Ambassador Academy 13 part 2- Love Your Spouses

By: Mande Kalbfleisch

I was originally going to title this “Love your wife”, but then I realized that there may be some women evangelists out there who have the same struggle with their husbands.

You might have read part one of this series last week.  If you did not please read it before reading this!  Ambassador Academy is an experience you will NEVER forget if you have the privilege to attend.  I can testify that my life has been totally changed by this.

This week I wanted to share with you on a different level.  Last week I chronicled my journey through AA 13.  This week I want to take a different approach……being the spouse of an evangelist.  I want to put a warning on this before going any further.  This is written from my point of view and does not give you both sides of the story.  My intention is to share with you some of the things I went through so as to hopefully help you see things your spouse could be going through also.  This article is not intended to bash my husband nor make public any problems we have or have had in our marriage. 

Several years ago a friend of mine and I were talking and she said to me, “It must be hard being married to John the Baptist.”  I gave her a blow off answer saying, “It’s really not that bad.”  I mean we had our weekly date nights, our weekend getaways, etc. and most of my friends didn’t have that after all.  Deep inside me her comment resonated through every bone in my body though.  Carl had been going out evangelizing for 6 months or so and had just asked me about starting Bezeugen Ministries.  He wanted my full support.  Of course he was very passionate about it and honestly at that point I didn’t see how it affected me so I gave him my approval.  I showed my love and support by enrolling in an online program to learn everything we needed to know about how to set up and run a nonprofit ministry.  We found out it was very complicated and way more than either of us wanted to do.  I made copies for him, stamped and labeled tracts, etc.  I felt like I was giving him 100% support.  He would say Thank You when I did things for him but honestly I didn’t feel like he gave me credit for what I was doing.  It was more than just my actions. I was drowning in a sea of life changes.

Deep inside, resentment was building up because although on the outside I was supporting him, on the inside I was resentful of what my friends were saying, how we were losing the friends we had because they thought my husband was crazy, and how we couldn’t do anything without him having to evangelize.  I could not get away from it. It wasn’t like he was doing things that were bad or even being a bad husband, I just didn’t know how to balance his new passion for evangelism with the passion I wanted him to have for me.   I began to let these feelings become real and my attitude changed toward my husband.  I began to feel like his evangelism and the lost souls he was talking to were more important than me. I began to let the verse in Eph 5:25 dictate my feelings and actions.  I began to blame him for what I perceived as not putting me first like this verse says.  Didn’t he see that if he asked me to “do” something for the ministry I would make sure it got done? It was as if all the love and support I was giving him meant nothing to him since I was not going out with him, handing out tracts, talking to people one on one, open air preaching, etc.  Notice all of the “I’s” in this story quickly appearing.  Being the spouse of an evangelist puts your life and marriage under a whole different form of spiritual attack than most people have experienced.  It can quickly reveal where your selfishness is and can allow Satan to attack in those areas.

A wedge quickly drove right through our marriage and when the topic of evangelism came up you could feel the strain for quite sometime because of it.  I became even more resentful when the spiritual attacks starting coming our way.  On days when Carl was going out to evangelize I would get very sick.  I could go from feeling GREAT to really sick in a matter of 10 minutes on those days.  Since I really resented him spending the day with someone other than the boys and I, what I really wanted was for him to stay home and take care of me.  That’s what Satan wanted too.   After this happened twice I told Carl “Just go. I’ll deal with it”.  It was amazing not 10 minutes after he left I was totally fine again.  So every time this would happen I would send him on his way with a prayer and a smile but inside I was so angry that not only was he going out again but that I was the sick one.  I totally felt unloved.

I tried to explain these feelings of resentment to him but could never quite find the words. I couldn’t explain it to him because he felt like he had been doing all the right things.  To his credit he had been trying to do things.   I became so angry, hurt and resentful of the ministry I finally told Carl that I didn’t want to be a part of this.  As I heard the words come out of my mouth I saw the crushing blow I had just delivered.  My fear, resentment, anger, and hurt had just crushed the man I vowed to love and support through thick or thin.  I kept thinking why doesn’t he see it?  Why can’t he see that his evangelism is ruining our lives?  Doesn’t he see how lonely I am because I have been exiled from my friends, social groups, etc. because of his actions?  As I look back on this I now see that Carl was seeing things through God’s eyes and I was seeing things though my own worldly eyes.  As a woman it is hard to get past the “what others think of me” stage.  I have just recently come to this conclusion, but I still struggle with it.  This will be something you will want to hang on to if your wife is struggling with this.  It is likely that unless you have others who are doing biblical evangelism around you, your wife may be going through some feelings of exile and rejection.  Here is a suggestion that might help.  This suggestion really only works for wives.   I will keep thinking if there is a group who needs suggestions for husbands.  Introduce her to some of the wives of others you know who are doing these things.  Facebook is a GREAT way to do that.  You can also contact some of your evangelism buddies and ask them to bring their wife to the next “event” and encourage the wives to go spend the time while you are out witnessing getting to know each other over lunch or shopping or whatever they enjoy doing.  If your wife is in the Dallas area I would be happy to get to know her.

Because of my feelings of rejection, hurt, etc. I turned to the two friends I had left for support and answers.  We agreed to do the Love Dare book together on our husbands and share our success and failures between the 3 of us.  In going through this book there were several days where the dare had something to do with giving into something your spouse would like to do.  The only thing I could think of for those days was going evangelizing with Carl.   Don’t get me wrong I had been “going with him” to events.  He would go one way and do his thing and I would go my way and prayer walk.  Most days it turned into a little bit of prayer and a lot of resentment building up because I had a long list of things I thought were more important.  I really had no desire to do what he was doing at all.  It was more of an obligation to support him than anything else.  We would go out and he would encourage me to leave a tract or talk to someone and I would just find the quickest way to get rid of the tract so I could say I had done it.  Both of our boys love to hand out tracts so most times I would find an excuse to just let the boys go.

I was still praying that we could have “normal” family activities like my old friends did. After 40 days of doing the love dare my girlfriends said to me “Mande this ministry thing is not going away. You married him and no matter if you like it or not you have to support him.”  One of them asked me why I thought it was such a horrible thing.  I told her it was because I felt second in my marriage to evangelism.  I felt like evangelism and the lost were more important to him than I was.  She encouraged me to try and find some other wives whose husbands did evangelism and talk to them.  So I did.  I sought out several wives of evangelist I knew Carl was hanging out with.  I prayed with an open mind that God would reveal to me my place in Carl’s life.  Over the next year God did just that.  God gave me the words to talk to Carl and tell him how I felt.  It was not easy as all the pent up emotions would come running out and jumble my words.  I started taking a few tracts and leaving them where people could find them.  I would prayer walk at events or lunches and earnestly pray for what was going on and when we would meet back up I would hear about how God had protected the team from security guards at the mall, from nasty hecklers, and from other things.

I began to see that my time spent praying was really making a difference and the feelings of unimportance began to go away.  We could go to an event together and both have an impact and support each other.

Our ministry began to really grow and flourish.   Carl went off to Ambassador Academy 10 and came back with some great stories, friends, and those friends had wives.  I began to connect with those women and share with them my struggles.  Most of them had the same type of stories.  As you know less than a year later I have had my life drastically changed by the very thing I used to despise and resent.

So why am I telling you this?  Why did I decide to share my heart with you today?  I believe there are many marriages out there that are just like ours.  One spouse has a zeal for evangelism and the other has not quite figured it out.  I believe that many evangelists can hopefully learn from my story and advice.   If you are in a situation like ours talk to your spouse, hear what they have to say and how they are feeling.  Put an extra effort into making sure if they in anyway enable you to go out witnessing that you praise them and make notice of that.  Don’t force them into doing evangelism just like you do.  BE PATIENT!  It may take them a while to come to the realization that they can and want to do this.  It did for me.  It was a 4 year battle for me.  Remember to love them first.  You may have to work harder at making sure they feel loved.  The things that worked before may not still work.  Be creative. Ask your spouse what would make them feel loved and important.  Yes you have a heart for the lost souls out there and that is awesome.  You have to remember to love your wife and have a passion for her more than for the lost souls out there.  When I realized that the battle I was fighting was really no battle at all I was much more open to hearing and seeing what this evangelism thing was all about.  I can tell you from experience that if your wife feels like evangelism and lost souls are more important than her you are never going to be effective in what you are doing.  Satan will always have a foothold into each and every time you go out!  Remember the Eph 5 verse I talked about earlier.  Put that into practice.  When encouraging your spouse to support you in this effort remember what Paul wrote to the Corinthians:

 4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (English Standard Version)

If your spouse would like to connect with another spouse who has been through the struggle and made it out successfully (I think) please have them contact me or leave a comment. I would be glad to share with them, be their friend, whatever they need.  I am also on facebook (Mande Williams Kalbfleisch).