I’m just going to go ahead and rip the Band-Aid off. It’s supposed to be less painful that way, right?

My husband and I separated, after 9 years of marriage. He moved out last weekend. It is both mutual and, thus far, amicable.

I am a walking cliché, it seems. Conservative Christian becomes an atheist and divorces her husband. The narrative pretty much writes itself, huh?

Well, whatever. Hey, they told me that if gay marriage passed in New York, it would endanger every marriage. Heh.

All joking aside (that is, if I know how to not joke when things are tense, which I don’t), blogging about my marriage and separation puts me in a bit of a tight spot. See, I have one and only one rule about blogging – no blogging about my husband.

I have had so many posts that I wanted to do over the past almost-two years about marriage and Christianity, but it was hard to do that while we were going through our problems without revealing that we were going through our problems. And, well, it’s just not cool to blog about your marital problems, you know?

So, now’s my chance to talk about some of that stuff. Of course, I will still keep my husband’s privacy one of my primary concerns. I don’t intend to use my blog as a forum to air my dirty laundry.

However, I do intend to use it as a place to discuss what’s wrong with Christianity’s views on marriage, and how those beliefs negatively affected my own marriage, from my perspective, of course. I think these things need to be discussed because they constitute so much of what is wrong with Christianity.

Sorry that I haven’t been around much lately. There are two reasons for that.

The first one is that I got a new laptop and I didn’t know my password to the blog. Yes, in other words, I was too lazy to turn on my old laptop and get the password. Sorry. It happens. I still love you. Hopefully, you’ll be more forgiving when I tell you the second reason.

The second reason, you will have to wait for. Oh, yes, I just did that. Sorry. It’s called building anticipation. I’ll tell you everything after after the weekend. It’ll all make sense. Promise.

In the meantime, be nice to someone just because you can. It will make you feel good.

Talk soon,
Charity

If you are not on facebook, there is a box right at the top of this blog’s sidebar with the recent facebook posts, so you can see the things I post, too. (But, why aren’t you on facebook?)

If you are on facebook, please consider liking Shatter Nicely. When you do, links to the latest posts, and anything else I share, will show up in your news feed. And you can leave comments over there or post on the wall, too. (Okay, yeah, you probably know how facebook pages work!)

Hope to see you there!

At any rate, I thought I would throw this post up here as a place for any conversations that anyone wants to continue, or even new ones you want to start.

I want to add a couple things to my comments in the “Molecules” post.

First, I want to say that I am not here to debate theology. That’s not to say that I am so sure that I am right (that there is no god) that I would never listen to someone try and convince me, or anything like that. I am not closed-minded. It’s just not what this blog is about for me. I am not posting here to make an argument or convince anyone to become an atheist. I am not an evangelical. I don’t need converts.

This blog is just where I post about my feelings and experiences with Christianity (a very specific kind of Christianity, not every possible permutation of Christianity), my deconversion experience, and my thoughts about life, and other stuff, now that I am an atheist.

I don’t have the time, nor the inclination, to debate theology. I welcome all comments and I enjoy reading what others have to say on the matter, but I want to let you know that I will probably not participate much in the discussion. Don’t take it personally.

Speaking of not taking things personally, I know this blog is hard to read for anyone who is still a Christian. It feels like a personal attack. Know that it is not. If I am angry, snide, sarcastic, or in any other way unpleasant, it is toward the emotional harm that I brought to myself by believing things that I believed and doing things that I did, while I was a Christian.

This is about me. This blog is about me. Not you. Not god. But me. This blog is a place where I come to sort out my feelings and thoughts. Along the way, I have met other people who have had similar experiences. This blog is about them, too.

I know that Christianity is a very personal religion. As such, it is hard to separate a person’s dislike of or abandonment of the religion from that person’s feelings for you. I get that. I was there. I also experience it from the other side, now. I feel the pain of knowing that some of my relationships will never be the same again. I even still have friends and family members who do now know that I am an atheist because I am still afraid of what it will do to our relationship.

But, try to keep in mind that I do not have any bad feelings toward anyone for believing. I don’t think they are stupid or foolish. I understand that everyone is just trying to make sense of this crazy world we all live in, and we all do that the best way we know how.

Please respect that I am just doing the same thing.

My life is finally starting to come together. I enrolled in a personal coaching training program. I am very excited about this. I have not really known what I wanted to do with my life for years, so having a focus is so invigorating!

The down side is that I have been super busy the past week, and will be again in a couple weeks when classes start. But, that’s a good thing!

I am also working on wrapping up our homeschool year, doing taxes, and some other yearly paperwork-type things, so that’s why I haven’t participated much in the comments discussion. But, thank you for the comments discussion! We don’t see too many of those around here!

I will definitely post this weekend! Hope you have a great St. Patrick’s Day! I have my corned beef on the stove right now.

(Man, I need to lay off the “!” key!)

Whatever was wrong with my system trashed the recovery partition, so I had to install it from a disc. Oh, yeah, but first I had to figure out why the system couldn’t find the DVD drive. Between backing up all my files and transferring them to the desktop computer, fighting with the computer to install Windows (which took a few attempts), installing all the drivers and programs I needed, setting up my e-mail client, running updates, and all the other little things that needed to be done, it took the entire weekend.

And I am still not finished installing this plug-in and that plug-in that I run into every time I try to do anything online. What a colossal pain in the rear!

I still have no idea what even happened. I guess I got some sort of virus, even though my anti-virus is up-to-date. I did get a weird Windows update the other day that might have been phony. It’s weird that it got through; I am pretty careful about that kind of stuff.

Anyway, I hope I never have to go through that again. But, at least (1) I was able to backup my data before the system got too bad and (2) I can do all that stuff myself, instead of paying someone hundreds of dollars to do it for me.

All it cost me was time, but unfortunately that meant no blogging.

I actually did a post last week, but I decided not to post it. I might still, but there was something not quite right about it. Maybe it was the timing. Not sure.

At any rate, I just thought I would let you all know that I am still around. I should resume posting tomorrow. I hope to get into a regular routine so that my posting frequency is more predictable.

Thanks for stopping by! Feel free to say “hi” in the comments.

I know it has been, like, forever since I posted.  I will tell you all about why I haven’t been around very soon, but right now, as you can imagine, I am slammed with Christmas preparations.  I am having dinner for 9 at my house.  Oh, and the guests are actually coming at 9 am, so I am having breakfast, appetizers, dinner, and dessert for 9 at my house.  Lots to do!  I am going to be baking, baking, baking for the rest of the week.

I hope you all have a happy and joyous holiday!  (Or Saturday, if you don’t celebrate any holiday!)

I will be back to blogging soon!

Thanks for stopping by.  Hope you are well!

It was a good experience to post everyday, good for discipline.  It wasn’t too good for content, as there were a few posts that were obvious fillers.  Still, overall, I posted more good posts this month than I have been.  I want to keep up the increased pace.  I also like that I added in some lighter posts to the mix.  I think it gives the blog a better feel.

Now, all that’s left is to win one of the prizes!