My Personal Religion Story

I saw that a lot of other people had posts on here about their own experiences with religion, so I thought I'd throw mine into the pot.
My mom actually rebelled against her anti-religion parents by becoming a member of the Presbyterian church when she was in college. My dad grew up Episcopalian and absolutely hated it. When they got married and had me and my brother, we went to Presbyterian church because my dad didn't really care where we went, as long as it wasn't Episcopalian.
Church when I was little, until I was around 10 or 11, I remember fondly. The pastors were always nice, there was lots of free food after church, and I had friends in youth group and awana that I went to every summer for arts and crafts. My mom sang in the church choir, and I used to love to go to her practices and hear her sing. When I was five I even sang a solo with the choir.
When I was 10 my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. We had moved to Bozeman a year before and had not really found a regular church, we just went to church randomly. After my mom found out she had cancer, we joined a little church called Gallatin Valley Presbyterian church. At first, they did all the fun things we always did in church--Sunday school, breakfast after the service, even church potlucks. My mom was very strong about her cancer, but after a couple of chemo treatments, she was physically and emotionally weakened. Becoming depressed, she began to go to the pastor for counseling. Meanwhile, she pulled me and my brother out of public school and put us in a tiny private school that was operated out of two houses.
The pastor counseled my parents, but I use the term "counsel" loosely. He told my mom that she got cancer because she didn't have enough faith. He told her to stop spending money on food and give it all to the church. She listened, and we lived off of canned tuna and spam from the food bank for months. He told her to hit us. So my parents tried to hit us with a belt when we were bad, but they only did it a couple of times before they couldn't bring themselves to do it again. Meanwhile, in the private school I was in, they told me that women weren't allowed to pray or work and that the Christians were really the chosen people, not the Jews. It was a bit damaging for me, because my mother had always worked and I knew from when I was little that the Jews were the chosen people; I was very confused.
Then one Sunday, we were sitting in church as the pastor was giving a sermon. At one point in the sermon, he said something like, "There are no demons. There is no Satan. They are inside of us." Always having an unexplainable fear of Satan and demons (which I still have...I never really figured out why), I began to cry. My mother took my hand and my family walked out of the church. My mom said it wasn't Biblical, that the Bible says there are demons and Satan, but that Jesus would protect us from them.
After we left the church, my parent's kind of lost their religion and they said they didn't believe in God anymore. I was very depressed and confused because, even after everything, I still believed in God. Then my dad's good friend Tony invited him to a Bible study. My dad went, mainly just to hang out with the guys, then began to read his Bible again. My mom started going too, and my brother and I would go with them to a coffee shop that used to be downtown called The Gathering Place. I think it was specifically a Christian coffee shop. I loved to go because I was happy my parents believed in God again and me and my brother would go there and play board games and the guy that owned the place would give us free cookies and drinks.
Tony went to a church called Grace Bible Church, so he invited my parents to go. My mom was still hesitant to get involved with another church, but my dad went with him. When he came back afterwards, he said that no church he'd ever been to had made so much sense, and that my mom just had to come with him. This was strange because my dad had never been especially religious, he just kind of went where my mom went. The rest of us went with him one Sunday, and it was true; I'd never understood a sermon better than the one at Grace. We still go there, and I like it because we learn a lot outside of just the Bible, like about history and etymology and all sorts of things. I don't know if I'll go there forever, because I would kind of like to explore some other churches first and I've always been curious about Catholicism, but I'd definitely advocate Grace for those who aren't quite sure what they believe.
I call myself a Christian, but I think I'm religious in a very personal sense. I don't want to preach to anyone because I'd rather do good things and have people come to Christianity by seeing my good acts rather than acting holier-than-thou. Even with all the stuff that's happened with strange churches, I never really stopped believing in God, and I don't think I ever will. I question him sometimes, and the Bible is confusing at times, but I don't see a reason not to believe in God and Jesus. I'm excited to get through the whole Bible because I've been learning new things everyday, and when I talk religion with others, I'd like to know exactly what I'm talking about.