"But My Husband Isn't Saved!"

Encouragement for the Christian wife of the unbelieving man

My husband the night he became a father, 1997.

I married an unbeliever.

People are surprised by this if they come into our story here, where we stand today. They know that God can do all things, that He is mighty to save, that He changes hearts. But they miss how mighty He is, how large a gap He can cross in such a short time. They assume that the man they see before them had a clear trajectory that landed in total faith, total submission. But it’s not true.

On our wedding day, my husband was a lapsed Catholic testing the waters of Zen Buddhism. When I say he was a lapsed Catholic, I don’t mean that he was casually brought up in the general culture of the Catholic Church. His parents were— and still are— devout adherents to the Roman Catholic tradition. Like his siblings, my husband had received the sacraments of baptism, First Reconciliation, First Communion, and Confirmation. He had been educated in parish schools, served as an altar boy, even attended an exclusive, all-boys college-prep high school run by the Christian Brothers. Despite this upbringing, he had walked away entirely from the church in college. Six years after graduation, he was building a library of books on how to meditate and seek enlightenment on his own terms. It was this man that I married.

I knew better, of course. I had been saved in a little clapboard Missionary Baptist church in Gray, Ky, as a teenager. But the path of my sanctification hadn’t really begun, so the red flags my Mamaw waved as the wife of a nonbeliever didn’t hold any sway. I was in love. And hey, it had worked for Mamaw and Papaw, hadn’t it? What could be so terrible.

It turns out, many things.

At first, the division was barely noticeable, just as it had been while we were dating. On Sunday mornings, I went off to my Protestant church, where I taught Sunday School to a group of eager, adorable kindergarteners. I came home to a husband just getting out of bed, happy to listen to my reports on the students I had come to love. I wasn’t reading my Bible daily, didn’t have any qualms about listening to the new things my husband was discovering as he read the classic works of Buddhist greats. We were happy.

And then we had a baby.

My husband had progressed from study to practice by this time, and had joined a zen center. Now our Sunday mornings had me attending worship at a local church and him sitting Zazen an hour north in a beautiful retreat whose “Sunday School” room had floor to ceiling windows, and was encircled with tall trees dotted with feeders for wild birds and deer. Understandably, my husband wanted his daughter to be exposed to the beliefs he had embraced— and just as understandably, I was distraught. I can still remember the pit in my stomach I felt watching my toddler gently caress the small wooden statue of Buddha that sat on the table in her father’s meditation corner. The Holy Spirit, whose nudges I had ignored for two years, now screamed to be heard. And yet, what could I say? I had knowingly married an unbeliever. I had been supportive of his apostasy. And now, my daughter was learning about Jesus, yes… but also how to ring bells to clear her mind.

I turned to Mamaw in this time. She could have said, “I told you so,” but she never did. Instead, she listened to me and cried with me. She told me then stories I had never heard before, stories about how Papaw had never stopped her from going to church, or from taking his boys. But there were stories, too, of how sometimes work had to be done on Sunday mornings, and those boys were going to help haul hay, not warm pews. Stories dismissing her concerns. Stories of worrying about the eternal soul of the man she loved so very much. Mamaw empathized with me, and committed to praying for her son-in-law’s salvation. And years later, on one of our last visits before she passed, my husband found her prayer sheet, tucked into her Bible. On it were listed the names of all those who she had prayed would come to faith: her sons, distant kin, friends. His name was there, and the date— much earlier than our wedding, by the way. Next to it, in her loopy, 8th grade education handwriting, was one word:

Missionary.

See, my husband did repent and accept the gift of salvation Jesus offers. He destroyed his altar, and burned his idol. He apologized to his daughter for exposing her to a false belief system that pointed her away from Christ. And, once redeemed, my husband took the somewhat radical path of dedicating his whole life to sharing the Gospel with those who are perishing for lack of the gift he so gratefully received himself.

Papaw was eventually saved as well. He walked the aisle in the very church he had avoided all of his adult life, down to where his younger brother—a deacon— was standing to receive those in need of prayer. “I reckon it’s time I admitted I need someone else to run this show,” he reportedly told his brother, who was in shock but still managed to lead him through the Sinner’s Prayer. He was baptized the next Sunday, and the whole church celebrated that afternoon with fried chicken and banana pudding and vats of sweet tea.

“What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.’ —Luke 15:4-7

Next to Mamaw’s wait, mine seems paltry. I was unequally yoked less than six years. Mamaw soldiered on more than 5 decades praying the man she loved would come to a saving faith in Jesus Christ as Lord. Trust me, I am grateful for the mercy of a blessedly short window in our disparate faiths. While I know the Holy Spirit would have girded me for the work of being the sole Christian parent, I know now what I would have sacrificed relationally in terms of my marriage and I do not take the gift of a praying husband guided by Scripture and his love of Jesus for granted. It’s my awareness of this blessing that spurs me to pray daily for friends and family members (and yes, even IG acquaintances) who are married to men who have not yet been born again. I know how deeply it matters and how it radically changes your family to have a husband who is saved.

But, I also know what it is to look around me in the pews and see the families gathered, mothers and fathers sitting together, bowing their heads. I know what it’s like to attempt to join a Christian co-op and be rejected because my husband couldn’t sign the statement of faith. (That’s a story in and of itself.) I know what it’s like to struggle and want the reassurance of my husband standing alongside me and affirming that the Lord was present, even in my valley. And more than anything, I know what it’s like to look into the eyes of the man to whom my heart was knit and mourn the fact that his eternity would be spent in torment.

I’m writing this today to encourage the Christian women praying for their husband’s salvation to not grow weary, and to keep their eyes fixed on the promises of God. He has said:

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven
and do not return there but water the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.— Isaiah 55:10-11

Living in this promise is hard. I’m not saying it’s not. When you’re living in a marriage that feels like a desert, hope for that rain to come and soak the parched landscape begins to fade. You start to wonder if maybe rain isn’t meant for you, if you’re doomed to watch what was planted wither and die even as those in other lands prosper. But we know that Jesus came and died to cover the sins of all, and Scripture demonstrates again and again his words in Ezekiel 36:26:

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

It happens, friends. Take heart. I have seen in many times. In my husband. My grandfather. My own dad. Men who were determined to go their own way, live on their own terms, not be distracted by believing in fairy tales that had no bearing on their daily lives. They were completely derailed, made new, given new eyes, and put on an entirely new course alongside Jesus. You may have been praying for five years, or ten, or fifty. Stay the course. Keep praying for him, and do your best to reflect your faith in all you do. You’re not the Holy Spirit; you can’t make him believe. But you can continue to petition the Lord to work on your husband’s heart, to make Himself seen, and to surround him with others whose words and examples might water the seeds that have been planted in his heart. Continue on in hope, knowing that the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10)… even your husband.

In Christ,

Heather