The Value of a Village

To an outsider, two young girls sitting on the front steps of a country Tennessee church would be ordinary. After all, what turmoil could such good little girls from good Christian families be going through? In each other, they found comfort. In their pain, they were not alone.

They talked about what it must be like to have a “normal” life and how wonderful it would be! To escape. To be freed from the expectations that followed them like shadows. Their imaginations ran wild that night plotting how to get away and live with a new identity. They were not unloved or mistreated; they just simply lived such an unorthodox life the isolation that came with it was their reality.

“Perhaps with this new friend,” they thought, ”My life could be different.” The two of them lost to their fantasies, their friendship as a salve to their tender lonely hearts.

All too soon, however, when only their families and the pastor remained in the church, they had to say their tearful goodbyes. How unfair that the circumstances of their lives would rip them away when they had just found, what seemed to be, the only person on earth who understood how they felt!

The life of full-time ministry can often feel overwhelming to all involved. Perhaps the most affected are the children. Often, they only have a vague understanding of why they were ripped away from everything they knew their whole life.

It is not the fault of the parent or the child.

It is not the “wrong” decision.

In fact, it could be the very best decision for that family to make as they seek to serve the Lord. There are hard things that these children must walk through that very few other people understand. The child of a family in ministry has many muddy rivers to forge.

The word “home” becomes ambiguous. The seemingly simple introductory question of “Where are you from?” is suddenly complicated. Friendships morph into complex puzzles. You start to wonder if you’ll still be friends when you come back. Inevitably, when ministry kids do return, it feels like they’ve stepped into the middle of a book they haven’t read. 

There is an expectation that almost every “ministry kid” understands.

It goes unspoken but is one that won’t be ignored. It’s a quiet fear that, if unmet, the ministry of their family may be injured. The expectation is that of near perfection. A heavy load for anyone to carry – much less for a child!

I know this because I grew up in ministry from age nine to nineteen.

The problems are not limited to these and they can look SO different for every ministry kid even within one family. I’m not here to tell you I know exactly what you’ve been through or are going through, or to tell you how you should feel or what you should do. I am here to tell you though, you’re not alone and you’re not “weird.”

Instead of viewing the challenges of ministry life as a curse, I’d like to present them to you as a gift. The gift of a unique worldview. I have traveled from church to church to raise support for my family’s ministry. We moved to a new country. Twice. Thankfully, we only needed to learn one language and adapt from one similar culture to another. 

I suffered from undiagnosed depression in high school caused by isolation. I even considered ending my God-given gift of life. I know the struggles of making and losing friends along the way. Never quite feeling like you fit in. 

Then, when I graduated high school, I had to figure out how I was going to build a new life in the States without my family. It felt like my only choices were Christian college or staying overseas indefinitely with my family.

I finally settled on a small Christian college for a degree I didn’t really want. ended up struggling with reverse culture shock in silence and isolation despite the fact I was around more people than ever before. After only a year of college, and through the circumstance of my family’s inability to take a furlough in America, God led me to work at a small new camp in the mountains of West Virginia for a summer. 

Through that camp, God led me in a direction I never expected. I didn’t go back to college. Instead, I went to live with my grandmother so that I could work and save every penny, waiting for God’s guidance. I reconnected with a friend from another camp I attended in high school and it didn’t take long for him to propose marriage. Within 10 months, I became a military wife. Ten months after we said “I do,” we found out we were expecting our first child! 

All of that to say, friend, from my heart to yours, God has a plan for your life that you could never imagine. He is The Master Artist. As impossible as it may feel, He can take even your ashes and turn them into beauty. 

Now that you’ve met me, I’m so excited to meet you! Please join our village, tell me about yourself, and meet other ministry kids! I pray that this will be a place where you can debrief, and recognize the hard moments of ministry, but also to be a place you walk away from feeling encouraged and refreshed!

My armor of encouraging Scripture for the hard times:

• John 14:26-27

• Psalm 27:14

• Isaiah 61:3