I admire my new religious friends and acquaintances. Their dedication to living lives of Torah and Mitzvot inspire me. And nevertheless, although I feel a greater spiritual connection with them than I have ever felt with other people, I still feel as if there is a great divide between us. The divide is not one of knowledge of halacha or other elements of the foundations of our faith, although those exist of course. The chasm relates to their inability (understandably) to empathize with the profound sense of loneliness my becoming religious has created. It is ironic how lonely I feel at times because the irreligious, or perhaps more appropriately stated, the anti-religious, often scoff that people succumb to religiosity for a sense of connection. These enlightened secularists feel only the ignorant social misfit could possibly want to live a life dedicated to G-d. It could not be more opposite for me.
How can I explain what it feels like to have almost no one in my family respect my choice to become religious? How can I convey what it feels like to go to a family event and feel both anger and sorrow? Anger that these people cheated me out of a religious upbringing and sorrow that I know no matter what I say, no matter how positive of an example I set, they will never come to Torah. To make things worse for me, my wife’s family is just as bad if not worse. Although they have made some efforts to accommodate our new lives, sarcastic comments from my wife’s father about eating bacon, or arguments with my mother-in-law about why my kids cannot swim on Shabbos are a frequent occurrence.
To make things worse, my wife seems to just be along for the ride. She has no real connection to our faith and feels it is more important for our kids to be around their non-kippa wearing, treif food eating, tznius issue laden, cousins than it is for them to be exposed to positive Jewish values. After today’s family event, with music blasting (during Sefirah), non-kosher food all around us, intermarried relatives, not a kippah to be seen for 20 miles outside of my own, and of course no tzitzit, because I was not happy enough for my wife we are talking about divorce again. I am so torn.
On the one hand, I would like to just walk away and start over. Marry someone frum and live the life I want to live. On the other, I deeply love my children and know that I will lose them completely (to the secular world) if we divorce. I feel blessed that Hashem has brought me to Torah; yet, I want to know why he continues to beat me down. When does he start to build me back up?!!
Some of this journey is just hard, and for the first two paragraphs of what you wrote I can completely empathise. Been there, worked out my coping strategies. (I still amn’t married – which in itself doesn’t make things easier, communally – so can’t comment on the rest.)
Hatzlacha.