Doing God’s work versus being there for family and loved ones
Puzzler
Shipmate
in Epiphanies
Did you ever feel your loved one wasn’t there for you when you needed them because they were busy or away “doing God’s work”?
I am interested in hearing others’ experiences of being affected by the conflict between family life and the calling of another family member, where the respective needs seemed at times to be mutually exclusive.
How did you deal with any conflicted feelings?
And if you were the one who was often absent how did you feel or cope?
I am interested in hearing others’ experiences of being affected by the conflict between family life and the calling of another family member, where the respective needs seemed at times to be mutually exclusive.
How did you deal with any conflicted feelings?
And if you were the one who was often absent how did you feel or cope?
Comments
Moreover, the ordination vows are clear on the responsibility of the ordained person to so that proper fulfilment of the call to be “doing God’s work” includes proper care and attention to family life.
That doesn’t mean there are no challenges balancing the various demands, and I’m not saying that I have always got it right. I do say, however, that giving proper attention to family life is part of “doing God‘s work“.
Easier perhaps for you both in that you were both on the same level, so to speak.
We had our share of battles until Mr Lamb learned that you don't sacrifice family to church (to his credit, it didn't take that long). I pointed out that the church was Somebody else's bride, and he'd better stop behaving like she was his mistress. I think the Lord heard a word with him too (I certainly asked him to!) now we have most of our boundaries worked out. For example, he's at home with me while I'm recovering from retina surgery face down. The church has been told to handle their own non-emergency needs..
How did I cope with conflicted feelings? Not very well. FWIW when I was treated for PTSD, the NHS clinical psychologist who was treating me suggested that I might have avoided PTSD if my husband had been more available.
Now he's retired I have been promoted from second fiddle to first fiddle, which is very nice, but if he ended up working again, I'm sure I'd end up playing second fiddle again.
ETA - 37 years married, though, so we must be doing something right!
*translates to helping out in a Sunday School approximately
He would write all morning, go visiting in the afternoons and have evening meetings. Sundays - three services. We just went to the morning one.
But he always made sure he bathed us children, read us a bedtime story and put us to bed before he went out. So we never felt like we missed out.
I think my Mum missed out. But she was always thrilled that he became a Minister as she introduced him to religion.
As Donne says:
Dull sublunary lovers' love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.
The difficulty came when we had children and my husband continued to prioritise work over me, especially as the pregnancies took a heavy toll on me. But we both worked together to make sure that my husband spent time with the kids. We just weren't able to juggle his career and the kids and still have time for him to support me.
That's exactly what I thought. I used to be a workaholic, but saw the error of my ways. Of course, getting older changes things a lot.
We did the same. My wife was a Primary School teacher and often did marking and paperwork on Sunday afternoons while I went out with our son.
There is another issue for volunteers: it can be most unhelpful to say that you'll lead or help out at an activity and then cry off a couple of days beforehand because, unbeknownst to you, another family member has arranged a meal together and assumed that you will be free. "It's only church", they'll say, "I'm sure they can do without you".
Looking back, what were we thinking???
Fortunately our second was born at Easter, so my husband had the day of her birth and a further three days off anyway.
It wasn't until the third pregnancy, when my health started to let me down, that my husband's inability to take time off work really started to be problematic.
Personally, I've always enjoyed my own company, so the demands this kind of life made on the people in my immediate emotional orbit never bothered me very much.
But I have often wondered how people in the situation described in the OP cope, if they don't have a third party who's close enough to offer a perspective without first being asked.
Later, as a school chaplain, non- residential, my husband’s workload was again insane, with no whole day off as there were Saturday morning lessons and Sunday evening Chapel, plus the local church on Sunday morning. It became easier once the boarding side closed. Yes there were school holidays, but teachers need recovery time and also preparation ….
But I was on the same page, in a demanding post in a different school.
However the hardest thing has been retirement - or rather non-retirement. Such was the shortage of clergy and Mr P’s dedication to his calling that he returned to church life after school. A part-time post led to full-time. On retirement he helped out in so many churches, not just on Sundays, that it was often hard to know he was retired.
It's actually got harder as the years have gone on - it's so hard to get time with one another that isn't overshadowed by w*rk.
We hope retirement might be more expansive.
FWIW, it isn't just a 'God's work' thing - plenty of teachers are working 60+ hours per week, to the detriment of their health and family life, in the name of 'vocation'.
Also because if you don't submit to the grind you get forced out.
I'm the oldest classroom teacher in the complex needs school I work in - by some margin.
It's interesting (now the mortgage is paid, kids are raised, and pension is looking OK) that I feel less pressure.
Heron
It is very easy to put in long hours in the church with very little results.
What I found very effective was to divide the day into four four hour blocks. There are 28 blocks in the week. The trick was to work no more than 12 of those blocks. If one has meetings in the evening, making one work through three blocks, it stood to reason to take another block off for self and family
A typical week would look like this
Sunday--Two blocks worked
Monday Two blocks worked
Tuesday Three blocks worked
Wednesday Two blocks worked
Thur Open
Friday Open
Saturday One block worked
This can be adjusted
This would be 10 blocks or 40 hours
I kept one hour open for emergencies during the week
Thus, I would normally work around 44 to 48 hours.
The rest of my time was for family and self.
My chief confidante is a close female friend, not my husband. My female friends are very important to me.
E.g. - when I got my Masters, the original plan was for my husband and kids to attend my graduation, and he'd booked a day off work. But then he heard about a day conference happening the same day as my graduation, which he felt he had to attend, so a friend stepped in and brought the kids. I was a bit disappointed beforehand, but we had a fantastic day. My husband came to my PhD graduation, but having had such a good time at my Masters, I didn't care whether he came to the PhD or not - I'd have been equally happy to have my friend there again.
And then it becomes a thing that if there's something you really want to see at the theatre, for example, it makes more sense to plan to go with a friend, because then you can look forward to going, knowing that only something like illness will upset your plans. Whereas planning to go with your husband robs you of the anticipation, because there's always the chance of the last-minute work crisis scuppering everything.
Now that he's retired, things have been so much better!
I can certainly echo this. When we returned to the UK after being mission partners with the Anglican Church in Kenya we were already used to seeing much more of each other than we had when we were both working, bringing up our children and volunteering in the church.
I was adamant that once back in the UK in addition to still enjoying one another's company we should each invest in some relationships and activities without the other.
My thinking being that when the inevitable happens we would both still have part of our lives where the absence of the other was not so stark.
That's the theory but it might end up proving to be wishful thinking!
We often attended church separately too.
The greatest changes have been the essential every day things, including somebody to come home to, and the holidays.
I'll probably never say this to Mr Lamb, not wanting to grieve him over choices long past mending, but when he wonders out loud why LL brings all his difficulties to me by default, instead of his father--the reason is obvious. It was I who changed most of his diapers, dealt with the vaccinations, cooked dinner, gave advice about adolescent heart aches, went to school conferences, and coped with his college finance papers. Mr Lamb chose to spend his time and attention elsewhere. He was invited, but rarely chose to take part. And IMHO children seek out the parent who handled the nasty and boring bits of life with them. LL loves his father dearly. But it's me he comes to when he's in trouble.
Another important difference is that the vast majority of Church of England clergy (who are office holders) are not employees paid to do a defined job; they set their own hours.
For both these reasons, my close-at-hand observation is that resenting the consequences of your partner "doing God's work" comes with a whole load of extra baggage. As does being the one "doing God's work" while resenting the consequences for you and your family. (But I would be surprised if this didn't also apply, to at least some extent, to people working in Special Education, and some other vocations.)
As a number of people have pointed out on this thread, maintaining close friendships with others, to me has always looked essential.
Reading this thread through again, some of the gender differences being expressed make me weep.
Reading this thread through again, some of the gender differences being expressed make me weep.
My husband's employers were utterly hopeless.
First child - got the day of his birth off and that was all.
Second child (Easter) one day off, plus the Easter holiday.
Third pregnancy / first miscarriage - couldn't get a couple of hours off to be with me in hospital, even though the doctors had specifically said my husband should be there. Even though it ended up being catastrophic (haemorrhage / on oxygen and a drip / went into shock through blood loss / emergency ERPOC (should have waited for X time since my last meal, but they couldn't wait) / blood transfusion / collapsed vein / lucky to be alive) his employers had a category for absence for wife's miscarriage, and if my miscarriage didn't fit into their conception of a miscarriage as basically a heavy period, well, that was down to me. He did get the next two days off as I was hooked up to stuff in hospital and he had to look after our children.
If I'd had something a bit more gender-neutral, like appendicitis, I think he'd have got the time off.
Fourth, very difficult pregnancy. He was uncontactable in France while I was bleeding in hospital at 11 weeks (can't blame him for that one), with me for the 20 week scan which first showed up our baby's issues, but he had something like an hour off, and we had to wait to see a specialist, so it was an issue that he had to be absent for longer than expected, he got time off for about half of the follow up appointments but I had some very difficult ones on my own. He was with me while I was fasting and on a monitor at 32 weeks, so that if David's heatbeat had stabilised I could be straight into theatre for an emergency vertical C-section, but David's heartbeat was never good enough. I was alone for the truly wretched follow-up appointment (one of the events which led to me having PTSD).
He couldn't be with me for the appointment when I'd stopped feeling movements, although he left work straight away when I phoned to say our baby had died and I was being induced later that day. David was stillborn full term 12 noon Saturday, husband had to be back at work on Monday. He got Tuesday off so that we could register the stillbirth and see the undertaker. Wednesday and Thursday he was at work, and a friend took me to make the final funeral arrangements. He got Friday off for the funeral.
Couldn't get time off work for the hospital appointment to discuss the post-mortem results.
Again - if only I'd had appendicitis!! Or something, anything! that his fucking boss could relate to! At about the same time as David's funeral one of my husband's colleagues got four days - four days! - off to attend a family funeral in Ireland, because, obviously he had travelling time on either side of the funeral. But if they could manage to give his colleague FOUR days off, and the department didn't collapse, surely my husband could have had the week between our son's stillbirth and his funeral off. What a difference that would have made to both my physical and mental health. And also, it would have made a difference to our marriage.
It's more that if, as a married person, you go through experiences which form who you are as a person, and, as a married Christian, you go through experiences which help form and define and clarify your faith, and your spouse is not fully part of those experiences, or is even peripheral to them, then it diminishes the bond between you. An opportunity to cleave together is missed.
Your spouse isn't front and central any more, but compartmentalised off. As I said before, the icing on the cake, but not the cake itself.