World Wide Marriage Encounter

I think I may have mentioned a time or two that my husband is as devout an atheist as I am a Catholic. We were married at a time in our lives when my faith was weak, and I wasn't too sure if God really did exist. I also didn't know whether to trust the Catholic Church's teachings or not, so I wasn't really all that interested in what they had to say. I left the Church in search of the truth. The nice thing about the truth is that it is testable. You can hold it up and under examination it will be as true now as it was the first time you encountered it. The more I tested it, the more I found that the Catholic Church really did hold the truth and that yes, there really is a God and He really does love us and He really does care what we do with our lives.

When I came back to the Church, my husband was less than ethusiastic to say the least. Suddenly there was a being in competition with him for first place in my life, and it wasn't a competition my husband could win as he was neither omnipotent nor all good nor all loving nor all powerful. As God became a larger part of my life, a part which my husband told me he didn't want to hear about and wasn't interested in, we had less common ground on which to stand and found ourselves growing further and further apart. The gap between us just seemed to great for us to cross.

I spent a LOT of time in prayer on this, as it hurt my heart to lose my best friend. I had, years before, asked him to go on a world wide marriage encounter weekend, but he wasn't interested in anything that had to do with God. This year, however, I got up the courage to just mention it to him. He said he thought he would give it a try if he weren' so new to the company (the encounter weekend was advertised for June) and unable to get that time off. I looked it up, there was a weekend in August, and we scheduled time to go.

I have never, ever, been a really patient person. I like my results yesterday, please. I have been no different in my prayer time, usually, expecting God to deliver sooner rather than later. This year He has been teaching me patience. For instance, back in January He promised me that August 8th my circumstances would change and prosperity would begin to wash over our family as it has never before done. He explained to me that I would have to go through a lot of hardship before we got there, as we were in need of a lot of work. We would have to start respecting our prosperity and gifts more, using them wisely instead of wasting them and transforming our hearts and minds so that when we got the prosperity it would be used to help others in need rather than being wasted on stupid stuff for ourselves. August 8th seemed a world away for me back then, but I trusted God to be true to me. He told me one of the reasons He takes so long to do things is that He's building for eternity, and that takes time. If he built it quicker, as I had asked, it wouldn't last.

In early March, during Adoration, I receive a message that my husband believes but is not ready to admit this either to himself or anyone else and to watch for changes in behavior as signs of this new belief. I marvel at this but I do indeed watch. He backed me up when I insisted that Eddie should go to Mass, practically forced my son to attend a Mission they had at church the week before Easter, but he refused to go to Mass with us.

Later that month, I am feeling very depressed and my husband agrees to go to Adoration with me as I want both his company and the company of Christ. The next month I forgot to schedule someone to take my place in Adoration while I am on retreat. Nobody I asked is able to do it for me. The morning of, in desperation, I turn to my husband and ask for him to go. He reluctantly agrees. He knows that he must be there the whole hour, and knows who it is he will be sitting with that day and how important this is to me. I do not know that whole weekend whether or not he has fulfilled my request, or if he stayed the whole hour, or if he left the Lord alone, but I put it in God's hands. Not only did my husband show up on time, stay the whole hour, and make certain Christ had two others with him before he left but he brought my son with him as well. I was floored.

Now, July 31st comes - just weeks before we're scheduled to go the encounter weekend, and I'm thinking to myself that I cannot handle another day of our empty marriage. My loneliness has just reached an absolute peak. Furthermore, I had learned a few months ago that an unbaptized person and a baptized person cannot have a sacramental marriage - even if the marriage is recognized by the church - as a sacramental marriage requires that both parties are baptized. This broke my heart. I had begun to despair that we would ever have the marriage I had dreamt of. I tried several times that day to write him a letter saying Good bye. Each time I, who love to write and do it so often, could not find the words to say. I put the letter away, figuring that perhaps this was the intervention of the holy spirit, and turned on Catholic radio to see if God might be trying to speak to me about this matter. Sure enough, every program was on marriage and relationships that day. That night as I worked with my sister Julie on Communique, I told her about my feelings of despair for our relationship. She encouraged me to stick with it, though I didn't really appreciate it at the time. I listened as another sister gave her witness that night, and she talked about some of her own marital struggles. I knew now God was telling me to hang in there and have faith both in my husband and in my God.

Saturday, August 2nd, I am sitting in Eucharistic Adoration just writing the small things which I hear God saying to me. He whispers to me that even if my husband should leave me, He will bring him back to me. I think that's a pretty odd thing, but I write it down and reflect on it. Monday, August 4th, and I decide to write my husband a letter. I tell my husband that if he wants to find out whether or not God is real, he should know all the ways in which God has protected our family from a major fall even though my husband is not thankful for the protection. I tell him also that I am praying that God stop protecting him so that he will see that God is real and, perhaps, on his knees find his way to God.

My husband is furious. He tells me he wants a divorce, that he no longer loves me. He says I've changed from the girl he married and he doesn't love the woman he's married to. I spend all night thinking, and in the morning write him another letter. I agree that I have changed, but I remind him of who I really was when he met me and how much he really didn't like the ways in which that girl hurt him, rejected him, treated him. I also explained to him that I was only praying for God to take away His protections because the only time I had ever seen my husband pray was when he was being crushed by adversity. I told him also that if prosperity would have the same effect for my husband, I would have been praying for that instead.

The next day I am furious. I am thinking of all kinds of letters to write the man. How dare he leave me! Heh. I'm so glad the Holy Spirit intervened, as it was a really busy day and I had no chance to write anything. Around 11 am I realize that my phone hasn't rung once. I check it, and it's off. I turn it on and there are four messages from my husband. One of which says "You have some valid points. We need to talk". We meet for lunch. He tells me that he will start going to Mass with us on Sunday and that I can try to convert him all I want as long as all of our conversations aren't about God. I agree.

The Friday of the weekend, neither of us know what to expect and we are both very nervous, but my husband is a ball of nerves. I try to reassure him that things will be fine. He's worried he'll be rejected by others because of his atheism, that we won't get to spend much time together, or that others will try to convert him. The weekend is like nothing we had expected, and in the process we begin to reconnect. Saturday, though, we fight because of my misinterpretation of something he said. I confess this to the priest, who reminds me to be more patient and more loving, and admonishes me to apologize for my part in the disagreement. I do , we make up, and by the time the weekend is finished, my husband has agreed to daily prayer in addition to weekly mass. We both walk out of the weekend feeling as if we have our spouses back, and are deeply in love and deeply committed with tools to help us communication and connect on a deeper level than ever before.

Since then, my husband has been faithful to his promise of daily prayer with me and the daily dialogue exercises recommended by the encounter weekend. He attended Mass. He has expressed a desire to get "a little" involved in the Church and has made suggestions on ways to change and improve the prayer I wrote for us. He has also suggested that we start a website to help other couples like us. I am amazed every day at the little changes I find happening, and the way in which God is clearly working to transform my husband. I know that things will be brighter in our future, and I hold great hope for each new day.