freeasabird Posted March 7, 2012 Share Posted March 7, 2012 As many of you know my wife more or less followed me out of religion during my deconversion. My deconversion may have as well been titled "A Christian read the bible and becomes an atheist". The ongoing struggle we've had though has been that she hasn't been forced to really deal with the details. Because she hasn't carved her own path but rather took mine by proxy she's still been holding onto some remnants of her faith that she wouldn't or couldn't let go of. Some examples of this would be the fact that she still brings up from time to time that she wants to send our son to sectarian private school, or "church" him. Other times she'll basically say "this can't be all there is", as if her pleading will make it so. When I question her why she still wants our son "churched" even though she says she doesn't believe it basically comes down to playing Pascal's Wager with him. She'll say something like "I'm willing to take that chance that I could be wrong, but not for him". So clearly she's not over religion. This weekend she found out her grandma on her dad's side died. Now this family dynamic is really complicated. She has been estranged from her father for almost ten years. Her parents are divorced and she was basically forced to choose sides and she took her mom's. I had gotten to know her dad well enough during our early years of marriage before the breakup to know how manipulative he is. She would tell me ahead of time exactly the kinds of things he would ask me when we got alone, sure enough she was right every time. Those who recall my extimony will know he is a fundamentalist baptist minister. The first moments we were ever alone basically became an interrogation of my church background and my current faith. I had been prompted in advance as to what the 'right' answers were. Anyway, this guy is hardcore and religion is his life. Especially now that he is estranged from over half his family, he has become that much more entrenched in his faith. So now to the funeral. My wife, let's just call her Flower, Flower struggled with whether she even wanted to go to the funeral because her father would be ministering it. She hadn't seen her grandma in several years either as grandma and dad pretty much come as a package deal. She wrestled with it for a couple days and finally decided at the last minute she would go, and she asked I go with her. I agreed but we were already running late as it was a few hours away. Almost there, and going to be late for the service we hit slow traffic "God dammit!!" she says. We both laugh. "I've never heard you blaspheme before." Flower says, "well, it's not blaspheming if you don't believe." The day is already looking up. We walk into the service only 5 minutes late and Flower's cousin is still speaking, her father hasn't taken the podium yet. We grab an empty pew toward the back and get comfy. Already 5 minutes in and this probably the most religious funeral I've ever attended, not that I expected any less. Soon her cousin finished and her dad steps up. I'm not sure whether he's spotted us or not but I can tell by the way she's leaning to one side that Flower is hiding behind someone's big head so pops can't see her. He starts in by talking about mom/grandma wasn't always saved and this would be a hard service to perform if he wasn't 100% sure where she was going, and it quickly turns into a diatribe against atheism and the secular world. He just keeps going on and on with the Paul quote, something about if Christ isn't real than everything is in vain blah blah blah. At this point I'm having a hard time telling if he even believes what he's saying because it's all just a bunch of "life is worthless" if you don't have faith in Jesus. Now here come the big guns. He says, and I quote, "If you do not seek repentance from Jesus and call upon his name, you... you just... you just have no hope. No hope. Your life has no worth." There is hardly any mention of the details of her life or why we are celebrating her life. This has become a full blown prostheltysing session. Now here I'm thinking that I'm comfortable enough in my own skin and my own thoughts that I would take him down philosophically with one hand tied behind my back if I had the chance, but I'm really worried about what Flower is thinking. Is she getting caught up in this emotional blackmail? Is she going to fall back into the brainwashing and fall to her knees for forgiveness and go back to religion? I'll just have to ride it out to see. The service ends and we get out of there quick as she had no intention of meeting with or greeting her father. We head for the car and she says "I'm glad I came. Thank you for coming with me." We get in the car and I purposely give her some space to her thoughts and not try to push her at all to find out what she's thinking. That's backfired on me before. We're not two miles down the road and she lets out "I HATE it when they do that." I know exactly what she's going to say and I start beaming inside. "Hate it when they do what?" I ask already knowing the answer. "Funerals are supposed to be a celebration of life to talk about all the good things about the person. It's not supposed to be your chance to prostheltyse and preach fire and brimstone. GRRR." I agreed with her but try not to assert too much of my own opinion. We continued talking some more about our plans for our final arrangements and what we want. The day has gotten even better. We go out to lunch and I very carefully tread around that subject for which she opened the door on. I mentioned that I'm constantly torn between letting people have their 'comfort', but everytime I hear the vitriole and hatred coming from religion - just like we heard from her father today - it makes me want to come out against religion. The conversation just kind of goes nowhere, for the moment at least. We get home that night and we're talking at the dinner table and she asks me if I think she's doing the right thing by keeping our son away from him (he's never met her father). I go back and forth on the subject and finish with one final comment. I was careful to say "now this isn't the biggest reason, but just one of many, but religion is going to be a major contention" trying to let her know that I'm still willing to compromise on religion if that's what she really feels is important, but rather the problem I have is that he is so fundamentalist that we are going to be at odds over our liberal values, simply because we are at opposite ends of the spectrum from him. Now here comes the best part of the day. She starts in repeating many of my words from lunch where I had mentioned that he came across as hateful and intollerant, only her words are much more stinging and basically throws the question back at me saying "do you want our son around that?", my answer was obvious. Yesterday may or may not have been a slam dunk to the end of her religion, only time will tell. But I don't think that's necessarily important. What is important is she finally saw religion through my eyes, that which I have seen during my search over the last year. She saw the hatred. The intollerance. The simple mindedness. The "you're either with us or against us" mentality. She saw it, and she saw through it. And even though she has been very understanding of my path, she understood me so much better than at any other time since my deconversion. I think she may finally be letting go, and she knows I will be there for her every step of the way. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jblueep Posted March 7, 2012 Share Posted March 7, 2012 Congrats on a meaningful day! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eugene39 Posted March 7, 2012 Share Posted March 7, 2012 Death seems to bring out the best in some people and the worst in others. At any rate, I'm very happy for you that your wife is seeing through the deception. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marmot Posted March 7, 2012 Share Posted March 7, 2012 Great story! I am glad to hear she is solidly entrenching herself in the godless camp. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
owen652 Posted March 7, 2012 Share Posted March 7, 2012 awesome story, way to keep your cool under difficult circumstances too. life is much easier all round when you and your spouse are on the same philosophical page. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freeasabird Posted March 8, 2012 Author Share Posted March 8, 2012 Thanks everyone. As you'll see in another thread, things are going so well I had the nerve to mention I would like to consider going to the reason rally and she was completely supportive. I few months ago she would have rolled her eyes and asked why I would want to do something like that. But instead she was completely supportive. She did have to throw in a couple jokes asking is we'd be sacrificing anything or eating any babies. had I been on my game I should have said no that's what the Christians do!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Positivist Posted March 8, 2012 Share Posted March 8, 2012 What an encouraging and uplifting story! (Well, depressing as hell in some ways!) This is really great progress. It's so exciting to see the lights come on in someone's head! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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