Praying for a non-believer spouse

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jnderose

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Not sure if this is the correct space for this but…

My wife is an unbeliever, mainly through her lackluster religious upbringing and apathetic attitude towards the need of God. She believes in a “force / higher intelligence” but believes in a somewhat absentee god or deist (god is nature thing) but is not attracted to Christianity because it is what she believes she would do only because she is western, and thats what her family’s religion was, so it seems as somewhat of a rebellion and also she really feels no need to seek religion or faith because " she seems to be doing okay, if she’s nice to others the universe or karma will do unto her". When we met and married I was not paticularly religious either, a non-practicing methodist with conviction but no discipline nor vigor. Now I find myself drawn to the Catholic Church and we are having problems, she sees this as distracting from our relationship, a cause for problems in the future, and a wedge that will drive us apart due to our formative differences. This scares me deeply and don’t know what to do. Be it with our future:( kids, birth control, morality, pro-life, gay issues etc.) My views have greatly changed on many of these subjects.
I pray daily that she will let the Holy Spirit enter into her life and change it for the better. Since we are granted free will however, how can a prayer such as mine be of any use if she does not desire the relationship in the first place. I see us drifting furthur apart in the future as I become more involved and it bothers me so much I do not have words for it. Any help, insight, encouragement is greatly encouraged. Thank you all, this forum has been a blessing for me.
 
:blessyou: I know a fellow that is in a similiar situation. He is a Christian and his wife is an unbeliever. My opinion is that a person in this situation has to go easy and in a kind and gentile way be able to answer the questions that will come as you embrace the faith. The Holy Spirit works in strange ways. The conversions stories on EWTN are truely remarkable. Nothing is impossible with God. Pagans were drawn to the early Christians because of their love for one another. The joy that the Christians had, made the non-Christians want to be followers of Jesus, even though they saw the Christians being persecuted.
 
I am very familiar with the situation you describe.

Pray that you are able to act in a way that allows Jesus to be evident in her life in the way she needs now. Allow her to see that the God she recognizes in nature is the same God you have come to know in the Catholic faith.

Show her that she can talk to God out in a forest or in a church. He will listen to her everywhere and anywhere.

I’m not saying this very well. St Francis says it much better “Go and preach the gospel, and if absolutely necessary, use words,”
I know from my personal experience that actions speak much louder than words.

Stop useless worrying about the future - focus on doing the right thing at the moment. I have come to realize that doing the right thing this moment leads me to the right place in the next moment.

Go with Love, Go with God!
 
Other than praying and living a good Christian example for her, maybe you can invite her to Christian gatherings, let her be exposed to people of faith. I know fellowships in Protestant churches are usually warm and frequent. Since you probably are in the process of converting to Catholic, you may also bring her along to Catholic activities. The more Christian friends she has, the more faith influence she will receive.

As for prayer, the verse of **1 Peter 2:9-10 **is good for the situation.
“You, however, are ‘a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people he claims for his own to proclaim the glorious works’ of **the One who called you from darkness into His marvelous light. ** Once you were no people, but now you are God’s people; once there was no mercy for you, but now you have found mercy.”

Use God’s word to pray for her and make a proclamation.
In Jesus’ name call her out of darkness into light.

Love is patient, love never loses hope.
God bless!
 
I’m in the same situation with my husband. He is Jewish, but hasn’t practiced his faith since high school. When we married we were in complete agreement about religion. Neither of us was interested in it.

Now I have changed and come back to the Church. It is the first major thing in our marriage we don’t share. I think that bothers me more than him at this point. Of course, I am the one who is changing and not him.

So far we have not had any problems regarding religion. My husband has been in a Catholic church one time to have our marriage convalidated. He has never been to Mass, and has no interest in attending.

I wonder a great deal about what the future holds for us as a couple.
 
I was a believer but not a Catholic. After getting married my wife prayed daily for me for 10 years and I became a Catholic. I feel her prayers had a big hand in my conversion.
 
Thank you all for your supportive responses, Anne1964 said
Stop useless worrying about the future - focus on doing the right thing at the moment
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This is so hard, she has no interest in religion of any kind and still she is my wife and I love her, I want children but want them raised with the faith (my greatest worry), want to agree on issues without the arguing etc. I know i should place it all in Gods hands, i just don’t know how I can handle x number of years with this struggle.:confused:
 
I don’t know where you are, but in our diocese we have a Catholic Counseling Center, where there are experts in problems such as these. You may want to get some professional advice.

God bless
 
During a tragic time in my life, when the future appeared horribly bleak, I came to the blunt realization that I can only truly know “each moment”. I will never truly know what the future holds for me and my loved ones.

I used to have so many expectations of the future (both good and bad).
I have replaced these thoughts with a focus on what is happening in our lives now, on the “right thing” for me to do in this specific moment.

Whenever I realize I have fallen back into the trap of good or bad expectations, I “let go” of these thoughts. I tell the evil one to go away and pray for Jesus to give me enough light to see my path today and enough courage to walk it.

By walking the path I am supposed to walk rather than the one I expected to walk, I have come to a “place” I never would have dreamt of and it is wonderful!

Go with Love, Go with God!
 
I was an atheist when my wife and I were married in 1987. She attended a Baptist church near our home but had been brought up in the Episcopal church. I had no church experience since Sunday School almost three decades before. We went through some marriage sessions with the Baptist pastor before our marriage but I didn’t really believe in God even though I said I did.

After a few years and the birth of our daughter we moved to another part of town (Phoenix) and my wife started attending the nearby Catholic parish, and was eventually confirmed in 1995. I had no interest in her church activities and didn’t even attend her confirmation. My attitude was that was fine if she thought she needed to go to church, but I was staying home and watching football.

My wife would ask me to go to church on important church days, and I would moan for a while but eventually go, but not participate at all and think what a bunch of foolish people I was surrounded by - this was a rather charismatic parish with a lot of loud music and arm-waving. I would insist on sitting in the back with my arms at my side, feeling extremely uncomfortable, confirming my knowledge that church people were a little goofy, maybe more than a little.

As our daughter was growing up, she began asking why she had to go to church if daddy didn’t have to go. This didn’t bother me too much but it bothered my wife a lot. I felt like saying to our daughter to just forget about me and do what your mother says, but I didn’t. The pleadings from my wife to at least go to church a little more often usually fell on deaf ears, and it was like an itch you couldn’t scratch, a gnawing sense of unhappiness that went away during the week but rolled around again the next weekend.

My wife prayed for me but not every day, she tells me now. A homily about Augustine and his mother inspired her to start praying for me every day. Once in a great while she would share a sentence or two from something she was reading of a spiritual nature that she thought I might be willing to tolerate. She was very indirect and gentle in her urgings and I usually would listen, maybe with one ear. Then I’d be off the hook for a few weeks, so that was a pattern I could deal with - I’d listen to a few sentences, attend an occasional Mass once in a great while, trying to keep the heat off me.

I knew nothing of her RCIA sessions she’d attended before confirmation, and still didn’t know they were also for people with no faith background. I thought they were only for people who at least had regularly attended some church. She started mentioning, maybe once a year, that such sessions also existed for people who knew nothing about the Bible, like me.

This went on for about five years, my wife praying daily for my salvation, me mostly watching football but grudgingly attending church once in a while, hearing about this class at church that tells people about the Catholic church, maybe once a month listening to something she wanted to read to me about her faith, mostly going in one ear and out the other.

Finally in 1999 I said, okay, I’ll go to RCIA but only if you go too. She agreed, and I sat there in this small circle of people with my arms crossed like I did when I was in regular church, feeling smarter than everyone else because they were dumb for believing in God, angered at the facilitator who assumed I already believed in God, which I didn’t. I think I skipped a couple of sessions and then went back, just to prove again how much smarter I was than everyone else.

Somewhere in the inquiry process I began to realize that these people had some smarts after all, and weren’t as dumb as I originally thought they were. I began to imagine what it would be like to actually believe in some supreme being, someone who knew about me and cared about me. That was a good feeling, surprisingly, but then I’d think about my parents and brothers, all atheists, and how they would ridicule me if they only knew I was sitting in on inquiry sessions in a Catholic church.

But gradually that wasn’t so important any more, and I began to actually listen to the facilitator’s expressions of faith and how they might actually relate to me. After five years of feeling uncomfortable and awkward in church, I for the first time felt accepted at the Rite of Acceptance and Welcoming, and began to feel a part of our group.

Anyway, I was baptized and confirmed in 2000 and received my first Eucharist at the Easter Vigil. Since then I’ve joined the RCIA Core team and joined the Dominican Laity. As I tell our candidates and catechumens, the Holy Spirit can work wonders in their lives if they remain open to the possibility. I know my wife’s prayers must have played a great role in my conversion.
 
Conclusion:

All I can say, jnderose, is to keep praying, be gentle and don’t rush things with your wife. If my wife had been insistent that I go with her to church every Sunday, I don’t know what would have happened, but it would have divided us more than bring us together. I’m sure there are a lot of people here praying for you and your wife. Good things come from prayer.
 
Thank you all for your kind and encouraging words. many times I know the answer to my questions but it helps greatly knowing other people have gone through similar things and giving examples of God’s providence and love. Jeff, your story echoes mine in many ways whereas the only major difference is that it is my wife and not I, the husband. I find that it is much easier for the man in the relationship to change than the woman, but thats just because we men always know deep down that our wife’s are right. Thank you so much for your thoughts and prayers, I will continue to pray nightly for her and trust in the Lord, keep my eye on today, do the right thing by her, and take it one step at a time. Thank you:rolleyes:
 
I’ve been married 32 years, and my wife is not Catholic. I too pray for her conversion, not every day, but I may try that as well. When we were married I was a “lapsed Catholic” (or Holiday Catholic) but returned to the Church just shortly after my first son was born.

At times things were very difficult particularly in decided when and how many kids we each wanted. I come for a very large family and would love to have many kids, my wife only has one brother, and so we only have 3 kids. Needless to say she got her way but not without some grief and heated debates.

I hope and still pray some day she may convert. Sometimes I don’t see how but I knoe God will work something out. My wife is very pro-choice and she is militantly feminist with much resentment towards a male dominated Catholic hierarchy.

Although I would love to see her convert, I believe God accepts her as she is. She is a very loving good hearted person. She is a terrific mom, volunteers for the school, community, very civic minded etc. Yes she has some flaws like most folks, but she is a genuinely nice person and wonderful wife.

I really don’t believe God will judge her too harsely even if she never converts. I leave it in God’s hands. I’ve certainly asked and conjoled my wife without beling too pushy. It is up to the Almighty for the grace and influence to make her conversion possible.

Don’t be too surprised if it takes more than 10 or 20 years for it to happen. I’m approaching 30 years, and it hasn’t happened yet. It may take most of your lifetime. You may try getting her a Miraculous Medal, I’m trying that on some friends and relatives. It is supposed to work within a year (if you can get them to wear it).
 
Incidently I prayed for many years for the other members of my family who have fallen away. Years ago my brother and his whole family all converted/returned to the Church (all within a year or two of each other). There are many more who are still not Catholic, but a couple of years ago one niece converted and just last year another of my nephews converted.

It seems like a very slow process, but in time, I still hope that all will join us.
 
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