For this series each week of August, I invite you to take a sneak peak into a few moms’ lives and then on August 29th, I hope you’ll join us by linking up “A Day in the Life” of a fill in the blank post about you & your season of life! Today please meet Jenn… aka a the pastor’s wife.
Written by Jenn, Contribution Writer
Hi everyone! I’m Jenn, wife of eight years to the love of my life and mom to three of the most adorable kids on the planet!
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| Not the most professional pic, but it reflects their personalities! |
My husband is a full-time pastor with two churches, which makes things a little crazy on the one day of the week when we’re supposed to be “resting”. I thought I’d share with you a {Sun}day in the life of a pastor’s wife with a 6, 4 and 1 year old along for the ride.
The day starts out at around 7 am, when my husband gets up and ready to go to the first church service of the morning. I try to get up with him before he leaves and to get myself showered and dressed but unfortunately it doesn’t always happen! Once the kids are up and at ’em, the leader of the family is gone, driving 25 miles from our home to the “country church”, as the kids call it. We sometimes go along but since we have Sunday School at the church in town, the times conflict.
Between 7:30 and 8:55 during the Sunday school year, I try frantically to get everyone ready. This is not yet perfectly routinized {something about life and schedules changing all the time!}. Most times I’m calling out instructions left and right, some of which are not listened to immediately. Then we scoot out the door and into the van to head to Sunday school at church which is just around the corner. In the summer we walk! This past year the youngest took a morning nap, so I would get the older two to Sunday School, bring the baby back and give him a nap while I finished getting ready. This was actually a great time for me to pray and prepare for the worship service. The morning nap is now gone and I have yet to decide if I want to try to go to adult SS with a busy toddler!
During church, beginning at 10:30 am, I am again sitting nicely, ahem, wrestling with three children, with a prayer that I’ll get at least something out of the worship time. Some of the things we try to do during the service are:
- Stand up for the opening praise/hymns and open our praise books to the right page. This involves much rustling of pages but the kids are SO proud when they can sing along!
- Read along with the Scripture lessons in our Bibles. My six year old has his own Bible and can read and my four year old uses her toddler Bible and just looks at the pictures. I have them both listen for certain words in the passage like God or vine or love, etc. The advantage of having a pastor husband is that you know what Scriptures will be read ahead of time! The toddler squirms in my arms and tries to chew on my small Bible. Oh, well.
- Listen and sit during the sermon. It’s honestly a challenge to get a very active four year old to sit through the entire sermon. We really need to work on this at home, I think. But thankfully my six year old is more than cooperative and will remain in the pew when I take the toddler and inevitably the middle child to the nursery when said toddler gets too restless. And yes, we do allow quiet coloring during this time.
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Wait until Daddy walks to the back at the end of the service. Then the children
walk quietlybolt for the door so they can stand with him while he greets people. I hand over the restless, noisy toddler.
Join Jenn at The Purposeful Mom where she shares how she is learning to live with purpose in the spiritual, financial and practical areas of life.
Her desire is that we would all :encourage one another and build each other up” 1 Thess. 5:11
About Rachel
Thanks for sharing this.