I’m going to put in the effort to pray to You.

I'm going to sit there quietly and listen and not be distracted.

I’ve done what You asked me to do.

So I felt like, yeah, I felt like I deserved an answer.

And when I wasn’t getting it,

that’s where the anger came, as I was like: “OK,

I'm not going to try.

Like, if You’re not going to answer me, I’m not going to try.”

It was like I didn't feel like God was talking to me.

I just felt alone, like no one was there.

To me, that didn't feel right.

It didn't feel like there is no God,

because there's a lot of things that show me that there is a God; that just, I couldn’t really believe that. I felt like there is God.

I just I need to learn how He speaks to me.

It was about 10 years ago, I was in a car accident. It was somebody messing around, and I was at the expense of that.

And I have dealt with pain for like the last 10 years. But it got really, really bad to the point where I couldn’t even lift up my kids at some points. And sorry,

I’m emotional because I really felt so low, like nobody my age knows what this is like.

And it just made me more angry towards God. Like, “Why me?” Like, “This is too much.” You know, it felt like more than I could take.

It's hard to deal with physical pain and feel like I'm doing the things that I’m supposed to. Why,

why am I having these huge trials that other people my age don’t have? It was just like this downward spiral of like, God's not there for me.

And, you know, like I felt very alone and like no one understood what I was going through.

One time, I just prayed to God, and I said,

“Will you just tell me how you speak to me,”

because what I was doing, I felt like it wasn't working.

I had a friend reach out to me from high school, and she had been in the Army. She had gone away to Iraq and she had

a lot of back problems and stuff like that.

The way she described her pain was exactly the pain that I was having on a daily basis. And she also had three young kids like me. And it’s like, “You’re not alone;

someone else is going through the same thing.”

And it just made sense to me that God talks to me that way,

because I have always loved people. Like, I can’t even explain it. I will talk to random people in the grocery store. So why wouldn't he have me talk to other people and have other people talk to me to get my answers?

He wasn't giving up on me. People were reaching out to me. And so I felt like, “OK, He cares because He’s having people reach out to me.”

And I don’t know, I just felt like my burden started getting lighter and lighter as I realized I wasn't alone.

And I felt like He put people also in my life that had been through the same things.

And randomly they would reach out to me and tell me very, very similar stories.

And now I actually have a good relationship with God.

You know, I think sometimes it takes going through something like this to truly know where you stand with God and understand how He talks to you and have a real relationship.

And so it just made sense for me to go on a mission, and it just made sense to follow these cultural norms and go forward with faith.

And so when I found out that I didn't really believe anything,

I also realized I never really believed anything in the past either.