In reality, no one’s faith is exactly the same, even when we practice the same religion, but I didn’t realize that until after Steve left our church. And one of the most profound lessons I have learned from my mixed-faith journey with Steven has been that there is a divine magic that heals when we listen in love.
A few years ago, my husband, Steven, struggled and stumbled from Mormon to Christian to agnostic to atheist over the course of a year. It was like watching him be beaten by invisible enemies that we didn’t know how to face or see.
For the first time in our marriage, Steve exposed his wholeness. I still admire his courage. On one of the many nights we stayed up into the morning talking and crying about our faith, Steve said something that became a pivotal moment in our relationship; he said, “I’m so afraid that if I tell you what I really believe, you’ll leave me.” He thought that my love only reached him if he was a certain way, or if he was certain. He thought I would be scared of his real beliefs and doubts and that if I knew all of him, I couldn’t love him. He didn’t know that I was capable of loving his differences, his whole self, but I was, and I am.
I realized that for me to listen to him was to love him. To listen to him would set him free from the paralyzing fear of believing that he didn’t deserve to be loved because he had lost his faith in the Gospel and ultimately God. I also realized that for me to really listen, he needed to understand my whole self, too. Through Steve’s crippling doubt, we finally learned how to share and accept our whole selves.
The Gospel has not eradicated darkness in my life, in fact, it holds many contradictions, questions, grief, and loneliness for me . . . but I choose it; through the darkness, I have found light. And Steve chooses to leave it because through the darkness he has found light.