Up until two years ago, I identified myself as an agnostic or atheist. I am a questioner, a doubter, a skeptic. I have never accepted things for what they are or what they appear to be. The surface is only the surface. Even as a child I asked questions about why and how.
I was raised in a Catholic family and was sent to Catholic school. My family is a normal modern Catholic family, one that looks at their faith as a very personal thing, not often openly discussed. They help out at church and the school and volunteer often. They disagree with the church on some issues, but are rather conservative in their social politics. Essentially what some would call cafeteria-Catholics.
You would think that Catholic school would have solidified a belief in God. However I often hear stories similar to mine: it did the exact opposite. Religion class was an ambiguous fill in the I-am-special-God-loves-me-Jesus-is-my-friend crap and you get an A. Church was dull and usually spent looking at other people or thinking about other things.
By the time I entered high school I had decided that it was all a load of crap. I could respect some people that believed in a God, but He wasn't for me. I could plainly see the damage religion had done: the hypocrisies, the hate, the lack of love, the wars, the intolerance. I had seen the intolerance of my friend's father who was a minister, seen forty plus people "slain in the spirit", watched four planes crash on the 11th of September in 2001, had a Sister of Mercy bring me to tears in class, learned about the crusades, written a report Islam, answered the door for Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons, watched the Westboro Baptist Church protest at funerals, and seen the news reports on the sex abuse scandal. Obviously none of these things encouraged me to pray to some god.
My preteen and teen years were unstable. I questioned everything I knew to the point that nothing was stable or true anymore. I had anger issues with my family and myself. I couldn't and didn't want to open up to anyone. I didn't love myself and I didn't understand myself. I couldn't accept the way things were and I couldn't stop myself from trying to fight them.
I avoided taking a stance on religion, faith, and spirituality. I went back and forth between not believing in a God, not believing there was a loving God, believing that there could be some Deity up there just watching us, and hating God.
My instability became apparent as I felt everything come crashing down. There was no stable ground in my world view, I had blocked it all from sight. I realized that I couldn't go on living life that way. Something needed to change.
I started going to a therapist when I realized that a lot of my issues on the outside were because of all the time my sister had spent in the hospital. I didn't go to see her for long. I felt like I had hit a wall. There was still something key to the whole problem that was missing. I was trying to do a puzzle with out having a smooth surface on which to work on. Christmas Eve night of my junior year of high school was when it suddenly all clicked. I had been lying in bed trying to sleep, thinking of how much I took my family for granted and how I really did appreciate them, when I realized that there was a God, and that I needed to find Him.
Music was a huge part of what helped me understand further. It did something that no theological reading could have done. It was clear and uncomplicated. I understood that having faith in God was not a magical thing. It wasn't perfect, and it didn't make everything better. God was not the one that caused bad things. He did not do good things because you prayed for them. But He was there.
