Teen Life Youth Ministry

My husband is a full-time youth minister. He is extremely dedicated and spends between 50-70 hours a week with young people.

I think the reason he is so successful with kids is that he is always available to them, always ready to help when they need him.

That may be why the attendance has more than double in the past year. He really knows how to talk their language. This past year he would be out two and three nights a week talking with kids until midnight. He’s always taking them to camps and ski trips and overnight campouts. If he isn’t with kids, he’s thinking about them and preparing for his next encounter with them.

And if he has any time left after that, he is speaking or attending a conference where he shares with others what God is doing through him. When it comes to youth work, my husband has always been 100 percent.

Frankly, I just couldn’t compete with God. I say that because my husband always had a way of reminding me that this was God’s work and he must minister where and when God called him. Young people today desperately needed help, and God had called him to help them. When a young person needed him, he had to respond or he would be letting God and the young person down.

When I did ask my husband to spend some time with the kids or me, it was always tentative. And if I became pushy about it, I was “nagging,” “trying to get him out of God’s work,” “behaving selfishly,” or I was revealing a “spiritual problem.”

Honestly, I have never wanted anything but God’s will for my husband, but I never could get him to consider that maybe his family was part of that will.

It didn’t matter how many discussions we had about his schedule-he would always end with “Okay, I’ll get out of the ministry, if that’s what you want.” Of course, I didn’t want that, so we would continue as always until another discussion.

You can ask for only so long. There is a limit to how long you can be ignored and put off. You threaten to leave without meaning it until you keep the threat. You consider all the unpleasant consequences until they don’t seem unpleasant anymore. You decide that nothing could be more unpleasant than being alone, feeling worthless.

You finally make up your mind that you are a person with real worth as an individual.

I wanted to be free from the deep bitterness and guilt that slowly ate at my spiritual and psychological sanity.

Deep inside there was something making me not only dislike my husband, but everything he did or touched.

His “I love you” became meaningless to me because he didn’t act like it. His gifts were evidence to me of his guilt because he didn’t spend more time with me. His sexual advances were met with a frigidity that frustrated both of us and deepened the gap between us.

All I wanted was to feel as though he really wanted to be with me. But no matter how hard he tried, I always felt like I was keeping him from something. He had a way of making me feel guilty because I had forced him to spend his valuable time with the kids and myself.

Just once I wish he would have canceled something for us instead of canceling us.

You don’t have to believe this, but I really loved him and his ministry once. I never wanted him to work an eight-to-five job. Nor did I expect him to be home every night. I tried to believe every promise he made me, honestly hoping things would change-but they never did.

All of a sudden I woke up one day and realized that I had become a terribly bitter person. I not only resented my husband and his work, but I was beginning to despise myself. In desperation to save myself, our children-and, I guess, even my husband and his ministry-I left him.

I don’t think he really believed I’d leave him. I guess I never really believed I’d leave him, either.