The day I first believed

the breaking point

I know God Is always around me and he will protect me but I don't feel him I can't sense him I don't know if he's even here. His presence to me seems non existent and it's hard for me to try to believe in him when I can't feel him. Especially when things go wrong in my life and I want to turn to him for help I feel like he's not going to listen and help me. The idea of God to me is strange because I know people who have said they spoke to God or they have seen him. But I just don't get it in my life God has never really seemed to exist. Yeah we grew up being told there was a God and that the world was created by him and we are to pray to him but I've never known him to be there for me. It's never felt like he was here with me and protecting me when I needed him the most. Like when my parents split or my grandfather / grandmother died it didn't feel like he was with me in those moments. I stopped believing in God when I was six, my parents were constantly fighting around that time and I would pray and pray and pray that it would stop but it never did so I said to myself " obviously if praying doesn't work there is no God" so at that point I stopped believing stop praying and having any connection with God until I turned 14. I went to high school and all my friends ended up being Christian and I started going to their church as far as they knew I was an atheist who cared not about God. I made friends with other kids at the church, the pastors kids and three other kids from another family, they were really nice people and I value their friendship, they taught me that it's okay to believe and that God will be there, so that was I did. I slowly started to believe again though it's slowly showing I believe I don't know if I really do but people say they know deep down inside I believe but it's truly hard to let that show due to how much I tried not to care about God and do anything that had to do with him.