by Susie Gilliland

Created on: July 03, 2008

So many denominations in the world today for Christians perhaps your Methodist, maybe Church of Christ, possibly Baptist, Presbyterian, or nondenominational. Which ever you are the one thing they all have in common is they all have preachers and most preachers have children. I am one of those children for short I am called a PK, 1 of 6 in my family and just like all PK's I didn't choose to be. No one asked me if I wanted to be born into the ministry, to a farmer or to a rich Doctor. Nope, God didn't ask for my opinion or the other 5 sisters I grew-up with either. Being a preacher's kid is a very select membership and not many people understand what it is like. To this day if I mention I was a preacher's kid the reactions are still similar.

Being a preacher's kid was hard for me to except and understand for much of my life. I was expected to be perfect all the time and was held to a much higher standard in my walk very early on. I know that God held my father to a higher accountability when it came to those who were under his leadership. To the people of the church, for some reason, they held us to the same accountability. I understand now that it was wrong of them to do so but when I was a child I had no idea. I just thought my dad was like every other dad. Sarah next door had a dad that worked in construction, Jennifer down the street her dad was a doctor and my dad was the preacher of the local church. I saw no difference, to me my family was like ever other family and I didn't understand why my sisters and I were treated so differently. I can remember when I was maybe 6 my sisters and I were running through the church after service one afternoon, playing tag like kids do and this elderly women grabbed me by the arm looked me straight in the eyes and said " You know better than that you're the preachers kid." I had no idea what that had to do with anything but at that moment I realized I was different. The pressure put on us to walk a mature Christian walk was difficult to say the least. Just because you're born to a man of God doesn't mean you were born sinless or strong in your faith.

Then there was the moving, we moved all the time I can't remember staying somewhere more than 2 years at a time. We'd move from one city to the next, one state to the next. And no one asked my sisters or myself what we wanted to do or how we felt not once did our voices matter. I knew better than to make any real friendships wherever we moved because soon we would be leaving

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