How Do You Raise Kids in a Mixed Faith Marriage?

In episode 4 of The Mystic and the Saint, we talk about one of the hardest parts of a mixed faith marriage: raising kids together. When one parent believes in organized religion and the other doesn’t, how do you decide what to teach your children? How do you respect each other’s beliefs while still guiding your kids spiritually?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

My most difficult aspect of raising kids with somebody who's a different religion than I am is sending them into the religion that I grew up in that taught me so much, but also I feel like caused a lot of damage and feeling like I'm sending them like a lamb to slaughter. I'm the mystic and he's the saint. We're opposites in every way and still choose to be married. Welcome to the conversation. I'm Sierra.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

And I'm Devin.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

And today we're going to talk about how we try to raise kids in a mixed faith marriage.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

The hardest part, I think, is rediscovering what is important to me, or maybe even discovering for the first time spiritually what is it, what's most important for me so that I can communicate that to you and communicate that to the kids is these are the things that I want to instill or pass on to our kids. Because when you're in a religion or a church, a lot of that stuff just comes pre-packaged. And so you can just say, here's what it is, and take the kids to church and do kind of what those things are. But because we've interrupted that flow a little bit, now it's kind of like, oh, I need to pick and choose. But like, what are the things that I truly find most important and want to share?

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Yeah. And for me, because I I feel like I already had spirituality before. But for you, I feel like you had religion before, but you didn't really have spirituality. So since I had spirituality before, now knowing the harmful things that were taught to me, lots of them are still being taught to our kids and trying to balance it out with recognizing there is so much good that comes from the church and having those conversations of like, you were taught this at church today. Do you feel like that's true or not? And not feeling guilty for sending my kids to a place that caused me harm.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Yeah, I think it's really tricky because we don't want to, or I don't want to, I don't want to minimize the experiences that you've had, obviously, and that plenty of other people have had. Don't want to minimize those, but there are, to your point, and to what I'm saying, is there are a lot of really good experiences and a lot of really good things that happen there. So it is difficult. It is challenging to say how do we avoid those pitfalls or those potential moments because they don't happen to everybody. The bad stuff doesn't necessarily happen to everybody or impact everybody in the same way. So how do we pick the best stuff for the kids and also just try and be there in case? I mean, bad stuff's gonna happen no matter what. And I'm not saying that again as a minimizing thing is like do whatever we want, but you just have to try and stay attuned and stay in touch and encourage the most good.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

Well, and when you talk about not being harm, a lot of people would argue, well, men aren't harmed in the church because it was built for them, but there's a lot of harm that comes from living in a patriarchal society and system because it puts a lot of pressure on men. And so at first I didn't really think about it and was like, whatever the systems built for them, push them through. But then I started really analyzing and looking at what are what's being taught to them and how are their little minds perceiving it and taking it in?

SPEAKER_00 3:18

Yeah, I think there's high expectations from both men and women, and it can cause stress and anxiety trying to live up to those expectations. Yeah. And processing that. So how do we help encourage or form that spirituality in our kids coming from different backgrounds? What are the things that you do pass on to them or encourage in them?

SPEAKER_01 3:43

For me, it's just a curiosity and a drive to care about their spirituality, not even necessarily about are you following all the rules, are you doing this, but genuinely caring about the good and the bad that they bring into this world? Because I feel like, particularly in regards to religion, it's like you get a prize at the end. So if you check these boxes, then at the end when you die and you go to heaven, it's like, yay, you won, you get this treasure. And really I want a mansion. It's a mansion. You get a mansion in heaven. Anyway, I want them to care about right here, right now. Do I have value? And is what I'm offering to the world and doing a value, not just end goal is a mansion in the sky.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

Yeah, I think that's where a lot of that burnout can come from if you're just stuck on this end goal that isn't really tangible in the sense that you can't you don't know if you're doing it. You don't know if you're succeeding. Somebody might try and tell you yes or no, but that's all ambiguous. So I think that that breeds kind of that competitiveness or comparison or judgment a little bit. But I think, yeah, if you can encourage that mentality of just trying to do the right things in the right ways.

SPEAKER_01 5:04

And be in the moment, because I feel like that's one of the big things that was hard for me with religion was it was always you're planning for an eventuality that we don't even know if exists. And you're putting all of your stress and your anxiety on this future thing, right? Being in the moment right now.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Which I think is what detracts from that spirituality. Yeah. You're just trying to run through that and say, I'm doing a good job. But where's the legitimate connection with God? Where's that spirituality coming from if you're just constantly saying, one day I'll have that?

SPEAKER_01 5:39

Yeah. And my entire life was a checklist of like, I have to do this, and I wasn't enjoying any of it because it all felt like, and I have to. And now I feel like I have joy making dinner and chopping vegetables because I'm in the moment and I can be grateful that I'm feeding my body healthy things, or what like minimal stupid stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 6:03

Yeah, so that's one of the things that we encourage, and I think it blends together well because for you it's in the moment, how do we do good? For me, it's easy to blend in. Hey, Jesus is a he went about doing good things, he was always caring about others. So I think that's one of those things that kind of blends together pretty easily.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

I think one of the things that is fun, sometimes it can be a little bit difficult, but holidays. Holidays have a little bit of a different meaning and different perspective. But we did instead of just sending New Year's resolutions, we did a fun activity.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

Yeah, we just wrote down intentions for the year. We wrote, I think, 12 of them, and then each day we burned one without looking at it, and then at the end we had our intention for the year.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Yeah, that was a fun activity that I think helped us draw attention to an activity that didn't have much attention before. And I think we've shaped that and done that with a few other things, which is that I don't know your standpoint really on prayer, but we still incorporate prayer around certain times, like dinner time. It's a time that we come together, we sit down, we kind of use prayer as a way to focus us and center us in that moment, be grateful for what's there in front of us, and then that sets the tone for the rest of the dinner where we have the kids there, we can talk to them, engage with them, do all of that stuff. It helps us kind of just say, no, we're here, we're sitting here, we're focused on this, and we're gonna talk for a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

Are there other things that you think we've blended or done well like that?

SPEAKER_01 7:42

I feel like we've done a really good job of blending a lot of it, and maybe some people that are religious would say that we haven't, because we don't really, I don't anyway, ever talk about Jesus or God, but we talk all of the time about the principles of the religion. So rather than saying, well, Jesus wants you to be kind, we say, Well, how does it feel when people are kind to you? How are you? Like we talk about the principles all of the time.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

Yeah, I think we I think that is the heavy focus because that's how we blend. I will say that I toss in Jesus and God. That's my kind of pieces that I'm throwing in, but it isn't, I don't think it's too much heavy-handed me, and I don't think it's too much heavy-handed you. I think that's one of the areas that we find to mix that in. Yeah. What are some absolute no-go's boundaries that we've kind of set for each other from each other's standpoint?

SPEAKER_01 8:41

This one I feel like might be kind of difficult for people listening in who may not be Mormon because a big boundary that I set was around baptism. In regards to your religion, Mormons believe you get to choose to be baptized at the age of eight. And if you are not baptized in this life, you'll have the opportunity to be baptized in a next. So, with that being the context, I thought, hey, let's not have them get baptized when they're eight then. And they can get baptized when they're 18 when their brain's a little bit more fully developed and they can actually choose that rather than just them choosing it because it's what all their friends are doing or because their extended family say that it's the right thing to do. So in the context of your religion, that was a boundary that I was really wanted to make because your religion made it sound like it was a choice anyway. So I was like, let's not have a child make that choice. Whereas I don't know if I would have set up that boundary if you were a part of the religion where they had to be baptized when they were babies or their soul would be lost. Because I feel like it would have been too painful for you to believe that their soul now had no opportunity if they died before they got baptized.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

Okay. Yeah, if we were a different mixed faith, that might be a bigger issue. But yes, I think in our current situation, I think we found that nice groove of you're not saying a hard no, you're just saying let's wait until they're a little bit older. Yeah. And yes, that blends well with my beliefs. It doesn't blend well in the sense that we're encouraged to be baptized today. Yeah. We have to make that compromise.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

Yeah, that's where the boundary is. While there's an expectation that our children will be baptized at the age of eight, the boundary is now they can make that choice for themselves when they are adults.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

Yeah. So I think 18, is that your your line that you've drawn in the sand of?

unknown 10:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:40

If you're old enough to vote, you are old enough to vote for God. Yeah, because I don't.

SPEAKER_00 10:46

Somebody's gonna win, somebody's not.

SPEAKER_01 10:48

What boundaries have you had?

SPEAKER_00 10:50

Boundaries is I still would like and still want to be able to talk about God and Jesus and kind of teach that lesson as far as the gospel goes.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:02

And that example. And we don't necessarily do that from the standpoint. I don't say things like you'll be damned to hell if you don't do this or different things like that. It's more of just the here is an example, here is somebody that we should all, in my opinion, strive to be like. Yeah. And whether you believe it or not, kind of like what we talked about before, whether you believe in Jesus or not, those principles are sound for a good life. And I think that that blends well, but you still allow me to kind of talk about somebody that you may not believe in.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Another boundary that I feel like Lisa is we do not talk bad about each other's religion or choices. And that is something that I feel like is not okay either way. Like the me sneaking in after you taught the kids something and being like, that guy's full of shit.

SPEAKER_00 11:52

And again, I think that there's been some snarky comments both ways along the way.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

But never in secret.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

No. No, no, no. It's always in front of each other. Yeah. I think I take it to an extreme sometimes of if I have a conversation with the kids, I'll come back to you and say, hey, I just had this conversation with them. This is what I talked about. Is that blend well? Is that okay with did I tell them something that's going to encourage something? Because I haven't experienced the same hurt. I haven't experienced the same situations you have. So I don't necessarily know how to blend that. And again, it's not necessarily an I'm asking for permission or or forgiveness for talking about it. It's just a, hey, if we need to augment this conversation or rehab it and introduce some new principles or some new thoughts, processes to this. This is the conversation I had. And if we want to rehash that, let's rehash it.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

Which we do with parenting in general.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

Of like, hey, the kid asked a question about this, and this is what I said. I don't know if that's the right answer.

SPEAKER_00 12:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

We cool with what I said. So it's not any different than the way that we parent in general because we try to parent as a team.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

Yeah. And I think one of the scariest parts about it probably is that you just have to, there is an acceptance to some degree of the kid gets to pick. And again, from my standpoint, and I think the example that you just gave there, you judge your kids, you want your kids to be successful, you want them to have happiness and all of this stuff. And so I think from the religion standpoint, that's ingrained in you that following this path will get you the most happiness and the most success. And so I think it's hard to let go of that to an extent.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

And say, here is the proven road, here's a paved road that you can follow and should get you to happiness. It doesn't always, because I think to some degree, and and this is what's hard about religion, is they they encourage you to go out and discover it and find it and choose the right thing, while also at the same time saying, here's the path.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:58

And so both things are true at the same time. And and I think that's one of the hard things from a parenting standpoint is just saying, I have to come to terms with allowing my kid to choose.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

Right. And that makes it really difficult for extended family as well, because one thing that the Mormon church does is really, really focus on and them being together forever. And if you leave the church, you can't be with your family together forever. And so not only is this something that we are trying to work on and figure out how to raise our kids, but now everybody is like, hey, those are my nieces and nephews, those are my grandkids, and you're stopping them from getting into heaven. And so it feels like all of a sudden everybody gets to have a say in how we raise our kids because especially both of our families are LDS.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

That's one of the doctrinal points of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is families can be together forever. I think a lot of the family stuff, there is that notion of families can be together forever, and if you leave, then you're tearing that apart. I think maybe some of that is the burden that you put on yourself from thinking that you're pulling that apart. I think more of the feedback or the the kickback that we get is probably more in regards to this is the right way to get to happiness, and we all want you to be happy.

SPEAKER_01 15:27

Well, because when you think about raising kids in different religions, it's not just about this life. It's literally eternity, it's forever.

unknown 15:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

And it's in regard to children. So if there's somebody that's an adult, you would be sad that they are making those choices for themselves. But then when the organization is telling you this is how you get a good eternity forever, and this couple right here is not choosing that, of course, everybody's going to panic because it's like, hey, those kids don't have a choice in this. You have to be teaching them how to get into a happy eternity. And it makes it easy for external sources to come and tell you how to parent because it's like, hey, I may be crossing a boundary here or whatever, but I need my nieces and nephews to get into freaking heaven. And you're shaping their brain right now when they're seven years old.

SPEAKER_00 16:24

And now maybe they're not going to because Yeah, I think people associate maybe different life choices outside of the this is the path with not happiness and not a connection to God.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

So when we present something that is outside of that path, it just is deemed that they won't be happy. Yeah. And that they won't have a spiritual connection.

SPEAKER_01 16:47

Yeah. Or Right.

SPEAKER_00 16:49

And that's, I guess, what I'm trying to say is I don't know that a lot of people maybe make that connection of we won't have an eternal family or whatever. It's more along the lines of you're you're not gonna let them be happy. You're not gonna everything gets simplified, if that makes sense.

unknown 17:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

Because when things are structured like that, it's just a plug and play. And if you don't plug it and if you don't play it, then the opposite is true. So if it's not the church, then it's sadness. Even though if you really think about it, there's plenty of people who are connected to God and connected to Jesus and all that stuff and very, very happy. And I think that people would say that's a great thing, that's a good thing. Even people who are part of the church would say that's a great thing and that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 17:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:30

It's just in those not really thinking moments where it's like, no, yeah, you have to do it.

SPEAKER_01 17:35

Yeah. And I feel like it's easy from my standpoint to look at the people who make comments about our parenting and be like, back off, this isn't, but then I have to remember what it was like being in that mindset of thinking, plug-in play, and giving people grace to be like, yeah, that if you believed this was the only way to have happiness, and you were watching some in-law come in and screw up your grandbabies, it would be hard to not make a comment. Not saying that it's okay to make the comment, but I try to give some grace because I know what it's like being in that situation.

SPEAKER_00 18:13

It's all about communication and talking.

unknown 18:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:16

So again, I would say c comments from family members are okay. It's just how are you presenting those and are you open to having the conversation?

SPEAKER_01 18:25

And are you doing it respectfully?

SPEAKER_00 18:27

Right.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

Because if you're doing it to undermine me as a parent and tell my kids that I'm an idiot and I don't know what I'm talking about, and you know how to give them the most happiness, not a hundred percent I'm okay with it.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

And you might also have to understand that somebody saying, Are you coming to church today? Could mean all of those things that you just said when they're just trying to ask the simple question of are you coming to church today? And somebody might walk away feeling like your family just told me that I'm the worst individual in the whole entire world, and our kids are going to hell because I'm choosing all of these different things.

SPEAKER_01 19:09

I said I'm trying to give them grace.

SPEAKER_00 19:13

I don't always it's a hard thing sometimes because sometimes they do make comments that are very, very I mean, everybody does. Sometimes you've made comments to the church or friends that we've been in part of with groups of people who have left, make comments to me that are like, boy, that's pretty hurtful. But I don't know that all the time they're trying to make that. Like sometimes they are trying to sting it a little bit because they want change. They want you to everybody from their perspective is in the right and they want you to be in the right with them. Yeah. And so sometimes they want you to change a little bit, and so they prod you. Other times they're just trying to make some comment. And because of the burden that we're carrying, lots of times, we can add on to that. I do it, you do it, we all do it.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:00

But family in general is it's all a progression. It's always constantly changing. And if you're gonna anchor on something, like me and you, if I throw an anchor down and say, this is what Sierra believes, I'm gonna find out really, really quick that I anchored in the wrong spot. And if I continue to hold on to that and say, no, no, no, you this is where you said you believed and this is where you stand, it's just gonna cause those fights. But if you can be open and try and process things, and I think that that bodes well with the kids because our kids' belief system at eight years old, nine years old, ten years old, it is going to be a constant evolution. And if you keep latching on and grasping onto, okay, good, this is what my kid believes, and I think I've done a good job, and I'm gonna relax, or you it just is this ebb and flow of it's constantly changing. It's constantly going to change, and you have to be open to that and accepting to where are you at and where are we headed?

SPEAKER_01 20:58

And that's one thing that I feel like being in a mixed faith marriage has really helped me as a parent and our kids because they have the opportunity to see what it's like to choose different, to try and find your own faith and your belief and spirituality and know that it's okay and your family will still love you. Not everybody has that luxury or that privilege. And so it's, I feel like setting our kids up for success to know no matter what you choose, we're still your family and we're still here. And we love that you have found happiness in the best way that you can. And you know that we still love you because mom and dad are polar opposites, and we still choose each other every day.