It's a new year.

Not much has changed since my last post in September, except that I've pretty much stopped going to any church. Oh, and I tried to convince myself I was Catholic for a while. (Chesterton was fairly persuasive, but so far not finally so. If I'm any species of Christian at all, I'm probably more or less Reformed.) Thank God, I didn't really mention this to my wife, so at least she didn't see me waffling, again, some more, on the content of my faith.

I think the attractive feature that Catholicism and the Reformed faith have in common (besides the obvious gigantic overlap in true doctrine) is their certitude. Heaven and hell are real to the faithful in both camps in a way that they're just not to me. I could wish for a proper fear of hell, one that would motivate me to repent of my idolization of my family, my timidity in declaring the gospel before them. So far I can't bring myself to take any kind of pro-Jesus, anti-world stand that would cast a shadow across their temporal happiness.

Don't get me wrong-- I don't pretend to be super-husband, super-daddy. I tick my wife off with one or another form of laziness and irresponsibility every day. It makes it even harder to contemplate making demands on her time with respect to church. It would just be another way in which I'd failed in her eyes, just another cross she'd have to bear.

That's putting it a bit melodramatically, I guess; and I should make clear that she'd tolerate it if I went to church for an hour every other week at a nice mainline Protestant house of worship. But she'd tolerate it the same as she'd tolerate any other questionable hobby: only to a point. I'd liken it to the way some women tolerate their husband's monthly low-stakes poker game, or the occasional cigar on the back porch. It's okay if it gets me through the night, but don't let it get in the way of real life.

If, on the other hand, she knew that what I really want to do is join and support the local Orthodox Presbyterian congregation, our marriage would cease to function. I would become an enemy with whom she must be civil while the children are present. I would be held a traitor to the truths she holds sacred. She would be miserable; I would be miserable; sooner or later the girls would be miserable, too.

I have to think God has other plans. Oh, if anyone's reading this and is of a praying bent of mind, then pray for me, pray for my family. Pray that my wife will be opened to the gospel this year. Or if that's too much to ask, you could even pray that I'll find a way to go back and take the "blue pill" and perish in my cowardice and temporal satisfaction. I don't really want to go back to the fleshpots of Egypt, but it's been years that I've prayed for the courage to go forward and I can't find it. Please, please pray for my salvation and that of my family.