Back & A Question?!

I'm back. Wrote a 50,000 word novel in November; still haven't finished it. Regardless, Nanowrimo.org says I'm a WINNER. :)

I'm feeling bad for my husband right now- He's had a horrible week of person after person sucking the life out of him, and one of them was loaded for bear. It's hard to have the love we're supposed to when people are attacking your family.

Ok, so... here's my question: How much of a pastor's life experiences/sermon illustrations belong to him?

Specifically: a woman who doesn't go to our church wrote me a very nasty (and uninformed) letter criticizing a recent trip I took to New York, calling me worldly, etc... I journaled my trip on Facebook and apparently it got under her skin. She attacked out of the blue. For the Full Monty, read the previous post. :)

My husband had just started a series on "Difficult People" and the final week was on the "overly critical person". Four weeks after it occurred, he mentioned this letter I got as an example of when it was right to answer a mis-informed person's criticism. He did not mention any names and I hadn't told anyone about the letter she sent me. The only people who knew about it were me, my husband, and this woman.

Her sister attends our church (the letter writer does not and is a "friend" of the family), but we had no idea that she knew about the letter; in fact, I had a couple of conversations with her sister asking me all about my trip and excited to hear about it. Because of these conversations, I assumed she knew nothing.

So hubby mentions that I get this letter of criticism, reads a couple of lines from it and said that I answered her concerns because she didn't have the correct info (the trip was a gift; I wasn't out spending extravagantly, etc... not that it's any of her business). Apparently, her sister DID know about the letter and this family is angry that hubby used the letter as an example, even though he gave away no identifying info whatsoever.

Here's what I think, but I may be too close to the situation to see clearly.

The moment she sent me that letter (via Facebook, no less)it became my property. The letter was greatly upsetting to me and I shared it with my husband. A month later, a life experience of ours (this lovely letter) happened to fit perfectly as an illustration into a message series that had been planned since January.

Hubby shared it in a way in which no one was implicated, and it was ok to do so because the writer didn't even attend our church. Had his sharing been with the intent to cause a stir or make her look bad, he could have made it clear who wrote the letter. That was never the intent.

I honestly don't think we/hubby did anything wrong- or anything that would displease God. We've prayed about this and asked the Holy Spirit to convict us if we needed to apologize for anything... and so far, a couple of weeks later, neither of us do. But, wonderful man that he is, hubby is still going to contact the family and try to make things right.

I also believe that had I not been a "Pastor's Wife" (insert angels singing in the background here) I would have never received a letter like this in the first place. It would have been ok to take an expensive trip, blow enormous amounts of money, journal it on Facebook, and brag to all my friends about it.

Thoughts? I'd be interested to know your honest opinion...