Did you grow up with a strong influence of religion or spirituality from within your FOO?
I grew up in the church pews, more thanks to my grandparents than my parents (who were churchgoers only at Christmastime). I was in Sunday School and Wednesday church group from the age of 3. God was in my life from the moment I was born -- and before that.
If so, did you find that the way you were raised in your spirituality continued to serve you into adulthood (& especially in your recovery); where you continued to believe & find faith & comfort in the same ideals? Did that continued conviction come from just "always" believing or did you re-examine the ideals of what you were raised with & judge them to still be relatable & suitable to your life?
Or did you, at some point in your adulthood, examine the dogma you were raised with & find that either parts or the whole no longer provided you spiritual comfort?
If so, did recovery bring you to this Spiritual Quest/Awakening or is it something that you sought out for yourself previously to & independent of your recovery needs?
I think -- and this is a general statement but I do believe it's true -- that even if you are raised in a faith, there comes a time where you are faced with exactly what you mention, having to
make the faith your own and determine whether you
really believe this enough to put your life on the line for it, or whether it's something that's just a comfortable inherited quilt that reminds you of grandma.
For me, that point came when I was about 16. I spent a summer reading the Bible and praying and basically asking God to show me that all of this was real. And I determined it was.
If anything, I wavered in my faith during my last few years with AXH. I had long arguments with God, asking "How can you let me suffer through this when I've been such a good wife, such a supportive wife, been everything I thought you were asking me to be?" It wasn't until after I left that I realized that what I thought was virtue was really the opposite: I was trying to be so good that God couldn't but make AXH stop drinking. I was feeling superior to women who left their alcoholic husbands -- I was stronger and more godly and wasn't ever going to do that.
It was humbling to me to realize that pride, not virtue, was what made me do what I was doing. But I'm veering off-track here...