Lacey Sturm had given up on God as a young girl when her cousin was brutally murdered, but years later, on the day she decided to take her life, He intervened in a way that left her in no doubt He was good and loved her.
Speaking to Fox News on Tuesday, the Flyleaf singer revealed how the tragic death of her toddler cousin at the hands of his stepfather turned her against God.
"My mother always talked to me about God, but at the time I just remember thinking I couldn't reconcile how God could allow something like that to happen," she told the network.
"Either He was something awful or He wasn't real. And so I just decided to believe He wasn't real."
She admitted she often asks herself how much she was a true atheist or whether she was just angry with God. And she wonders how much the disbelief of other atheists is rooted in anger towards God too.
It wasn't only God that Sturm came to resent. She says she grew into someone who "hated Christians" and "hated religion" and saw believers as nothing more than people "trying to pull the wool over people's eyes to reality and make them feel good about something that was going to hurt them in the end".
What saved her from the anger and disbelief in the end was what she describes as a "miraculous encounter" with God on the day she planned to commit suicide.
She believes it was the only way she could be brought to believe in God because she was so judgemental towards Christians that she wasn't able to receive the truth from them.
"For me it certainly had to be something very tangible to come to believe and what I encountered, I realise now I was actually searching for something true," she said.
"I didn't find anything solid, anybody's faith that I saw from the outside. In that moment, the day that I had planned to commit suicide, I realised this encounter with God was so much more real than anything that I'd ever heard from anyone."
Now Sturm is happily married with two children and has just written a book about her journey to faith called "The Reason: How I Discovered a Life Worth Living".
She's no longer with Flyleaf but is instead working on a solo album. Life is going well for her and she attributes it all to God.
"God just rescued me," Sturm said. "All of the blessings that I've seen come out of my life have been from Him just rescuing me. It's not like from I was this great person; I wasn't. I just think it's amazing what He can do with our mess."
