I was raised very strictly in a faith which dwelt on sin, considered it appropriate for seven year olds to go to confession (I used to make up 'sins' when I couldn't think up enough) and what we experienced at school was psychological abuse. I renounced my belief in God at the age of 14 (!), and remained a rampant atheist until... until... the eclipse of 1999 in the UK.
It was an experience I found so profoundly moving that I've never been the same since - just for a few seconds I had a sensation of being in contact with the Divine. Of course, after all that, everyday life intervenes - but having experienced that, the impression remains. It was a sense of the vastness of everything, our/my own tiny place in it, how insignificant I am in the general scheme of things and, paradoxically, how important that I found significance in my own life. And that I was the only one with that power and responsibility. Again, paradoxically, it is only in recognising my own powerlessness that I really started to experience my inner strength.
At the time I was teaching in a school, and a few weeks later some other staff members were discussing some new, quite petty, policy, and getting agitated about it. One of them looked over at me and said "You don't care, do you?" and I told him he was right. He sat next to me and asked how I'd achieved this state; as it happens, he was probably the only person in the place who would understand, so I told him how I'd felt about the eclipse; I was interested that my inner shift was also visible on the outside.
Gradually I drifted back into attending church regularly; not the same one I was brought up in, by the way, and experienced the power and caring of a group gathered together to, er, gather together. At the time I'd just started attending CoDA meetings and the two meshed together perfectly.
I have my alcoholic ex-partner to thank for providing the circumstances which led me to Alanon, and I've never looked back. It wasn't the relatively short relationship (1.5 years) with him which had caused my spiritual trauma, of course, but I'd never connected my father's alcoholism and the general dysfunction of my family in quite so profound a way as when I started attending Alanon.
I was brought up to pray for specific things - things that my parents wanted. I recall my mother telling me to pray for specific things, as if reciting a shopping list to a cosmic store called God. If they didn't happen, it was because I hadn't done it right.
I pray more these days than I ever did as a child. For serenity, for knowledge of God's will and the courage to carry it out, or insight, for guidance. And it always arrives, somehow... sometimes through very unexpected channels.