Here is part two of my wife’s post carried over from yesterday. Enjoy and be sure to visit her blog as well for more!

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Let’s get some background info on my husband, Andrew.

He is the grandson of a Southern Baptist pastor. However, he wasn’t really raised in a household that put much emphasis on religion either. In high school, he became a devout, but very judgmental and hypocritical Christian. He was in a Christian band and had a holier than thou type attitude.

When he went away to college, he started to lose interest in religion all together. Alcohol, partying and girls were much more important which is how he got involved with me.

Religion was never something we talked about. He was trying to get away from his and I just didn’t know enough to talk about it anyway.

As we began having children, my Mom often asked us about having the girls baptized to which we both adamantly refused. “No way,” we would say, “Let them make that decision on their own”. And often times a very heated argument would ensue.

After the loss of our last pregnancy, my husband abandoned faith all together. Not only did he not want anything to do with it, he didn’t want me involved with religion either.

You can imagine the tension in our home when I confessed Christ as Lord and Savior in 2009.

This pushed Andrew from being an atheist to an anti-theist. Any conversation remotely involving religion would end up in a fight and I would leave the room crying.

I didn’t understand why this was happening. Why would God call me to Him knowing the amount of stress it would put on our marriage. I really began questioning everything.

Andrew made it very clear that he didn’t want me putting my faith on our daughters.. He allowed them to come to church with me. He even came to church with me occasionally, which usually back fired on me because he would spend the rest of the day criticizing every word that was spoken.

Before you get to picturing Andrew as this big, bad anti-religion monster (which he sometimes was), keep in mind that I am the one who changed. When we were married, I wasn’t a Christian, nor did I have any plans of ever becoming one. Would he have married me if he knew who I was to become? At that point in his life, I’m not sure he would have.

Mid-fall 2010, Andrew was so cold-hearted and bitter. It wasn’t just my faith he was trying to destroy. He was against ALL religion. If you’ve ever seen a person consumed with hatred, you know it’s an ugly thing. And that is what he had become.

Then, I believe God started working on his heart. One night in October, we were lying in bed and Andrew tells me, “I can’t live like this anymore. This hatred is burning me alive. I’m going to do a project. The entire year of 2011, I’m going to live each month as a member of a different religion. I’ve got to stop hating these people and in order to do that, I am going to have to be them. And I need your support.”

My classic response was, “You’re kidding, right?”

But alas, he was serious. Project Conversion, as he named it, was born and we started January 2012 with him being a Hindu. He blogged the entire year and if you’re interested, you can read his journey here.

It was a rough year. I was always supportive threw many tantrums and wanted him to quit many times. I definitely didn’t always show him Christ through me. My pride got in the way and I worried about what people would think. I got so caught up in the nuances that I was missing the bigger picture.

He continued the project the entire year. I wish that I could sit here and tell you that at the end of 2011, he made his final conversion to Christianity, but he didn’t. He didn’t convert to any religion.

However, he left the year a changed man and our marriage was saved because of it. He no longer hates religions. He is now as he states, “a lover and student of all faiths”. He is the loving, caring, happy person he was when we were married.

He helps me to learn more about my religion. He goes to church and attends Bible study with me. He helps me to teach the girls about Christianity and he even helped me pick out a Bible-based homeschool curriculum for next year.

My husband may never be a Christian, but he loves me and he honors me. He is no longer an obstacle to my faith.

I’m not here to tell you that our differences in faith never cause issues within our family, because that would not be true. Being unevenly yoked definitely has it’s challenges and I’m here to tell you about those challenges and how we get through them.

Being a wife with an unbelieving spouse and interfaith marriages are topics I’ve become passionate about. You’ll read many posts about that here at Upside Down Homeschooling.

Homeschool moms, do you have an unbelieving spouse? I pray that you’ll find some love and encouragement here.

Do you know someone whose marriage is struggling because of differences in faith? Please encourage them. Your words could make a world of difference.

“Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives.” 1 Peter 3:1