I was raised in a consciously Christian home where God and the gospel were so much a part of my life that I cannot remember a time, even when young, when I was unaware of who God was, what Christ had done, and how I as a Christian girl should seek to follow God’s will. My parents did an excellent job of instilling in me a routine of devotions and prayer, and they were even supportive of my harder questions when I came of an age to start wondering whether there were a bigger reason for my faith than simply, “ because Mom and Dad said so.” Instead of becoming frustrated with my questions, they encouraged me to look for answers, both in the Bible and elsewhere. I read a survey of several religions and agreed that Christianity did make the most sense; I read my Bible faithfully and figured that God, if He were who He said He were, was a pretty magnificent God.

The biggest threat to my faith came when I was still young, perhaps around ten or twelve. My parents and I attended a church where I, a fairly meek homeschooler, had little in common with my Sunday School classmates, and as a result, I faced a lot of taunting and that unique breed of childish cruelty. Because church was really the only place I experienced this ostracism and teasing, I began to question God, both in whether He truly loved me as He said, and in whether He were actually as huge as He had been portrayed in the Bible. For many years, I struggled quietly with this problem, even after we left the church for other reasons.

I clung to the shreds of my faith for several years, sometimes blaming my own inability to be “good enough” and sometimes blaming God’s apparent inability to love me. I must have said the prayer for salvation a hundred times during those years, and I always waited for a few minutes afterwards to see whether I felt any different.

The summer before I left home for college, I was at a camp worship session when many of the questions I’d had for the past few years began to overwhelm me. For once in my life, I stopped questioning and just listened, and received from God a spiritual comprehension or blessing as well as the love and prayers of some very good friends, which illustrated to me, for the first time, that I was not alone in my questions and that this was not a problem I needed to handle on my own. The humility I experienced from that drastically changed the way I approached other Christians and also gave me the strength to reach out beyond myself, both to God and to mentors and friends.

During my freshman year of college, I badly damaged my back, to the point that I dropped my dance major and instead graduated with a degree in English, low self-esteem, and a lot of frustraton with God for the pain and the injury. Many of my questions returned, particularly when the doctors were clueless and even the prayers of fellow Christians did little to alleviate pain. In particular, I struggled with one pastor who repeatedly emphasized that “God wants you to be healed but you do not have the faith to accept it.” Through a lot of prayer and searching I realized that, yes, God did want me healed but that He also had things to teach me from my weakness and pain. Slowly I learned humility, patience, and gentleness, and as my spirit lightened, my faith grew. I was sure that God could heal me, and would, but in His own good time. In February of this past year, I had my healing. Obviously, I’m still imperfect and trying to grow in Christ a little more every day, but it was certainly encouraging both to feel God’s presence and touch in such a tangible way and to look back at how I had grown during that time, despite all my tears and questions. God really is gracious.