Somehow my husband managed to talk me into taking this class called "7 Steps to Financial Freedom". It is a finance course targeted toward Catholic couples. The guy who wrote the course is apparently a well known Catholic guy named Phil Lenahan. I do not consider us a "Catholic couple" since I am not Catholic; my husband is. I don't know how he decided he wanted to do this thing. At first when he told me about it, it was so he could be trained to teach the course to other couples, then it changed to "we have to take the course as a couple." Since I have asked my husband to do some things with me at my church, I thought it would be my obligation to do this class with him. Turnabout is fair play, afterall. Anyway, for some reason I absolutely DREAD these classes. The other couples in the class are very nice, they all have good things to say, and the guy who is teaching it is really nice as well, but I just get a knot in my stomach every Thursday evening when it comes time to go to the class. I agree with nearly everything the course has to say about budgeting and giving money back (tithing), and that all we have comes from God. I believe all that. I just can't feel comfortable with all the Catholic stuff. I get so hung up on how exclusionary the Catholic traditions are that I can barely sit still. Everyone has to take a turn leading in prayer which I am terrible at, and I am self-conscious about not doing the sign of the cross, and everyone has to read aloud a bunch of stuff from the Catechism book thingy. Half of the time I can't even pronounce the words, let alone understand what the words mean. Some of the stuff about sending your children to ONLY Catholic schools (higher education included) I just don't agree with. After tonight, there are still three nights left and I know next week we will miss the class. My husband said we have to make it up by going to another class on Tuesday night. I am hoping one of the girls has something on their schedule that will require me to bow out of the class. Isn't that awful? I just really feel that uncomfortable about it. I feel trapped and I also feel like somehow, I am doing something dishonest by sitting through these classes and everyone thinks I am on the same page as they are. I feel like a bad person, but I will have a budget to follow!