Too much God?

[acadian]

Once upon a time, my husband and I were on the same page spiritually…go to Mass on occasion, and life was good.

Over the past 10 years, things have evolved.

He goes to Mass without fail on Sundays.
I go to Mass when I have the chance…pretty much every day. I dont think I’m obsessive about it, but if I can go, I do. It has changed my life.
I have also found value in approximately monthly confession.
There is time in my schedule for me to spend 20 minutes or so before the Tabernacle prior to my work day.
Our priest facilitates Bible Studies from the Great Adventure series. We meet once a week for about 20 weeks or so a year. I have learned :thumbsup:so much, and find it interesting.
During Lent, I like to attend Stations of the Cross on Fridays at my parish.
There is an Adoration Chapel about 2 miles from my house that I occasionally spend time at…i would love to have a regular hour.
During Advent and Lent, our choir performs Lessons and Carols and a Tennebrae service, and I enjoy attending them.
During the Triduum, I will attend Msss and Adoration for an hour or so on Thursday, the service on Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil. I have plans to attend the Chrism Mass with a girlfriend on Thursday morning.
I was praying the Rosary twice a month at my sister-in-law’s house.
A friend of mine and I help decorate the church for Christmas and Easter…Christmas took a couple of hours…Easter about 30 minutes.

My husband is deeply distressed by all of this. He says it just gets worse and worse and worse. He thinks it is his place to “stop” me and that it is “causing problems” in the family. My boys are 15 and 16 and are certainly welcome to attend any of this that they feel called to attend, as is my spouse. They do not need me to be home every second, and are not feeling neglected. I have discussed some of this in the context of confession, and my confessor has been very supportive…says I have a right to that time with the Lord, etc, but anytime I want to pray at the chapel or attend something at church…I have to hear about how I’m “neglecting the family”. Even though they are welcome to come with me.

I almost feel like I have to hide what I do.

Have any of you been there, done that? And lived to tell?

 

[MidnightSun12]

Provided that you are fulfilling all of your family duties and you still feel positive and engaged toward your home life (ie. not using daily mass as an escape) then I see nothing wrong with growing spiritually and spending more time with God.

You are fortunate that your husband is also active and engaged in the church. Is there any way for you to choose church-related activities that he can be involved with as well? Maybe he’s speaking out because he’s feeling lonely when you’re not around and not so much because he has issues with you spending more of your time with God.

 

[The_Reginator]

You seem to have your priorities right.

“The first and greatest commandment is this: Thou shalt love thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind and with all thy strength.
The second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
(Matthew 22: 37-40)

*Love God first. *
Luke 14:26 says, “If any man come to me, and hate not his father and mother, and wife, and children, brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” Jesus said this in order to show us what our priorities really must be.
Love God first and foremost. That is a Commandment, not a request.

 

[MidnightSun12]

You seem to have your priorities right.

“The first and greatest commandment is this: Thou shalt love thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind and with all thy strength.
The second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
(Matthew 22: 37-40)

*Love God first. *
Luke 14:26 says, “If any man come to me, and hate not his father and mother, and wife, and children, brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” Jesus said this in order to show us what our priorities really must be.
Love God first and foremost. That is a Commandment, not a request.

To be clear, I don’t disagree with what you are saying, Reginator. I just want to add that there is such a thing as spiritual gluttony where a person can indulge in praise and worship to the point where it starts to inferfere with a person’s ability to fulfill his/her vocation duties.

I don’t believe that the OP is necessarly struggling with this tendency, but I think we have to remember that we can follow what Luke is saying (ie. loving God first) by offering up our daily work and family responsibilities as a prayer to God, as well as attending mass and church functions. Remember, that God is all around us everywhere… sometimes the challenges in our everyday lives are some of the best opportunities to give Him praise!

 

[Dorothy]

All of us need to bring our newly found love in the Lord to our families.

No, we shouldn’t decrease our praying or taking part in the life of the church that feeds us on our journey, such as Mass and Sacraments.

Some things can be cut out that are just there for us to “feel good”, as our families need to feel good about our love for them.

It is easy for a confessor/spiritual director to perhaps only see our side and not understand that parents need to be around their children more in order to encourage, guide, and show our love for them.

 

[graciew]

Yes,I have been there.
It may or may not be ojectively the time you spend doing these things away from home,but sometimes the “problem” they notice is that your heart and mind are away from home.or away from them,husbands,I mean.Justified or not,but they feel it that way.And sometimes the battle ground is not exactly where it should be.
Only you know the answer.It can become a relentless battle,harmful for our family and harmful for a faith,cause we kind of polarize it:either our husbands or our faith.And it does not have to be necessarily that way.I can hear where Midnight sun and Dorothy are coming from too.A Hail Mary goes for you.

 

[toosan1967]

In reading these posts, a terrible thought occurred to me. Suppose your husband and kids were involved in a terrible auto accident and the worst you could imagine were to happen? I wonder: would you then wish you had spent more time with him/them? Are there things you might wish you would have said had you known? What suffering would you endure? I’m thinking; “God is always with us. But we never know what tomorrow might bring in our earthly lives.” May God Bless You and Your Family and May God Bless Us All.

 

[Joannm]

You vocation is to your family. Being with your family is where you find God first of all since God gave you your family. If church stuff is taking you away from your family so much so that they feel neglected, even if it seems to you that you are fulfilling your obligation, then church, not God, could be too much.

 

[DL82]

Your spiritual life sounds like mine 3 years ago when I was living in a university chaplaincy community and discerning a vocation to the religious life. Even back then I know my studies suffered. I’m guessing you don’t live next door to your church, so I’m figuring add driving time to all those devotions, and it makes for a lot of time. I can’t even imagine doing all of that as a married person. Coming out of that intense environment, I knew the best I could expect with my wife was to drag her to Sunday Mass and occasionally pray morning prayer at home together, and that seemed appropriate because that was where she was at the time. If we ever move on to greater devotions, I want us to move on together.

I would suggest you need to think about which of your devotions help you to communicate God’s love to your family, and which of them give you a personal sense of peace. Now I am not saying that you shouldn’t seek a sense of peace, but that takes second place behind being there for your family. Do you really think your teenage sons want to come along to an early morning Mass with a bunch of old ladies? Maybe there is a youth group they could join though, and you could help teach religion to them there? I knew of a soup kitchen run by a Catholic charity that had a chapel of adoration on site - lots of students and teenagers would help out, and then go upstairs to pray the rosary at the end of the night. Maybe you could find something like that.

Maybe you could also think about whose time you are carving out -of going to Mass in your lunch hour at work, instead of going to Starbucks, is basically your own time, and I can’t see how your family could legitimately resent that. Leaving them alone for two evenings so you can be at both the Bible study AND the Stations, seems like you are doing this on your family’s time, and I can see why they might resent it.

Also, you mention having such a growing spiritual life -sounds usually, people who have such a deep devotion also have a spiritual director to keep them on the right track, as we can’t follow every devotion in the Church’s tradition at once. I suggest finding a spiritual director, and I would also suggest, if at all possible, it ought to be a married deacon or a priest who really understands married people and married life.

Above all, you are already following Gods commandments, you love Him, you love your family, and you want to know how best to make those two loves work as one, God bless you. Don’t worry, and don’t read this as though I am judging you in any way.

 

[TheRealJuliane]

(clipped for character limit)

My husband is deeply distressed by all of this. He says it just gets worse and worse and worse. He thinks it is his place to “stop” me and that it is “causing problems” in the family. My boys are 15 and 16 and are certainly welcome to attend any of this that they feel called to attend, as is my spouse. They do not need me to be home every second, and are not feeling neglected. I have discussed some of this in the context of confession, and my confessor has been very supportive…says I have a right to that time with the Lord, etc, but anytime I want to pray at the chapel or attend something at church…I have to hear about how I’m “neglecting the family”. Even though they are welcome to come with me.

I almost feel like I have to hide what I do.

Have any of you been there, done that? And lived to tell?

The problem is not what you are doing, it is what your husband is NOT doing. He sounds like a Sunday Catholic who is content to go to church once a week, maybe pray occasionally, and consider himself a “good enough” Catholic. Not casting aspersions, because a lot of Catholics are in the same category.

Of course, what has changed is that you want to be in the Lord’s presence more than he does. So he is jealous of your time and attention. Thus, the “it’s getting worse and worse” comment. He does not see the benefits of your daily Mass attendance, time in Adoration, Bible study, etc. I take it that you have invited him to come along with you to Bible study, and he is not interested? He probably isn’t interested in the Knights of Columbus either, right?

My story is even more radical than yours. When we met, dated, and finally got married, both my husband and I were “cradle Catholics,” but we were both completely lapsed. I didn’t even think of myself as Catholic, far from it. We married civilly. We were the intellectual type of “spiritual seeker,” except for what it was worth, my husband was not seeking, even then. I had been through Wicca, Buddhism, philosophy, and world religions, looking for the truth. We had 2 years of married agreement, and then we decided to try and have a baby. I got pregnant rather quickly and got very ill with nausea. Dropped quite a bit of weight, terrified the baby would be hurt by my not being able to eat anything. I’d been a vegetarian for 10 years before I got pregnant and I was not that careful about balancing my diet, so my concerns were that my body didn’t have anything to feed the baby from.

Anyway, I started praying to God while I was pregnant. I never said anything to my husband, but going through childbirth changed my life forever. It wasn’t just the pain, it was that the miracle of conception and birthing that son, and more important, the prayers I had earnestly prayed all the way through, had transformed me into a new person. The baby was healthy, which was also an answer to prayer. Shortly after our son was born, I told him I wanted to start going to church. To say that he was shocked is to minimize. But I knew I had to go forward, whatever his response was. I have never looked back, and that was almost 21 years ago. He has never had the same revelation and feels that I am too religious now. I try to be a better Catholic every day.

Now, the fact that he is a Catholic atheist has affected my participation in church activities, I won’t deceive you. We have done nothing at church together - well, we did sign up to help at a Thanksgiving feast one year, but since that is a popular event, we weren’t really needed so we didn’t go again. I have done a few things over the years. But I do miss the kind of agreement that couples have when both are fully Catholic.

I count my blessings that he has allowed me to educate our sons in Catholic schools, and he has gone to Mass with us most of the time. The boys have no idea that he no longer believes. And I won’t tell them unless there is some pressing need. It’s not my place.

Anyway, I share all that to let you know that you are not alone in being alone. Pray for your husband, pray to St. Monica for intercessions. Try to find a good solid Catholic man who may help your husband spend more time with God. I pray for that every day. My husband is not currently open to any spiritual mentoring, but maybe one day, he will be. I pray that one day, he will come to see Jesus as his Heavenly Father and will reach out and fall into his Daddy’s arms like he never has.

I will agree with the others who have said to be careful not to neglect your family with church activities. Your schedule does not sound excessive to me, because you probably do most of these things when you are on your own time anyway. But if there are any interests that your husband shares, try to find something at church that can include him. Such as, if he believes in helping the poor, have him help with the Homeless Committee. If he is pro-life, get him interested in the Respect Life effort or 40 Days for Life. If he has any skills, he can use them somehow within the parish. Preaching doesn’t work, they only think we are playing holier-than-thou.

My heart goes out to you. There is a thread at the top of this forum titled, “St. Monica, Pray for Us!” and a lot of us go there to post our intentions for our husbands and/or children to come to know Christ. I will add you to my prayers.

 

[monicatholic]

I think Dorothy hits important points squarely.

Whether or not your husband is a Catholic enough Catholic isn’t the point. Your primary vocation is wife and mother. That your family is welcome to join you is not a good defense.

If you ever want your husband and sons to experience deep conversions, you’re responsible to witness to them. They need to see your faith has made you a better, more patient, generous, loving, self sacrificing wife and mother. They need to see your faith makes their lives better.

A good test: if you cut down to participation at times when your family is not home ( except for Sunday obligation and confession) and you find yourself mad or resentful or self pitying about it, then you’ll know your practices had been unbalanced. You’ll know your faith practices were self indulgent.

PS. Some of the best advice I ever got: I bemoaned to my confessor that I didn’t have enough time to pray, adore, kneel in front of the Blessed Sacrament. I said, " there’s always
chatter and laundry and somebody wanting something."

He said, " who told you to expect the life of a contemplative? Loving your children. Being kind to your husband. Folding the laundry. Those are your path to holiness. That’s your vocation.

He saved me from a world of resentment. I still pray. Sometimes a lot. But on my time. And during all the times my family needs me, I pray then too. My service to them is a prayer

 

[VonDerTann]

Weighing in…

I agree with the poster who said there can be “spiritual gluttony.”

Are you there yet? I can’t say, although I respectfully think you may be close to it, simply based on the sheer # of hours spent in Church when you also have a family. But I will say this:

1. IMHO, saying “my husband and boys are welcome to attend!” is rather unfair to them. Are there ANY 16 year old boys ANYWHERE who would want to attend the things you do? As a former 16 year old boy – I’ve never known a 1.
2. In your list of church activities…I see no juxtaposition of family needs or obligations. What hours do you work? What hours does your husband work? Do your boys, say, play sports? Are you active in their school? Do they get homework done by themselves? My point is that there are only 24 hours in a day. If you do your stated Church activities in lieu of watching Jerry Springer on TV, that’s one thing. If it’s in lieu of making dinner, that’s something else.
3. It is IMHO irrelevant what your confessor said, simply because it’s all in the asking. Irespectfully posit that the same question, asked by your husband, might get a whollu different response…and since a priest almost axiomatically has no idea what a raising kids or being married is like, that’s not a source of great answers IMHO.

TheRealJulianne, I respectfully think some of what you say is REALLY unfair. You use the phrase “Sunday Catholic” as if it’s a bad thing when people only go to Mass on Sunday…OP ought to count her blessings her hubby goes at all! And I think this nugget is also unfair:

“Pray for your husband, pray to St. Monica for intercessions. Try to find a good solid Catholic man who may help your husband spend more time with God.”

–So OP’s husband is NOT “good” or “solid?” Why? Because he would like Mom/Wife to be a mom & wife & not a nun, who is church what sounds like 7 days a week? I’d pity the husband, and tell him to pray to find his wife “a good solid Catholic woman who may help his wife spend more time with her family.”!

 

[TheRealJuliane]

TheRealJulianne, I respectfully think some of what you say is REALLY unfair. You use the phrase “Sunday Catholic” as if it’s a bad thing when people only go to Mass on Sunday…OP ought to count her blessings her hubby goes at all! And I think this nugget is also unfair:

“Pray for your husband, pray to St. Monica for intercessions. Try to find a good solid Catholic man who may help your husband spend more time with God.”

–So OP’s husband is NOT “good” or “solid?” Why? Because he would like Mom/Wife to be a mom & wife & not a nun, who is church what sounds like 7 days a week? I’d pity the husband, and tell him to pray to find his wife “a good solid Catholic woman who may help his wife spend more time with her family.”!

Fair enough. We have different experiences. No, I don’t think that Sunday Mass is enough. Now, it’s true that she didn’t say her husband doesn’t do anything else for or with the Church during his week. Maybe he prays with her and/or his sons. Maybe his spiritual life is more private than hers is. If so, I apologize for making that assumption.

Spouses are supposed to be helping each other get to heaven, yes? While a lot of that can be done through our everyday life, we also have an obligation to reach out to our communities of faith, not to be isolated, and to give to others.

No, I didn’t mean that her husband is not a good solid MAN or HUSBAND. But as far as being Catholic except on Sunday, she said nothing about any other involvement with his faith. Have you ever watched “Crossing the Goal” on EWTN? THAT is what I mean by a Catholic man, a mentor, who could spark her husband’s relationship to Christ. I find that show absolutely inspiring, just to know that such men exist and are out there working so that Catholic men can be MORE to their families than the once a week, only in church Catholics.

If I misinterpret based upon my own experiences, I apologize.

 

[DL82]

No, I don’t think that Sunday Mass is enough.

Well, then you disagree with the Church, which lays only this obligation on lay people. For some people, that is enough involvement with the formal liturgy of the Church, united to private prayer and the consecration of our daily duties to the glory of God, of course. St Monica is patron saint for lapsed family members. To suggest that the OP’s husband falls into this category is to contradict the reality of his observance of the faith.

 

[joclucsylv]

I haven’t read all the posts, but I can tell you a story about a husband and wife that stuck with me. Sometimes with my job people just open up to me.

This woman found Jesus. She always knew Jesus, but one day she got saved (as the born agains say) and Jesus became her life. This woman’s husband grew increasingly jealous and finally gave her the ultimatum that it was him or Jesus. He felt second to Jesus. The marriage ended in divorce. I remember her saying that she still loved her ex husband.

I suppose the story always stuck with me because I found it strange that someone in a marriage can become jealous of Jesus.

 

[28562]

I am reading a book called ‘Be a Man’ by Fr. Larry Richards. There is a lot of good stuff in the book, but one line that has stuck strongly in my head might be fitting in this thread…

**Husbands are called to love God primarily *through *their wives. Your wife is the sacrament of Christ to you. You are the sacrament of Christ to your wife. When she looks at you, she is supposed to see Jesus Christ. **

I would certainly think that it would be appropriate to swap the words ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ in the first sentence.

 

[bstorm]

Once upon a time, my husband and I were on the same page spiritually…go to Mass on occasion, and life was good.

Over the past 10 years, things have evolved.

He goes to Mass without fail on Sundays.
I go to Mass when I have the chance…pretty much every day. I dont think I’m obsessive about it, but if I can go, I do. It has changed my life.
I have also found value in approximately monthly confession.
There is time in my schedule for me to spend 20 minutes or so before the Tabernacle prior to my work day.
Our priest facilitates Bible Studies from the Great Adventure series. We meet once a week for about 20 weeks or so a year. I have learned :thumbsup:so much, and find it interesting.
During Lent, I like to attend Stations of the Cross on Fridays at my parish.
There is an Adoration Chapel about 2 miles from my house that I occasionally spend time at…i would love to have a regular hour.
During Advent and Lent, our choir performs Lessons and Carols and a Tennebrae service, and I enjoy attending them.
During the Triduum, I will attend Msss and Adoration for an hour or so on Thursday, the service on Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil. I have plans to attend the Chrism Mass with a girlfriend on Thursday morning.
I was praying the Rosary twice a month at my sister-in-law’s house.
A friend of mine and I help decorate the church for Christmas and Easter…Christmas took a couple of hours…Easter about 30 minutes.

My husband is deeply distressed by all of this. He says it just gets worse and worse and worse. He thinks it is his place to “stop” me and that it is “causing problems” in the family. My boys are 15 and 16 and are certainly welcome to attend any of this that they feel called to attend, as is my spouse. They do not need me to be home every second, and are not feeling neglected. I have discussed some of this in the context of confession, and my confessor has been very supportive…says I have a right to that time with the Lord, etc, but anytime I want to pray at the chapel or attend something at church…I have to hear about how I’m “neglecting the family”. Even though they are welcome to come with me.

I almost feel like I have to hide what I do.

Have any of you been there, done that? And lived to tell?

First of all, I do not think this is a good place to get advice on your problem. We do not know you and cannot possibly evaluate your situation. Do you work outside of home? You better discuss this with your confessor in more detail than you did last time. Also, you might want to make an appointment with him, so you can really talk, because sometimes it can be difficult to take an appropriate amount of time during the confession when there is a number of other pople waiting to confess.

My opinion is that you should somehow balance your need for deeper spirituality with the needs of your husband. I believe it is possible to do more than just go to mass once a week and be a good mother and wife. But, you need to make sure that going to all the meetings, bible studies, and concerts does not take you away from your family. Your husband is telling you he feels neglected - I would try to talk to him about it. Also, I would come up with some essentials that are really important for you (for example, daily mass when possible and regular confession) and compromise on the rest.

 

[marcella_1981]

Your spiritual life sounds like mine 3 years ago when I was living in a university chaplaincy community and discerning a vocation to the religious life. Even back then I know my studies suffered. I’m guessing you don’t live next door to your church, so I’m figuring add driving time to all those devotions, and it makes for a lot of time. I can’t even imagine doing all of that as a married person. Coming out of that intense environment, I knew the best I could expect with my wife was to drag her to Sunday Mass and occasionally pray morning prayer at home together, and that seemed appropriate because that was where she was at the time. If we ever move on to greater devotions, I want us to move on together.

I would suggest you need to think about which of your devotions help you to communicate God’s love to your family, and which of them give you a personal sense of peace. Now I am not saying that you shouldn’t seek a sense of peace, but that takes second place behind being there for your family. Do you really think your teenage sons want to come along to an early morning Mass with a bunch of old ladies? Maybe there is a youth group they could join though, and you could help teach religion to them there? I knew of a soup kitchen run by a Catholic charity that had a chapel of adoration on site - lots of students and teenagers would help out, and then go upstairs to pray the rosary at the end of the night. Maybe you could find something like that.

Maybe you could also think about whose time you are carving out -of going to Mass in your lunch hour at work, instead of going to Starbucks, is basically your own time, and I can’t see how your family could legitimately resent that. Leaving them alone for two evenings so you can be at both the Bible study AND the Stations, seems like you are doing this on your family’s time, and I can see why they might resent it.

Also, you mention having such a growing spiritual life -sounds usually, people who have such a deep devotion also have a spiritual director to keep them on the right track, as we can’t follow every devotion in the Church’s tradition at once. I suggest finding a spiritual director, and I would also suggest, if at all possible, it ought to be a married deacon or a priest who really understands married people and married life.

Above all, you are already following Gods commandments, you love Him, you love your family, and you want to know how best to make those two loves work as one, God bless you. Don’t worry, and don’t read this as though I am judging you in any way.

This is, in my opinion, the best response. I’ve been there myself and I can relate to what the OP is saying but at the end of the day your family is mega important as well and I’m sure that your parish priest would understand if you put the brakes on one or two of your activities to spend time with your family. It isn’t all about getting meals ready and washing done (although I appreciate that this sounds more than a bit sexist) - you need to spend time with them.