Reflecting on the Kansas City Experience (1)

I’m not going into a lot of detail about our Kansas City experience.  It was somewhat like Charles Dickens description at the beginning of the Tale of Two Cities.  It was the best of times and the worst of times.  I’ll say a little about each, but there are a lot of specifics that are best left in the past.

It was a very difficult time for Ann.  She was the victim of harsh judgmentalism and congregational gossip.  

On top of that she was facing something of a personal crisis. She had three children under school age during our early years.   Gary was born within our first year at Kansas City, so she had her hands full.  The salary wasn’t the greatest in the world, and she was working to help make ends meet.   On top of all that she tried to involve herself the children’s school experiences, and was named the unit president of the PTA.   When we left Kansas, she was given a lifetime membership in the Kansas PTA.  Ann never does anything half way.  She had also major surgery during that time, so there were a lot of things on her plate.

To make matters worse I wasn’t engaged in family life in the way I should have been.  Ann tied to be a good trooper but she was going to church more and enjoying it less.  She tried very hard to live the life of a supportive preacher’s wife, but she found it difficult to live up to the expectations of others.  

Looking back on it, I think I was pretty full of me, and I think Ann saw right through me.  The more I got involved in church life, the more I seemed to be moving farther away from God.  My prayers were cold, ritualistic, formal, and lacking in fervency.   My thoughts were superficial, and often nothing more than a rehash of something I heard someone else say or something somebody else had written. 

Besides that  my practical skills left a lot to be desired.  I wasn’t much of a handy man around the house.   I hated trying to do anything electrical.  Once I ran a drill bit into an electrical cord inside the wall, and knocked out half of the electricity in the house.  It was only by the grace of God that I avoided electrocution.  I hated plumbing, and would sometimes let a leaky faucet go for months before trying to fix it.   I didn’t hate plumbing as much as I hated electrical work, but only because it was harder to kill yourself that way. 

A lot of preacher’s wives are frustrated because they are married to a husband who is a klutz when it comes to doing anything practical. Nevertheless preachers sometimes end up being admire by woman who are frustrated because their husbands don’t exercise spiritual leadership.

So when Hattie Housewife starts telling Peggy Preacher’s Wife how wonderful her husband is, Peggy wants to throw up.  She knows that dude’s weaknesses better than he does, and she doesn’t share Hattie’s opinions about him.   If he ever appeared to be angelic at all, she knows full well that he’s lost his halo.