Messy Motherhood: Parenting in the Church Pew
By Glenna Marshall
Is anything in life as humbling as parenting?
Before we’re parents, we picture darling little angels who sit at our feet to listen and learn, who do their chores without complaint, who love their siblings wholeheartedly, and who make us exceedingly proud every waking and sleeping moment (because they’ll be perfect sleepers, of course!). What we get, though, are human children who struggle with sinfulness and obedience just like we do. It’s humbling to be the mom in the grocery store whose kid is wailing with all his might while demanding the Spiderman toy you refused to buy. You can feel every eye on you as you try to diffuse the situation without melting into the floor. Even worse if it’s a church sanctuary instead of a grocery store!
Add the pressures of pastor’s wife and pastor’s kid to the parenting mix, and you’ve got a recipe for regular humbling—with an audience. I felt the pressure to make my kids perform the moment I brought them to church for the first time. I was certain that church members expected my young children to always speak politely and look them in the eye, to share every toy they touched, to always volunteer to help, and to sit in church service like quiet little mice. Instead, my kids ran through the church building, turned flips over the pews, threw tantrums during fellowship meals, refused to speak when spoken to, and hid behind my legs when greeted. In other words, they acted like every other kid in the church.
Sometimes over the years, I received unhelpful comments from church members—criticisms of my parenting methods that still sting today. And yet, much of the pressure I have felt is largely conjured up in my head. Though a few bold people have offered critiques, most church members have only wanted to help me contain my rowdy boys. I am the one who has misconstrued offers of help as criticism. Because I have felt the expectations of me as a pastor’s wife, I’ve worried that people will have similar expectations of my kids. My fear of criticism has revealed only one thing when it comes to parenting as the pastor’s wife: I’m certain everyone in the room is criticizing me when one of my kids acts up.
Parenting young kids as a pastor’s wife is challenging for a plethora of reasons—not just the ministry expectations part. Most of the time, the pastor’s wife is parenting her kids at church alone. Her husband is working full-time on Sundays: preaching, greeting, praying, teaching, putting out fires, and sifting through complaints and suggestions moments before standing at the pulpit to preach. The pastor’s wife likely got her kids dressed and fed alone, drove to church alone, and then parented alone throughout the church service. But her kids aren’t unique. They’re like all other kids. They don’t want to sit still, are bored by long sermons, would rather play a game on a device than listen quietly. They feel shy when adults address them, they get tongue-tied during Sunday school, they are selfish with toys in the nursery like all the other little ones. And if that’s okay for other church families, it’s okay for yours. No child is perfect, no parent is perfect, no church member is perfect.
Last year, after several disparaging weeks of trying to wrestle my wild four-year-old son in the pew, I confessed to my counselor that I couldn’t handle the pressure of parenting my sweet but willful child in front of everyone. “I feel like a failure every week,” I told him. “Everyone is watching me.”
I expected him to tell me that I wasn’t a failure or that this is just a phase, and to some extent he did. But what he focused on was my internal monologue that convinced me everyone was judging me while I parented my kids on the front pew. “You can’t know what’s in their hearts,” he said, “so let’s give every member of your church the benefit of the doubt. Let’s assume they’re not focused on you and your struggle with your son. Let’s assume that they know how hard parenting is.” He encouraged me to step away from the situation in my mind, to block out everyone else from my peripheral vision, assume they’re not concerned about me, and to focus solely on parenting my son—just him and me.
Here’s the thing—there may be church members criticizing you parenting methods or your rambunctious kids. But you can’t know that for sure unless they vocalize it. So, rather than convince yourself that everyone is watching you struggle to parent in the pews, assume that they’re rooting for you. They are your church family, after all. Assume the best, not the worst. You are actually loving them when you give them the benefit of the doubt. Paul tells us that love isn’t resentful (1 Cor. 13:6), so don’t hold a grudge for something that might not even be real. Assume that they love you and your family, and then focus on your kids—not the imaginary criticisms floating around your head. Once I started taking that approach, my relationship with my son improved because I was dealing with him, not him and everyone else’s supposed opinions of me. What matters here is not what people think but how I love and discipline my son. That relationship matters far more than what people may or may not think.
If you’re in the midst of the messy, little years of motherhood and ministry, I’d encourage you to give your church the benefit of the doubt and assume they love you more than they criticize you. You’ll find freedom to focus on parenting rather than meeting expectations no one can meet. The Lord has blessed you with children to love and raise to love Him. He sees you struggling, and He is with you in it.
Glenna Marshall is married to her pastor, William, and lives in rural Southeast Missouri where she tries and fails to keep up with her two energetic sons. She is the author of The Promise is His Presence: Why God is Always Enough (P&R) and Everyday Faithfulness: The Beauty of Ordinary Perseverance in a Demanding World (Crossway, June 2020).