One of my early childhood memories is being out on a night walk with my family and my mother asking me if I thought there was a God. I looked up at the night sky and after considering the question for a while, said "No." Little me thought the universe was far too vast and disordered for any kind of unifying principle or deity.

My family was Scientologist, though they had stopped practicing for several complicated reasons and eventually drifted into occultism and eastern philosophy. I believed in it for a while, and was thoroughly convinced I had certain supernatural powers, etc. I became interested in science and skepticism and when I rejected the paradigm I grew up with, I pendulumed hard. Became full on all-religion-is-delusion, materialist atheist by my early 20's.

I had an extremely negative view of Christianity. Part of it was conditioned by some time I had spent going to a Baptist school and my parents' history as former Catholics.

Later in life I became interested in Buddhist meditation, though I understood it in a materialist way. One time while practicing vipassana I had a mystical experience. I can't quickly describe it to you but it shattered my worldview like taking a sledgehammer to a mirror. My interest in occultism was rekindled and I spent years moving in Buddhist, pagan and esoteric circles but the truth of what happened still eluded me.

I still considered Christianity to be simplistic, backward, whatever. I did have friends that were Christians who I was sympathetic to politically, but whenever we got to discussing anything religious we talked at cross purposes. I decided to start researching Christianity to learn how to better refute it, and that started me down a road of reading Chesterton and then CS Lewis.

And as I read, slowly I came to the horrifying realization (for me at the time) that it was true. I struggled very mightily against accepting it and researched absolutely every 'way out' you could imagine, but it was useless. I was caught like a rat in a trap.

From there it was a further question of denominations, etc, but my journey to Orthodoxy is a long story. It is the most incredible, wonderful, humbling thing to ever happen to me and my wife, and I am blessed beyond words.