I did not grow up in a Christian home.
I’ve faint early memories of church, walking up and down pews as a toddler, passing the collection plate. Then, somewhere along the way, we stopped going for reasons never explained to a toddler.
My childhood shelves filled with Richard Dawkins, Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett. Rational voices, skeptical voices, voices that confirmed what I was already inclined to believe: that the universe was explicable, and that faith was for people who had not thought hard enough about it.
I carried an idea from my great-grandmother that there are many routes up a mountain, and as long as you reach the top, the path does not matter. In practice, this translated to: all religions are basically the same… just be a decent person.
At university I studied biochemistry, then psychology. I leaned hard into science and rationalism. I enjoyed debating Jehovah’s Witnesses at the door, not because I was searching, but because I thought I was right.
If I am honest: I was confident. Arrogant, in the way that only the genuinely ignorant are.
The door opens
Then I met Steph… a vicar’s daughter.
I knew my argumentative atheist routine would need toning down.
We dated, married, and I started attending church at Easter and Christmas, the big events.
I could see the psychological benefits, the ethical framework, the community.
But it was not personal. It had nothing to do with a divine creator.
Then life began to chip away at me.
When my Nan Ruby died, her funeral was at St Julian’s, the church she had helped plant.
Walking in there as an adult, it felt like home. Not because of the building (a plain concrete church on a council estate of plain concrete houses). Because of the people. The love. The peace.
I could not explain it. I could not quite shake it, either.
The first prayer
When Isaac was born, there were complications. Emergency surgery. Hours in theatre after he was handed to me… removing a cyst the size of a watermelon.
For the first time in my adult life, I prayed… that very transactional prayer: if you help, maybe I will start believing.
Steph came through safely. I quickly rationalised away any divine explanation. But in the recovery room, near Steph’s bed, there was a single pink feather. The exact shade of the feather boa my Nan used to wave around at family gatherings.
I do not have neat theology for that moment. But it stayed with me.
Anger
Still I hovered in what I’d call cultural Christianity… then cam Emily, Isaac’s godmother, who was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma shortly after his baptism. She had an unshakeable faith and beat cancer twice. Shortly after her eighteenth birthday se caught a chest infection and with a weakened immune system she couldn’t recover.
We saw her the day before she died. There was no fear… only trust in God’s plan.
When she passed, I was angry. Really angry. Whatever fragile faith was forming was shaken hard.
But my mum decided she was going back to church. And a thought nagged at me: if I was going to be mad at God, I should probably find out who I was being mad at.
Easter 2018: in my head, not my heart
Easter 2018, I started attending the church that had felt like home. I helped out. I did Alpha. I became what I would describe as a philosophical follower of Jesus, I liked the ideas, the ethics, the person of Christ. But the cruelty of the world still made me doubt the supernatural or divine.
The quayside at Dartmouth
February 2020. Through a combination of events I will not detail fully here, I found myself sitting alone on the quayside in Dartmouth in the middle of a storm… soaked, exhausted, utterly defeated by life. I had never felt suicidal, but in that moment I understood how people reach that place.
…and I prayed.
I do not know what I prayed, I’m not sure it was sentences. Just raw heart.
And something shifted.
The anger drained away. The defensiveness dissolved. A peace settled over me that I cannot logically explain. Physically I felt warm. Lifted. Certain, in a way I had no rational basis, that everything would be okay.
The next morning, I looked at the world differently. More patient. More compassionate. Less focused on winning. Less focused on being right.
That was the moment faith moved from my head into my heart.
What came next
Weeks later, the world went into lockdown (covid) giving me time and space to rebuild.
I got more involved in church, helped get services online, served where I could. Through that I came to understand the Holy Spirit not as something strange or dramatic, but as present, personal, transformative.
When lockdown lifted, I was baptised alongside my mum.
Over time, I began to feel that God was not just changing me but leading us. Doors opened. Conversations happened. And eventually we found ourselves in Saundersfoot… a place that felt, when we arrived, like the place we were meant to be.
Looking back
I can see the thread now. The roots planted by my Nan. The questions raised by science. The anger after loss. The surrender that changed my heart.
But the biggest part of this story is not the storm on the quayside. It is the patience.
For most of my life I did not believe in Him. I argued. I dismissed. I explained Him away. And yet He did not force Himself into my life. He did not give up on me. He waited.
When I finally stopped trying to have all the answers, He was there.
I did not reason my way into Christianity. I was met.
And despite most of my life not believing in Him, I have come to understand that He never stopped loving me, never stopped pursuing me.
…and that changed everything.
Related: Letter 1: Have Faith | Thought for the Day: Being Caught