A Witch’s Marriage to a Christian
At first glance, my husband has as much interest in religion as… well, he has no interest or at least not any visible interest. In general, he’s a very private person – something that’s a prominent feature of his personality as well as a constant source of frustration for myself (“Hey! Get back in the picture! It’s a family photo!”). Most people will come to find out that he’s a Christian, especially when they meet his mother, a former Protestant minister. I know he has several little Book of Psalms, and I’m guessing he pages through them now and again because they’ll randomly pop up when I’m cleaning.
I also know for certain that one of his prized possessions is a dilapidated Bible given to him by an Army chaplain that he befriended while in Iraq. (Not just any Bible, mind you. It was the one the chaplain had used during seminary college over 20 years ago, personal annotations included.) In fact, I recently noticed that all his “good friends” are chaplains – every single one. He once briefly mentioned that he would have very insightful talks about different aspects of Christianity with these chaplains, but beyond that, I never really heard him talk about God or Jesus or seen him pray (although he claims that he does).
Throughout our six-year marriage, religious beliefs were more-or-less never mentioned. We had a few conversations, mostly me explaining that “Christian” is an umbrella term and yes, Catholics were under said umbrella and yes, being a Methodist also made him a Protestant. Beyond that, there was very little discussion – oh, except the occasional mention of “Neopagan freaks” and the “load of bullshit” they practiced.
Take a guess at who choose not to tell their husband about being a witch.
I decided that maybe it wasn’t the best time to go raining on his parade all at once. I should subtle, I thought. Apparently my being “subtle” meant erecting a permanent altar/spell-table in the middle of the living room one day. (Not my most brilliant of ideas, admittedly.) Unfortunately, the only mention that he made of it was “…got enough candles?” Alright… so Plan A was a complete failure.
And then one day…
I went to his office to have lunch with him, as I do every week or two. While we’re hanging out in his office (and while I’m heckling his men), he tends to read the news online. I forget what the article was about (Update: it was about the “Occupy Wall Street” protest), but he shared it with me which ultimately lead up to the mention of Wicca (which he believes is synonymous to all Pagans, witches, faith healers, and hippies). And that led to a comment about how they were idiots for believing hey could “magic shit” and for worshiping “air spirits or whatever…”
My knee-jerk response: “That’s because you think of magic in the context of Harry Potter. And they don’t worship elementals, per se. It’s more akin to veneration and invocation…”
That, as you can guess, earned me a look.
“You don’t believe that crap, do you?” Well, there it was – the ultimate question. For a panicked second, I considered lieing… but did I really want to lie to my husband of all people? On the other hand, he has a really bad habit of making fun of things he doesn’t understand and I wasn’t sure if I could accept that kind of ridicule. To top it off, he was very familiar with Christianity’s belief that all witchcraft (and Pagans) are considered tools of the devil. He’s made several mentions of Exodus 22:18 before – “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live…” (I’m not going to get into the debate as to whether that’s mistranslated or not.)
Ultimately, I figured it was best to lay out the truth: “It’s not ‘crap.’ You just don’t understand it. But to answer your question: yes, I do. I’m a practicing witch.”
Silence. A very long silence. Suddenly, one of his men knocked on the door and he got up to deal with that issue. I ate my sandwich in silence. When we were alone again, he sat down and gave me a look. I didn’t bother meeting him eye-to-eye. “If that’s what you believe,” he began, “then that’s what you believe.” I blinked, wondering if I’d heard him right. “I might make fun of it a little,” he continued, “but if that’s how the universe works for you, then I’ll respect it.”
I gawked. “You’d be a Christian married to a witch, you know. Dogma says that’s a one-way ticket to hell.”
He shot me one of his goofy smiles and said, very simply, “Good! If that’s how it works, we’ll be together. That’s all that matters.”
Ellery Faye
My situation is a bit similar… My darling husband is a die-hard scientist, trusting only on that which modern science has proven. Sigh… But when I told him about my beliefs he was really fair and good about it, saying that he accepts my beliefs as long as I accept that he doesn’t share that faith. And then he added that he wished magic was real, he really would love it to be real, but he just… doesn’t believe in it. The same goes for any spiritual beings, telepathy, healing etc etc. And I accept that, sure. But of course, I still hope he’ll have an awesome paranormal experience one day, to show him a bit of the ‘other’ world…
I think all of us who share this sort of situation wish we could watch our other halves naturally stumble upon our “truths.” My husband is particularly bad with denial, especially in respects to the paranormal. He’s adopted a coping mechanism (from a rather terrifying paranormal experience during his youth) to pretend anything he can’t explain/see isn’t real (with the exception of God, for some reason). That way his universe is nice and orderly.
Still, gotta count our blessings, right? At least our hubs are respectful about our beliefs. So, kudos to the men!
Definitely! I am incredibly happy that he accepts my beliefs, and the small fact that he doesn’t actually share them is more of a small inconvinience. Just as me not sharing his beliefs probably is to him. =)