I was born into the Southern Baptist church. My grandparents took me every Sunday and Wednesday from before the time I could walk. Naturally, I took Christian teachings for granted as The Way Things Were while growing up. I enjoyed church activities and participated a lot in choir and other such things.

However, Southern Baptists believe you're not a "true born-again Christian" until you have a conversion experience and get baptized. I put this part off as long as possible because somehow, it made me uneasy... I think I may have felt I wasn't a good enough Christian. I had always prayed faithfully to God, but over the years I prayed less and less, because nothing ever happened that could be construed as an answer.

Finally, however, I was about 11 or 12 and one day at Wednesday youth group I just felt awful. The group was putting together a musical, and as usual, I had a big role. I pondered the fact that while my work might have been leading other people to Christianity, I myself was not "born again" yet. After a bit of crying and discussion, I prayed the sinner's prayer with my youth leader and was baptized the following Sunday.

But the uneasy feelings started up again right there. After praying the prayer, I remember quite clearly because it really bothered me, my youth leader commented that I must feel incredibly different than I had just a second ago, as though a huge weight were lifted off me. I smiled and nodded so she wouldn't think anything was strange, but the truth was, I didn't feel any different at all. Just as with my other prayers, this one seemed to have had no effect. But I told myself the "Christian change" would become apparent later, and went on with my life.

Well... it never did, and my heartfelt prayers asking for God to come into me and change me were never answered. I stopped believing in Christianity sometime during junior high, because if the Christian god existed, it seemed he wasn't interested in talking with me.

After that I went through a period of religious exploration. I read about various faiths, and one that seemed to jive well with my personal morals was Paganism, specifically Wicca. So I decided to try practicing that for a while; but to the same result as my practice of Christianity... it seemed that if there were any beings listening to my spells, prayers, and devotions, they weren't interested in talking back. Seeing no results to this experimentation, I kept reading and searching elsewhere, but never found another faith I particularly agreed with.

Truthfully, I'm very disappointed that I've never been able to make contact with the supernatural. I wouldn't go back to Christianity--a faith that asserts it is the only truth, and that is headed by a psychotic god who would punish innocent people, is not one I ever want to be associated with again--but I wish God and Goddess and fairies and spirits and other such boojums existed. I want to believe so very badly--but the strange spiritual "feeling" other people have when they talk about their Gods seems to refuse to grace me with its presence.

But I want to believe, so badly...

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