It may be harder for believers to look upon this with this same lack of judgment. (No wonder the world is in such a state, if there are Christians out there not even talking to their kids about Christ!)
OK, I'll bite. How could I have kept such an important thing private? How could I have raised my children with no understanding of what it means to trust Christ for salvation?
The answer is quite simple, although you sort of had to be there. And while I deeply regret that I didn't share my beliefs with my children, I'm trusting God with the outcome. He isn't shaming me about this, so I refuse to shame myself about it or let others shame me.
I married the wrong person. The reasons for this mistake are complicated, but "on paper" my decision seemed quite good. He was in full-time Christian ministry, well-liked, smart, good sense of humor. And he was convinced that I was God's choice for him. That last point should have been a red flag (was it all about him?). My gut was saying "No," but I talked myself into "Yes" by telling myself this was God's choice for me, and therefore He would make something good out of it.
I wavered for some time, even after agreeing to marry him. My confusion was augmented by conflicting advice from well-meaning fellow Christians. One person all but said I would be extremely foolish to proceed with the marriage; another person "advised" me by saying she hadn't been sure her husband was the man for her until she was walking down the aisle. Both these people were in full-time ministry (I was a student in the same ministry). Picture my head spinning.
If I had been a woman of prayer, God would have made it very clear to me not to marry this man, because he was not a man of prayer. Looking back on it, I can't remember any time he and I prayed or read scripture together by ourselves. Looking back on it, I can't remember ever hearing him talk about his relationship with God, other than perhaps in some official gathering, where he might have related some principle he had learned intellectually.
I have a vague memory of going to church for a while after we got married (in 1977), but within a few years we had virtually stopped going to church. The date is not entirely a coincidence. We had moved to the U.S. in 1978, and by the early 1980's an extremist political swing had begun within the American church. We didn't fit in anywhere. For a while we attended a church that had quite the opposite world view -- it was focused on community and peace issues. I once commented to my ex that I liked the church in some ways, but had he ever noticed that they never talked about, well, doctrine? (By which I essentially meant they never talked about Christ's saving work on the cross or about a relationship with Christ.)
Now that I look back on it, even before the 80's my ex had begun wandering away from Christianity. This happened so subtly, I didn't really notice. I had other things to worry about. The marriage was rife with deep problems from the very start.
When our first child was born, it was a new lease on life for me. I felt deeply honored to be given such a remarkable, beautiful child to know and to raise. I felt the same way when our second child came along, some time later. The marriage had long since begun disintegrating, but I adored my children. Still, by this time I was confused myself about what my faith really was. I had never let go of my core beliefs, but that's about all that was left. I still "prayed," but this had never been much more with me than just a running conversation with God about things that happened during the day, or about things that were weighing on my mind. Better than nothing, though, right?
Nothing is what my ex ended up with. He left his Christian faith altogether about two decades ago, shortly before we separated. We lived together as virtual strangers during the last year, so his changing beliefs didn't have any significant impact on me.
As I write this, I realize that even though God allowed me to make a serious mistake, He had His hand impeccably on the timing.
On numerous occasions, Jesus sternly ordered people not to testify about what they had seen and learned about Him. Was He just being humble? No, He was aware that the messenger was not ready to carry the message. Even the disciples who had spent time with Him following His resurrection were instructed not to spread the gospel message until they had received power from on high.
I'm now wondering what would have happened if my ex husband and I had shared our beliefs with our children. The marriage was a mess, to put it very gently. What would our children have learned about Christ if we had told them Christ had the power to transform hearts and lives, but we ourselves were in chaos?
When my son spoke to me recently and I told him that I had never left my core beliefs, he replied, "Then you must have been suffering." This is a profound observation. I was suffering from this deep disconnect, but not on the surface. On the surface, I was just living life, chatting with God and making the best of it. But Jesus saw that I was suffering. Which is why He came and found me again and brought me to His arms, brought me to a beautiful renewal of my faith.
In my own eyes I wasted decades of time, spiritually. Not so in God's eyes. Because now that I've found Him again, in this sweet renewal, I've become deeply impassioned about the plight of Christians who are suffering but not on the surface. Christians who are living a life that's not the one the Holy Spirit within them longs for them to live. Christians whose prayer life has never evolved beyond chatting with God or listing off requests. Christians who have never come to understand fully what it is to live the exchanged life, where we surrender all that we are to Christ and give Him free reign to live His life through us. Christians who live disconnected from God's intimate heart, so that they have no way of truly discerning His will day by day.
God's time is not like our time. If something important He has planned for us takes a few decades to gel, that's not significant to Him. Forty years (almost exactly the time it took me to arrive at this deeper understanding of the Christian life) was one of His favorite "gelling" periods in the Old Testament.
And my children? Well, they live in an entirely secular world and have no real understanding of spiritual things. But God has had His hand on so many tiny details of this story -- things that are only now being unveiled to me. My whole life and everything it has touched is now fully surrendered, daily, at His feet. I'm prepared to trust Him with the outcome.
Then I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was, making something on the wheel. But the vessel that he was making of clay was spoiled in the hand of the potter; so he remade it into another vessel, as it pleased the potter to make.
(Jeremiah 18:3-4)