O.K. all my lovely friends out there who have husbands in some kind of ministry (and that should be all of you who are married to believers)–this is for you. Bill has been in vocational ministry roles for most of our marriage. Though not vocational anymore, his ministry responsibilities at Sojourn keep growing. The more responsibility he’s given, the more nasty things we hear said about/to him. I know I’m not new to this, but I need some counsel from you ladies who are good at handling these situations. Ladies like Kacie, Sarah, Julie, you don’t get to sit out on this one without making a comment. 
What do you do to protect your heart from anger or sadness when you hear something hard about your man? Bill guards me as much as he can, but there are times when someone will just tell me to my face when he isn’t around. I rarely act in faith in these situations and let it consume me. It doesn’t help that one of my sins is the fear of man. I am going through a particularly difficult season right now where I feel like we’re being hit from all sides.
For clarification, though there are definitely many times Bill has been called to repentence by brothers in his life, I’m talking more about the times that I have found out there was a gossip session about him, times when someone gets angry that he calls out sin in his/her life, or times when someone is simply bitter and takes it out on him for instance.
