Attachment, abandonment, and being a pastor’s spouse in the time of Covid

There’s a lot swimming around in my brain right now, and for some reason it kind of came to a head last night as I tried to drift off to sleep.

Isn’t that always the way?

For those of you who don’t know me personally, I’m married to a Lutheran (ELCA) pastor. He serves a small, youngish congregation outside in a relatively rural – but seasonally touristy – area. So while I am not a staff person, like him, and just attend church as member, I do kind of straddle an odd role as his wife and confidant in addition to any relationships I grow there.

Partly because I genuinely like the people I encounter – but also because I don’t have a ton of other outlets – I’ve met some truly wonderful people through the churches my husband has served.

In classic/old school teachings, a pastor is ideally somewhat set apart as the church leader, and that also falls to his family. When a pastor leaves a call (position in a parish) for another one, ideally he or she would cut off all contact because they are no longer the pastor of those people. They are also not the friend of those people, so staying in touch is not a concern.

Except for, relationships – and ideally, authentic ones, connected in carrying each other’s joys and bearing each other’s burdens – really does drive what people do. That is true for clergy as well. It’s inherently a lil messy. As a therapist, I believe healthy connection is key for well-being, motivation, and so much more.

Throw in the widespread use/reliance on of social media (it ain’t going away, folks), and many pastors and their families will use it to connect with their fellow church-goers before, during, and after the call has ended.

Throw in a pandemic that initially completely upended in-person gatherings – including school, workplaces, and church services – as we scrambled to figure out what the best practices were for keeping each other safe and healthy.

Throw in a lot of political division and ensuing chaos about what was an over-reaction, what was truly necessary, and what sacrifices people were willing to make.

If you aren’t a church goer, I’ll let you in on a secret – people disagreed about those things.

Yup, it’s true everywhere, but it felt SO intense in the church.

Some people said, “Have faith! We need to be together. Keep gathering!”

Others said, “Love your neighbor, and try to avoid getting them potentially deathly ill.”

Some said, “The church is not a building. We can improvise, adapt, change course!”

Others said, “We need to be in our sacred spaces and we don’t want the awkwardness of changing seating, wearing masks, giving up singing, or not taking communion.”

Some of this is an oversimplification, but all said, it was a lot.

It’s still a lot, though thanks to vaccine availability, much these days, looks relatively normal. Our area feels rural enough to have a sense of being “protected” whether or not that is actually accurate.

Some still wear masks, most don’t.

Our chairs are still slightly more spread out, but we sing, pass the peace, chat and drink coffee together after worship.

And when Covid hit, and we didn’t know up from down, or just how contagious it was, or what was best to do – a lot of us retreated, in hopes of staying safe.

Church went online.

Bible study went online.

Parking lot worship over the radio dial happened.

Outdoor worship happened.

All this rehashing of what happened to say, things changed.

And for some folks, who may have already been ready to move on from the church, it was the push they needed to GO.

And world-wide pandemic or not, people move on from church communities all the time. We saw it before Covid happened, we saw it during Covid as well.

Sometimes the pastor is privy to why. Perhaps they’ve been upset about things, or feel like the church community isn’t right for them anymore. Maybe there’s a confrontation, or a blow up. The person formally leaves and says, “I’m going somewhere else now.” Sometimes – more often, I’d venture – the person starts to fade away. The pastor and congregation just stops seeing them regularly, and they stop answering the pastor’s calls, and the congregation essentially gets ghosted.

My husband doesn’t like to have people leave the church, but to me, he seems to have a healthy sense of these goodbyes. He reaches out a time or two initially, but also reminds himself, these members are adults, and they know best what they need to do. He trusts that if the church is needed, the person will make their way back.

Me? Well, I’m not on staff, you’ll recall.

But I do love people, and want to connect with people. And as I’ve grown close to some people, I want them to know they’re part of our community and they’re loved.

I want to make sure they’ve heard it.

I don’t want them to feel alone, forgotten, uncared for.

I also… admittedly… (sigh) don’t want them to be angry. Whether that anger is due to something that did, or didn’t, happen, ideally I’d like to nip it in the bud. I recognize that being a supportive spouse can sometimes cause me to get a wee bit enmeshed, which equates to me wishing … hoping… or trying to fix things if I can.

I recognize more and more my desire to cure conflict, wipe out hurt, and to somehow magically fix things that can’t always be fixed.

Among it’s many pains and losses, Covid has stirred that up in me.

It’s been hard to see people go.

At first, I was defensive and low-key angry. Like, I understood if people needed a break, but did that mean we were actually just DONE seeing them ever again? I felt like people who left were just uncommitted, living with “one foot out the door” and ready to disappear as soon as things got challenging.

And I confess… I can see now that that’s been callous of me. It’s simply not true, and each person does a balancing act that I am not privy to. In my heart, I do hold the ideal that people generally know what they need and should be trusted to figure that out.

But people leaving – people I generally considered friends and in good relationship with – also frickin hurt. In a whole different kind of way than other kinds of hurt. And it brought up a trauma unique to church communities and Covid times.

Yes, they were leaving the church, but they were also leaving ME.

And writing that out, I can clearly see how egotistical it sounds. This was very likely not about me, one person who they went to church with; it was about the church, our national church body, Covid changes, leadership choices, maybe even the way pastor spouse does things.

But it made me want to cling … chase… hang on… fix… solve these problems.

Remember how I said things came to a head for me last night?

My mind just flipped, flipped, flipped through the metaphorical church directory.

I thought about all the people I used to routinely see, and never see anymore. I thought about the people who I run into in town, who are pleasant when we meet, but who are missed in the congregation. Who *I* miss in the congregation. Even though things now are more normal than they’ve been in the last 2 years.

I thought about those who disappeared without a word. I thought about those who announced their departure over the dang loud speaker like they were at the airport.

I thought about the wonderful folks who remain, and the new families that have joined us, and was heartened. But the voids also felt BIG and dark and painful.

I thought about how I embrace vulnerability as a fact of life, and that I believe it is usually a rewarding thing that connects people. But it’s also a risk. I’ve thought I was doing the right thing, but I’ve chased people. Not as a rep of the church, but I’ve reached out to people, and tried to connect with people in an authentic and caring way, and … silence.

I didn’t fix it. We didn’t reconnect, and I just probably made things awkward with these needy abandonment issues.

And it just leaves this big weird hole of realization.

I don’t think of myself as an insecurely attached person.

I grew up in a family that valued connection, but overall, also respected space and needs. My siblings and I text from time to time, get together from time, and have a lovely time. But we also live hours apart from each other, and don’t drop in on each other or nose our way into each other’s issues.

I am a friend who loves you, and would drop things to help if you needed me – even when I’m not actively in touch. I don’t take offense to times of quiet or no communication. Life gets busy, and it’s not a reflection of character if we’re out of touch.

With social media, for better or worse, I still feel a close kinship to friends I haven’t seen in 15+ years. Maybe that’s presumptuous, or at minimum, not as accurate or as reciprocated as I might hope.

Even with my spouse, we lean on each other and rely on each other, but we also tend to do fine on our own. (As I write this, he and my oldest 2 kids are away at church camp for the week.)

But more and more, I’m realizing my role as a pastor’s spouse is a challenge for how I connect with others and invest myself into the relationships.

I value, and dream of having a close-knit village, to support and connect with through the good and the bad. Much of that has traditionally come from my church.

I know people come and go, and I don’t think it’s healthy for me to chase them if they’ve decided our church is no longer their home.

I have considered many of these people friends. And that may not be wrong.

Covid truly has messed with the ways we connect, and I have to acknowledge that huge upset. But it’s becoming clearer to me, that it’s also time for me to pray about it, and examine what my role in it all might look like too. This world can be shallow, and I value deep connection and fighting for good relationships.

But how do I navigate this unique loss and trauma, with Covid in the backdrop?

Clearly, I also write and process externally a lot of the time, hence… this whole big post, which is surely going to make many people feel vulnerable and uncomfortable.

It’s a confusing ball of yarn to untangle.

My friend posted this today, and I chuckled, but it also made me sad as it pointed me to that hole. It should very much be true, but as a pastor’s spouse – in a world that’s moving on from Covid – I am struggling to make sense of what relationships can and should look like.