A transfer from pastoral work to a departmental place at conference head quarters brings to some persons impressions of many changes. A wife seems to find several aspects of her life quite different. At her new location her duties may not seem as well defined as when she and her husband planned the hours of each day together. Neither may her responsibilities seem as clear to her, surrounded as she is by several other ministers' wives, including the local pastor's wife.
Actually, however, as time passes she concludes that the changes were fewer than she had anticipated. Hardest to accept, perhaps, for anyone, are the distant appointments involving days and nights and weeks alone.
If there are children, she has, of course, the enjoyment of their companionship during these times, but also the increase of responsibilities for their problems, care, and training. Often when she could go with her husband for a Sabbath, she realizes that her children's part in a thirteenth Sabbath program or their keeping up a perfect attendance record might matter more in the future than her pleasure for the present. A woman learns from previous transfers that any change means adjustment, and the more readily made the better, not only for her own sake, but for the sake of her husband and his associates. She knows that circumstances can look dark or bright according to one's own thinking. In the process of making changes many little things can annoy and may stimulate self-pity. The discipline of one's self is imperative, although it is the most difficult of all tasks.
"If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions: I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching." SHAKESPEARE, Merchant of Venice.
I have quoted these lines to bolster my own courage in listing a few of the considerate things we strive to do, with the thought in mind that we will not weary in well-doing.
In the transition into new work an analysis of what matters most for harmonious living in a conference community and among the office family members is important to a wife, as well as what contributes most in helping her husband.
Suggestions
1. Study and learn all you can about your husband's department. It helps toward sympathetic understanding. A wife's interest strength ens her husband's influence.
2. Collect and mark material for him.
3. Read the current denominational litera ture that he cannot get to, and check what you know will interest him.
4. When making notes on home telephone calls include the specific time of the calls. Incidentally, many have a natural gift of pleasant telephone response. For a few of us the "voice with a smile" needs cultivating.
5. Make telephone calls to the office brief and on business only.
6. Make office visits during office hours brief and in an emergency only.
7. Guard confidences. It is a compliment to a person to be entrusted with another's problems, and a type of disloyalty to regard the confidence lightly.
8. Cultivate good nature. Begin to cultivate good nature when under the pressure of irritations, whatever they might be. What is one person's trial is not another's. Since unscheduled interviews come after a man's appointments have been taken care of, a wife needs patience and generosity to make allowance for tardinesses at meals and delays or cancellations of personal engagements. Someone has defined good nature as "the very air of a good mind, the sign of a large and generous soul, and the peculiar soil in which virtue prospers."
9. Keep from inquisitiveness about other workers' business, their families, or their appointments. "Familiarity breeds contempt."
10. Take time for relaxation and recreation. A man's home should be a place where he can relax and rest. His hours there are of necessity short, and need to be as undisturbed and peaceful as possible in view of the stress and strain of problems and the demands upon his resource fulness and courage in leadership. A woman's talents and opportunities for outside activities should be subordinate to the art of creating a pleasing and cheerful home atmosphere. A woman who is alone much of the time needs to get away from the house frequently, to mingle with people, to attend a selected program, or to take an afternoon for browsing in a library. It clears the mental air of worries and imaginary hurts.
11. Be neighborly to those not of our faith. Too often we become so taken up with the interests of our conference circle that the fine little deeds of neighborliness to those not of our faith are neglected. We want to wait till we can do something just right. So while we are thinking of some larger thing to do possibly that of giving each neighbor a copy of Bible Readings—the things that matter most to prepare them for such a gift are left undone. These neighbors may not know the department we represent in our organization, but they know us as the Adventist preacher's family, and no doubt wonder many times why we seem so unconcerned about them. One of them made this revealing statement not long ago: "You Adventists live to yourselves too much."
12. Try to generate enthusiasm and be adapt able. A person who views a new environment with apprehensive doubt and too frequently alludes to the way things were done in the past location is not readily accepted in a new co munity.
A few months ago I saw an almost impossible house situation actually transformed into a little model through a wife's imagination and spirit of adventure. No one was surprised to hear her say, "I know I'm going to love it here." Every one enjoyed the lift it brought to hear her say it, and knew it was sincerely meant.
Much of the attractiveness and strength of character consists in the degree with which we adapt and adjust ourselves to the place where we have been called. Sooner or later circumstances that cannot be altered have a way of coming to everyone. Those who can accept them or make the best of them with a mastery of their personal attitudes are, indeed, well-adjusted people.
Ethics of the New Situation
When the transition from pastoral work to the office has been made, a wife may feel as if she had let go of something very vital to her. She misses the phone calls from the elder's wife, the Dorcas leader, the family who joined the church the winter before, or the little lady taking studies. These were people she felt needed her. And as much as she enjoys remembering them, she realizes there are certain limitations to her continuing contacts. It now be comes her duty to direct them as diplomatically as possible to the new pastor and his family.
A wife's thinking on working relationships in general makes her aware of new and different boundary lines. Included among these lines that are sometimes as difficult to define as the equator are certain ethical boundaries, as instinctive to some as a sense of direction or an ear for pitch.
Although boundary lines may be either geographical or ethical, they are by-products of organization, and certain ethical ones must be maintained for harmonious working conditions among ministers and their families. To accept an invitation for a weekend with a layman's family of one's former pastorate may create a strain among workers. Correspondence with those who can't get used to their new pastor and his family may appeal to one's vanity, but causes a difficult situation. The ambitious wife, who may be limited in the extent to which she can direct and lead groups in the local church, will find no barrier to her ambitions for working with children, or making new contacts and new friends for the church and inviting them to special meetings.
Except for the lessening of a few direct obligations, an office man's wife sees in an analysis of her responsibilities to the local church very much the same program that she pursued as a pastor's wife. Although not a pastor's wife, she is the wife of a worker, a minister, and that always carries responsibilities and duties, even to the extent of small personal sacrifices. As the wife of an office man she expects to continue to be cooperative in filling in wherever needed, but hopes she will know when to decline an office in the church as well as when to accept. At conference headquarters the local church usually has a large membership, with many talented laymen. She has long been aware of the objective of all workers to prepare the laity for places of leadership in the various departments of the church.
A wife's sympathetic attitude toward the local pastor and his family strengthens her husband's work. A good report from the wife often gives an important cue. Her husband is dependent on good relationships with the pastors in put ting across his own promotional program. In equal measure the pastor needs the help of the officer or departmental man and his family. Cooperation works only when it comes both ways. Each is dependent on the other.
Likewise the families of the office group need each other's support constantly. They may not always see alike, they may not always be the closest of associates, but the families do need tolerance and willingness to follow a constructive course of building confidence for each other. It takes so little to weaken it.
In cases of problems on ethical lines, the spirit of kindness from the heart can be our com pass to guide us. What matters most in the relationships among workers' families is this spirit of kindness that mutually forbears, forgives, and forgets. What gives a great personal satisfaction is our own knowledge that we have helped, by giving moral support or otherwise, to make another's program easier.
