Surviving a Spiritual mismatch in Marriage- Part 2 of 4

This transcript has been adapted from the attached audio. It may not be in its final form and may be updated.

LAND: We are talking about the fact that when they both got married, Lee was an atheist and Leslie was sort of an agnostic, and she came to a personal faith in Jesus Christ and how this created conflict where there had not been conflict in their marriage. Leslie, how did your view of Lee begin to change after you became a believer?

LESLIE: I was frustrated because Lee had been as an avid journalist, very open minded, willing to look at all kinds of ideas and anything he was willing to take a good hard look at and be open minded about it, but for some reason when it came to Christianity his mind just snapped shut. He had his decision made on it. He wasn’t even open to looking at what I was trying to tell him about it, and so I was very frustrated. I was very fearful. I was suddenly looking down the road of our lives together and wondering what on earth was ahead of me in terms of just turning old together. How are we going to live our life when we are in conflict constantly? How are we going to raise the kids? They were very little when I became a Christian and I just was concerned about what we were going to be teaching them, where we were going to be sending them to school and Sunday school or if I could even send them to Sunday school—just everything. Everything that you feel you have in common, suddenly that rug gets pulled out from under you because now you have different ideas on how you want to do things as a Christian.

LAND: Lee, what was happening to you? I mean, as you said, you had sort of a bait and switch deal. Here you had married this woman and all of a sudden she had gone spiritual on you.

LEE: Yeah, it was the last thing I wanted. I mean, I literally thought we were going to end up divorced. I remember mowing the lawn one day and Leslie had a flower garden and I was mowing down her flowers, sort of a passive-aggressive display. I just said this is it. I didn’t sign up for this, this is not the woman I married. I want out of this marriage and I decided to call a lawyer and I didn’t, fortunately, but I was really headed in that direction. I think part of it is, I saw Jesus as my rival. You know, I had always been the guy in Leslie’s life. We had been childhood sweethearts, grew up together, got married young, and now all of a sudden there was another man in our relationship, and she worshipped this guy. Well, who was I? And she was looking up to all these people who she was meet at church who had a very strong and vibrant relationship with Christ and sort of wanted to emulate them. Well, what does that say about me? I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in this stuff, so is she no longer going to respect me. Is she going to love me less? Is she going to care less about my values and the way that I want to live? I saw conflict down to the horizon of our marriage in terms of raising the children and spending the money. I mean, she wanted to give money to the church, which I thought was, why don’t you just throw it out the window? And so, we had all of this kind of thing but I think the most difficult emotion I felt is, I couldn’t pinpoint it at the time, I didn’t know why, I would have these flashes of anger and rage and I think people listening who have spouses who are not Christians and they wonder why did that flash sometimes with this anger, I couldn’t have diagnosed it at the time, but looking back, I now understand why sometimes. Like for instance, one time I got so angry I kicked a whole in our living room wall just out of pure rage right in front of Leslie and the children. If you would have asked me at the time, “Well what are you so mad about?” I couldn’t have really said, but looking back I can see that what it was, was the more that Leslie pursued a life of following Christ, the more she lived a more holy lifestyle, the more that she made decisions and choices about her behavior and allowed God to shape her character, the more this accentuated the difference between her and me, because the more that this highlighted the corruption and the immorality and the cynicism of my own lifestyle. She didn’t even have to point this thing out. I could just by observing her more godly lifestyle. The natural question was, “Well, what about me?” It was like she was holding up a mirror to my life and I was seeing myself for who I really was and I could no longer pretend that I was just this great guy because it was God’s way of convicting me in my sin. I was seeing myself as a sinful individual in contrast with Leslie’s lifestyle. Well that made me mad. I didn’t want to face that. I didn’t want to come to grips with that and, consequently, it would result in these flashes of anger that would erupt from time to time that scared me and scared Leslie and the kids.

LAND: I guess that’s called conviction.

LEE: Yes, it is and it’s uncomfortable.

LAND: Yes, and you know, no less a person than the Apostle Paul said that he kicked against the goads and the sharp sticks of the Holy Spirit’s conviction. Leslie, you made an important decision to make the most of this unequally yoked relationship. Why was that decision important and tell us about that?

LESLIE: Well, because, you know, even if you are in it for life, there are no guarantees. We can pray and ultimately it is up to the individual whether they are going to bend their knee to Christ but we pray as best we can for the Lord to open their eyes. But, ultimately, God will use you in that situation for his good purposes. So even though it was hard and it was uncomfortable and it had a lot of trials, I was changing. I was becoming who God wanted me to be and as Lee has often said, if I hadn’t gone through this, I wouldn’t be who I am today.

LEE: Yes, I mean I look at Leslie today, I see such a woman of strong faith and of deep conviction and prayer and so forth, and where did that come from? Well, it came from this difficult year of our marriage where she was desperate and she was not praying these nice little neat full-sentence prayers. She was crying out to God in frustration and pain, afraid that her marriage was going to dissolve before her eyes, and because God used all of this pain of that relationship, to mold her character and mold her values and turn her into someone today who she would never be able to be otherwise.

LESLIE: And the other thing too, is that it helps me over time to recognize and accept that it isn’t my job to get Lee to come to Christ, that as badly at first as I wanted to be the one to lead him to the Lord, it became clear that I probably wasn’t going to be that one or, at least, I had to let go of the responsibility of being the one that was going to lead him to the Lord. It is not my job. It simply isn’t and it isn’t any Christian’s job to bring another person over the line of faith. It is the Holy Spirit’s work in that person’s life and it is that person’s responsibility to admit their sin and to accept who they are before a Holy God and then to accept Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. And so, once I freed myself up from that kind of obligation—if only I’m a better wife, if I only knew the Bible better, if I only knew more verses that I could interject in this conversation when it comes up with Lee—once I released myself from that and I just relaxed in God and allowed the Holy Spirit to grow me up, then it just changed my life.

LAND: Lee you state that Leslie was able to make you feel that you were the number one human being in her life. How did she do that?

LEE: Well, this is very important because I thought that Jesus was going to be everything to her and, consequently, I was going to be nothing and, what I learned was that she could follow Christ and, yet, in our marriage she could honor me and she could build on the common ground that we had so that I would not feel like I am the odd man out. We got married for a reason, we loved each other, we’ve got common ground. There were things we liked to do together and so Leslie would build on those common things that we had and strengthen our marriage and she would reach out to me when there would be a chill blowing through our relationship, she would be the one, which is very unlike the way she used to be, she would be the one to initiate reconciliation and she looked for ways to serve me. I mean, this was not like the Leslie I used to know. The other thing she did that was important is she didn’t compare me with Christian husbands. She never said, “Well, look at Jerry downstairs, he does this, that, and the other thing, he’s a Christian, and look what they are doing.” She didn’t make me feel inadequate and bad. She just from a positive perspective tried to honor me as her husband, but at the same time to follow Jesus Christ fully.