The best advice I have for us is to remember the wise counsel we’ve given to other women. Give yourself a pep talk about your true identity, and then remember how much you have to bring to the church.

I’ve believed many lies throughout my life. Different stages led to different misconceptions – some more detrimental than others. When I was a young brunette living in the bay area of California, I believed everyone had the Golden Gate Bridge in her backyard. I took advantage of a view many never get to see, which led to an empty thankfulness. When I was in college, I felt terrible about my body and stopped eating a healthy diet to see if shame drips off a woman like beads on a popsicle. It doesn’t. This sent me into a tailspin of lies about womanhood and beauty that I still battle as a thirty-something. I’ve lied to myself about love, education, motherhood, and intellectualism. This diet of lies has chased me into the wild and uncharted territory of anxiety and shame; two feelings God never intended his prized creation to chase.

And yet, we do.

Including pastors’ wives.

In a two-part series, we will explore eight lies that many pastors’ wives believe. We will expose them and redeem them. And then we will attempt to live the truth. (Emphasis on the “living the truth.”)

Lie #1: Don’t be anyone’s friend.

This is the lie that is most pervasive. It’s in blogs and pastor’s wife forums and spoken in hushed tones among some that have gone before us. As an extrovert and a genuine people-lover, these statements confused me. But what really matters is that as students of the Bible, these statements should be perplexing.

To cut a pastor’s wife from deeply rooted friendships is the same as saying that she is not a part of the rich community that church was designed to be. You were designed to be an intricate part of the body, limb attached to limb. The church should be a symbiotic relationship created to make a whole system work (1 Corinthians 12:12). This can’t happen unless you have close relationships with people within your church.

This lie also reveals the underlying notion that a pastor and his wife are above their congregation in our platform-driven society. A pastor and his wife are called to lead a church, but they have no more clout in the kingdom of heaven than do the rest of the body. If we don’t develop real relationships, people may assume that we have some kind of superpower, which is laughable, to say the least.

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