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Old 20th April 2014, 08:41 AM   #15
freddo
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Join Date: Apr 2014
Posts: 8
Re: 20 years Trapped

Im sorry, Raymond, but you have picked a red-rag-to-a-bull metaphor for a vicar's wife:

"Thinking of it like a property. We are all responsible for our own property. We will have a fence and a front door and we only allow the people in that we want to. In the same way we are responsible for our own skin so to speak. We open the gates to who we want to but keep them closed when it's not safe. It is really our own responsibility."

We have never lived in our own property. To the outsider this sounds like a great blessing and I am fully aware of all that it gives, but few are aware of all that it takes. Few live life never feeling safe. Our house is not our haven into which we choose those we invite. If we work in a tricky area with no church facilities the vicarage is the church facility. There are meetings, counselling, weddings, baptism, funeral visitors, complainers, people asking for drug money, people wanting food, people begging for help, people wanting to tell us what's wrong with the church today......and that's before you add the traffic of my pupils or the children's friends. The phone, the doorbell.....added to the office being next to the sitting room with no bolting door! We have been broken into 4 times as we have a probation hostel 3 door s down- at the end of the day when the doctors and lawyers and social workers have finished their do gooding days and go home to their fenced in houses-we are left to live in the imploding community.
We move around the country as hubby turns a parish around and gets it thriving and is moved onto the next challenge so you can never invest any emotion in furnishings or bricks and mortar.....yes I know we all say these aren't important but why is b and q so full if we're not all enjoying the colour of our walls (which we're not allowed to paint!)
So you see, I've never felt physically safe. I spend a HUGE amount of energy making sure my childen do -I'm first to the door with the iron poker if I smell trouble and they don't know about 3 of the break ins. They're pretty street wise so it's taught them that, but I've spent many hours sitting outside their bedroom doors while hubby at church as someone banged on door and windows downstairs demanding money (even locked us in the bathroom severalmtimes when they were tiny!)
If you are a strong team bonding together against the world then such conditions are bearable. When the team is fractured then this survival-type instict is even harder. And you're right....resentment sets in.
The kids are teens now....the bond is strong but inevitably going to change. My main reason for being so strong and protective will no longer be there. Without that passion, I'm not sure where my strength will come from.
Many, many clergy wives struggle with this lack of privacy even if they are not in areas where safety is an issue. You are married to a public figure.....yes like a doctor or a politician.....but it invades the place you are trying to call home. Without that very solid place underfoot it's very exposing.
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