Disclaimer: I don't own HIMYM.

Limbo

I. Barney

The Stinsons were a stereotypically dysfunctional Catholic family.

His mother had given birth when she was seventeen (in a convent, no less – her parents didn’t want anyone to know that she’d been pregnant). James was gay. And Barney was a womanizer with issues.

Not that Barney blamed Catholicism for his problems. He still believed in God, in a “hey, it’s been a long time since we’ve talked, but I’ve got this huge problem” kind of way. And it wasn’t because being Catholic was hard. Actually, the problem was that it was too easy. You went to a priest, told him your sins, he told you to do a few Hail Marys, and all was forgiven.

Real life didn’t work that way. Forgiveness was never that easy, forgiving was never that easy. And maybe Barney hadn’t quite forgiven the Church for misleading him.

Besides, if he was still practicing, that meant no sex. He wouldn’t that give up, not even for the Big Guy.

II. Lily

Sometimes Lily suspected that her family was Jewish only because they, as New Yorkers, were expected to be.

Sure, they had Hanukah, but they celebrated Christmas, as well. Her mother didn’t quite get kosher, and Lily never heard the Yiddish that seemed to be thrown around by Jews on TV. They took the subway to the synagogue, but got off far enough away so that it looked like they’d been walking. And her bat mitzvah had been more about money than any ascent into womanhood. It was a superficial kind of a faith, paying lip service to the concept of religion.

So, sometime in high school, she’d gone from being vaguely Jewish to vaguely atheist. Nothing really changed.

III. Marshall

Church was a social event for the Eriksens. It was a source of potluck dinners and gossip, and Marshall was fine with that. All of his friends had gone, too, and they could whisper while the sermon was going on, and no one seemed to mind. Except his mom, occasionally, although she talked more than he did.

When Marshall went to Wesleyan, he tried going to the local Lutheran church, but it wasn’t the same. For him, church was about community. Now that he didn’t know anyone, it didn’t feel right anymore.

When he and Lily had kids, he might start going back, to give them the same kind of experience. But, for now, all he needed were his friends, and his wife, and the occasional prayer.

IV. Robin

It took Robin nineteen years to figure out that she’d never been to church.

OK, so she knew that she’d never been to church. It just never came up in conscious thought before then. She’d never even considered what she believed.

As she did with everything bad that happened to her at that point in life, Robin blamed her father. Robin looked around, and everyone was defined by their religion, by their heritage, by their gender. Her father had given her none of that. So Robin Scherbatsky became the first teen to rebel by becoming religious, rather than by refusing religion.

Every week for the next year, she went to a new church. She’d tried Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, everything. In a moment of desperation, she’d even joined the on-campus Satanist group. None of them could give her what they wanted – an identity.

By the time Robin was twenty, she’d given up. If she was going to find herself, then she’d have to do it without religion. So she replaced spirituality with guns and journalism, and never looked back.

V. Ted

By the time Ted was nine, he’d learned to dread going to church.

His parents took him to nice, non-controversial, non-denominational services, where the pastor talked about “stories of the community” and the church raffle. It was a way of saving face, of blending in.

Even as a child, Ted had to wonder if this was all there was to the whole God thing.

His first foray into other religions was Catholicism. At first he’d liked it (something about the chanting and the structured services made it seem more real), but then he realized that pretty much everyone he knew was going to hell. That didn’t seem fair, somehow.

So Ted kept going, not committing to any school of thought but still aware of the vague nagging need for belief. And about once a year, he’d do or see something – witness an amazing, heart-warming coincidence, or maybe just make a random visit to a cathedral – that would make him find God again. But he couldn’t hold onto it.

Ted settled into his life, plagued by the need to believe but not sure of what to believe. Just idealistic enough to buy into the idea that something better was out there, but too cynical to go the whole hog.

This must be what limbo was like.