Are you and your spouse of the same faith? Did you convert to his religion in order to marry, or did she convert to yours? (If you came from different ones.) Or maybe neither of you had one before marriage and adopted one together. Or maybe you didn’t.
Right after Wayne and I first got married I’d pass churches and feel guilty I didn’t have a religion.
“Maybe we should see about finding a church?” I once ventured.
“Maybe we shouldn’t. Why start going now anyway? You never wanted to before.”
I couldn’t put my finger on what was happening with me. I guess I was growing up and thinking more about what you should and shouldn’t do. I thought church was a To Do, even though with the exception of my dad no one in my immediate family went with any regularity.
And what faith to follow? Both my parents were raised Catholic, and so was my sister, but by the time I came along church was totally out of the picture. After my parents divorced my dad went back to the church, and later my mom did too, but I’d never done First Communion or any of that.
I had been to several masses and felt totally out of place. It just wasn’t my bag. But I’d also been to Presbyterian, Lutheran, and United Methodist services and hadn’t quite felt moved either.
Yet, in 1998, when my job sent me to work in Salt Lake City for a couple of weeks, I had a chance to visit Temple Square. It was while standing by some flowers in the courtyard area that I felt moved to tears by some unseen force of love unlike any I’ve ever known before.
That was the key. I felt something. Something magical, mystical, pure, and amazing. Not that I ever doubted the existence of a Higher Power, but in that moment I knew as sure as the sun rises and sets that an incredibly benevolent spirit did exist. One that had touched me with the most pure love I’d ever been graced with.
I ran back to my hotel room to call and tell Wayne.
“So now you’re thinking we should become LDS?”
“No, I don’t think that’s for me either, but I know there is something more I’m missing and I need to find it.”
“Does that mean I need to find it too?”
“I don’t know.”
Since then I have found a spiritual way of living that works for me and which brings me that sense of peace I knew that day in Temple Square. I’ve never expected Wayne to adopt my beliefs, but I think some of them have rubbed off on him anyway.
So now I’m back to questions on par with what I opened with. Have you gone on a spiritual quest? Has your spouse? Or did you begin the journey together? Have you shared along the way? Rubbed off on each other along the way? Has it helped your relationship?
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