BALANCE: Community

| 2017-06-02 00:00:00 -0400

There are unique challenges when a spouse is not in full-time ministry, requiring a lot of communication and understanding. Whitney shares how she and Steve have learned the balance of finding a community that fits both of their needs.

I can be a needy wife. And over the past (almost) two years of marriage, we’ve discovered that I’m neediest when Steve has to be productive. I’m known to need chips and salsa at 11 p.m., and I’m seemingly only bored when Steve has an MBA exam within hours.

I raised financial support through our engagement and was released to the my ministry assignment about two months before our wedding. Since then Steve accepted a full-time job, started graduate school night classes, I have increased my H2O staff hours, and our cat remained 16 pounds.

The balance happens by living graciously and slowly and owning communication.

When we got married, we knew we desperately needed community, but with our very full, very different schedules, we weren’t sure how to find it.

For me, one of the most difficult parts of being on staff for a campus church is constantly being in community. By the end of my work day, I have spent all day with people. I have talked girls through crises, sat through planning meetings, answered my phone 1,000 times and attended a small group or two. When I come home from work, all I want is a large pizza, Steve and Netflix.

Steve, on the other hand, works for a large financial institution. He spends most of his days in a cubicle on the computer crunching numbers and doing something that sounds like my personal nightmare. He has very little human interaction. When Steve walks through our apartment door at 7 p.m., he’s ready to go go go! He wants to be surrounded by people and laugh and frolic and talk.

Pretty much exactly what I don’t want to do.

We’ve learned that the differences in our jobs and personalities require us to B A L A N C E community. The most practical way we’ve seen that play out is through a life group we attend together. We made a conscious choice to find a group where we could both attend and grow. While I love our church’s life group for post-grads, sometimes it’s hard for me to go. Again, pizza and Netflix sound better than engaging with other humans. But I often sacrifice because life group is where Steve feels deeply connected to community. He needs that space to grow spiritually, especially after sitting in a cubicle all day.

The balance happens by living graciously and slowly and owning communication. Community looks different week by week. Steve and I have to check in with each other often to make sure we’re both actively investing in our community but also not draining ourselves while simultaneously carving out time for us. Some weeks that looks like life group and double dates and serving on the weekends with our friends. Other weeks it’s staying home and ordering that large pizza. We may have different communities we’re a part of throughout our work days, but we’ve invested in a community outside of our work that we can commit to together. This commitment to a community outside of our work days allows us to know each other in unique ways as we serve, live and grow in community.

We know community is deeply necessary, but for us it probably looks different from couples who may have similar jobs or are both in vocational ministry and that’s OK.