My spiritual journey is separate from my relationship with my husband, because I have known God intimately for most of my life so far, while he has yet to get past just knowing God exists. Skeptics would say he's just using the stall tactic, that he'll never become a believer. But I know just as surely as the Lord brought us together that He can make that come to pass. After all, He's brought my husband this far. So why would I choose to be married to him? I believe it is part of God's plan for my life.
When I first met my husband, I was a believer in God without a church home. I was a freshman in high school, struggling with who I was in Christ. My parents had grown up protestant, but my mom and her family broke away to one faith while my dad began resenting religion until he finally became atheist. His hatred for religion kept us from attending church. That all changed when my grandfather came to stay with us for a couple of years after my grandmother died. It was then that he insisted on going to church, dragging mom and I along with him. I found my place at last, and around the time I was almost ready for baptism, I fell in love with my husband. We were both Juniors then, with goals for our futures uncertain in light of our unexpected romance. Yet I felt that God had drawn us together, because of a prayer I had prayed just weeks prior. The gist of it was this: that God would lead me to who He'd want me to be with, if it was His will I date anyone at all, and that he would be everything I would need.
From the very beginning of our relationship, things just seemed to fall into place. Whenever I'd question in my mind what his actions might be in a given situation, the Lord was quick to have it happen, reaffirming my relationship with both of them. These were things I never told anyone but God, and the confirmations I would receive just made things that much clearer. I found out he had been scared off from the church by his aunt-in-law who made him listen to condemning sermons as a child, which had tainted his opinion about christians - that is until he met me. He said so himself that I was the one person he knew who was a good person, who was not hypocritical. I praised God for that, and asked Him to continue to let my light shine and rub off on him.
There came a time when my church family began cautioning me against the relationship, telling me not to be unequally yoked. On one such night when I was plagued with doubts, I prayed like I had never prayed before that the Lord would show me a sign if I were to stay in the relationship or not. I asked for Him to touch his heart and want to call me, and then I would know never to question Him again on the matter. Now, this was a near-impossible request, because it was quite late at night (past the time for me to accept calls from my friends), and he was working late and didn't usually get a chance to call me when he worked weekends like that. But just as soon as I finished praying, the telephone rang, and the first words out of his mouth were: "I felt like I had to call you and tell you that I love you." So that's when I knew without a doubt we would eventually get married.
By the time we did get married, nearly six years later, he had gotten to know some of my church family and would attend church events on occasion. He still didn't go to church services, but agreed to eventually start going to church when he was not working. But then two things happened - I got pregnant, and my faith blossomed to a whole new level. Several months after the birth of our daughter, he attended church with both my parents and his family in order to have her dedicated to God. It was a sobering moment for me, making me realize that going forward my walk with God would have to be more defined. I then fell into the pattern of taking our daughter to church with me alone, until I found that I had outgrown the faith. I broke away to find a new beginning, frustrated at not being able to connect with others who understood God with the passion I was feeling. What I didn't expect was for my husband to tell me "I'm glad you left that church, they were all a little weird." That's when it dawned on me why he had hesitated as he did about joining my faith. What an eye-opener that was! He watched me change, commented on it, and gained an even deeper respect for me.
I've made friends in my new church, and they've met my husband. We all went out together, and later he told me that they seemed like ok people he wouldn't mind seeing once in a while. But when we all went out for dinner, he changed his mind, saying he didn't really have anything in common with them. Since then, they've been a blessing to us in our times of need, altering his thinking of them yet again. I know God's work is not done in this story, and I continue to pray for God's will in our lives.