I was married for 27 years and really thought I loved my husband and he loved me. We had been pastoring a small but growing United Pentecostal Church church for eight years and then the unthinkable happened. He left me for another woman while I was out of town helping our son get settled in college.
When I came home he was gone, he left me a letter telling me all about his girlfriend and etc. He also closed out our bank account and took $5,000 from the church account. I had $12 in my purse and a grieving church to deal with and it felt like my heart was breaking into a thousand pieces. I was also the section ladies leader and I had speaking obligations to attend to.
It was a lot to deal with but I put on my best facade and mustered through all the pain of obligations, board meetings, closing the books of the church and trying to stay afloat financially. I had 30 days to get my act together and move our mobile home and try to find a job. But I managed it. With a lot of help from my parents.
I filed for divorce about four weeks after he left me and I had secured a good job and was feeling more confident that I was going to be OK on my own. My life has never been the same.
I was free from somebody else’s control and could make my own decisions about everything. I felt free, very free. I had my own money and I was living life on my own for the first time ever.
Although there were times my heart hurt so bad that I was almost sick with grief and that’s when the phone calls started….first call came from a friend in Alabama and she knew a pastor who just lost his wife to cancer a few months ago and was looking for a new wife. She had told him about me and he thought we would be a perfect match. So she gave him my number….which aggravated me!
A few days later Mr. Widower Pastor called me and I was polite and kindly told him I was not interested in a relationship. He wouldn’t let it go telling me how big the church was and how nice his house had been decorated by his wife and that I could move right in.
I couldn’t believe my ears…I’ve never met this man before and here he was offering me marriage, another woman’s decorated home and being a pastor’s wife again. I asked him about love and commitment. He said that would come later. He wanted to fly me down there to check everything out and seal the deal.
I was shocked by the calculating coldness that a marriage proposal was being treated like a business contract. Needless to say I declined and he found someone else to “move right in.”
There were a few more calls but I turned them down I had no interest in marriage with a stranger but I now understand why some UPC marriages seem so fake…because they are. There is no love between pastor and wife so how much love could there be with the saints of the church?
What’s love got to do with it? Everything!
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I once knew a man…a missionary…who lost his wife. He remarried but constantly talked about his diseased wife…always wanting to return to the mission field where he and his diseased wife lived and raised their children…where she was buried. It was no surprise that his new wife divorced him. I don’t mean to sound smutty or crude, but I often wondered if he “made love” to his diseased wife with his new wife’s body…….
That is a good question. I did ask this man what he expected from me as his wife and he said everything…so it didn’t matter to him who he was marrying because they were just replacing the dead wife with a warm body. The whole episode made me feel dirty like I was selling myself.
Wow, just wow!