My Life as an Atheist Has the Meaning It Never Had While I Was a Believer

I was a second generation 7th-Day Adventist. My grandparents and parents converted at the same time (from Catholicism) and became SDA. I was sent to Adventist schools from Pre-K to High School and even went to an Adventist college for 1 semester.

I was indoctrinated and trained to suppress my reason and even felt guilty for even doubting in my mind. Unfortunately, I passed down the same "disease" to my children who are believing adults today. Now I know that it has been the worst mistake of my life.

I was an only child and my parents were pillars of their church. My father was an elder and my mother a Sabbath school director. One day, my father had an affair and eventually divorced my mother and left the church.

My mother was devastated but was resilient. She struggled financially but sent me to Adventist schools to shield me from the world's influences. However, I always had some doubts about Ellen G. White's so-called prophetic messages and some of the views of the church.

But as mentioned before, I always felt guilty for even doubting and would ask god for forgiveness for my lack of faith. My mother and I moved from Puerto Rico to Texas when I turned 18 and I had a few years of "rebellion," as I wanted to experience the outside world. I wanted to taste alcohol, dancing, and dating.

I joined the U.S. Coast Guard and shortly after leaving the military, I made one of the worst decisions of my life. I impulsively married a man and we re-joined the SDA church. He was a deacon in a conservative SDA Spanish church and we became an "exemplary" couple.

I had 2 daughters and raised them in the church. Pathfinders, camping, sermons, church schools... What no one knew is that while my husband was an excellent deacon, he was unfaithful, abusive, uncaring, lazy, a bad husband, and a terrible father.

I prayed to god, I pleaded, I cried, I fasted, and I spent entire nights on my knees, all in vain. I decided to go back to school and finished my associate's degree in nursing. I knew I would need it as a way to eventually support my girls as a single mother. One Sabbath afternoon after church, we had the worst fight ever and he got physically abusive. That was the last day I was with him.

The pastor of the church and his wife came to speak with me. They practically blamed me and told me that the only reason for divorce according to the Bible and the church was adultery, and although he had been unfaithful in the past, he had "repented" and was not cheating.

I was accused of being possessed by Satan, and some people at the church had the audacity to even talk with my children without my permission. They shunned me and took my name off the membership books, but he was seen as blameless. No one believed I had the right to divorce an abusive man who I didn't love any more.

We eventually divorced and I left that church and started visiting another more progressive SDA church with my daughters. I raised the girls as a single mother and unsuccessfully dated a few men. The years passed and my daughters became teenagers, then young adults.

My younger daughter joined the Navy and got married. My older daughter finished college and moved with her boyfriend. My journey to atheism began in my late 30s. After my divorce and throughout my life, I felt incredibly alone. Surrounded by people and yet, as if I was the only human on planet earth.

Away from the church, I felt free to explore the doubts that I'd had for many years. I started reading and analyzing EGW books and claims, and I found no evidence for her claims. I also went back to college to obtain bachelor's and master's degrees in science. I felt that EGW had seizure disorder related to her accident as a child.

I stopped believing in EGW and the SDA church, but I was still claiming to be Christian. I then started exploring other denominations, but the more I read the Bible and searched for the truth, the more I discovered errors and contradictions in the Bible. I watched videos of former believers. I read books by Dan Barker, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and I watched Bill Maher's movie about religion... I also read and compared Christian authors.

As I read somewhere, "One day, I could no longer reconcile the claims of faith with the realities of life." I abandoned my faith. I realized I was an atheist. I told my daughters that I no longer believed in god. They understood but remain believers, although not SDA.

My girls are supportive and respect my unbelief, but my mother is another story. She remains a very devout, orthodox, Ellen G. White-worshiping 7th-Day Adventist. I slowly told her over several conversations... she is still upset and told me I have hurt her. She can't understand were she went wrong with me, but tells me that no matter what, she still loves me. My father never maintained a relationship with us and died 3 years ago while living with his 7th wife. He had other children which I don't know.

Today, I am very happy. I got remarried to a wonderful man. My life as an atheist has the meaning it never had while I was a believer. It has been tremendously liberating discovering that the world is natural, that there are no deities or demons. I live my life to the fullest knowing how incredibly lucky I am to exist for a brief period as a conscious being in our planet.

Like Carl Sagan said, a pale blue dot in an immense universe where life seems to be very rare if it even exists some where else... yet, I am alive and conscious. Thank you for the opportunity to share my story, and hopefully it will help others in the same situation.