Interesting update from April Osteen Simons at a conference in Dallas for pastors' wives:

Pastors' wives hear good news: Support available

April Osteen Simons, wife of the Rev. Gary Simons, pastor of the High Point Church in Arlington, said pastors' wives have to learn to be themselves and not try to live up to a "perfect" image.

Simons, who is one of the featured convention speakers on Saturday, said she learned that growing up in Houston watching her mother, Dodie Osteen, and her father, the late Rev. John Osteen, founder of Lakewood Church, which is now led by her brother, the Rev. Joel Osteen.

"I think my mother and father were the greatest people in the world, and I learned a lot from them," she said. "The biggest thing they taught me was to be real. They lived their lives, not perfectly, but they were the same people on the platform that they were at home."

Unlike Evans, Simons said she grew up wanting to be a pastor's wife. But she has had struggles, too.

"Sometimes it's difficult not being the people you are expected to be," Simons said.

"I think a lot of people think a pastor's wife doesn't go through hard times," she said. "But that's just a fallacy."

I had hoped to have some time and availability to make a stop at High Point Church in Arlington. It's literally on the way from Houston to my parents' place in the DFW area. Needless to say, the end-to-end days of my weekend schedule and an over-eagerness to get home prevented that from happening. About all I did toward this end was catch a glimpse of it on the way home. It's every bit as impressive looking as I suspected.

Worth noting was that some of the billboards for the church added the fact that the church was located at the former Johnson & Johnson plant. Of interest to me since I'm wondering how long before people drop the "Compaq Center" reference to Lakewood. As one who always thought of the place as the Summit (even after the first name change), I suspect it'll take a while. And one of these days, I'll make it out to High Point just to see how they've filled in such a large peice of real estate and what their services are like.