If you’re just joining us, I’m driving my wife Cat home from the airport, and haven’t yet told her that while she was away I became a Christian. She suspects something is going on with me, though. I’ve thus far denied it (I didn’t want to tell her while I was driving). She, Highly Suspicious that Something Is Up, has (lovingly) told me that she knows I’m lying.“I’m not lying,” I said, lying. Yikes. Better make that right. “Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s fine.”

“You bought me something, didn’t you?” she said. “You’ve got some kind of really expensive gift waiting for me at home, don’t you?”

“I wish. But I’m sure you remember the state of our finances before you left. Believe me, they haven’t improved since then. We’re lucky if we haven’t been evicted by the time we get home.”

“And there’s nothing going on with you.”

“There’s nothing. Everything’s fine.”

“Hmmph,” she said—which, in our private, Been Married For 16 Years language, translates into, “You’re keeping me in the dark about something, which of course I’m displeased with—but since I can tell whatever you’re hiding is good, you must have your own reasons for keeping it from me. So I’ll wait a little bit longer for you to tell me what it is. But I won’t forget!”

“So,” she said next, “tell me about your week. Anything happen or anything?”

“Oh, you know,” I said, signaling and moving into another lane. “Just … the usual stuff. Made some lasagna that came out pretty good. Went and saw a movie. Fixed that little leak we had under the bathroom sink. Became a Christian. Got the oil changed on the car. Did some laundry.”

Silence.

“What did you say?” she said.

“What? Whaddayamean?”

“What was that last thing you said?”

“That I did some laundry?”

“No, not that you did some laundry,” she said. “Before that. The part about you becoming a Christian?”

“Oh, right, right,” I said, my voice sort of trailing off. “That’s … that’s also something that happened.”

I drove a good long while after that in silence. Cat knows that when I have something of real emotional import to tell her, it takes me about forever to begin. I don’t know why I’m like that. It’s like a hundred people all trying to squeeze through a door at once: None come out at all. They have to get organized first.

“So,” she said softly. “Tell me.”

“I will,” I said. I laid my hand in her lap, where she cradled it in both of hers. “Of course I will. But let’s wait till we get home.”

So we did.

And I did.

And then, on the following Sunday, she came to church with me, since she was so used to our hanging out together on Sunday mornings.

And at church she was surprised to find nothing said, sung or read that contradicted her lifelong, constant, unwavering sense of what she’d always thought of as simply “The Good.”

About a year and a half after we started going to church together, she, too, got baptized into the faith.

Somewhere we have a picture of her on the day of her adult baptism, standing in the church with the pastor who blessed us by lovingly performing that ceremony.

Someday, many years from now, I imagine I’ll come across that picture, and stare at it for a long, long time. And I know that the image of my wife and our pastor will grow blurry, as the water comes to my eyes.

Whenever I tell someone about my sudden conversion to Christianity, they very often ask me what my wife thought of the change.

“Hey, man,” I often respond. “It doesn’t matter what my wife thought of it. I’m the king of my castle. If I’d wanted to become an indoor pig farmer, my wife would be fine with that! You understand? What I say goes! Besides, this isn’t about her! This is about me! It’s always about me. Me, me, me!”

And that usually puts the conversation back on track.

Man, I’m funny at five in the morning (as in: As I Write This). Um. Or not.

Anyway, I became a Sudden Believer during the tail end of a week that my wife was out of town on a business trip. Impossibly enough, she wasn’t even home when it happened!

That God. He sure knows how to … turn people’s lives into one big sitcom that’s totally missing a laugh track.

At the time of my conversion, I’d been married for sixteen years to Cat (short for “Catherine,” which is short for “Catherine the Great”—but generally she’s cool with friends just calling her “The Great”). Throughout that time—and for a great many years before then—I couldn’t have been any less of a Christian if I had horns sticking out of m head and cloven feet. I simply had no respect for the faith: It seemed like nothing more than a laughably simplistic, fear-based system designed to exploit and (especially!) capitalize on two of people’s most dependable weaknesses: guilt, and the need we all have for Daddy’s unconditional love.

People being “forgiven,” and “saved.”

Please. If ever there was a religion for the mentally unchallenged, I figured Christianity was it. And worse, actually: I thought that saying someone was a Christian was about as condemning a thing as you could say about that person—since, to me, that meant that person was guaranteed to be smug, self-righteous, judgmental, and reflexively dismissive of the beliefs of everyone who wasn’t a Christian. (Of course, like all bigots, I somehow managed to disassociate from that malicious stereotyping those Christians who were, in fact, my friends: They, of course, were “different.”)

And then (as I’ve related in previous blogs) I had an entirely different view on the matter.

Then I was one of the people for whom I’d always held such disdain.

That God. He sure knows how to hit ya’ where you’re craziest.

Anyway, the man Cat left behind on her business trip that week was the Happy Heathen Husband whom she’d always known and tolerated. The man waiting for her at the airport the night she flew home, however, was … well, holding a Bible, for one.

“Is that a Bible?” she asked, after having jumped in my arms, and hugged and kissed me so much it was all I could do to pretend it embarrassed me.

“Uh, yes,” I said. “It is.” By then we’d started walking toward the baggage claim. She stopped dead in her tracks.

“What?” I said. “What is it?”

She closed the distance between us, and fixed me with her humongous brown eyes that always seem to have behind them energy and love piped in directly from, well, God.

“Something’s going on with you,” she said. “What is it?”

See, this is the problem with marrying a woman with freakish, supernatural intuitive powers. I could be just thinking about, say, artic seals, and she’d go, “I just got cold. Are you cold?” It’s like living with Cassandra, the Gypsy Empath.

“No, no” I said, trying to sound casual. I didn’t want to tell her at the airport. “Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s good.”

“I didn’t say anything was wrong,” she said. “I said something was going on with you. You seem … different.”

“Well, a week is the longest we’ve ever been apart,” I replied. “I’m surprised you recognize me at all. In fact, when you first came off the plane I saw you heading for that other guy, that cop-looking guy. Oh, sure, he was handsome. If he hadn’t been so groomed, you’d probably be going home with him right now.”

She reached up, and rubbed her fingers in my longish stubble. “I do prefer the furry types,” said.

“C’mon,” I said. “I’m feeling too psychologically fit. Let’s go get our baggage, man.”

About halfway through our drive home from the airport that night, Cat said, “So? When are you going to tell me what’s going on with you?”

“Nothing!” I said, a little too intensely. I didn’t want to tell her while I was driving. “Nothing’s going on with me.”

“You are so lying,” she said. 

Next Time: How My Unbelieving Wife Took The News of My Suddenly Becoming a Christian (Pt. 2)