Kelly Nava

When you think about our country’s military personnel—and the sacrifices they make to ensure freedom—do you ever think about the chaplains who serve in each military branch? It’s imperative, also, that we take note of the families of those chaplains. 

God doesn’t make mistakes—His plan is perfect, His execution unparalleled. When the fallen nature of the world and all of humanity comes into play, however, the exquisiteness of His perfection becomes clouded and subject to complication—but it is not hidden altogether. This is true across creation but perhaps most poignantly in the realm of the parent-child relationship.

The vocation of parent is the ultimate paradox. It is at once viscerally sweet, compelling, and satisfying—and then also just not. Not at all any of those things. In fact, parenting is often the very absence of those things, especially when life goes sideways in any of the many ways that life can.

“Here I am! Send me” (Isaiah 6:8). It’s a good verse, right? Isaiah sets a prime example of what our attitude toward the Lord’s will should be—what our degree of willingness ought to look like when God nudges us in a direction according to His plan. We like to think we’d say the same thing to God as this spectacular prophet of yore when asked. But let’s be honest.  

We’re all pretty awful at doing that.

A few months back, I wrote a post about how you can support your pastor’s wife. In it, I mentioned that because the role of the pastor’s wife comes with so many challenging aspects, there could be a whole field manual for women about to square up with the task. In place of a field manual, though, I thought I’d offer more insight via a few dedicated blog posts. Here’s the third of three.

A few months back, I wrote a post about how you can support your pastor’s wife. In it, I mentioned that because the role of the pastor’s wife comes with so many challenging aspects, there could be a field manual for women about to square up with the task. In place of a field manual, though, I thought I’d offer more insight via a few dedicated blog posts. Here’s the second of three.

A few months back, I wrote a post about how you can support your pastor’s wife. In it, I mentioned that because the role of the pastor’s wife comes with so many challenging aspects, there could be a field manual for women about to square up with the task. In place of a field manual, though, I thought I’d offer more insight via a few dedicated blog posts. Here’s the first of three.

Do you ever pause and consider how vast God’s love is for us? How absolutely outrageous and wonderful and impossible it is in its scope?

I venture it’s not always often that you do if you’re anything like me.

I never wanted to marry into the ministry.

There. I said it. Whew.

The life that corresponds to marrying a church worker—whether pastor, chaplain, missionary, or so on—is messy and difficult. There’s no way around that. It would take a very noble specimen of humanity to seek out a life that features extra helpings of flaming devil-darts and inevitable family struggle—to say nothing of the fact that it’s a life very much on display to those served by one’s spouse’s work. But that’s exactly what it is. And people do sign up for it.

Just as being humbled in life is unavoidable, so is living with change. If my new motto is “Be prepared; humbling will happen, and there’s nothing you can do about it,” then I might as well tack on another clause: “Oh yeah, and change happens too.”

The concept of change shouldn’t be an afterthought, but how often do we clutch our perceived life stability with a white-knuckled grip when change lurks nearby—and resist change so much that it sweeps us off our feet anyway? I know I engage in such white-knuckling often, so it can be helpful to remind myself that nothing on this earth lasts for long.