22/08/2026
THE PASTOR'S SILENT FUNERAL
Addiction, Trauma, and the Hidden Wounds of Shepherds
Written by DEBOLA PRAISE AINA.
CHAPTER 2: THE FISHBOWL LIFE
Living under constant watch
They watch everything.
Your car. Your clothes. Your kids. Your wife's dress length. Where you eat lunch. What you buy at the grocery store. How much you tip the waitress. Whether you laugh too loud at the restaurant or look too tired on Sunday morning.
They watch. And they remember. And they whisper.
I learned this the hard way at my first pastorate. Third month in, I stopped by the gas station after evening service, still in my suit and tie. Grabbed a Coke and a bag of chips - dinner, because we'd had another late board meeting that killed my appetite and my hope.
The clerk smiled. "You're the new pastor, right? At First Baptist?"
I nodded, suddenly aware that my rumpled appearance was being catalogued, filed away, probably shared by morning.
"Rough night?" he asked, and I heard it - that tone. Part curiosity, part judgment. The same tone I'd later hear from dozens of people who seemed to think pastors weren't allowed to look human.
"Just tired," I mumbled, paying quickly and escaping to my car.
But it was too late. By Wednesday, three different people had "heard" I was at the gas station at 10 PM looking "troubled." By Sunday, it became "Pastor looked rough the other night - I hope everything's okay with him." By the next Wednesday, someone asked if I was "struggling with something."
A Coke and chips became a crisis of confidence.
Welcome to the fishbowl.
King David understood this microscope life. In Psalm 69, he cried out: "I am the song of the drunkards. They who sit at the gate mock me." Even the king - God's anointed - couldn't escape the watchers, the whisperers, the ones who made his every move their entertainment.
But David was a king. Kings are supposed to be watched.
Pastors are supposed to be... what? Perfect?
My wife learned this faster than I did. Sarah's always been beautiful - the kind of woman who turns heads without trying. In our previous life, before the calling, this was just a sweet reality I got to enjoy. But in the fishbowl, her beauty became a problem.
"Pastor's wife sure dresses nice," became the whispered critique. "Must be nice to have all that church money for fancy clothes." Never mind that she'd worn the same three dresses in rotation for months, or that her "fancy" shoes came from the discount rack.
The day she came home crying, I knew the fishbowl had claimed another victim.
"Mrs. Henderson asked me today if I thought it was appropriate for a pastor's wife to wear red lipstick," Sarah whispered, her face buried in her hands. "She said it might send the wrong message to the young girls."
Red lipstick. The same shade she'd worn since college. The same lips I'd kissed at our wedding altar. Now suddenly a scandal because she lived under the pastoral microscope.
That night, I watched my wife scrub her face bare and wondered what we'd gotten ourselves into.
Jesus knew this surveillance. They watched him eat with sinners. They counted his steps on the Sabbath. They measured the length of his conversations with women at wells. They turned his every meal into a theological debate, his every friendship into a controversy.
"The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners,'" he said in Matthew 11:19.
Even the perfect Son of God couldn't escape the watchers.
But it gets worse when you're human.
I remember the Sunday my youngest, Emma, had a meltdown during service. Full-scale, three-year-old, nuclear-level tantrum right in the middle of my sermon on patience. The irony wasn't lost on anyone.
Sarah carried her out, both of them in tears, while I continued preaching to a congregation that was no longer listening to my words but cataloguing my parenting.
After service: "Pastor, maybe you should practice what you preach at home first." "Hard to take marriage advice from someone who can't control his own kids." "Preacher's children should know better."
My three-year-old's bad day became evidence of my spiritual failure.
That night, Emma crawled into our bed after a nightmare. "Daddy, are we bad people?" she asked in the dark. "The lady at church said we embarrass you."
The fishbowl had claimed my daughter's innocence.
Moses faced this constant scrutiny too. Numbers 12 tells us that even his own siblings watched and criticized his choices - his wife, his leadership style, his relationship with God. "Has the Lord spoken only through Moses? Hasn't he also spoken through us?" they whispered.
Family members. Watching. Judging. Competing.
The fishbowl makes everyone an expert on your life.
Your grocery cart becomes a sermon illustration. Your child's grades become a reflection of your spiritual discipline. Your marriage struggles become proof of your hypocrisy. Your moments of doubt become evidence of your unfitness.
You can't have a bad day. Can't look tired. Can't be seen arguing with your spouse in the church parking lot. Can't let your teenager dress like other teenagers. Can't drive a car that's too nice or too old. Can't eat at the wrong restaurant or shop at the wrong store.
Can't be human.
I started changing my behavior without realizing it. Taking different routes to avoid being seen at certain places. Coaching my family on their "public face." Rehearsing answers to questions I hadn't been asked yet.
We became performers in our own lives.
The breaking point came on a Friday evening. I was at Walmart, just trying to buy toilet paper and cereal like any other human being. In sweatpants. With bedhead. Looking exactly like what I was - a tired father doing errands.
Mrs. Patterson spotted me from two aisles away. Her face lit up with the special joy of catching the pastor being normal.
"Pastor! My goodness, I hardly recognized you out of your suit!" she announced loudly enough for half the store to hear. "You look so... different."
Different. Like being human was somehow unseemly for a man of God.
I smiled and made small talk while internally planning my escape route. But as I drove home, something inside me snapped.
I called my mentor that night. Pastor Williams had been shepherding for forty years. If anyone understood the fishbowl, he did.
"Son," he said after I finished my rant, "let me tell you something I learned the hard way. The fishbowl isn't about them watching you. It's about you watching you."
"What do you mean?"
"Jesus walked in the ultimate fishbowl. Every move scrutinized. Every word measured. Every relationship questioned. But you know what he did? He lived authentically anyway. He ate with sinners because they needed him. He cried at funerals because grief is real. He got angry at injustice because righteous anger is holy."
He paused. "The fishbowl only wins when you start performing instead of being."
That Sunday, I preached in a wrinkled shirt. On purpose. When someone mentioned it, I smiled and said, "Yep, had a rough morning. Kids were sick all night. But God's grace covers wrinkled shirts too."
The fishbowl didn't disappear that day. People still watch. Still whisper. Still judge.
But I stopped performing.
Because I finally realized that the God who called me to shepherd his people is the same God who made me human. And humans buy toilet paper in sweatpants. Humans have bad days and crying children and imperfect marriages.
Humans live in fishbowls, but they don't have to drown in them.
The watching eyes will never stop. But maybe - just maybe - when they see a pastor living authentically human, they'll remember that God loves humans, not performers.
Even the ones in sweatpants at Walmart.
To be continued...
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"Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ." - Galatians 1:10.
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