I’m sure after reading the title I’ve piqued your interest. The title could be taken many ways but I’m referring to it in the vain of when the stress of church can actually make you PHYSICALLY, EMOTIONALLY and SPIRITUALLY sick,
I grew up a Pastor’s kid as most of you may know if you’ve been following this blog. That means born in the pew, never missed a service unless I was near death and spent more time in the church building than I did my own house. I sort of had a triple whammy. My Grandfather was the founding Pastor, my dad was the English speaking Pastor and my Uncle was the Italian speaking in our church – it was a bi-lingual non-denominational pentecostal church. I couldn’t get away from the pastor connection thing no matter how hard I tried because my other grandfather was a pastor too, my grandfather’s brother was a pastor, my dad’s brother was a pastor, my dad’s brother in law was a Pastor and I have several cousins who are pastors. We are FULL of Pastors in this family. Not sure if that means we’re gluttons for punishment or we genuinely LOVE serving God and people but our you could always count on finding someone at a family function to pray. 🙂
Being from a Pastor’s family you’re very much aware of things that are going on around you. Besides being a member of the “ruling monarchy” where your entire life is a fishbowl with what feels like 24 hours surveillance on you, you also “hear” things about the people in the church. Sometimes good, sometimes not so good.
My parents should have moved my bedroom to another spot in the house because we lived in a small cape cod style home in Upstate NY and the hallways were short and the bedrooms close. My parents obviously figured that I was asleep and couldn’t hear them talking from my bedroom whether they were in the living room or their own bedroom but I heard EVERY word. In fact, I’d lay there and practically break my neck trying to hear what they were saying.
I could catch the latest scoop on who was having marital issues, who’s husband drank too much, who was whining because they weren’t married yet and their biological clock was ticking, who was gossiping about who and which person this week you had to keep your eye on because they were trying to cause trouble in church.
Now please don’t take this the wrong way but in the culture I come from, some of the people tend to be “drama queens” both male and female. THEY LOVE drama. It’s just the way they’re wired – it’s as irritating as poison ivy but it’s the truth. If felt like our church had more than it’s share of drama queens though.
Anyway – I don’t want to get off topic. The amount of things that you hear when you’re in ministry can really get to you. If you’re the Pastor or the Pastor’s wife, you have the unbelievable privilege to be the one people call, the one who hears their complaints, their “side” of the story, the one who gets to hear all the things you’re doing wrong, all the things your kids are doing wrong, etc.
You’re the victim of gossip, of two faced people, of not being able to have a person you can trust in confidence to talk things out (at least not in the church), and you keep alot to yourself.
My Grandfather was my first “protector”. He was the most incredible man. I was “grandpa’s girl” mainly because he lived with our family but he never let my mom discipline me and even told her one time that if she spanked me, he’d hit her back. I shouldn’t laugh every time I tell that story but it’s true. He let NO ONE touch me. My grandfather was a work horse from day one. He worked a regular job and travelled to a couple of different towns on the weekends to preach services for small groups of italian congregations that needed a Pastor. My grandmother died when my mom was seven years old. They had four children at the time and my grandmother was in her mid 30’s and died from what they called, “Acute indigestion” which translates now into a heart attack. He was left to raise those girls and depended on his oldest daughter to stay with them when he couldn’t be there.
They finally moved to Rochester and he acquired a church building for them to meet in. He was the person that did everything that needed to be done in the church until my mom grew up and married my dad who by then was all ready a Pastor for a church in the Southern Tier of NY. My other Uncle was now preaching there as well. The congregation grew and so did the trouble. Things like letters from one Pastor to another were given to my grandfather warning him of a congregants bad behavior and tendency to cause problems in church. There were fights about buildings, service times, who wanted to be on the church board – you name it, we had the drama.
I noticed the illness factor in my grandfather when I was about nine years old. He was in and out of the hospital alot when I was a child. He had stomach problems my mom would tell me until I learned later on that it was ulcers. He kept alot inside about the things he endured as a Pastor. The personal attacks, the people trying to split the church.
My mom, bless her heart, went through some tough scrutiny, some nasty bouts of verbal attacks against her and her sisters and her dad, and it continued and got worse as she became one of the Pastor’s wives. She was “very nervous.” THAT would be an understatement. My mom was as high strung as a Jack Russell terrier on Espresso. She bit her nails, she had headaches, tons of stomach issues and even had a bout with colon cancer when I was six years old. She didn’t sleep well at night. She and my father argued constantly about the things people from church would say when the phone rang over and over again EVERY Monday following the Sunday services while dad was working his full time job.
All that “nervousness” transferred itself to me because I started having stomach issues when I was about 10 years old and finally the pediatrician told my parents that I too had a “nervous stomach.” My grandfather died shortly thereafter. I was devastated. No more learning to count in italian, no more stories about pagans and how I needed to stay away from the things of the world, no more stories, no more rides on his knee and no more hugs. My dad and my uncle were now solely responsible for the church. That was an interesting transition.
As the years went on, my aunt (who’s husband was the italian pastor), developed angina and a heart condition. She finally got to the point where she couldn’t go to church because it would make her so nervous that she’d get chest pain and would be popping a couple of nitroglycerin pills during service and end up going home. My mom of course would get nervous because of it and basically it was a bundle of nerves the entire time.
My aunt passed away three days before her scheduled by pass surgery from a heart attack. My uncle was heart broken. There were very much in love.
My mom continued with the health issues – gall bladder attacks leading to surgery, unbelievable bouts with insomnia over ‘church stuff”. My dad buried himself in overtime at Kodak and in doing things at church. I sought refuge by getting involved in school stuff and taking on the role of Pastor’s wife because my mom had stopped going to church. I hosted church dinners, I worked in the nursery, I sat in the church during counseling appointments in another room, I attended every service – and we had church FIVE times a week. Thank God I was able to do homework during church. 🙂
My dad starting having health issues. He ended up in the hospital needing surgery because his stomach was so messed up. He recovered and was back at church immediately.
I developed migraine headaches at the age of nine. I later found out those were stress related and hormone related.
Yeah – it was pretty much a mess in our house.
Let’s fast forward to my adult years. I’ve endured my share of migraines, stomach pains and anxiety attacks from ministry positions. I’ve seen my husband do the same. I’ve seen us have sleepless nights. Our kids have seen the physical effects and the emotional effects of us being in ministry positions over the years. Neither of my kids will attend church because of what they’ve seen us endure and what they heard their grandparents went through. It saddens me more than I can put into words.
So if you’re finding yourself having sleepless nights, bad headaches, stiff necks, stomach pains, and whatever else I’m going to ask you to do this…..STOP IT. IT IS NOT WORTH IT.
My father died from a massive heart attack two weeks following his 70th birthday. He had resigned his position as pastor about two years earlier and my mom said he was stressed from something including some property that he was trying to hold onto from his childhood for the sake of another family member being able to live there. She told me that for years before that he had recurring nightmares and would wake up hollering in his sleep. She said that his blood pressure had been high. It’s amazing the things your parents don’t tell you once you get married and move out of the house because they don’t want you to worry. She told me he was quite hurt from the way he’d been treated before he resigned. He had gotten to the point that after over 40 years of ministry, he had finally had enough. He had to get out. It was too much.
My mother died of colon cancer in 2005 and I can tell you as sure as I’m sitting here it was because of the bitterness she harboured until her last breath against the people that hurt her and our family so much over the years. She could recall incidences as clear and as fresh as the day they happened up until a couple of weeks before she passed away. I know this for a fact because she visited me six weeks before she died and and got on the tangent of what so and so did and I looked at her and said, “Mommy, PLEASE let it go. They’ve moved on. YOU HAVE TO MOVE ON TOO.” By that time the bitterness had become so much a part of her that she got mad at me for saying that even though I KNEW she knew I was right.
My Uncle who was the italian Pastor died from cancer as well. My cousin found a box of his diaries recounting all the things that went on in the church, the pain it cause him, the pain it caused my aunt, how it broke his heart and even recounting where a church member grabbed his by the neck. If you knew my uncle, he was a humble, quiet man who wouldn’t hurt a flea. He worked as a barber to support his family. He loved his family and he loved people and most of alll he loved the Lord with his entire being – it showed the minute you saw him.
About two years ago my husband and I were attending a church, I had been asked by the pastor’s wife to take over the Womens Ministry because she was spread too thin. I gladly took it on. She asked me to fill in for worship when they went on vacation. I gladly did that too. I found out that she eventually started feeling threatened and told her husband that he needed to get us out of the church. I had developed a successful moms ministry there, had developed a strong Womens Ministry and the people liked the way I led worship. He called us in, ripped us up one side and down the other, said some hurtful and hateful things and we told him we were done. We would leave his church since that’s what they wanted.
I was so hurt – I cried – I cried alot. My husband was angry – so angry. We both got angry at God. And we both started getting sick too – physically, emotionally and spiritually. We stopped going to church. We stopped reading our bibles. We just stopped everything. And it was a horrible time in our lives. It wasn’t until we hit rock bottom without God as a main part in our life that we finally realized that what the things we saw over the years and recently were NOT God’s fault. What we had endured was at the hands of people – some very screwed up people. We realized that we needed to ask God for forgiveness and we started to attend church. My walls were up – I dragged my feet. I didn’t want to be back in church. I shook physically to the point of rattling when I walked into church again. i popped prozac before going. I did that for about six weeks. Little by little, things got better. And little by little, because of God’s grace, His love and His mercy, we are at a point in our lives now that God is THE MOST important person in our lives and that He has restored to us the joy of our salvation, our peace of minds and our desire to be in ministry. We also started to attend a church that has showed us love and support in ways I can’t even put into words especially when my husband was diagnosed with Leukemia in November of 2012. The Pastors and the church family have been great. We are back and active again and my husband is doing amazing!
My friend, DO NOT allow the enemy to let church swallow you up to the point of illness, to the point of strife in your home, to the point of feeling like you can’t find peace. Realize that PEOPLE ARE HUMAN – THEY WILL MESS YOU UP and that you CANNOT allow that to shroud your view of God and how GOOD and LOVING and MERCIFUL and AMAZING GOD IS.
If you can remove yourself from the situation, then do so. Even if it hurts. But in the long run it will be worth it. Confront what needs confronting because then and only then you can CONQUER it. God NEVER intended for church to make you sick – EVER. There were issues back in the Bible days but even now, we need to keep our eyes and our minds on God and HIM ONLY.
From the Inside of Church 