What happens when the pastor’s family isn’t perfect?

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.

For many of us, summer can be a time that invites a slower, easier pace. Kids are out of school, and the grill is fired up as days lengthen, weather warms and vacations take shape.

But this year, it seems that there is so much going wrong. Earth’s climate is changing in scary ways, the political climate is tense, the economy is challenging and our communication with each other seems ever more contentious and polarized. What does it mean for a season of ease to be upon us when it feels like the world is crashing down?

Here we sit in the reality that two things can be true. This is a hard time to be human, and we can hold space for some of the simple joys that are often reserved for summer.

A 24-hour news cycle, social media that invites doom scrolling, and algorithms that thrive on tragedy can lead us to believe that we must always be aware and alert, that we must constantly ruminate on all the things that require our action.

However, the shifting of the seasons is a reminder of God’s constancy in our lives and an invitation to a rhythm that incorporates all of reality: “As long as the earth remains, there will be planting and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night.” (Genesis 8:22 NLT)

This God-ordained rhythm is an admonition that constant work is neither desirable nor productive. From the commandment to remember the Sabbath in Exodus to Jesus’ actions throughout his ministry, the invitation has always been to rest from our work.

We lose our power and effectiveness when we don’t honor this rhythm with our minds, bodies and spirits. Whatever work you are called to in the world, the long game requires strategy. And an effective strategy must include rest.

So, this summer, you can still go slower. You have a decision to make about whether you buy into the myth of urgency that is doled out by a capitalist society. You can instead stand with Audre Lorde, who in “A Burst of Light” famously writes, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

What if a part of the way you fight for the world that you envision is to honor the parts of you that need a reprieve? What if a form of resistance is being fully present with people whom you love and who bring you joy? What if the way you sustain yourself for the journey is a day in nature, soaking in sun and being screen-free?

These practices are vital for all of us, but especially for those who experience marginalization in our society, including people of color, women and LGBTQ+ folks, who often face demands to perform, provide free labor and bear the burdens of the communities they inhabit.

To affirm that we are made in the image of God is to rest in the truth that our being is not defined by our work or what we produce. As Chanequa Walker-Barnes notes in her book “Sacred Self-Care,” “Many of us have been taught that productivity is a sign of blessedness.” A commitment to doing less is a way to combat this falsehood.

In addition to stillness and a slower pace, summer offers open opportunities for play — not just for kids, but for adults too, if we would only give ourselves permission. When we are feeling fearful, unsure and worried about the state of the world, it is a courageous act to be playful.

In “Doing Theological Double Dutch: A Womanist Pedagogy of Play,” Lakisha R. Lockhart-Rusch offers this call to action: “Play empowers people in the face of oppression, interrupts and allows for reflection, teaches skills needed for living, and provides space for a creative and imaginative outlet to express, explore, and try things out.”

In other words, play is not idle time. Play trains us for the world, even when that world doesn’t operate in ways that encourage our thriving. Play is not a diversion from the rhythm; it’s a part of it. Play is preparation. Play is a way of being present to self and others that restores and rejuvenates.

A final benefit of a slower pace is that, simply put, our nervous systems need a break. Living and interacting in a chaotic world can leave us feeling stressed, overwhelmed and disconnected. A 2025 survey on stress conducted by the American Psychological Association found that 62% of American adults feel stress due to societal division in the U.S., with more than 75% reporting worry about the future of the country.

Add to this the realities of working, caregiving and just living. Chronic stress over time wears down our bodies, impacts our emotional well-being and increases our risk for chronic illness. In other words, when we have an opportunity to reset or downshift, we should take it.

For those who are even moderately aware, it’s probably impossible to block out all the noise and enjoy perpetual bliss until Labor Day. You don’t have to do that to let summer be summer. But you do have choices about how much energy you give to things and how you prioritize your time.

Every battle is not yours to fight. Giving yourself the opportunity for stillness, rest and play can also provide you with the clarity you need to discern the work that is yours to do.

Perhaps a slower pace will equip us with fuel for the fight, bestow us with marching orders and connect us with comrades on the journey. As we sit with the duality that this moment brings, its invitation is to choose what fills you.

Just Be

I have placed before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants.

Deuteronomy 30:19

Sometimes it takes everything in us to choose life hour by hour just to get through the day.

My first encounter with the wisdom of Rabbi Abraham Heschel was when I saw these words of his painted on a little ceramic plaque in the boutique of a Benedictine monastery where I was on a retreat:

“Just to be is a blessing, just to live is holy.”

It felt like an opening to sacred ground, a balm for my feelings of never being enough.

But it also seemed like an impossibly far Promised Land.

I sighed with longing as I read those words and thought, I wish I could rest in that. I know it’s true for other people. I know their just being is a blessing. But I’m so lazy and unproductive! Are we really invited into that kind of rest? Doesn’t God want more from me?

At the time of that retreat, I was struggling with the fact that, even several years after finishing my doctorate, I had no scholarly publications while friends were publishing books left and right. My nonacademic friends were doing all kinds of other good work.

I felt like a fruitless lump in comparison.

I bought the little plaque to take home, feeling it might be an invitation from God.

That spring I had the semester off from teaching and hoped to get some writing done but was making little progress. One afternoon I got caught up in one of my usual self-shaming tirades about how unproductive I was.

At some point I paused and looked at the plaque with Heschel’s words.

“Just to be is a blessing, just to live is holy.”

I wondered — But, how can this be any sort of blessing?! All my friends are out there doing great work while I sit here rotting away in a depressed funk! There is nothing remotely good or holy about this.

My younger self might’ve floundered in that swamp for hours.

This time I tried to take a step back and reframe.

Well . . . what have I done today? I guess I got out of bed. I took my medication. Maybe I can give myself credit for that? Could be worse, right? It’s been worse before. But I’ve been taking my meds. I’m staying out of the hospital. Does that count for something?

And I’m doing this. I’ve been fighting like this . . . all these years. All the times I haven’t liked living at all, I’ve kept showing up.

So . . . what if I give myself credit for choosing “just to live” today, on this bare level? That’s a real fight for some of us — to show up and keep choosing “to be” at all! Could this count as part of a day’s work? Maybe God would see this and say, “Good enough, dear! This is what being faithful looks like today. You’re doing it.”

Describing life with schizophrenia, Esmé Weijun Wang points out that “chronic illness stitches itself into life in a different way than acute illness does. With chronic illness,” she explains, “life persists astride illness. . . . The absolution from doing more . . . during surgeries and hospitalization is absent during chronic illness.” And thus, the constant guilt.

It’s exhausting to have a “serious mental illness” like bipolar disorder. I mean, seriously.

But one positive aspect of having an actual diagnosis is the awareness that illness is involved, though it might be less visible and more stigmatized than other illnesses. So, even if no one else gets it, even if people feel let down by those of us with challenging mental conditions, perhaps we can offer ourselves this “absolution from doing more.” It’s real work we’re doing to stay in the fight.

Showing up “just to be” is not nothing, especially in the middle of a war against forces of self-annihilation.

If you’re overwhelmed in the day-to-day, it can help to simply focus on where you are in the present moment. Research in mental health has shown that how we feel emotionally is concretely tied to how we are in our bodies, and moving our bodies or slowing down with deep breathing can have a calming effect on our state of mind.

Take time to ground yourself in your body and your breath. In their book on Asian American trauma and mental health, Where I Belong, Soo Jin Lee and Linda Yoon offer wonderfully practical grounding exercises at the end of every chapter.

I sometimes practice breath prayers to slow my breathing and quiet frenetic thoughts when I’m feeling overwhelmed. Here are a couple I’ve liked:

Breathe in: Lord, have mercy.

Breathe out: Christ, have mercy.

Breathe in: Kyrie,

Breathe out: eleison.

Breathe in: Christe,

Breathe out: eleison.

We can give ourselves credit for taking this one aching breath.

And the next.

And the next.

Breath by breath.

I think that counts as choosing life.

If it’s all you can do, just be.

“Just to be is a blessing, just to live is holy.”

What would it be like to grow into the truth of these words?

Adapted from “Christ in the Abyss: Cultivating Deep Faith amid Depression and Despair” by Jean L. Neely, Ph.D., from NavPress in June 2026. Breath prayers from Jon Fosse’s “Septology,” trans. Damion Searls (Transit Books, 2019),

I’m in my backyard on a Saturday morning. My goal is to plant seeds I picked up from my local library. Eggplant, corn, okra, tomatoes, cantaloupe. I fill pots with soil, then I drop in the eggplant, okra and tomato seeds. The corn and the cantaloupe are destined for a sunlit patch of earth.

As I dig holes with my spade and drop in the seeds, the cool temperature signals that winter’s grip is slipping. It’s the interval between winter’s chill and summer’s suffocating humidity. The break before the heat arrives and ushers in the annual plague of gnats.

My companion is dressed in rain boots and a light coat. At 4 1/2, everything is a wonder to her. She stands on the front edge of a lifetime of firsts. She comes from a long line of peasant farmers, people who know what it means to struggle to survive. She will know one day that rich volcanic soil is buried beneath the fingernails of her ancestors; the nutrients from potatoes and yams are embedded in her DNA.

The tulips are the product of fall sweat and backbreaking labor. They were among bags of bulbs my wife and I purchased in October. The yard of our new home is endowed with hedges of camellias and azaleas. We wanted to plant bulbs to ensure color all year long, and the tulips along the walkway are the first to appear.

The eggplant, okra, corn and cantaloupe are for my sustenance. A hedge against rising grocery prices. The tulips’ beauty enriches my soul.

Planting, I know, is an act of faith. It is a vote of confidence in the future. Planting is a prelude to growth. And growth must come before the harvest.

I know intuitively that the laws of nature, ordained since creation of seed time and harvest, are part of the Adamic promise received generations ago. Promises made, promises kept.

I look up. My granddaughter is holding a pink tulip flower in her left hand. Can I give this to my mother? she asks. The glee on her face is unmistakable.

She is the next generation — our down payment on a future I can only imagine. Like spring itself, she’s our family’s hope of renewal and regeneration. The simplicity of her joy lifts my spirits.

Even as I dig holes and pour the dark, rich soil into pots, music from a nearby Presbyterian church’s carillon punctuates the air. “Amazing grace! How sweet the sound” chimes over the morning breeze. “Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine.” “It is well with my soul.”

These are hymns of my grandmother; they are songs of my boyhood; they are the soundtrack of my faith. In my middle age, they are hourly anthems of renewal, and a reminder that despite the chaos, there’s constancy in my faith and my hope. That constancy is a bulwark against the fear of uncertainty, about what the future might hold.

Author Toni Sorenson wrote that spring is far more than a changing of the seasons; it’s a rebirth of the spirit. It is even much more than that. It’s a rebirth of all creation, seen and unseen.

Even as the beauty of this spring is muddied by wars and rumors of wars, the azaleas and camellias make a strong case. Their beauty is unsullied by the chaos that surrounds us; their majesty is undiminished by the ugliness that so often characterizes our human relations. Their existence is a rebuke to us all.

Spring is also pollen season. It was once a time of pure misery for me, but thanks to the miracle of yearlong allergy medications, my sinuses and my senses are clear enough for me to work in my garden or to sit and watch the Flint River as it flows past, from Atlanta in the north to the Apalachicola Bay and the Gulf of Mexico in the south.

This renewal of the earth and the promise of seasons to come inspire me. They infuse me with new energy. It is an opportunity to correct past wrongs; to do it better next time; to embrace unfulfilled promise.

As I reach my mid-60s, this season brings a new perspective. Each spring is to be measured and cherished. It’s a time for calibration and a time to assess how much has been accomplished.

Are there unfinished tasks to be completed? Have I done enough with my talents? These questions are not about merit or working for divine favor; they are attempts to quiet the murmuring in my mind, the doubts in my spirit. No one wants to live with regret. And looking back and looking forward opens the door inevitably to regret.

Spring is a reminder that there is still time to correct past errors, to get past idle promises and half-baked resolutions. There is still time to step toward that one thing. So much about life at middle age concerns legacy. What will I leave behind?

Perhaps it’s sharing time with my granddaughter. Perhaps it’s the familiarity of old songs. Perhaps it’s the freshness of the air before the gnats return.

Spring brings a clarity that purifies. It allows us to see life through the lens of hope. Spring brings its own music, asks its own questions, ushers in its own scents, delivers its own promises. And like my granddaughter clutching the pink tulip, it brings priceless gifts for all to savor.