What was your own upbringing like, and how did it lead to your current beliefs?

I grew up evangelical Southern Baptist. In our church, we believe that any encounter we have, God put people in front of us to lead them to Christ. As I got older, my first marriage, my husband was a Promise Keeper, and we were Sunday school teachers, volunteered heavily in the church. All of those things you're supposed to do. There were a lot of times that I had questions that people didn't seem to have clear answers for. Even things as small as logistics, miracles in the bibles, and things like that. Those aren't questions people are really fond of [in the church]. The questions were always there, but you're always taught that when you ask too many questions, and you doubt too heavily, that's Satan pulling you away from God. So I always had that in the back of my mind, that if I was a better Christian, I wouldn't have those questions in the first place. I would just accept it. My husband at the time was very violent and abusive, which was condoned by our church leaders. They don't overtly say it's okay to hit your wife, but they do a lot of preaching how to maintain head of household status. [But] I grew up believing that divorce was wrong. Eventually, our oldest daughter was about 11 and she was mouthing off, and he picked her up and he threw her into the wall. And for whatever reason, that was it for me. That crossed the line for me. So I told him to leave, and I ended up going to our church's benevolence committee. I explained what had happened. It was very focused on what had gone wrong and what I needed to do to save this marriage. And in that conversation, I had asked for about $600 to help pay bills and get some food, and they said they had to pray about it, and Jesus had apparently told them not to do it. So I left the meeting very upset, mortified, ashamed, heartbroken. I couldn't figure out why God would torture our family this way, and as I pushed out of the door to leave the building, I accidentally pushed into someone who was working on the door, and they were putting on glass etching art, decorating the glass. I had this kind of surreal moment, going, "That had to cost a hell of a lot more than $600!" It was one of the first microscopic moments of me thinking, "This really doesn't make sense."