A Trailing Spouse on the Trail

For most of my professional life, I’ve been a trailing spouse, that is, a person whose spouse has the primary job and who moves when that primary job changes.

I’ve always refrained from writing about it, and mostly will continue to do so here. Either I sound like I’m patting myself on the back for this and that, or I feel sad about things that were painful. Some folks have looked at my resume and called my career "distinguished", which startled me and, of course, pleased me very much.

Looking online for a funny picture to post here, I found this one attached to what turned out to be an excellent article on trailing spouses in ministry and missionary work. The author sensitively discusses the issues and provides advice, with good examples. http://www.missionarycare.com/marriage/trailing-spouse.htm  I recommend the article in its descriptions of feelings about being a trailing spouse (in this case, religious work) and some ideas for friendship, support, and contentment.

As I wrote some earlier drafts of these reflections, I honestly thought that---for me----only a couple of my experiences are truly peculiar to being trailing spouse.  Others are more or less universal in working life. I’ve had to leave jobs because of Beth’s desire to relocate---but many of us relocate without necessarily wanting to.  (God bless our military folks and their families, for instance!)  Certain opportunities had unexpected challenges and difficult, hard to please people---but that can be true, as well, of a job you dreamed about and moved to a new town for! And although I don't like some of the more "trivial" tasks (that the above author discusses), they do give me mental and artistic "space" for some of the work I do which involves creativity.

Spouse trailing in red car... 

One thing that is special to “trailing,” is when one’s opportunities do not develop as quickly in a new location than you want. The relocation, after all, hasn’t been for your job!  You might have to keep your job search ongoing.  (And yet, this aspect of "trailing" is basically a kind of unemployment, which many people sadly experience.  If you're trailing, hopefully your spouse’s income can pay the bills. But it may not, or you might have to stretch your finances to make ends meet.) I jokingly tell people I was a “Kelly girl” for a while, but it was no joke: my work, in the location to which we had just moved for Beth's career, wasn’t working out as planned. Our move was costly, my career was still new, and I needed to keep working and making money. People’s careless comments made me feel ashamed, but the key thing was to fill my time with honest work until I figured out what God was up to.

Another thing has made me particularly downcast sometimes. I regret the fact that although my parents are very proud of my wife and proud of me, their pride in me had a "cut off" point (an parental expectation I didn't fulfill) because I was never the “bread winner.” My dad wondered what my salary was, and I didn’t tell him because it was none of his business, but also because he would’ve disapproved.

I’ve had to accept all this with regret and try to "move on" quickly if I become blue. I don't know if other, particularly baby-boomer men have similar feelings. My folks never understood that the working world is different from theirs; not only are more women in the work force, but the whole middle class no longer thrives as it did during their generation. Plus, with regard to the teaching part of my career, a great, predicted opening of the teaching market, on account of a generation of professors retiring, did not happen. Our dreams would be so great if the world just cooperated, LOL.

Again, I think I'll leave a lot of things private, even the very good things, because we all have different experiences and I don't want to imply that mine are normative. As I write all this, I realize that part of my experience has been, when I'm discouraged, to acknowledge my feelings but to put the things in perspective with everything else in my life.  If I have my life is a good balance, things go well and there's joy. One’s work is always interconnected with one’s family life, one’s health, one’s relationship with God, and other things.

One thing I've really appreciated as a a trailing spouse has been the “Covenant Prayer” from John Wesley’s 1780 Covenant Service.  Really, it's a good prayer for anyone's working life---for any aspect of life, for that matter.

"I am no longer my own, but thine.

Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.

Let me be employed by thee or laid aside for thee, exalted for thee or brought low for thee.

Let me be full, let me be empty.

Let me have all things, let me have nothing.

I freely and heartily yield all things 
to thy pleasure and disposal.

And now, O glorious and blessed God,

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,

thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it.

And the covenant which I have made on earth,

let it be ratified in heaven. Amen."

I’ve known some pastors who love that prayer and yet cling haughtily to the very Puritan idea that if you’re not successful you’re doing something wrong---not in God’s will. That Puritan idea, of course, is found in many areas of society.

And yet our lives do have “seasons” of success and failure, happiness and discouragement, productivity and idleness, missed opportunities and surprising blessings.  Wesley’s prayer deeply links the seasons of life that we all experience---whether we’re “trailers” or not----with the movements of God’s care.

Keep believing in spite of
anxiety

Not only as a trailing spouse but in the whole of my life, my best Christian witness is that God has never failed me over the long haul. I don’t like to talk about the Christian life in ways like: “Give your heart to Jesus and you’ll have peace,” etc. (So if you’re upset, then you don’t have Jesus???)  Specific events are difficult, things do or don’t work out; tragedies and crises happen, some of which are life-changing. Many times we have no idea is God is present or even cares. That’s very much the outlook of some of the psalms, too!  But I do like to tell folks that the Christian life is a way to have a framework, so to speak, for one’s whole life: a framework of belonging to God and being cared for and led.

But God’s care and guidance don’t just affect us as individuals. It’s easy to start thinking about “God’s will for my life” in a very individualistic, self-centered way. God’s will for our lives encompasses God’s will for our family members and friends, and God’s will for them encompasses us, too. If you’re trailing, God may want to employ your spouse and let you be “laid aside” for a short time. Your "trail" becomes a journey of faith, but you're not alone thereon.

God’s care for us becomes clearer over the long haul, as we look back and see grace.