Praying on Empty: A Female Pastor's Story

By Marjorie Weiss

AMAZON #1 BESTSELLER & FOREWORD INDIES FINALIST - Women's Studies

 

GOLD WINNER OF THE ILLUMINATION BOOK AWARDS - Inspirational Memoir

 

INTERNATIONAL BOOK AWARDS FINALIST - Best New Nonfiction

 

"Pastor Weiss tells the truth about what private life can be like for women who seek to publicly serve the Church." --Lynne Silva-Breen, MDiv, MA, LMFT, former ELCA Pastor

"Anyone who daily searches for a genuine faith relationship will find benefit from this work." --Bruce G. Trethaway, MDiv

"What are you?" the curious man asked Pastor Marjorie Weiss when he saw her walk by him in the church corridor while she was wearing her clerical collar. That question is indeed the heartbeat of her story. Until the 1970s, "pastor" had been a male-only profession.

Book Description

"What am I?" she asks throughout her journey. "What am I as I stand before a congregation weekly to deliver a sermon that will inspire and guide listeners to better understand themselves and God?" And what is she when that faith, so necessary to do her job, suddenly seems to vanish? What is she when her emotional life crumbles and anger rules her landscape? Can she be a pastor without God in her life?

Weiss's deeply vulnerable, often humorous, memoir speaks to universal issues experienced by the religious and nonreligious alike. Many of her experiences may seem familiar while others border on the truly toxic.

Can the pastor recover her faith? Or is it God from whom she needs to recover?

IT'S YOUR TURN...

It's your turn to experience this riveting memoir named a Finalist in Best New Non-Fiction in the International Book Awards... Scroll up, download, and enjoy Praying on Empty: A Female Pastor's Story now!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Citrine Publishing
• Release date: Jun 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781947708563

Book preview

Prologue

June 2011

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The day the idea entered my head to become a pastor should be cursed. That day might also be blessed. Such was the hate-love relationship that had developed regarding my ministry, my job, and my personal life. Did male clergy feel this way? I often wondered if the ping-pong ambivalence I felt regarding living and working as a pastor was unique to my female psyche or if it was gender-neutral. I trudged through the dunes of parish ministry, hoping that over the next rise there would be an oasis where God would be waiting to explain why this job was so damned hard. Yes, I swear and cuss. And I am not the only pastor who does, despite the reality that many think the clergyperson’s mind zings with burning judgment whenever they hear someone swear. I like doing it. It’s a cathartic action for my brewing volcano of issues.

Some oases—islands of refreshment—have existed throughout my years as a professional Christian: lives have been changed, the poor helped, and there are many people who have loved and supported me. Nevertheless, the God oasis was the one I NEEDED. There, God will greet me with a gin and tonic. Whether God is a man or a woman, I have not yet decided. I will sit down in the Adirondack chair offered, plant my feet in the sand, sip my favorite drink, with lime of course, and in true I Love Lucy style I will say, God, you have some splainin’ to do! God will oblige with a chuckle and will make it clear that the personal sacrifices, the isolation, the loneliness, and the toleration (of people who have treated me in a most detestable manner) have all been worthwhile. I will require a great deal of convincing. Yet, our dialogue will give me hope.

I began these reflections a year ago in the month that I marked the thirty-year anniversary of my June 1, 1980, ordination into the Christian ministry. The 400-member Lutheran congregation, for which I served as pastor, had a party for the occasion, at which the genuine affection they had for me was most evident. The elegantly set tables and scrapbook (with individual pages of memories made by members) contrasted with their gentle roast of me, in which they poked fun at my years-long affection for Star Trek and the soap opera Days of Our Lives.

It was also the month in which I experienced an emotional breakdown, manifested in uncontrollable tears of gut-wrenching intensity. The sobbing lasted in some form for weeks and frightened me into an epiphany that screamed, You have to learn how to live life differently or you will, at worst, not survive. At best, you’ll live the rest of your employed years, or even of your life, in proverbial ‘quiet desperation.’ My feelings continuously bounced like a ball, pinging and then ponging between love and hate. Such were my days when I wondered how I could be so good at what I did for a living and yet, was getting increasingly less satisfaction from it.

Additionally, that party was ten months since the day I had quite unexpectedly lost most, if not all, of my belief in God, at least the God I thought I had known. I found that I had become a pilgrim seeking a faith that had once been my touchstone, and was hoping for its resurrection. Simultaneously, I was considering the unsettling notion that my life would be most improved without God and without Christians surrounding me all the time. How had I gotten to this Sahara?

1

The Cinder Block Room

August 2009

The setting was beautiful: the Marriott Hotel which overlooked Biscayne Bay in Miami, Florida. My husband, David, and I were dining in the grand high-ceilinged restaurant, looking out at the sparkling water, the boats, and the happy bicyclists. Even though it was August and the summer’s usual 90 degrees, the breezes from the nearby Atlantic had made our earlier walk pleasant despite the humidity. In a few days, we were to mark twenty-eight years of marriage. That evening, we looked upon the meal as our anniversary celebration, knowing that David would not be in any shape to go out to eat on our actual anniversary date. We were seventy miles from our home in order for him to undergo his second deep brain stimulation surgery (DBS) early the next morning.

Deep brain stimulation was still a relatively new treatment for the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease (PD), which David had been diagnosed with (as young-onset) when he was fifty. No problem, his doctor had initially said, we can give you twenty more good years. This prediction was not to be. Unfortunately, Dave was one of the rare people who did not get relief from medication for the Parkinsonianisms, which, for him, were tremors in his arms and legs, stiffness, rigidity, and daily suffering from pain in those extremities. His most recent neurologist at the time had tried every standard medication and then some. He had even prescribed him the highest dosage of Carbidopa/Levodopa (the medication of last resort) that any patient of his had ever used. The side effects of that high dose were extreme, but still his tremors continued unabated and were so debilitating that he could no longer lift a drink with one hand. He had had to revert to the two-handed child’s way of cupping a glass. He was also having more and more difficulty getting a loaded fork to his mouth while eating. I had to carry his plate for him if we were at a buffet, which showed how he was increasingly dependent on me as a caregiver. His meds were eventually reduced since the high dose was clearly not effective. Consequently, the side effects that had put him on edge and ready to jump out of his skin had lessened, but his life became one of daily agony from the never-ending pain and frustration. His only relief was sleep because then he did not shake.

Depression is also a symptom of PD. For Dave, this meant additional depression on top of the clinical depression from which he had already been suffering for at least a dozen years before Parkinson’s entered our lives. What a joke this is, he said with dark humor. Give a guy with depression a disease that makes a person depressed. That wasn’t funny to me. Depression is often more hellish for the loved ones than the depressed person, and I had already noticed him diving ever deeper into the darkness. Such tumbles always pulled me under as well. At age fifty-five, his days were often ones of watching himself shake.

Illness is never experienced in isolation. Dave’s combined pain from PD and depression became mine. It moved us into one of the most despairing times of our lives. At work I was often in a daze, trying to concentrate on my next sermon or on the person sitting across from me for counseling. I wrestled with hopelessness and then I would come home to this dark soul sitting on a chair, trying to read a book that often shook too much for him to follow a sentence. I prayed for Dave to die so that he would not be in such misery and, to be frank, so that I would not have to watch it. I envisioned him purposely driving himself into one of the Florida canals near our home to drown himself, and would have totally understood his motivation had he chosen to do so. I was helpless and tired of being his cheerleader since there was no chance of winning the game. Our future looked bleak. Parkinson’s and depression were thieves, taking so much from us.

I never blamed God, nor did he. Getting Parkinson’s is just bad luck. I totally reject any theology that casts God as a punisher, zapping people with pestilence in order to discipline them. I don’t even understand Christians who can say God is love or God is a loving father and then try to come up with a reason for why God sent a bad thing into their lives. Do they not see the disconnection? Sometimes, as the bumper sticker proclaims, Shit Happens. And it happened to him—to us.

Dave’s daily life had become quite diminished and there was little for him to do since he was unable to utilize the small motor skills required to engage in his hobbies of camera repair and building radio-controlled cars. He was receiving disability income due to his inability to work in his profession of computer programming. A computer mouse does not cooperate with a tremoring hand. At the time, I thought he’d be in a nursing home before he was sixty.

However, salvation came in the form of DBS, a surgery in which an electro-stimulator is implanted into the portion of the brain affected by the disease. By sending high-frequency electrical impulses into that specific area, it can mitigate symptoms. Dave’s first DBS surgery had been in October 2007 when a stimulator was implanted in the left side of his brain to control the tremors and stiffness on the right side of his body. Patients have to be semi-conscious—that means awake!—during the first part of the surgery in order to speak to the medical team to give them feedback regarding improvement. Has your hand stopped shaking? How about now? Is your leg less stiff? When the computer, doctors, and patient agree that the symptoms are mitigated, the patient is then put under general anesthesia so that electronic wires can be snaked under the skin from the skull, down the neck, to a battery implanted in the patient’s chest or belly. I took David home the next day, amazed that brain surgery was just an overnighter. Three weeks post surgery, after he had healed during the recommend interval of time, the stimulator was turned on and Dave was wondrously given back much of his life. So was I.

His tremoring right hand, leg, and foot were still. The pulsing that I had always felt in his hand, when I held it during our walks, was quiet. Without a doubt, the best benefit was that he was pain-free, and the pinched visage that had become standard was relaxed and peaceful. Consequently, Dave’s spirits improved and he even found that he could manage some of his hobbies. The PD continued to progress, but with the doctor making periodic computer adjustments of the electro-stimulator during office visits, he’d been given years of quality life that never would have been his otherwise.

Not quite two years later, similar PD symptoms had begun to affect his left side, resulting in tremors in his hand and leg and great pain in his arm and shoulder. He opted for a second DBS surgery on the right side of his brain. Hence, we were in Miami for our early anniversary dinner at the Marriott.

I don’t look forward to this, Margie, especially when they drill those holes into my skull to attach the metal halo. Man, did that ever hurt!

I smiled sympathetically. Well, I think you do want your head to stay still during the operation. You don’t want an accidental lobotomy. I might like that but you, not so much. He stuck his tongue out at me.

The halo had hurt, but he had found the rest of the previous surgical procedure tolerable, and was even able to joke with the doctors during the awake portion of that surgery. He was confident that this next one would go smoothly. The benefits were going to be extraordinary, just as they had been from surgery number one. I thanked God for the technology that was keeping my husband from becoming a drooling, shuffling shadow of himself. I had seen that happen to my Uncle Howard, who had also had the disease. It was a terrible thing to watch.

For us, anniversaries are always a time to reminisce about our past, so we easily steered our conversation to what we had considered highlights of our years together. You know when I knew I could love you? he asked as his green eyes crinkled and disappeared into his deep-set sockets when he smiled at me with anticipation.

Was it the tube top I was wearing when I invited you over for dinner?

No, but it was a surprise to see you for the first time in many years, a pastor no less, opening the door wearing that and short shorts.

It was August and hot outside.

I didn’t mind it, you know.

Just like I didn’t mind the flowers and you standing there wearing a shirt and tie, your red hair shining. And you had the Vandyke beard I’ve always liked. You looked good—yummy.

Ah, those were the days before I went bald.

I looked at his shining head and tried to remember him with hair. You look okay to me... Now, tell me when you thought you could love me.

The next week after we went out for dinner, back at your apartment you tried to get me coffee and…

Dropped that bottle of Tabasco sauce on my dress.

Yeah, it shattered on the counter. I was waiting in the living room, heard the crash and then you yelled, ‘Shit!’ Any pastor who said ‘shit’ was okay by me, especially a beautiful one!

I sure didn’t feel beautiful in those days, with my odd and missing teeth, but you didn’t seem to mind. It didn’t take us long to fall for each other, did it? I said with a smile revealing my now-beautiful teeth.

Nope, Dave agreed, beaming. And I never really noticed your teeth as a distraction, not like you did. But anyway, who would have thought that two people who were from the same hometown would have hooked up years later and have it click? It certainly had been a marvel to us both and assisted in our bonding since we had common childhoods, teachers, and memories of our shared hometown of Oley.

Dessert came as the sun was setting on the bay and we moved into reflecting on our wedding and then our years together—the challenges and joys of raising our two daughters and how content we now were in the empty nest. We reviewed the three moves we had made to different communities for my church work, our vacations, the cats we had loved, and our big transition from Pennsylvania to Florida five years earlier. Dave’s decade-long battle with depression had been won about a year before so it was fabulously pleasant to be enjoying each other’s company with a lightness of energy around us.

Dave interrupted our reverie with an unexpected question. Would you have married me if you knew I would get Parkinson’s disease?

I tried not to choke on my food. What a question! I laughed. But I could see by his expression that he actually wanted a serious answer. My response came surprisingly quickly.

Parkinson’s yes. Depression, no. His eyes grew large. Those years of struggling with your depression were miserable for me and detrimental to our marriage.

Yeah, but worse than Parkinson’s?

Parky, I said (my nickname for his illness), is manageable and predictable. We can plan for the inevitable. Mr. D, I continued (my nickname for his clinical depression), was a specter living in our home—in you. I hated him. You know that. He was unpredictable, mean-spirited, and created a vacuum whenever he showed up, which was far too often. Mr. D was making you a dark shadow. He was a thief who took you from me. Compared to Mr. D, Parky is a walk in the park.

My husband’s eyes shone at my play on words. Parky, walk in the park—cute! Then in sincerity said, I didn’t really know how much my depression affected you, you know that—

Since you were depressed, I interrupted and smiled back. You always retreated into yourself when Mr. D showed up. It was infuriating…and lonely.

But your saying it was worse than PD sure puts it into perspective…I’m sorry. His eyes got misty and tears poured over. I’m sorry for the way I was.

I grabbed his hand. I know you are, but with Parky, I can’t blame you. With depression it was so easy to hate you for what ‘you’ were doing to us and the family—to me—because it was hard to distinguish between illness and David. I lost you for so long. That happy man I married was stomped down by that damn brain chemistry fuck-up that caused your depression. Had I known in advance about how often I would wish you dead… I began to tear over as well. Because you left me while still existing in our home as that alien…No, I would not have walked down the aisle that day.

Clinical depression affects millions of people. One of God’s blessings has been the development of antidepressants. Mr. D had been with us for years, maybe for most of our marriage in some form, without our knowing what he was. But as the years passed, he showed up more often and stayed longer as our lives became fuller with kids and our respective job demands. In 1997, sixteen years into our marriage, long before Parky showed up, Mr. D was diagnosed and revealed. Dave started using Prozac. The effect was stunning. Mr. D, the hostage-taker, let go for the majority of the time. My lacking-in-affect husband began to smile, laugh, and become more engaged with life. Work hassles no longer immobilized him. Alas, Prozac began to lose its effectiveness after a year or so, even with increases in dosage. His primary care physician, therefore, referred him to a psychiatrist.

Unlike actor and Scientology Golden Boy Tom Cruise, who famously ranted against psychiatry (as all Scientologists do) to Matt Lauer on The Today Show, I am glad for it. (I was so ticked off at Mr. Cruise that I have not seen a movie of his since that tirade as I assume he kept many depressed people from the help they could receive. I’m sure my boycott has cost this multi-millionaire at least $100.) Unfortunately, we had a lot of difficulties finding a psychiatrist who would treat Dave for more than what seemed to be ten minutes before his or her moving on to a new job in a new locale. As a result, he never had a medical professional who considered his entire health history. The medical center that served our HMO even had rent-a-docs, psychiatrists who were hired short-term for six months to fill in holes in the staffing schedule. Dave saw a stream of these temps who gave him pills and nothing more. If only one of them would have probed to see if the medication and dose were really helping him. His sessions were done in fifteen minutes. Shockingly, no such thing as psychotherapy ever happened. His condition never improved. In fact, it often declined. Suicide watch was at times mine.

Mr. D grew stronger while David grew weaker, caught in their battle for prominence. I was miserable living with Dave’s negativity and disinterest in life. Our daughters were mercifully indifferent as kids can be regarding parental trials. In 2004, seven years after he began antidepressants, we moved to Florida for my job. That