I grew up going to synagogue with my parents pretty regularly. I remember being excited to go to services because I knew I would get cookies after the service and because the old women would tell me how pretty I looked in whatever dress my mom had carefully chosen for me. There was Ms. Lucille, a Julliard-trained pianist of whom I was vaguely afraid until I got a little older and she would pull me into the social hall's kitchen to tell me how I had "chutzpah" spirit. And how could anyone forget Mrs. Malka, the rabbi's wife who used a microphone despite not needing it, and left lipsticky kisses on all the little children? Nothing was more comforting than falling asleep on my dad's lap while the congregation sang my favorite song, "Shalom Rav," a gentle hymn that sounds just like a lullaby.

These days, I still look forward to going to services every Friday night, but not for those reasons. I love going to synagogue on Shabbat (the Sabbath) because it's my chance to thank God for everything He's done for me during the week. Shabbat is my opportunity to slow down, take a moment, express gratitude, and feel like a part of something greater than myself. I enjoy singing the traditional songs I’ve grown up with, and sometimes I help to lead them. Everyone in my congregation loves my singing voice, which I believe is a gift from God given to me to help others find Him through music.

I haven’t always loved God and Judaism with as much fervor as I do now. In fact, I used to be an atheist. I thought I didn’t need any sort of higher power in my life, and that I could be happy and fulfilled without religion. Some people can be, but I am not one of them.

I sort of started going back to synagogue at the beginning of this year, but my heart wasn’t in it. I knew that I believed in God, that Judaism is the religion I connect with the most, and that I wanted to feel the Presence in my life. The synagogue where I grew up was undergoing the process of finding yet another new rabbi, so my dad and I would drive thirty minutes to go to a different temple where I connected with the rabbi a little more.

It wasn’t until after the Orlando shooting that I realized how badly I needed God. The night it happened, I was out with my girlfriend and friends from my college’s Gay-Straight Alliance watching a drag show. We weren’t in Orlando, but we’d been talking about going to Pulse at some point. I will forever be grateful that we didn’t go that night. Everyone slept over at my house that night, and in the morning, one of our friends’ moms had texted them to see if everyone was okay. Gradually, we all woke up, checked our phones, and saw the news. We started calling and texting friends to make sure everyone we knew was safe.

In the days following the shooting, everything looked bleak to me. I went to work the next day and held back tears through my whole shift because I kept hearing my coworkers worrying about friends they hadn’t heard back from, and one of my friends was worried about someone as well. I had come out as a lesbian almost exactly a year before. I’d been out and proud for a year, not worried about my safety, and just happy to have finally accepted myself. Isn’t that what everyone wants? Yet here were members of my “family” seeking exactly the same thing who had been killed for just that. How could God have let that happen? As far as I know, Judaism doesn’t teach that being gay (or any other flavor of the rainbow flag) is wrong. The cantor-turned-rabbi who got me through my bat mitzvah training is gay. When I see him smile at his husband sitting in the pews while we sing “Bim-Bam,” I know in my heart that love knows no gender, that love between two people is a manifestation of God’s love for all of us, and that God crafted us with love by giving us the capacity to feel for each other a small bit of what He feels for us. Not knowing what else to do, I started to pray.

Even though some time has passed since the shooting, I still don’t understand why God allowed it to happen. I never will. People always say, “God works in mysterious ways,” and the old adage rings true. I regret that it took a tragedy to bring me back to God, but despite the path I had to take, I’m glad I’ve arrived at the destination.