For ministers who carry private family pain, shame can be overwhelming. But our difficult lives might make us better clergy, writes a pastor and mother of a child with emotional and behavioral challenges.
In the back corner of a furniture store I picked up an end table to test its weight. The first was too light, so I moved to the next. Working through the next five, I pushed each one to see if it would topple. The sixth one held steady: heavy with blunt edges. Strong enough to withstand a tantrum.
This is one of many decisions I make as a mother raising a child with emotional and behavioral challenges. It’s a weight other parents carry too, but for those of us who pastor and lead church ministries, there is an unspoken expectation: Hide the pain and be composed during church, even when we’ve spent the week in crisis.
Across the body of Christ, I’ve watched fellow leaders carry versions of the same heavy heartbreak. Some, like me, spend our days trying to keep our children from unraveling into meltdowns they can’t control. Others I know have watched their grown children struggle with addiction or mental illness. Adult children may reject faith, which is its own kind of loss.
As leaders, we have to stand up on Sundays, lead worship and preach, and then go home to households that are falling apart. It happens every week. But almost none of us will admit it.
This was brought to my attention by a question on an ordination recommendation form I filled out for a friend. The form covered their beliefs, spiritual formation and prayer life. But one question stood out: Do they have well-behaved children?
I know what people would write about me. Her child doesn’t listen to anyone. He’s always bolting away. And underneath it all, the real question: How can she lead us when she can’t even seem to lead him?
That question, particularly in the context of readiness for ordination, reveals a theology of ministry many of us have absorbed without realizing it: that our households are evidence of our fitness to lead. Scripture calls leaders to manage their households well. But scrutiny and unspoken judgment have twisted that standard into something else: the belief that our children’s illnesses and personal choices are a referendum on our calling.
When our children are thriving, we feel affirmed, not only as parents but in our Christian calling. When they are not, we bear the burden of shame. We feel like failures, not only as parents but also as ministers. That shame keeps us silent.
But here’s the problem: When we model a faith with no room for honest struggle, we teach families managing their own crises at home that the church has no room for them either.
I am still learning that our children’s struggles do not disqualify us as leaders in ministry. I have prayed two prayers while holding a thrashing child: that God would calm his mind and that God would show me what it means to love even in utter chaos.
If we let shame go, our persistence — rather than the absence of conflict — can deepen our understanding of the gospel and our relationship with Jesus. As a pastor who has sat with their child through a psychiatric evaluation, I personally know a God who does not abandon us in our darkest depths. We can sit with prodigals and with the parents waiting for them to come home, because we also know how to wait and carry radical hope. We can confidently assure our congregants that God will never give up on us, because, despite everything, we have never given up on our children.
For ministers who carry private family pain, I offer two pieces of advice that can make the difference between leading sustainably through suffering and being undone by shame.
Separate your children’s story from your identity
When our children struggle, no matter their age, our shame as parents becomes so entangled with our ministerial identity that our entire sense of self feels under indictment. We must do the work of disentangling our worth from the outcomes we cannot control.
The God who called us into ministry was not surprised by our children’s diagnoses or the decisions they have made. Our children are not our credentials but part of our ministry. If we understand that our own behavior does not change who God is, why do we apply a different standard to ourselves and our children?
When we anchor our identity into who God says we are rather than in how our families appear, something releases within us. We can become more present to our congregations. We can become more loving to our children. When we do this, it will make us better parents and better ministers.
Learn to lead from the middle of an unfinished story
Ministry culture loves a testimony with a clean ending. We have been trained to tell our stories of struggle in three movements: problem, faith, resolution. Many of us believe that we cannot testify until we reach the third one. But mental health struggles do not always resolve.
Addictions can be a lifelong battle. Some of our children may be in and out of crisis for decades or perhaps for the rest of our lives. My son is on a long waiting list for cognitive behavioral therapy to help manage his emotional dysregulation and sees three other specialists every week. No simple cure is in his future.
We do not need our children to be healed before we lead. Our calling does not require all our problems to be solved but demands our faithfulness and obedience in what’s left unresolved.
The people we serve are in the middle of their own unfinished stories. Our congregations need to know they are not carrying these burdens alone. God will complete what he has started in us, and within our children, but for today we are called to do the work until our time here is done.
Our churches were never meant to be museums of perfect families. We are part of a broken community being made whole. God loves our children more than we do, and God will not forget them. When we remember that, we can minister from a place of depth rather than weight.
I am still learning that our children’s struggles do not disqualify us as leaders in ministry.
