The demands of life as a ministry wife can leave our hearts open to dangerous traps that bruise our spirits and discourage us in ministry. Today, Paige Wieser shares her experiences as a church planting wife and offers ways she’s learned to avoid these traps.

Trap #1: Ministry is a taking endeavor; it’s taking everything from me.

“Satan wants to plant a root of bitterness that says, ‘Oh this is taking so much from me emotionally, timewise, and spiritually.’ But we should not be surprised or caught off guard, because church planting is actually a giving endeavor. When you start seeing it as a taking endeavor, there’s a lot of pitfalls and traps that come from that.”

“Can’t we sometimes be dramatic, us girls? ‘This will always be like this, I’m never going to see the end of it.’ There will be hard. Pain comes with purpose and there will be hard moments, but they won’t last forever. There is joy in the morning, and sometimes the morning comes a lot later than you want it to, at least in my heart and how I feel. Someone asked me once, ‘Remember that year that was hard, does it still hurt as much?’ and I was like, ‘No.’ That was an encouragement. What’s hard right now isn’t going to hurt as much in the future. The seasons do change.”

“I think unmet expectations feel like they could be a trap in any part of life maybe, but they lead to comparison. Realize it’s not going to look exactly like you thought it would in every single detail, and that’s okay.”

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