Ex theists: what did you believe?

[Aroura]

I was raised by a deeply Catholic mother, sent to private Catholic school from k-6 (7 years of my life!), church twice a week and everything.
I pretty much believed all of what I was taught (God, Trinity, prayer works, graces, etc) because I wasn't exposed to anything else until my tweens. When I was about 9 or 10, I really thought I might like to be a nun when I grew up, lol.
But I was still taught science and nothing utterly wacky like creationism.
When I was 9, my little brother was shot in the eye by a friend with a BB gun. His retina had detached, and the docs said he would probably lose sight in that eye. I'd never seen my mother and father so distressed. That night, I prayed so hard to God to save my brothers eye. I offered anything of myself. I couldn't sleep, I stayed up praying until sleep took me....by force. I had my first incident of sleep paralysis that night. I felt that I'd died, and I even saw my soul soar up out of my body. I was terrified, I didn't mean to takem y LIFE for my brothers eye! I soared around the house, chasing my mom and crying. Then I woke up. I went out and told her what had happened, I was so frightened and confused.

She actually explained to me that it runs in our family. All my aunts get terribly sleep paralysis during stressful times, so my mom was familiar with it. She told me it was just my brain falling asleep kind of backwards, and even gave me tips on how to handle it when I felt it coming on (relax into it, don't fight it). It was then, right then, that I think I first started questioning the things I believed. My mind had tricked me sooooo thoroughly.

So then, when I was 11, I went to a Christian summer camp. They accepted all Christian denominations, but it was run by 7th day Adventists. So THEY really pushed things like Noah's Ark and Adam and Eve being literally true. They also did a passion play the second summer I went, I think it was. That was disturbing to me at that age.

It brought up a lot of questions for me, and I started asking my mom and my priest. The thing is, I'd been taught that the stories in the bible were mostly parable, including Adam and Eve. My mom whole heartedly accepts evolution, as did the priests I spoke to. When I asked about people believing the bible to be true and maybe they were right?, they didn't really answer my questions well. When I asked how they know they are right, both of them talked about the pope and some shit about representing God on earth. When I had questions about how a human (the pope) could be considered infallible, I got a lot of answers that made no sense. Some of my questions of course were answered with some version of "God works in mysterious ways".

I stopped going to church when I was about 13. My mom actually stopped going about the same time. I still believed there must be some sort of God, but I discarded most of the dogma of the church I'd grown up in. I think I retained that vague belief in god for another 10 or 15 years, until I finally admitted to myself I was clinging to it for comfort and nothing else.


So to sum I, I believed in God, transubstantiation (at least a bit), prayer, saints, all the usual Catholic stuff. I never believed the Devil was a literal person/thing, or that most of the bible was true. I believed that Jesus story was real, and Moses, and the rest of the bible was parable. But only into my mid teens, when I pared my belief down to just jesus, God and prayer.

It is all so silly and embarrassing when I look back, but it isn't like I had a choice. None of us do with this stuff, do we?