As all are aware, many a ministerial career has been made or broken by the influence, attitude, and activity of the minister's wife. If she is tactful, talented, wide awake, and devoted to her husband's best interests, she can smooth the way, ease the difficulties, and build for good will and success. She can help her minister Husband climb to the heights of true achievement for God.
Specifically, if she is cultured and refined, with a well-trained mind and well-disciplined lips, she can win the friendship of people of refinement. If she is careful, and accomplished in speech and manner, she will not only make a good impression personally but also help her husband to increase the effectiveness of his public speaking, and aid him in overcoming any unfortunate mannerisms and infelicities of speech. If she is trained in music or art, she can help him to employ the best and avoid the unworthy; and if better talent is unavailable, she herself can assist in playing, singing, and directing.
If she has teaching skill and is an effective personal worker, she can prove to be a price less asset in winning the interested to a favor able decision. If she is an expert typist, she can assist with his publicity and mimeograph work, his correspondence, and his sermons. If she has training in nursing or dietetics, she can become an invaluable partner in public and home teaching of our health and cookery principles. If she is wise, and endowed with good common sense, she can smooth out many a little church ripple before it develops into a storm of disastrous proportions. If she is economical, ingenious, and saving, she can keep within the budget, and help her husband make ends meet, while he acquires necessary books and equipment. Life under such a partnership is an upward climb.
If, on the other hand, the wife is blunt and crude; if she has a sharp tongue and is careless of speech; if she is sloppy in personal appearance; if her home is untidy and her children unkempt; if she is gifted in saying and doing the wrong thing; if she nags at her companion for his ardor and abandonment in his work; if she is always too tired to make things pleasant, comfortable, and inspirational for her companion when he comes in tired and perplexed from a hard day; if she is too fond of sleep to get up and get him a satisfying meal before he starts out for the day; if she is an agitator who creates factions and deepens schisms in the church; if she is indifferent to his ideals and aspirations; if she objects to every book or slide or chart he buys to strengthen his minis try; if she complains over his legitimate absences from home; if she is wasteful, and always plunging her husband into debt; if whatever he does is in spite of, not because of, his wife—then Heaven pity the poor man!
His path will be thorny indeed, the uphill climb will be hard and wearing, his opportunities for growth and advancement will be constricted, and he will have to drag his chariot through the valleys, and forego the heights of service. Happy the lot of the man with a capable, sympathetic, understanding companion, who is his true complement, and whose interests are his interests. But sad the fate of the man whose wife is indifferent, unsympathetic, and incapable of standing at his side as his full companion in the high calling of the ministry. He may still make good, but he does so under heavy handicap. The attitude and relationship of the wife will largely determine the heights to which her husband will be able to rise in the holy profession to which he is called and chosen.
