Faith, Personal Journey

From Fearful to Faithful: How My Story with God Began

My journey of faith did not begin with warm family prayers or gentle bedtime Bible stories. It started in the structured world of church and parochial school, where faith felt more like a subject to master than a relationship to embrace. Yet, even through fear, confusion, and an early panic attack, God was quietly writing a very different ending to my story.

Faith as a Classroom Subject

My journey of faith began in church and parochial school. Religion was not just a part of life; it was literally on the schedule, slotted between math and spelling. We filed into class, opened our catechisms or Bibles, and treated God like another topic to be tested on. There were right answers and wrong answers, and it felt as though heaven itself was grading us in red ink.

Memory work was done several times each week. Verses, commandments, and catechism questions were recited until the words were etched into my mind. On the surface, it looked like devotion; inside, it felt more like pressure. Forgetting a line didn’t simply mean losing a point—it felt like failing God. The focus was on performance, not on the Person behind the words we memorized.

When Reverence Turned into Fear

Most days, the teachers scared me. Their voices were firm, their rules strict, and their descriptions of God often leaned heavily on judgment. Instead of learning to reverence God, I learned to fear Him in the most unsettling sense—afraid of making a mistake, afraid of punishment, afraid that one wrong move might push me beyond His patience. God became, in my mind, a distant authority figure waiting to catch me doing something wrong.

At home, it was a different world. God was not really talked about in our house, and we were sporadic church goers. That contrast only added to my confusion. On Mondays, we had to tell our teacher—and the entire class—whether we had gone to church the day before. When my answer was “no,” shame crept in. I felt exposed, as though my family’s inconsistency somehow proved we were less spiritual, less worthy, less loved by God.

Early experiences of faith can shape our view of God for years to come.

Panic, Misunderstanding, and a God I Couldn’t Trust

Having my first panic attack at age 11 did not help my already fragile picture of God. My heart raced, my chest tightened, and a wave of terror swept over me that I didn’t have words for. In my young mind, the only way to make sense of it was to assume God caused it. If He was in control of everything, then surely He had allowed—or even sent—this fear. Instead of running to Him for comfort, I pulled back, wary and unsure.

Looking back, I can see a child doing the best she could with limited understanding. No one explained anxiety or panic attacks. No one told me that a loving God could be present in my fear, not the cause of it. So I carried that heavy misunderstanding for years, quietly believing that God was someone to be survived more than someone to be loved.

Discovering a Different Kind of Relationship

But my story of faith does not end there. Somewhere along the way, through people who reflected His kindness and through Scripture that spoke of His grace, I began to see that God was not the harsh taskmaster I had imagined. He was a Father who knew my fear, my shame, and my questions—and loved me in the middle of all of it. Slowly, the God I dreaded became the God I could talk to, cry to, and trust.

I’m happy to report that I love the Lord and have had a relationship with Him now for many years. Not a perfect relationship, not a life without questions or struggles, but a real one. The fear that once kept me at a distance has been steadily replaced with a deeper, quieter confidence that He is for me, not against me. The child who trembled before God is now an adult who leans on Him.

And this is only the beginning. There is more to tell—about how God met me in my anxiety, how He gently rewrote my understanding of His character, and how rules and memory work eventually gave way to grace and relationship. Stay tuned to find out just how that happened, and how the God I once feared became the God I now love with all my heart.