A Messy Blessing

Yes, I’m married to a minister. No, I’m not judging you for your sins.

- Karen Stiller

WHILE ON VACATION in Cuba in 2002, my husband, Brent, and I met two other couples and we all became fast friends—as you do if you’re the least bit friendly at an all-inclusive resort. For a few fun days, we sat on the beach and rented crappy bicycles, laughing as we forced them up the rutted roads. We even shared a table at the restaurant.

One night I left to go to the buffet, and when I returned, my plate piled high, I found that the table had become quiet, subdued. I knew what had happened. “They finally asked what I do for a living,” my husband said.

He’s a minister—a man of the cloth and the Word. My heart sank. We had been having such a good time.

Brent’s calling crept up on us 25 years ago—up the stairs and into our student apartment at Dalhousie University in Halifax. It stuck around until he felt he had to follow it to the seminary, then into the Anglican Church. The religious calling, like writing, is often described as a decision that makes itself for you: no other choice seems right. And so Brent became a minister, a vocation that requires your entire being—it seeps through all of your life, for better or for worse. And I became a minister’s wife, for better or for worse.