Thank you all!
GREAT question, Sab!
That's one for a topic but since you asked, I'll give you the deets: I was skeptical about my belief in God since age 9, and His own worst enemy are all the accounts in the Old Testament. For a 3rd grader to study accounts where a Lot would offer his daughters up for a gang rape, or Jeptha giving his daughter up as a burnt offering in the All Scriptures Inspired book and then hear the spin about how "God's righteous indignation," "universal sovereignty" and "love for us" justified actions like those can really mess with a kid's mind! If the Bible says that he gave her up as a burnt offering, why did our books and magazines insist that this phrase means something more benevolent...like making her attend the "Bethel" of that day? If those words aren't meant to be taken literally, who says that 144,000 is literal? And for a kid of course, why do all the kool things in Revelation have to be symbolic? I wanted to see multi-headed beasts come out of the ocean! I had problems with "who decides what means what."
But growing up Dub, you understand the intense pressure to fit in. To satisfy your parents. To conform. And decades of cognitive dissonance hijacks your future! I "became" an atheist after majoring in Biology. I wanted to "study the enemy" and arm myself with their knowledge. I felt I could counter their arguments with my Bible-based "accurate knowledge." I hung in there for a few semesters and finally had to give up lol!
As far as "admitting it to myself," well... with that comes the difficulty of facing the fact that this life is all we have. It's kind of depressing at first and I was upset with myself for discovering this. NOW what??? I have nothing to hope for after this??? Yikes! The idea of never seeing dead loved ones was also very tough. But, something amazing happened...the anxiety and panic attacks that bothered me through the teens and 20s went away! I think the skeptic 9-year-old was clamoring to escape this cage he was in and the fairy-tale version of "happily ever after" in a peaceful new world never seemed real to me. This manifested itself in severe depression/anxiety. Why couldn't I buy in to this idea when so many intelligent adults around me believed it enough to bang on people's doors and try to convince them TOO???
Very tough to come to terms...but, it's also a new awakening. If this is all we have, by golly, we need to make the best of it!