Welcome to the Emotionally Healthy Leader podcast.

In this podcast, I am the interviewer and Jerry, my lovely wife, is the person who will be speaking today.

Our topic is called the leader's spouse.

And I can't think of a better leader spouse in the world than Jerry.

Then again, we have a lot of history together. So Johnny, thank you for being here.

Great to have you here. So we're going to dive right into it. Many of you know Jerry because she wrote

the emotionally healthy woman, emotionally woman workbook and a DVD curriculum that goes with it.

But more importantly, even beyond the book, Jerry has lived out, I think, brilliantly the process

of being the spouse of a point leader like myself for now 29 years.

And she not only has survived, she's thrived.

And so I'm really glad to have her here today with us.

So I got a series of questions, honey.

We'll just dive right into it. So, okay, Jerry, if a young pastor's spouse came to you and said, Jerry, if you could tell me

one thing you wish you knew when you were getting started, what would it be?

I think it would be to have friendships outside the church, people that are removed from the context of your ministry

and your spouse's ministry. And, you know, so a totally objective. Somebody that you're, again,

mutual peers. They're not people you're ministering to. They're not under your husband's

shepherdship, so to speak.

Could be a woman.

The spouse could be a man.

That's right. That's right.

The wife could be the one outside.

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