From the Corner of a Pastor's Wife

 Since beginning my blog back in 2008, I mostly write to update friends, family, and anyone really about the comings and goings of my simple life, from my highschool years, to college life, to working in California, and Maryland, my wedding to Dan, and our life here in upstate New York.  In all that time, I don't believe I've talked about a reality of my life that is weighty and more serious in nature...that being, life in the pastor's family and life as a pastors wife.  

Many of you may know that I grew up as a pastor's daughter.  My father began a church when I was three years old, and as far back as I can recall, that is all I ever knew.  I've known what it was like to pray and hope and hope and pray that the church would be full each Sunday.  I recall one instance on a Sunday, driving to the 10AM church service in our big, brown, econoline van, and closing my eyes as we rounded a bend on route 34 just outside of Aspers, PA, silently praying through the names of church attenders and members.  I would pray that they would have a desire to come hear the preaching, to come worship corporately in song and testimony, and that they would desire to fellowship with other believers.  

I'd heard every excuse in the book.  See, my father was a pastor, but also a full-time truck driver.  He worked all week long to make a living, and then on Saturdays, he would go out visiting people who'd visited the church, knocking on doors of people who had never visited...etc.  He would take us with him.  I spent nearly every Saturday of my childhood seeing people avoid my dad, sometimes talk to him for hours on end, sometimes be angry and yell at him, many (many) times lie to him and make promises they never intended to keep.  But he kept on going.  And I knew all of these people by name.

Sometimes, people would come to church after such a visit.  I would pray for these people.  Sometimes, people would come to church for years, then get angry about one sermon, and never come again.  

Sometimes, people would come to church, form close relationships with everyone at church, and then try to squeeze money out of people.  

Sometimes, the parents of children who were my friends, would write terrible letters full of accusations, lies, and slanders about my father, and mail them out to everyone in the church.  

Do you know though, that my parents never told me those things?  They knew that the hurts and hardships of ministry were not something a child should ever bear.  I would pray for some of these people without ever knowing what was going on behind the scenes.  

Fast forward if you will.  

I am now 30 years old.  I could have married a plumber, or electrician, or construction man, or Pastor, but I decided to marry all of these- in one.  :-)  Dan knows how to do all of this work.  :-) 

In a way, when Dan became a Pastor, I thought that of COURSE there would be ups and downs etc.  But surely there wouldn't be back-stabbing.  Surely there wouldn't be gossipers, or people who send out nasty emails about you...or people who get upset because you change a service time etc.  

But people are people...and the same problems that I saw in some people back in 1999 as a pastor's daughter are the same problems that some people have today in 2022.  

There have been gossipers.

There have been back-stabbers. 

There have been folks who made promises to the moon and then are gone without a word. 

There have been people who have shown tremendous kindness.

There have been people who have caused hurts so deep...

There have been many unkind words.

There have been faithful friends.  

There have been people who have grown, changed, and then went back to their old ways.

There have been 12 steps forward, and then 20 steps back...

And just three days ago, my sweet little Gwen, who is 3 years old, looked up at me when we were printing off handouts for the ladies Bible study, and asked "Mommy, why doesn't __________________ come to church anymore?" 

A few months ago, after Dan and I had been rebuked in anger by a church attendee for nearly 3 hours, Gwen asked "Daddy, why is _______________ so angry?" 

Tables have turned, because we simply answer "Well honey, God knows.  Let's pray for them." 

And each night at bedtime, Gwen prays for everyone to come to church, same as I used to.  She doesn't need to hear the truth as it would only make her cynical and to doubt that God is still at work.  

Gwen and Lucie a few days ago were talking about their friends and I heard them saying to one another "Well, ____________, and ________________, and _________________ are my best friends!" 

It almost made my heart break, because I know that Gwen and Lucie will likely not see _____________, ________________, or __________________ at church anymore.

These are weighty realities of ministry.  The ministry is wonderful.  But it is also hard.  

It is hard because unlike a salesman who is only forming a relationship in order to make a good commission, 

Unlike a waitress who is only exuberant and friendly because she wants a good tip, 

Unlike a politician who only is amiable in order to get your vote....

Being a Pastor or pastors wife is all about forming relationships with, investing time in, being vulnerable to people for a cause that is primarily unseen.  Our goal is not to have a big church, or to have a huge Bible study.  Our goal is to lift up Christ, teach others' about Christ, and help them to then learn to reach others for Christ.

If you have a pastor, lift him up in prayer.  If you have a pastors wife, do the same.  

If you have been guilty of making excuses, missing church for things that are not life-threatening, know that there may be a pastors child somewhere praying for you, while their parents are praying that God would honor the faith of that child. 

If you ARE a pastors wife, I'd love to pray for you by name.  

Two weeks ago, I saw a Facebook marketplace listing for a playmobil play set for free. The woman getting rid of it was cleaning out her closets.  I contacted her and asked if I could come get it on Tuesday.  She gave me her address, told me where it would be on the front porch, and I went to pick it up.  Underneath the playmobil box was a note with my name on it.  

Inside, the woman had written me a kind note stating that she saw via my profile that my husband was a pastor,  She left me $10 and thanked me for being faithful in ministry throughout the hard times.  How did she know there were hard times? Because she, too, is a pastors wife.  

It's easy to feel like you're the only one experiencing trials or rough patches, or messengers of Satan that  buffet you... 

But you aren't. You aren't ever alone.  With childlike faith, give your burdens to God, don't allow cynicism or bitterness to creep in, and keep believing God to use you where you are!  

(P.S. I know this is weighty and don't worry...my next post will be back to normal.:-)  This is Something I've been praying about/thinking about for a few weeks now and felt compelled to share)

Lighted Tractor Parade 2021

 I mentioned in one post awhile ago that we participated in the Granville lighted tractor parade this year during the Christmas season.  

Dan used his farmall cub, and built a small nativity float.  There were a few things we learned thru this....

1. Don't use non-LED lights

2. Throw candy out a lot SLOWER

:-)

A young couple from church were Mary and Joseph.  One of my piano students and Gwen and Lucie were wisemen/shepherds.  And Eliza was a sheep.    

Had SO MUCH FUN!  There were so many people who came out.  Probably at least 5,000.

We ran out of candy before we got to the second street.

Our friend (and one of Dan's clients), Jim, snapped this selfie with us!

There were some fun floats! And some awesome tractors decorated!

This was the winning tractor

This was the second place float- a Gingerbread house!  

The mayor, announcing the winners

It was a super fun activity, and even though our float wasn't flashy or impressive whatsoever, it was the only one in the entire fleet of floats (I think there were 50 some) that had anything to do with the real meaning of Christmas.  As a result, we had lots of people who loved nativity and some visited church, some started watching out online services...etc.  

It was a great outreach.  Looking forward to doing it again next year.  Thinking we will expand the nativity next year.  Maybe some live animals!.....

How's the Weather?

I don't know about where you live, but up here in the upstate, we're into the hardest part of winter.  That's the part when we don't ever see the temperatures above 20.

We pretty much just get used to switching out the chicken's water several times a day because it doesnt last but an hour and it's frozen solid.  

The snow is here to stay until the beginning of March.

Snowstorm-wise, we've had a mild winter thus far.  But the temps have been in the negatives and single digits now for three weeks straight with the occasional 17, 12, or 20 degree day.  

The sun has shone clearly about 3 days in the last month.  This was one such day.   

We take our daily dose of Vitamin D to make up for the lack in the sunshine.  Even if it was shining all day though, it'd still be too cold to benefit from it. 

A newer lady at church who moved up from Tennessee asked me "Is it always like this???"  

I said, "No, it's usually much worse.  This year is much warmer because of global warming." 

(that's a joke.)  :-) 

Despite the freezing cold temperatures, constant chapped lips and cheeks, and cracked and bleeding hands, I love the upstate weather.  The four seasons are beautiful.   

School for the very young

I've always believed strongly that children shouldn't have open-ended play times, or free times.  With too much freedom, and not enough structure, they become naughty, begin fighting, and it leads to a day of disasters.  

One of the ways I combat this is by being structured myself.  Of course, children need freedom too.  Of course, they need free time, and of COURSE, they must learn to have fun too.  

But from a very early age, I begin my children on "school".  If this is something as simple as getting out a coloring book, and teaching them to color.  

I'm learning more and more that each child is sooo different.  But they CAN all be trained to enjoy school.  Perhaps they won't enjoy every single subject of school, but they can still enjoy SCHOOL. 

That is my goal at this early age.  Teach them to love it, and teach them some basics while I'm at it.  

I'm in now way an expert in this matter.  But these are a few of the things I've learned to implement in our school time. 

1. Phonics cards.  

We go thru the entire alphabet and all of the sounding out.  The girls love finding "their" letter and replacing that card with themselves.  Ex.  "G says g-g-g as in Gwendolyn" 

I just use the mini phonics cards from Abeka, since someone gave them to me.  

Be wary of dollar tree alphabet cards...often they will have weird pictures that aren't easy for little kids to figure out.  Or cartoon looking figures.  Also, often they are WRONG.  

example: a picture of a giraffe on the letter G

My dear friends in Maryland bought us these posters.  There are a lot of them we don't use (yet) and still others that are more simple than we need.  

We go thru the months of the year, chanting them.  The girls tell me who's birthday is which month.  Also, they tell me which holiday is in each month.  

Then we do numbers.  Right now we're counting to 30.  

For Bible time, I borrow these Sunday school Bible story cards from the church (since they arent being used there) and I read them a Bible account.  We've gone thru several of these packets so far this year.  

I ask them questions about the story after.

I kept these small bible verse flashcards from when I was a child, going thru the Bob Jones Bible workbooks.  Sometimes we just go through them all, other times I play a "game" with them....lay them face down and each girl picks one and has to say that verse perfectly for a "point".  The girl with the most points gets a skittle... 

anything like that.  So far they have about 15 verses memorized and 1 longer passage of scripture.  

These are more things I kept from my childhood.  They were in a small Dover book...wildflower flashcards.  The girls love learning about flowers (or ANYTHING), so we've memorized 10 of them, usually 1 or two facts about each flower.  I'm thinking we're ready to move on.  Maybe to mushrooms since we have lots of those that grow around the house and they'd be fun to identify.  

Lucie is only 2, so she has a small tracing the numbers book she uses, one brand new pre-k book that Mr. Jon (from church) gave her for Christmas, and one random coloring book.  She is learning to color the WHOLE picture, not just scribble the tiniest bit and say she's done.  :-)  

She LOVES her new workbook.  She traces letters, finds and circles the letters in a big jumble of letters mixed together, and also there are sometimes little mazes.  

Gwen finished one pre-k book.  I wasn't a fan of it.  It was from the dollar tree and the cartoon figures (like I already mentioned) were hard for her to recognize.  For example:  There would be a large scene and it would say "circle everything that begins with a C"....but the carrot didn't look like a carrot, it looked like a human with legs and arms, and face...hopefully you get the point.  I like SLIGHTLY more realistic pictures.  :-) 

The book she is doing now is better.  I get annoyed sometimes because they have lots of "color this picture" pages.  I feel like coloring pages should be in coloring books.  Gwen doesn't love coloring, she loves dot-to-dots, mazes, patterns, find the differences, all of those....

Another one of the posters we've memorized is the world map.  I know it's simple, but the girls know all of the continents and small facts about each one.  They're learning the oceans now.  

We have a States poster too.  They love to go thru and point out where we live, where Grandma and Grandpa live...where Mimi and papa live, etc.  

The girls have all of the shapes memorized, which is more than I had memorized in like, 2nd grade (or whenever we had to have those memorized haha).  They're favorites are Hexagon and Trapezoid.  

It's been soooo handy teaching them the days of the week.  Every day they ask me "What day is today?" and I make them figure it out by giving them hints.  "Well, yesterday was a day that starts with a T-H....tomorrow is the day Daddy doesn't work...so what day IS today?" 

That might give you an idea of what all we do.  We also have Piano lessons, which I started last month.  

and we do singing.  

I read them books about five times each day, since it's understood now...when I sit down to feed the baby, I read Gwen and Lucie a book or two as well.  :-)  They remind me EVERY time.

Dan has begun teaching them Spanish as well.  They love running around the house saying the spanish words for things.

The girls beg me each day to do school.  Some days I have a lot of other stuff and we don't get to it.  But yesterday it was almost 9pm and Lucie started crying because I had said earlier that we might do school and we still hadn't.  

I remembered why I started school for them so early.  

So you can guarantee we went downstairs and did school time before bed.  If I can squeeze it in to the day, I will make that extra effort to do so.  

 

Jam-making tutorial- just kidding. :-)

 Since Dan got a deer about a month ago, I thought maybe I should try to free up some freezer space a bit.  One of our freezers is plugged up with frozen fruit a neighbor man gave us.  

Well, I looked through my cupboards and found one package of suregel, for jam-making.  

I tried jam one other time back in 2018 one week before I had Gwendolyn.  It was a disastor and tasted so gross and I was so discouraged to have wasted all of that fruit, that I didn't try again.  

That might seem appalling to those of you who are jam-making pros.  Whenever I've said to people "I've never made a successful jam", they say "WHAT?   How was it unsuccessful if you followed the directions...it's a foolproof recipe."  

Well, I must be the fool that proved the foolproof recipe wrong last time.  ;-) 

This time however, is a different story.  

At first, it seemed a little runny...

But after I gave it a water bath, it seemed much more normal. 

And by the next morning on my breakfast toast, it was perfect!  I was so happy!

So yay!  I can no longer say I've had only unsuccessful attempts at jam-making. 

All you people like me, who have been to scared to try again, go give it a whirl!  

Christmas 2021

I hope you all had the merriest of Christmases this year! 

Our Christmas was different and quiet, but I had so much fun watching my girls enjoy their day.  

We had such a wonderful time on Christmas Eve with our church, celebrating the birth of our Savior.  It was so nice to have visitors in church, and a very full church.  We had a candlelight service which was very nice.  We stayed rather late, so by the time we came home, we were all very hungry and didn't get a chance to get a family photo by the tree, which has become a sort of a tradition.  

I snagged this photo of the girls though, before they had a hanger fit.  

One of the dear ladies at church gave Gwen and Lucie gifts: these new dresses!  When they woke up Christmas morning, they begged to wear their new dresses.  Another lady at church gave them the fuzzy, Christmas socks they're wearing.   

I made a crescent roll/cinnamon sugar breakfast with scrambled eggs.  We ate, and then I had the idea to do a scavenger hunt for Gwen and Lucie to find their presents.  

I remember when I was growing up, my parents would do elaborate scavenger hunts (which could include hiding spots on the entire 5 acres) and we would hunt for our presents.  Sometimes there was a present with each clue...other times your present stash would be at the end of the hunt for clues.  

I loved it so much and each Christmas I have fond memories of them. I had Dan draw some clues

Then I went and hid the presents at the locations. 

We explained what they were to do, then I went with Gwen while Dan went with Lucie to find their presents.

Here's Gwen, looking for a present under the piano.

And Lucie found hers under the rocking chair!

Gwen, at the manger scene.

Gwen even had some in the bathtub!

This is Lucie, finding her final presents.

Then we let them open the presents they found.  

This year, I found quite a few nice things (keep in mind, my kids are 3 and 2) at the dollar tree. Don't think I'm a cheapskate.  I just know my girls and I know that they'll enjoy something that costs $1 just as much as they will something that's $25.  Plus they get overwhelmed with too many new things at once.  So we got them about 10 dollar tree things each.  Plus I got them some things they'll share, like new hair bows and baby doll bottles with the disappearing milk and orange juice.  

Gwen, opening her pretend jewelry.  She loves it so much.  

 

These are $1 dolls from dollar tree.  I got one for each of the girls.  Each doll comes with a purse, comb, shoes, and necklace and outfit. Sidenote: has your local dollar tree raised their prices yet? Ours is $1.25 now for every item.  I did my Christmas shopping for the girls before that happened though.  Whew!  hahaha

One of the guys at church got Dan this present!!  It's a remote controller backhoe!  Yes, Dan is 34 years old.  But Dan LOVES remote controlled toys...I attribute it to the fact that as a child he didn't get many gifts like this perhaps?  Whatever the case, he thought it was a fun gift and enjoyed driving it around, trying to pick up wrapping paper and bows off the ground with the bucket (Of which he was unsuccessful). 

Mimi (my mother-in-law) made and sent these hats for the girls!  They love them and wear them each time they go outside.  Okay, Eliza does not love hers...but she never loves hats.  :-)

After we finished wrapping presents (We have not actually finished FINISHED yet- we are saving a few of the girls gifts from friends for later when the "new toy" fascination has worn off of the $1 items), we drove to Queensbury and ate lunch at the Asian buffet (of all places!)  

The price was very steep...I suppose because it was Christmas, they gauged their prices because they knew they were the only place open.  

But it was nice!  I enjoyed eating the food on the buffet!

Hope you all enjoyed a lovely Christmas!!!  Did you do anything special?  Please let me know if you have any neat traditions!  I'd like to implement some new ones next year and need fresh ideas!