pastors wife, God chose me to participate in peoples lives to the degree he will allow me, he chose me to be a bringer of hope, love and life. I know that these same people he has called me to will be the ones that cause me the deepest pains, but I don't love them so that they will love me, I love them because God loved me and in this I am given the ability to love them. A wise woman I know told me that as a pasors wife I can not hide from pain, or run away from the hurts you will encounter but instead charge head first into it with the banner of forgiveness over you. I am not judging this article or other pastors wives, it started my head spinning and my passions stirring and these are my thoughts on the subject. I am not a pastors wife because I married one, I am because Jesus asked me to and for him I would do anything. A book that has definatley influenced my perspective and caused me thoughts to ponder is "The Pastors Wife" by Sabina Wurmbrand. Great book and some challenging moments. I know that I am married to an incredible man who passionately loves Jesus with all his heart and I am very blessed in this, so I know that my circumstance is not the same as other women's so please hear my heart of excitment and encouragement and not a criticism or judgement. I am young and idealistic and some day I will get old and then I hope that I will be old and idealistic because I will always believe in the impossible and dream the dreams of God, he came to change the world and I have enlisted myself to him in any way shape or form he asks.