Intro

So, my situation is a complicated one.....as is probably every one's in this world!  So some fast facts about me:
1. I am a true practicing Catholic....meaning that I actually believe what the church teaches...yes, all of it.  Shocking, I'm sure!
2.  I am also an only child whose parents are very involved in my life.  That has its pluses and minuses.
3.  I approach life in a logical fashion most of the time, as is natural to me as a scientist.
4.  And the final piece to this puzzle is my wonderful boyfriend and my current dilemma.

You see he is great in so many ways.  Our personalities mesh so well.  He is easy-going, very loyal, sweet, loves to spend time with me both on the phone (we live 45 minutes apart, so a lot of time on the phone) and in person.  His faith is also important to him....and therein lies the rub.  He's Lutheran.  He's known since the beginning that I am staunch in my faith and as such, want to raise my/our kids in the Catholic faith.  He is supportive of that and even goes to church with me about 90% of the time.  The first year of our relationship all signs pointed to him converting in the future, so I didn't worry about it a lot.  My Dad converted after being married 7 years, thus why I was open to dating a non-Catholic in the first place.

Then came the second year.  He stopped talking about the future on any sort of regular basis.  Also, he all of a sudden wasn't sure about raising the kids Catholic.  And, he no longer wanted to do RCIA as he agreed to earlier just for learning purposes.  Something was wrong, and I just couldn't figure it out.  We were in a stall.  After a few months he said that he longer had any issues raising the kids Catholic.  However, he just wasn't ready to move forward.  He didn't really have a reason for me.  So, after giving him some time....we broke up.

For about 12 hours as he showed up on my doorstep the next morning.  Begging for another chance.  He was going to go to counseling to work through whatever was holding him back.  Talking about the future, etc.  However, I was churning still....so I went through hell trying to figure out what to do.  I came up with the idea that I had peace about....to tell him that we were breaking up, but if he had things sorted out in 6 months to a year to look me up and see if I was single.  If so, we'd see if we could figure things out.  My mom even presented me with the same idea on her own!  Which I was shocked at, because she usually wouldn't give me an out like that.  She usually assumes that I would hold onto that instead of truly looking for a better match.  Also, I met with my spiritual director....she came up with that on her own too.  Since it came from 3 sources, I felt that was direction from God, and I had peace about it.  It had been about a week by then and basically said I wasn't up for waiting for him to be alright....I felt I would be constantly pressuring him even if I didn't say anything.  Also, I was exhausted from waiting 6 months for him even to get to the point of wanting to work on it.  So, I told him to look me up in 6 months to a year if he felt he had worked through it, and if I was still available....then we would see if we could work things out.  We'll call that chapter 1.