I am not the kind of person that keeps up positive attitudes well. Nor do I tend to keep faith in things that only disappoint me. But I do love the idea of believing in something, anything really.

The entirety of my life has been centered around religion. My parents and maternal side of the family are Nondenominational Christians, but I guess if you had to categorize them they'd be Evangelicals. My paternal side is mostly southern Baptist with a few Jehovah Witness individuals thrown into the mix. On both sides, I have uncles who are preachers and cousins that sing in church.

My mother is the worship leader and my father sings in the choir at our family run ministry that her father founded before I was born. Even my little sister has her role in the church. She teaches Sunday School and Children's Worship. Everyone has had their place in the church for as long as I can remember and no one ever questioned it. Myself included, up until I started college.

As a child, I was told that we were Christians and that was that. I was to go to church on Sunday, I was not to miss a service, and I wasn't really supposed to question much. Whenever I had an issue, I was to pray to God or Jesus, or whoever to help me through my problems and keeping faith was beyond important.

I really had no issues with any of this for a vast majority of my life. I did exactly as I was told. But the older I got, the more I started to question things, and the less comfortable I was keeping up the facade of a devout Christian.

I started questioning a lot of Christianity as I got older and I went through a hard time after hard time. I kept asking my mom a lot of questions about God, I often asked if there was one, and why none of my countless prayers were being answered. All my mom really told me was not to question God and to keep faith in him that everything would turn around.

Hebrews 11:1 says, "Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see." But by the same token, James 2:20 says, " As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead." So in essence, not only is faith something we have to hope for but can never really see, we also have to keep in mind that without proving your faith in God through action, your faith is as good as dead.

If you keep steadfast in your faith and work on it, your prayers are supposed to be answered and God is supposed to help you prosper. But it's hard not to poke holes in the entire concept when you're 15 years old and despite doing all of the things you know the Bible said to do, nothing went right.

I had a solid number of years where I secretly stopped believing in God. I would mock people that were devoutly religious and I would roll my eyes when my sister talked about how much Jesus loved us. I was a nightmare. But I kept going to church with my parents and going to Sunday School, despite the fact that I wasn't paying attention. I told myself it was to appease my family, but I think deep down I wanted something to happen that would prove me wrong.

Even into college, I would dismiss the idea of religion entirely. Up until a few months ago, I kind of dropped religion from my vocabulary. But, one night a few weeks before Christmas, I called my mom because nothing in my life seemed to be going right and I felt like I couldn't get my feet planted on the ground. All she had to say was, "I know you probably don't want to hear this, but maybe you should just pray about it."

For some reason, all that did was make me really mad. I hung up and yelled and cried at my ceiling and basically propositioned whatever God is up there. I basically had one big yelling match with my ceiling until I was too tired to keep my eyes open.

Now, I hate to disappoint you, but if you think this story is going to end with a religious revelation about how I had a solo "come to Jesus" moment and now I believe in the Bible, you would be slightly mistaken. When I woke up and realized how insane I had acted, it made me think.

Maybe there was something up there, maybe not the God I've been raised to believe in, but someone. I'm clearly not making all of these choices on my own and we know damn well someone has a hand in keeping me alive because I can not do it myself.

When I changed my attitude and my way of thinking, things in my life started getting better. I am not saying that I believe in the Christian God now or that he/she had a hand in my sudden change, but I am saying that I am slightly more open minded in going to church, sometimes I pray about things, and I remind myself that faith without any effort from me is dead.

I still poke a lot of holes in religion. I ask a lot of questions, and I really am not sure what the hell I even believe in. I'm not sure if I'm believing in anything. All I know is I am doing my best to be a good person, with or without a steady faith in a God. Whatever this spiritual hot mess is, it's working for me and this journey is mine and mine alone.