I was raised as a Baptist Christian for most of my life. I attended church with my grandparents every Sunday, read my Bible, prayed, and tried to be a good Christian girl. Although I was hiding the fact that I felt anxious in church, and although I felt the gnostic teachings of Jesus were amazing, I didn't agree with much of what I read in my Bible. Granted the Bible is thousands of years old and people lived differently then than they do now, I still never felt wholly right with it. I was always scared of disappointing God over horribly mundane things. God would be disappointed if I didn't do my homework, the dishes, etc. God always had his ever watchful eye on me ready to send me to Hell over anything. So when I was 15-16 I gave it up. All of it. I stopped going to church, stopped reading my Bible, and stopped praying. There were some pretty terrible things that had been going on for a few years that led me to believe God did not care a lick about me. My mother was heavily into opiates (she got clean a year later) and my father had been in a horrible motorcycle accident and lost his leg. My grandmother, who had always been the strongest person to me, was dying. My family was a shambles and I was beginning to fail school because of it. I never did go back to Christianity, I just couldn't. I still did believe in something though, and it was a very long time before I felt comfortable acknowledging that I still believed in a God. Or, as the case is now, a Goddess and a God. I have found my place in the Pagan spirituality. I found it through a blog (or something) called "Why Wiccans Suck." and I didn't know what a Wiccan was or what they believed. Not everything they believe resonates with me, so I call myself an eclectic with a ton of Wiccan influence. I practice alone and my rituals are heavily deity based. The entire concept of two gods really clicked with me, and the Sabbats too. It was unreal, like I could feel their energy the first time I sat down to a candlelit prayer. I am very happy with my religion, it has brought me a lot of peace since I found it at a very stressful and dark time of my life.