From Marriage to Confirmation

How a good relationship with his wife turned into a relationship with God

It started with a virtual “wink.” Blake Kasberger joined a popular dating site in his 20s, hoping to meet the future Mrs. Kasberger. It worked. After Jessica sent him a “wink,” the couple started communicating, then dating, and, five years ago, got married.

Blake grew up in Catholic home, but by the time he was an adolescent, church attendance all but stopped. Jessica grew up WELS, with a family that was active in their church and faith life.

Blake’s upbringing was quite ordinary with a loving, supportive family, who taught him the value of hard work. He can remember attending church and “CCD” (Confraternity of Christian Doctrine – basically, Catholic catechism) classes at the local Catholic church.

“My brother and I went through some CCD classes, but the classes were so disorganized and unprofessional, so my parents stopped sending us. From there, I really didn’t go to church for a while,” says Blake.

It wasn’t long after meeting Jessica that Blake learned how prominent her faith is in her life. When she invited him to church, he gladly went, knowing it was important to her. “One of the first times she asked me to go to church – that was many years ago – that was my first time going to church in many years,” he says.

Jessica says the fact that he wasn’t WELS didn’t stop her from developing a relationship with him. “It was never anything that was a roadblock for me. I never felt like I wanted to pressure him into anything. If he wanted to pursue becoming Lutheran, I wanted it to be his decision. He came to church with me, and I was happy that he was willing to do that. If he had been saying that he wasn’t going to go to church, it would’ve been more of a red flag to me. But he was very willing to come with me, because he knew it was important to me,” she says.

He continued to go to church with her while dating and eventually got confirmed in 2014, after being married a few years. His job as police officer, and the timing of the shifts he worked made it difficult to take the classes sooner. However, Jessica wasn’t worried, because she knew he was on that path, and the pastors a Grace, Milwaukee, Wis., were able to accommodate his schedule with one-on-one instruction. It was the anticipation of their first child that finally pushed Blake to that final step, so that he and Jessica would be united in faith as their family grew. His confirmation was almost exactly one year to the date following his daughter’s baptism.

Now, he says, he reads Bible stories to his children, a three-year-old daughter and one-year-old son, every night and is surprised at how much is familiar to him from his childhood days in Bible classes. Though, he admits, he still has a lot to learn and is learning the important Bible stories and doctrine as he’s teaching it to his children.

Jessica says, “I’ve notice more that while it wasn’t something he really thought about much before, now his faith and having God in our lives, it’s more important to him.”

photo by Emily Ebeling, emilyebelingphotography.blogspot.com

 

 

Author: Julie K. Wietzke
Volume 103, Number 3
Issue: March 2016

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