(pictured: a REAL Matushka, to my thinking)
Here a month and I've been thinking a lot about compartmentalization.
I'm a new Matushka. That sounds weird, but here is the deal: as a newly ordained priest, my husband is undergoing an identity criss or sorts, and I am with him. In the Orthodox church, priest-wives have names that indicate their place--in our tradition, it is Matushka. So with my husband's ordination, he gained the priesthood, I gained a nickname. Sort of.
So, where I have always been called Amy, or Mimi, or Amykins--I am now Matushka. And sometimes Matushka Priscilla. And it is a little strange. Not unwelcome, but sort of surreal.
I think it is because this new name denotes a new aspect of who I am--and I didn't think too much about that new part of my person until we moved and people started renaming me on a permanent basis.
Hence my identity is changing, and how do I integrate that identity and NOT compartmentalize it? How do I remain authentically myself while taking on the roll of Matushka?
The other night, before bed, I turned to my husband and said, "Oh my, I am a preacher's wife." This was after witnessing him, some hours early, preach to a rather large number of people. I never thought I would be a preacher's wife--I saw what my mom went through in the Protestant church and I know what I went through as a preacher's kid. So this struck me as really "off" the other night that here I am--married to a "preacher" or sorts. And this thing happened slowly and over a long period of time, and I agreed to it! So now, it seems I have suddenly woken up to a new kind of reality and I look, on the exterior, very different to myself. Not in physicality but in persona? I am seeing a new person, one that other people are newly meeting, as I enter into this roll.
But I am still just me on the interior. With a new name. A name that hasn't changed me much yet.
Hm.
