Lead-footed Preacher’s Wife

Sonja was serving as a pastor’s wife, a full-time job in itself, plus as a mom, teacher, library volunteer, and secretary for the family business.

—HEAVEN IS FOR REAL, 117

Sonja

Todd often describes how, when he was thirteen years old, he felt God telling him he wanted Todd to be a pastor when he grew up. I don’t remember having a specific moment during my youth when I realized what I would be when I grew up. All I can tell you is that I grew up knowing I would be a pastor’s wife.

My dad is a pastor and my brother is a pastor, so being a pastor’s wife seemed like a perfectly natural role for me. But, as any pastor’s wife can tell you, it’s not an easy role to fill.

There used to be a joke—well, maybe it wasn’t a joke, and maybe in some places it’s still a requirement—that the main qualification for being a pastor’s wife was that you had to know how to play the piano. Yes, I play. And yes, I’ve played for church many, many times (including several times when I was as sick as a dog but showed up anyway). Thankfully, I’ve retired from that duty now, but I always want to be supportive of Todd in whatever way he needs me.

Playing the piano for church services isn’t nearly the biggest challenge pastors’ wives face. That talent actually falls pretty far down the list, below a couple of bigger “qualifications,” including the ability to live and raise your family in the spotlight and having a heart big enough to share your family with the congregation.

It’s a no-brainer that pastors and their wives and children are held to a higher standard of behavior than non-churched families may be. The Christian faith is all about striving to model Christ in all areas of your life—showing humility in all things, having a servant’s heart, and, well, to put it bluntly, not breaking any laws or making headlines due to scandalous behavior!

The fact is, people in the church can blow it and be forgiven, but if a pastor—or sometimes a pastor’s family member—blows it, that pastor most likely will be fired. It’s not right for the church to have that attitude, but Jesus is the “gold standard” for pastors, and too often pastors and their families are expected to meet that standard.

Well, I’m sorry, but only Jesus was without sin. Certainly pastors should be good examples, and ideally their families too. But all believers are supposed to be good examples, not just pastors and their families, and it just isn’t right for that double standard to be imposed on them. I don’t know of any other families, except maybe politicians’, that get exposed for their mistakes the way pastors and their families do. It’s really hard.

If you’re breathing, you’re human (and that includes pastors and their families), and you make mistakes. I know one pastor’s wife who makes a lot of them—me. And the mistake I make most often is speeding.

Yes, I have a lead foot. I’m always in a hurry, and to be honest, I’ve seen those red lights flashing in my rearview mirror many more times than a preacher’s wife (or anyone else) should. I’ve been stopped in Nebraska, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and Texas. There might be another one I forgot.

People who know me know that this is one of my failings and, thank God, they don’t condemn me for it—at least not too much.

Not long ago we had to catch a flight out of Denver, normally a three-hour drive from Imperial. Todd was telling someone that we got a late start and made it in two hours and forty minutes.

“Oh, was Sonja driving?” the friend asked. (Actually I wasn’t driving that time, but it goes to show my reputation around here.)

On a different trip not too long ago I got another ticket. The officer who pulled me over asked, “Do you know how fast you were going?”

“Nope,” I answered innocently.

“Seventy-two,” he said. Then he mentioned something about it being a 60 mph zone.

“Why were you in such a hurry?” he asked.

“I want to get home,” I told him.

Mercifully, he reduced the ticket to a different category so the fine didn’t cost as much. Todd and both boys were in the car with me when it happened, and amazingly, neither Colton nor Colby remembered to tell Cassie about it. But she didn’t stay in the dark for long. This week, while I was out of town, I got a text message from her that said, “Did you get a speeding ticket last week!”

Apparently a couple of her friends had seen my name in the local newspaper. Who knew teenagers read the newspaper?

Besides my tendency to speed, the other big challenge I struggle with as a pastor’s wife is being gracious about sharing my husband. Even though I grew up seeing the demands on a pastor’s time and watched how well my mom modeled patience and acceptance, I really had no idea how hard that requirement would be. The fact is, a pastor is always on call. There’s probably not a pastor alive who hasn’t had a meal or a vacation or a night’s sleep interrupted by a phone call from a church member (and sometimes even non–church members) who need his or her help.

Pastors sometimes miss their kids’ school programs or sporting events because they’re preaching funerals. They miss meals because they’re at the bedside of someone who is dying. They miss their children’s dance recitals and baseball games because they’re comforting other kids’ parents about some crisis that has happened. It’s just the way things are. I get that. It’s been a struggle sometimes, but over the years I’ve become resolved to it. I still can’t say I like it, but when Todd and I were married in 1990 and I was asked, “Do you take this man . . . ?” I understood that I was also “taking” his church.

And speaking of taking, a pastor’s wife also has to learn to “take it” when her husband is criticized unfairly or accused of favoritism or targeted with other complaints. I’m not saying I don’t defend Todd in some of those circumstances, but I do have to be very careful how I respond.

The truth is, I never, ever want to keep someone from coming to Jesus or being impacted by Jesus because I’m having a hissy fit about some unfair criticism or throwing myself a pity party insisting that he stay home instead of doing his job.

As I said, I’ve resolved myself to sharing Todd with our church. That’s a given. But since the release of Heaven Is for Real there’s been a huge new demand on his time, and I have to admit, I’m struggling to cope with it. We both believe that Colton’s visit to heaven is a story that God expects us to share. So we wrote the book, and to date, nearly seven million copies of the original book and more than five hundred thousand copies of the children’s version have been sold. People read the book and want to know more; churches and other groups invite Todd to come and talk about Colton’s experience and how it has impacted our lives and millions of others’.

So now I’m not just sharing him with our local congregation. I’m sharing him with the world. And that’s hard. Reallyhard. It’s hard because Todd’s not here with the kids and me, and we need him and miss him. But it’s also hard because, even though he travels surrounded by the prayers of our church, our family, and our friends, as his wife I can’t help but worry about him amid the ordinary dangers of travel.

I’m writing this in late winter, during a week when Todd is on the road. He was on a flight coming into Milwaukee on a foggy morning when the plane missed its approach and had to pull up and go around and make a second attempt. The plane did land safely, but the danger was not over. The day was so foggy that the airport had trucks parked along the runway and taxiway to shine their headlights to guide the plane into the gates. Hearing Todd describe it later, I thanked God for his mercy—and for guiding those skilled pilots, flight controllers, and ground crews who brought Todd’s flight in safely.

But dangerous travel conditions aren’t my only worries when Todd is away. We know there are people who don’t believe Colton’s story and don’t like that we’ve told it to the world in what we see as our responsibility to share the love of Jesus. We know they don’t like it because they’ve contacted us and told us so—and even threatened us. So again, as a wife and mother, I worry.

Invitations have come in for me to speak publicly as well—sharing Colton’s story and how it has impacted our family and so many others. I am not a public speaker. I’ve never wanted to be and still don’t feel comfortable doing it. Accepting those invitations pulls me way out of my safety zone. Yet I feel God telling me that’s what he wants me to do—join Todd in spreading the message of hope that comes from the experience God gave our family.

So I’ve also been out on the road for a few appearances. I try to schedule these engagements during times our kids don’t have some kind of school or sports competition, but that’s hard to do with three kids involved in a wide range of activities. I joked to one audience recently that I had missed Cassie’s district softball tournament the year before because I was away from home, speaking somewhere, and that “I’m still in therapy because of it.”

I decline more invitations than I accept, believing that my first responsibility is to support Todd in the work he’s doing both in our local church and in his travels around the country. But it’s also important to me to be a mother to our three children. I also work as office manager in a local real estate firm. So yes, I’m busy.

If you’re in a church with a hardworking pastor, you’re probably also in a church with a hardworking pastor’s wife. I hope you’ll do your part to support her (or him) with your love and encouragement—and with mercy and grace if you happen to see that person’s name in the newspaper’s traffic court list.

Consider doing something nice for your pastor’s family today. I’ve been blown away by the kindness of our congregation, whether it’s a bouquet of flowers sent just to me or members showing up to clean our house. These are gifts this lead-footed pastor’s wife always appreciates!

Give a bonus to leaders who do a good job, especially the ones who work hard at preaching and teaching.

—1 Timothy 5:17 MSG