When Your Husband Loses His Faith
Things have not always been easy in our marriage. Actually, things have never been easy in our marriage. We have dealt with depression, financial struggle, conflict, communication problems, health problems, bankruptcy, poverty, and foreclosure. It’s hard to imagine that I had faith after all of that but I did.
What affected me more than anything was that my husband didn’t really have a heart for family when we first got married. He didn’t understand that his role as a husband and father required more than working and making money to support the family. My heart was all about family and Christian marriage. I knew early on that I wanted to homeschool our children. I wanted to have a close-knit, loving family that did fun things together and learned and made memories together.
My husband did not come on board the family train. He still lived his life as if he were single. He worked long hours, lifted weights, and played video games. Whenever I asked him to take the kids and me on “field trips” or family outings, he was reluctant. He was usually so irritable that none of us could really enjoy ourselves. Something bad or inconvenient happened every single time to ruin the day.
I listened to Focus on the Family every day and read lots of books about Christian marriage and parenting.
In spite of his seeming disinterest in family things, he and I still had many values and interests in common. The biggest one being our love for God and His word. We went to church regularly and discussed what we read in the Bible. Our prayer life consisted primarily of me asking him to pray together.
He put almost all of his identity in his job. He was brought up to believe that was the most important thing a man should do for his family. My husband never felt like he was performing well enough financially. Working overtime was a regular part of our lives. He was not home very much. I felt like I was raising the kids by myself. I had 6 babies in 10 years. They were all little and needed me for everything.
I was trying to hold everything together. I was losing that loving feeling, though.
God sent some wake-up calls that nudged him toward understanding how to be an involved husband and father. The biggest one was losing his job.
He found himself at home every day with me and 6 kids. He didn’t know where he fit into the family at first. The Lord worked with him to help him figure out how to pitch in and help with the running of the house and the care of the children. Things were great at first. He had been watching ministers who preached a lot about faith, so he kept a strong belief that everything was going to be okay, even though he felt that God told him not to get another job. We felt that God told us to trust Him and live by faith.
Drifting from the faith.
God did provide for us supernaturally for over three years. But some really crazy things started happening that made us wonder if God had forgotten us. We started getting in legal trouble for lapse of car registration, accusation of food stamp fraud (no truth in that), and money started running out, so we had difficulty paying bills. Our electricity was shut off temporarily. We got to the place where we couldn’t pay our mortgage. We seemed to be caught in a downward spiral.
It all culminated in us losing our house. We had added two more babies to our family by that time. I had twins in the middle of the downward spiral. So now we had 8 children and nowhere to live.
Some friends took us in for awhile, miraculously. But the strain was too much, and it only lasted a few months. Then we stayed at my parents’ house for a month. Then the Lord made it very clear to us that we were to leave everything we knew and head to another state.
These things we experienced were more than the run-of-the-mill disagreements and misunderstandings that every marriage goes through. These were major stressors and stretchers.
We thought the Lord was saying we should go to Arizona, so we did. Nothing opened up for us there. We went to Kansas City. After a few harrowing months of looking for a job, my husband finally got one….at Walmart! He was starting to get a bit disgruntled about how we were being treated by God. He felt like we held up our end of the deal, but God didn’t.
So he lost his faith in God and became a person I didn’t recognize.
I saw faith abandoned first hand.
He became angry. The kids were afraid of him. He was very negative and bitter and hard to be around. He didn’t understand why God let those things happen to us. I could see that he was mad at God and himself. He felt like he let his family down.
My husband turned away from God and tried to make it on his own. He tried to take care of his family by his own efforts. Our prayer lives were almost non-existent. He spent all of his time trying to make things happen by looking for jobs and filling out job portals, instead of spending time with family. He didn’t trust God to provide for us or take care of us any more.
When he wasn’t filling out job portals, he was working out at the gym or playing video games. The children and I weren’t spending any significant time with him.
He didn’t understand God, and it made him angry. I could see that he felt rejected and unloved. He felt powerless, useless, worthless, and frustrated. And I felt alone.
Gradually, things got better for us financially. God blessed us in some amazing ways. He moved on our neighbors to give us $20,000 at one time! But my husband has held back and not yielded his whole heart to God until quite recently. He is starting to believe again. He is becoming more interested in spiritual things and listening to ministers of the gospel and praying and listening for what the Lord is saying.
There are some ongoing negative situations with our children that I believe were influenced by my husband’s loss of faith.
We are rebuilding and restoring our relationship with each other.
A faith renewed breathes new life into marriage.
In many ways, it’s better than it ever was. But we’re still in the process of learning new ways to relate to each other. We want to have a Christian marriage that people can learn from and want to imitate because it is glorious!
I have to fight feelings of blame and unforgiveness. But that’s on me. I’m responsible for that. He has changed his behavior and many of his attitudes. He is looking to God, trusting Him and putting Him first again.
I have to forget the past, even when it seems like I can connect a current problem with his lapse of faith and the way he acted during that time.
We are working to re-establish our family culture as a faith-filled, loving family that only wants to do God’s will and fulfill His purposes for our lives.
In spite of the unmet expectations and the disappointment that we went through, especially during the last 13 years, I am happy to report that my husband and I would both say, without reservation, “I still do”.
- Hold On To Your Covenant - February 10, 2020
- When Your Husband Loses His Faith - February 23, 2019
- Women Who Walked with Jesus - May 25, 2018
Yes, Tiffany, I’m sure it’s as important to you as it is to me. Our faith is the biggest thing we had in common, and it’s just the most important thing to me, period. So it’s a real concern that our husbands stay strong in faith and close to the Lord. I am so thankful that he has turned the corner and come back to faith. I prayed hard and tried to not drive him away by my own feelings and desires and trying to make him behave the way I thought he should. I lost control of myself sometimes, but God has been very gracious to us. I am truly grateful! I pray for all husbands and all men to draw close to God. And that God would speak to men in the way that they can understand and see their need for him.
Thanks you for sharing this story Penny. My prayer is always that God will strengthen his faith… but I’ve seen him get close to walking away a few times and it scares me.