Stina Kielsmeier-Cook - Blessed Are the Nones

D ear One:

If you have been given this book, there is a good chance someone in your life has lost their religion. Maybe you go to church alone now. Maybe you are very brave and solo parent during the fellowship hour, attempting small talk while your unsupervised kids eat too many Oreos. Perhaps people ask about your absent spouse or child or friend, and at first you make excuses: Peter is sick. Jenny has homework. Chris is traveling. After a month of Sundays, you become blunt: Peter is an atheist now. Jenny is exploring Buddhism. Chris is not interested in church. The church people give you a sad look. Sometimes they whisper platitudes: Give him time, or Shell come around. Ill be praying for her. Their eyes go soft with pity. They twist their napkins into little snakes.

If the person you married is the one whose faith changed, I am here to say youre not alone. What the church people dont tell you is that, in any marriage, the person you wed will not be the same person you wake up with in five years, nor the same person who brings you coffee in fifteen years. That, in itself, of course, is not a bad thingyou imagine your partner will pick up an interesting new hobby (kitesurfing! CrossFit!). What you dont imagine is that one day your spouse will look you dead in the eye and say, I dont believe in God anymore. Your husband was supposed to start kickboxing, get wrinkles, lose his hair, change careers. The premarital counseling didnt warn you that this might be coming, that your deep, shared spiritual reservoir might be siphoned off. Or rather, that he would close off his access, fill in the well, walk away from the tradition of looking and seeking and praying and joining with all the other tired sinners who are desperate for hope.

Sometimes relationships dont survive these kinds of changes. But it is possible that the vows, even ones made in the name of the God that one of you no longer believes in, can still hold. That even if he leaves God, God wont leave him. And that even if the vows eventually do break, that God will never leave you.

So here is my promise. This book will not save your marriage or convert your loved one; it will not offer certainties or platitudes. Instead, this book will offer my experience of faith after life veered wildly off course. It will testify to a God who is good, who blesses believers and agnostics alike.

I hope it keeps you company on your journey.

Love,

Stina

I was eavesdropping, of all things, when my husbands deconversion first hit me.

I was sitting on the floor of the guest bedroom in Joshs childhood home in North Carolina, straining to make out the voices filtering through the hallwaythe steady, deep timbre of my father-in-laws voice and the more volatile ups and downs of my husbands as he explained that he no longer thought God was real. My father-in-lawwho previously served for twenty years as a missionary in South America, who I had seen sharing the gospel with strangers in parking lotswas now trying to talk his son back into eternal life. I closed my eyes. This was really happening. My mother-in-law was out running errands, and I wondered how she would react when she heard about this conversation laterthe same mother who, when I first met her, told me that Josh was set apart for Gods purposes.

It was Adventthe four weeks before Christmas that mark the beginning of a new church year. Our then two-year-old daughter, Eliza, was asleep on the bed nearby. I got up and wandered out through the hallway, out of earshot of the argument in the next room, and made my way to the living room where the Christmas tree glowed under the weight of cheerful twinkly lights. I hummed a few bars of the hymn O Come, O Come Emmanuel, then stopped.

Standing there near the Christmas tree, I remembered other trees: how, on a perfect spring day four years earlier, Josh and I had stood under maples and pledged to serve God and each other. Guests in attendance said that the clouds were doing funny things over our heads while we recited our vows. The wispy bits of cumulus were lengthening into long pillars, eventually forming the shape of a v. One guest said it was the Holy Spirit dove, descending over our little ceremony. It was a sign of Gods presence with us.

Now I prayed bitterly in my in-laws living room. What was that, God? Was the Holy Spirit dove just wishful thinking? Were the wedding vows too? Was God really there when Josh and I made that marriage covenant? And what am I supposed to do now?

My eyes went in and out of focus as I stared at the Christmas lights, considering how full of hope Josh and I had been when we first met ten years earlier.

The first time we held hands was in a prayer circle on a mission trip during spring break at our evangelical Christian college. When we started dating at age twenty, we talked about serving together overseas or doing missionary work together. We were on fire for Jesus. The world was abundant with possibilities, all in service to the God we both loved.