Spouse leaving faith

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Anyone ever have an issue where your spouse dicides one day to just stop practicing the faith? I’m a recent convert and my wife is a cradle Catholic. She tells me why bother she is just going to hell anyway. Its been depressing for me I stopped taking communion about a month ago and last sunday I didn’t go. I was palnning on just walking away also but am deciding that I’m responsable for my own actions. Anyone want to share whats its like being the lone practicing Catholic in the family?
 
tealblue said:
Anyone ever have an issue where your spouse dicides one day to just stop practicing the faith? I’m a recent convert and my wife is a cradle Catholic. She tells me why bother she is just going to hell anyway. Its been depressing for me I stopped taking communion about a month ago and last sunday I didn’t go. I was palnning on just walking away also but am deciding that I’m responsable for my own actions. Anyone want to share whats its like being the lone practicing Catholic in the family?
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I have not dealt with your circumstances, but do not deny yourself the Blessed Sacrament because your wife is having trouble with her faith; if anything, you need Jesus’ strength now more than ever! As husband and head of household, you need to take charge of your family’s spiritual direction and promote strong Catholic values in your home. It is strange that your wife would just decide one day to stop practicing her faith - is she acting differently in any other ways? Have you talked to her about this at length? She may be going thru a difficult time and need your help. All I can suggest is that you continue to enrich your life with the Lord and attending Mass weekly, encouraging her to attend with you and that you not only pray for your wife, but also pray with her.

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I think its more that she is tired of the burden of something telling her what to do. I don’t think it was just one day but I think over time has worn on her. She was never a ful practicing Catholic. She is more Catholic when its convienient. I’m just at the point of picking myself up and going on.
 
Fast and pray for your wife. Love her, let your example of joy and love bring her back.

A couple of books to read would be Madrid’s “Search and Rescue” and Kelly’s “Rediscovering Catholicism”.

This website might be of help:

e5men.org/
 
My husband is a lapsed convert. He left the faith after a major stress-breakdown around 13 years ago. I go the Mass every day alone.
You are right that you need to take responsibility for yourself…and in the end you wife’s salvation may depend upon the intercession of your prayers and faithfulness.

I ask the Lord to help your wife with whatever it is that makes her despair for her soul. This is a serious matter, and if possible she needs to deal with this despair that is coming between her and trust in God’s mercy. And I wonder if she is suffering some degree of depression…

I adapted a prayer I wrote for my husband, but you can perhaps decide on a particular prayer you will offer daily for her, however brief.

I know it’s very painful.

Prayer for unbelieving Spouse
Our God, through the love and merit of Jesus and Mary, I offer You all my spouse’s good deeds, sacrifices and trials, in prayer for her salvation, fulfilment, happiness and peace. Foster her as Your own child, for if she truly knew You, she would be a loving, obedient daughter.

I offer every frustration and disappointment, all sadness and suffering of her life, together with her pleasures, satisfactions, and achievements. I offer her to You, united in that terrible hour that Jesus cried out to You, “My God, my God, why have You abandoned me?” Thus may her sufferings be powerful prayer for souls. In Your mercy, please unite her with the Mystical Body so that even without her knowledge her life is a living prayer pleasing in Your sight.

If in any way, I fail to convey Your love to her, or I do not enrich her life with warm gifts of my nature, please forgive me and heal her. Guide me to give her the love, joy and goodness that you have united us to share, and lead her to love me freely and honestly.

Please forgive and overcome her cynicism and doubt. Open her to Your Spirit. Let her experience Your love in her life, so that she enters into sacramental faith and dedicated Christian ministry. Grant her resurrection with Your Son Jesus.

God bless and give you faith and faithfulness.
Your sister Trishie
 
Do you and she go to confession weekly? If not, you should go together with her soon.
 
tealblue said:
Anyone ever have an issue where your spouse dicides one day to just stop practicing the faith? I’m a recent convert and my wife is a cradle Catholic. She tells me why bother she is just going to hell anyway. Its been depressing for me I stopped taking communion about a month ago and last sunday I didn’t go. I was palnning on just walking away also but am deciding that I’m responsable for my own actions. Anyone want to share whats its like being the lone practicing Catholic in the family?
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Have her read Twenty Three Minutes in Hell by Bill Wiese and let’s see if she’ll be so blase about “just going to hell anyway”… Besides, once you’ve received your sacraments, you can never really leave the faith…you’re going to be held accountable no matter what, so why not live your life in the Catholic faith and save your soul?:confused:**
 
Lead by example, tealblue. (I like your username by the way:)) Just keep going to mass, praying, having zeal for the faith, and hopefully, she will follow suit. But, living your faith is your responsiblity. You can’t force your wife to, as you know, and if she chooses not to follow, then don’t let that affect your walk with Christ. Leading by example, and seeing the brightness in and around you, because of your choice to practice your faith, should cause your wife to want to get back involved.

Praying things turn around for her, soon.

Praying that you remain steadfast in the faith. God bless.
 
I hope and pray you are holding up and continuing to live the Sacraments.
It may take time but your faithfulness and prayer will lead your spouse back to faith by God’s grace. You remain in my prayers.
 
tealblue said:
Anyone ever have an issue where your spouse dicides one day to just stop practicing the faith? I’m a recent convert and my wife is a cradle Catholic. She tells me why bother she is just going to hell anyway. Its been depressing for me I stopped taking communion about a month ago and last sunday I didn’t go. I was palnning on just walking away also but am deciding that I’m responsable for my own actions. Anyone want to share whats its like being the lone practicing Catholic in the family?
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not in my marriage obviously but in my close family, yes this situation has developed and my first instinct, the encourage the person to get medical help for depression, proved to be a sound path.
 
I know how you feel; my wife of over 25 years left the True Faith several years ago to pursue what she felt was a more emotionally filling experience with God. It nearly tore our marriage apart. We had a fairy-tale marriage up until that point; without that strong base I don’t know if we would have stayed together.

In the past two years, I have come to accept that she is no longer in the Faith; I trust that God will bring her back home some day and hold her in Grace until that time. I do confess, my own faith has suffered. Not my belief or my love for the Church, but I feel far-away from God and wonder if I am being punished for some sins.

I lack the zeal I had before, but it does not affect my outward actions. My children do not suspect my internal struggles as outwardly we are as gung-ho as ever. I did take the time to give them a deeper education in the catechism and doctrines of the Church during this struggle. I felt like they needed a strong foundation in the Faith while their mother strayed.

She doesn’t ever try and take them with her (they are grown or older teenagers) and does not try and convert them, so that has made me happy. I worried.

Our marriage is not in danger now; we lack the emotional closeness we once had. We are more like domestic partners now than husband and wife. This spiritual battle has pervaded every aspect of our marriage. We can’t talk much, we don’t do much together, we don’t have relations very often. There is no anger or acrimony, just weariness and a feeling of defeat. We don’t fight or argue, we just each do our thing separately.

I pray your marriage will not be so affected. It is a trial that I bear, but not gladly.
 
From a different perspective, I left Catholicism about a year ago, and am glad that my wife still practices.

I would hate that my own experiences and beliefs would sway her own faith and I encourage her to go to Mass when she sometimes wants to skip.

Be your own person, not for the sake of converting your wife, but for your own sake. Be true to yourself and most of the other thing might fall into place.
 
tealblue said:
Anyone ever have an issue where your spouse dicides one day to just stop practicing the faith? I’m a recent convert and my wife is a cradle Catholic. She tells me why bother she is just going to hell anyway. Its been depressing for me I stopped taking communion about a month ago and last sunday I didn’t go. I was palnning on just walking away also but am deciding that I’m responsable for my own actions. Anyone want to share whats its like being the lone practicing Catholic in the family?
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I left Catholicism and became a Buddhist.

Buddha walked on water first. Jesus learned this when he travelled to India in his twenties.

So Buddhism is the root of Christianity but told for a Western crowd. If you want to know Jesus more, study Buddha for it is from Buddha that Jesus became Divine.
 
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