Christina Linstrot Miller: Character Identification

God wastes nothing—even our hard time.

My husband, Jan, and I have been in the ministry for twenty-eight years. When Andrea included a ministry couple in our story, I wanted to bring the pastor’s wife, Estelle, to life. I painted her as a childless woman, like myself, who dedicated her life to helping her husband succeed in ministry. 

But as I got to know Estelle’s quirkiness and gentle heart, I suddenly realized that she had a painful past.

In an instant, I traveled back in time to the day the Lord called Jan and me to a tiny, struggling church. One that had been hurt badly by a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.” 

Like Estelle and Robert, my husband and I worked, prayed, loved, visited, served. But the church simply would not grow. 

Jan and I wondered if maybe we were out of God’s will. Maybe we were doing something wrong. Or, worse, maybe we harbored some secret sin and didn’t realize it. But I eventually realized that wounds take time to heal. We began to see slow progress.

Our character Estelle fought the same battle. So I wrote a few paragraphs based on our experience, crying the same tears Estelle and Leah cried in the novella Andrea and I wrote together.

Christina Linstrot Miller,
coauthor of
"One Way to the Altar"

Pouring my heart into those lines was hard but healing. Maybe another pastor’s wife would read them and discover she wasn’t alone. Some church member might begin to understand how much pain comes with ministry and would begin to love her pastor’s wife, be a friend to her.

Thank You, God, for redeeming my difficult time.

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