Any clergy wives??

[clergywife]

Scuse name change...

my dh is a parish priest. I'm more and more realising how hard it is for me to maintain REAL friendships within the parish because i'm never just me, i'm his wife, i'm someone who may know stuff (rarely! lol), i'm a reminder of the disagreement they had with him last Sunday, I'm not just a random friend....

Is this unusual or am I normal in this?

Every now and again I think it's ok,. I've cracked it - but then I realise that I am not on equal footing however hard I try because they always perceive me as a link into the vicarage - whether psotiive or negative.

I'm not sure if it's cos I am young (late 20s) and if I were older I would have the same problems...

I am not being very concise, but i wanted to see if anyone had any experience....
When talking about this briefly earlier, I likened this to a gp's wife trying to have friendships with her dh's patients and dh nodded very sagely at that . So frustrating.

Only just found this thread, but have valued many of the comments on here.

I've named changed to come on here as some reading this may recognise my unusal status!(and I don't want my other posts being connected with me yet)

I'm retired due to illhealth but still live in the Vicarage as my dh is also the Vicar.
I've 3 kids and would love more (strange to be thinking about pregnancy when retired!!!)

The range cooker thread made me laugh - I've had to wait years to get one, but feel settled where we are so splashed out 2 years ago when the cooker failed on Easter day when cooking for 12.

As for the painting saga - i was always told the PCC is responsible for painting a room a year or when a new person arrives. The lovely people where we are now did that for us although we ended up paying for the hall and stairs. A months stipend gone in one go.

Lots of friends on the fringe of Church, trouble is they start coming to the messy church events :)

that's enough for now

Hi everyone, I'm not really a clergy spouse but wondered if a missionary spouse could join in too? Lots of issues the same for us - only in a different culture/language - so I've enjoyed reading what you've all had to say

Wrlcome retiredclergy and WomanAtTheWell it is great to see this thread revived with new folk as well.

We have a need for prayer at the moment as our DS is struggling in Reception and as we stand out somewhat it is making it difficult for us to integrate with the other parents. I don't really want to say too much more - there are lots of side issues to it which aren't really appropriate for Mumsnet.

Thanks all.

Obviously that was meant to say welcome not wrlcome - My typing is shocking!

thank you for your welcome shivster will pray for your ds at his school.

Need to go into my ds's school tomorrow as his locker has been broken into and all his games stuff taken. Couldn't swallow the price of buying it first time round.

Could really do with a family trip to Center Parcs this half term but know there will be too much 'Halloween' going on. Does anyone holiday at home or do they find they can't have proper time off?

Sorry that all sounds very negative, I'm sure we will have fun with the cousins coming to stay and visiting other family too

no, we can't holiday at home. Dh is unable to switch off if still at home, so most of the time we go away - often to my parents, or in the summer a combination of a week in a cottage with a few days visiting various friends.

eagle ugh re your ds's stuff :(

Any of you go to the walsingham families pilgrimage? We love it and dh arranges a parish group (ie several families) to go each year.

well that blew my cover :) forgot I'd changed my name I posted first under my retired name!I haven't even been at the wine tonight

No, we don't holiday at home if we can help it. We get weeks in cottages belonging to friends at reduced rates or stay at parents. Now the kids are older they do want to stay at home during holidays so that's a problem as OH doesn't get away from the job at all.

It's vital to book holidays in the diary for the whole year and keep them blocked free because so much stuff can start to encroach on those times. Esp when the "day off" gets eaten into by funerals/other church events you can't avoid.

Re days off. A clergy friend of ours is in a rural parish in the north and in the 5 years since she has been there she has had CONSTANT criticism for taking a day off. I am talking really aggressive accusations about how the vicar is not entitled to a day off .
makes me so angry!

Something a friend suggested - which dh has never done but ought to is to write the word "something" in your diary for a time when you want to not get booked up, so that you can legitimately say, "oh, sorry i have something in the diary"

We've never had criticism for taking a day off but somehow if you're not around for things happening on that day, some people (but only a few, if any) can get huffy and still expect you to be there. Near us there is a group of which normally I would be a natural member, but because it meets on the Day Off, I have never been involved with it. Sometimes I wonder, but very subjectively and not terribly bothered, how my non-attendance is regarded.

And some people can still have no issue with phoning up on the day off, usually prefacing the call with "I know it's your day off but..." Sometimes the phone calls are necessary and important so you just put up with them. Part of the job is balancing that need to have a break (stay healthy and sane and escape the parish boundaries) and showing the importance of taking time out of work - sabbath rest even if not strictly on the sabbath! - to other parishioners, and balancing all that with the living breathing vocation that actually makes you willing and happy to still do stuff relating to vicar'ing on that day, if not yielding the whole day because it's the right thing to do. Some 'busy' years, OH has had fewer than a third of possible days off, and those years have felt very hard work.

Parishioners should help their vicar to take a day off, as an example and a kindness. There are an increasing no of clergy now who have to take leave for exhaustion and stress, so it is vital to get holidays and days-off in some right balance.

Just been through the diary till the end of the year putting in a day off each week and the letters TWF the evening before where possible (or another evening)

TWF is time with family or time with friends.

Looks like a group or meeting to those peering over the diary as you look for a time to meet :)

Am reading the book 'Going the distance' with dh. Its great at explaining why you feel so tired by Sunday lunch time and how to stop getting sick as I have.

Thinking about it - there is no need for ym dh to be at all coded as NONE can read his writing!!!!! lol.

that book sounds good eagle.

My dh feels especially shattered Sunday afternoon (after 3 services) because especially when he has the 8am he really struggles to sleep on a saturday night. i think it is a kind of knowing you have to be up early, so scared of missing the alarm type thing. but it is not nice:(

I'm sorry your DH feels shattered but tbh, 8am is the norm for the first service in most churches. For the last couple of decades my OH has been at church at 7.15am five days out of seven for services/morning prayer (and when a curate, on the Day Off DH was expected to lead 7am Eucharist at a local Anglican convent, alongside the vicar - the Day Off ran from 9am one day till 9am the next day, so we had our lie-in at the end of it ). With tightening diocesan budgets and vicars covering more churches, it's normal to have three services in a morning, and then possible baptisms at lunchtime and afternoon or evening services as well. You're right about the need for sleep on Sat nights though - when we have guests to stay, OH will just get on with going to bed early so as to manage getting up in time for Sunday services.

We have an 8am (said), 9.30 (trad), 11.15 (family). dh does 8am twice a month, his curate once and a lay reader the 4th. And all baptism happen in the family mass - he is not a believer in doing them outside of the main service. Thank goodness:).

(oops had name changed for a different thing - ), was replying to your reply to me .

8am 10am and 6.30pm here (with the odd afternoon baptism or more recently wedding thrown in)

Morning Prayer at college was 7.30am so when we came to a parish where MP is said at 8.30am Mon-Fri and a very respectable 9.30am on a Saturday my DH feels it's a lie in.

That and the fact that DH used to start work at 7am in the days before college.

I am not a morning person so I rarely surface on a weekend morning unless DS disturbs me (obviously I am far more patient when woken by DS than by DH [grins] ) DH gets dressed in the bathroom!

HI - only just seen this thread revived.

DandyDan that's crap re day off, being expected to do something in the morning - bit off I think.

My dh often does 2-3 services on a Sunday then home communions etc in afternoon too. Then we have cell group in the evening. He's always pretty knackered.

He's off for a fortnight tomorrow to Uganda with a team doing a conference for church leaders there. Exciting stuff...we'll all miss him though so prayers appreciated!

Shiv if you want to FB me to chat about ds feel free. Praying for you.

Well, it was a bit off in some ways, but to be honest, OH's curacy was a brilliant and very happy four years, the boss excellent and the best trainer of priests, very kind. And he didn't expect OH to do anything he didn't do himself. They did all the services together, as a team, and it really worked brilliantly. Getting up at 6.30am to "do the nuns" was more amusing than anything else. And OH is an early riser, was Chapel Warden at training college so in chapel at 7am each day preparing for early morning communion, so has been getting up for Morning Prayer at 6.30 ever since. So long as it doesn't continue as and when retirement happens!

We have 8, 9 and 10.30 with baptisms at 12.30 many weeks, a 4pm once a month and 6.30pm once a month. Sometimes you get St George's Day or Thinking Day as well. There was a time the other year when OH did seven services one Sunday - 8, 9, 10.30, 12.30 baptism, Thinking Day at 2pm, Family Service at 4pm and a 6.30 at someone else's church, and also a confirmation class at 5pm. That's rare thankfully, but sometimes unavoidable. OH was the only priest covering an entire deanery one year - that was shattering.

shiv - happy to chat about anything also. Have a brood of kids that have passed through primary school now but it can be hard.

DS has had two settled days - very successful - signs of progress... Prayers very much appreciated.

The book 'Going the Distance' by Peter Brain explains how its not just getting up early (after an evening when others socialise till late) or the time spent working, but the adrenaline use that is constant from being on show and answerable to a huge range of people with their different expectations for hours on end.

I found this to be true when Sunday morning was always a migraine morning and I'd have cold clammy hands whatever the temp in the building.

How I hate the expectation that we will host a large lunch at the Vicarage, but seldom get invited out as a family in return.

If you are thinking of getting the book, it is written as if for men only, but its still good.

Sounds interesting eaglewings.

KWYM re entertaining but rarely getting invited out. It's very much our experience here, whereas before we went into the ministry we were always going to dinner parties etc (and at college, I hasten to add!) I wonder what it is that makes it different now. Do people really feel we are not 'one of them' anymore?

Shiv - so glad ds doing better :)

Hi everyone! How're you all tonight? We're having a blissful week off staying in good friends house while they're on holidays. We've had a crazy run with extra things on on Saturdays (dh's day off) so great to be away together.

On the book front, did I already mention One with a Shepherd? I'm loving this book! Grace and Peace to you all!

You can come here for dinner madhairday no really I am serious... I have never done a Mumsnet meet up and it sounds fun!

We never get invited to anyone's house for dinner. It's not the thing around here, and not in our previous parish either. Our only meals out are clergy do's = deanery get-togethers for clergy and spouses twice a year, and the occasional invite to the Archdeacons or the Bishops (which is always more formal).

Very interesing about that book though and theories about how the exhaustion relates not just to lack of sleep and continual hard work!