My story...

sent in by Mike

Cross post from "Breaking the Bad News.."

I wish I'd run across this site about 4 months ago!

My parents were involved in the Methodist church when I was young. I went through the confirmation thing and all, but to me it was just words and I never really bought into it. After I was about 13 - 14 we just stopped going to church. Nothing was said, just stopped. I think my parents became agnostic/athiest at that time, though they just recently made if very clear.

I'm much older (42) and married to a YEC, BAC. My wife was a Baptist when we met and I, being blindly in lust and love, did the whole baptism, decleration of faith. I really wanted to believe....

However, since that time (about 17 years ago). I "drifted" too and from trying to be "religious". I had many objections and was never comfortable with religion. Something just seemed "wrong".... My wife, on the other hand, went the other direction and is full force fundy everything is evil, end is near, gotta save all the souls kinda B.S.

Then, about 6 months ago I stumbled across the Flying Spaghetti Monster site. I laughed my arse off, and my eyes started to open.

I attend a fundy charismatic church with my wife and kids here in Austin. One day, during the "alter call", this lady comes over, crying and the whole bit, and says "Mike, don't you want what they have??". Meaning the folks with the arms in the air and swaying and chanting. Inside the answer was instant. "NO!, you'll are nuts!". However, I politely dodged the question and gave vague answers. My wife is sitting next to me and said something about "God was telling to ask you the same thing..."

At that point I made a decision. I would do my "due diligence" and let the facts speack for themselves. Lets just say the house of cards came tumbling down. I quit pretending to like church, or to pray. I told my wife in using "Rip the BandAid" method, she took it OK. Then I came home with some books from Michael Shermer, Carl Sagan and few others. That's when poop hit the fan. She wouldn't speak to me for about a day. I actually thought we were headed for rapid divorce. I did almost tell her the two main reasons for my decision was looking at her beliefs now vs. when we met and the current church we attend. I think I did the right thing by erring to caution.

Things have calmed down now, but it's a very sore subject and I know I'm on everybody's prayer list

I don't know how I would break the news differently, there isn't a good way.

Being "out" wow... I feel better now than I have in years!

The problem is all of our (read "her") friends are die hard fundy's. Blaahhh

Sorry to unload on you guys in my first post, but to be honest, I got no one to talk about this....

Thanks for reading...

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