And so it was with Lee and I. While there was a part of me that wanted to settle down with him immediately (mostly the part of me that fell head-over-heels in love with his amazing kids) there was another part of me that still needed to figure out where my place in life really was before I could consider committing to anyone. It took a while, and through it, my spirituality was key.
As Lee and I began our friendship, we were both die-hard pagans of a generic-but-slightly-Wiccan nature. We cast circles together, we communed with nature, we taught the kids about the Wheel of the Year and how to create spells. However, we were not very sociable in our spirituality. We kept it between ourselves, not for shame, but because both of us needed that independence. We needed to be our own spiritual home, without any community or influence other than ourselves. Somehow, as we progressed in our relationship with each other and became more intimate, we started to lose our fervor for this private paganism. That's when a hole began to grow in our spirituality and certain distance developed in our relationship.
In 2010, Lee proposed to me and I said yes. By this point in time, we identified ourselves as simply "spiritual." We leaned towards and Earth-based faith, but really, life was so busy that we weren't paying much attention to our spiritual side. I was working as the art director for a professional theater summer camp which required a good 16 hours of sewing and painting many days of the week while Lee was beginning a career with Costco. All our energies were tied up in wedding preparation and our work tasks, and we developed a certain sort of numbness towards our spiritual selves that came on so slowly, it took a few years for us to recognize what was happening.
It wasn't until we discovered that there was a baby on the way that I began to examine why I was so disconnected from my spiritual self. Once I started looking into this, I realized that I was growing spiritually distant from my husband and even my step-kids. We were all quietly floundering, like so many in the world, holding on to the shell of an old spiritual identity that no longer fit us as well as it used to. If my step-kids, who were 7 and 10 at the time, were so disconnected with their spirituality, how could I be capable of instilling a sense of spiritual identity in my son when he arrived?
I admit, I began to panic. A lot. I began to feel like maybe there was no answer, maybe my disconnect with my sense of spirituality was a glimmer of the horrible truth - that there is no spirituality. However, I faced complications with my pregnancy and became increasingly afraid to consider the possibility of my spirituality being a lie. I shut away those dark and confusing thoughts and focused on my pregnancy. I spent 6 months on bed rest, 3 weeks in the hospital hooked up to all manner of monitors, and jubilantly gave birth to a bouncing baby boy on March 14th, 2012.
For three weeks, I was in heaven. I was connected to the wonders of nature and the majesty of life. Then, one night, it hit me. I was feeding my tender little son in the middle of the night while Lee snored soundly in bed when suddenly it hit me - one day, this beautiful babe, this bundle of potential and hope, would die. There was nothing I could do to protect him from that because I would already be dead. Death would inevitably sneak up upon us and steal us away from each other thus making our time together, however joyful or loving, pointless.
This thought made my blood run cold and my heartbeat change its pace. I trembled, I cried, and I suddenly felt such desperation I still cannot comprehend the panic that was coursing through me. Over the next three months, I did battle with this sense of anxiety. Whenever I was alone with my son, I found myself struggling to push back fears and worries that would ultimately leave me a sobbing mess. I could suppress the anxiety while spending time with family and friends, but then night would roll around and poor Lee would find me sobbing and crying and ranting about not being able to find the point of life. Of course, I'm not blaming my postpartum anxiety on my lack of spirituality, not wholly at least. Yet, I can't ignore how intertwined my spiritual shortcomings and my deep fears were during this time.
After three months of struggling with these dreadful emotions alone (Lee did what he could, but there was nothing anyone could say to make the fears and anxiety subside) I decided to go to a doctor and seek professional help. My doctor is a lovely woman, graced with a bedside manner that makes you feel valued and comforted, and she prescribed me the standard low-dose medication for postpartum anxiety. However, she also asked how I identified myself spiritually. I had no response beyond "well, I'm spiritual..."
That was when Lee and I began to talk about finding a spiritual community to join. We had friends who attended the local Unitarian Universalist church that we had met through pagan gatherings back in the day, so we decided to give it a try. It was unbelievable. My step-kids were so comfortable with the children they met in the RE program and they lit up immediately. As for Lee and I, we felt so welcomed and so at home with everyone there.
It didn't happen immediately, it took about half a year, but I weaned myself off my medications and found myself feeling more an more confident about my spiritual identity thanks to the UU community we became involved with. While I was conquering my anxieties, Lee was finding a new community and spiritual identity in himself. It wasn't long before he approached me about becoming full fledged members of the church and I could see in him so much confidence and strength - things that I hadn't realized he had been missing in life. He became a worship associate in the church and the experience thrilled him and filled him with joy. My step-kids made friends and began having deep discussions about spirituality, faith, and social justice. It was as though this deep, dark hole that had grown within us all so slowly was being filled up with radiant comfort and peace.
We are all still on our own spiritual quests, seeking answers to questions and finding reason in the midst of the chaos that is our lives, but with every passing day, we are becoming more whole. We are meeting new people who bring with them new opportunities and new confidence, discovering the community of spirituality that we never realized we missing. My husband and I look at each other differently now, evolving together as we grow our spiritual identities and blaze a new path in our lives.
This is not a story about how Unitarian Universalism saved our marriage or restored love in our home. This is a story about how my marriage was the beginning of an ultimately beautiful journey into a world of new discoveries and realizations. My love and friendship with the most wonderful man I have ever known helped to bring me to connect with the most wonderful community I could ever imagine. I am honored and blessed to be walking this spiritual path with Lee, a husband who has stood by me in my darkest hour and rejoiced with me in my brightest, and I look forward to raising our children together in the love that radiates from the UU community.
- Jennifer Blosser -
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