The God I stopped trusting never stopped pursuing me

I had spent years trying to do things God’s way. I had prayed, waited, served, and believed I was following His lead. Yet the marriage I thought had been blessed by God ended in divorce, leaving me navigating single motherhood, financial pressure and a life that looked nothing like the one I had imagined.

The divorce caused me to question everything. If I had been so wrong about something that important, could I really hear God at all? Over time, I drifted. Prayer became occasional, my Bible remained closed, and life became about survival. 

For several years, I searched for peace in many places. I explored New Age practices: yoga, manifesting, crystals, tarot, moon cycles, sage and anything that promised healing or direction. Yet whenever I sincerely asked for guidance, I found myself sensing the same invitation: Jesus. 

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By the end of 2023, I had started reading the Bible again, journaling and praying. After watching a powerful testimony online, I began re-examining the beliefs and practices I had adopted during my years away from church. 

At the beginning of 2024, I experienced a strong desire to return to church. Initially, I resisted, believing I could rebuild my relationship with God alone. But the sense that God was calling me back into Christian community would not leave me. Eventually, I visited Hillsong Croydon. Through worship, prayer and community, I rebuilt my faith.

Then something shifted. I stopped asking God to bless my plans and started asking Him for His. Matthew 6:33 became an anchor: ​“Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” The more I surrendered situations to God, the more I saw Him move through answered prayers, provision, inspiration and practical guidance. 

Around the same time, I found myself praying for wisdom about parenting. Years earlier, both my sister, a GP, and my stepmother, a former primary school headteacher, had suggested that my son might be neurodivergent. At the time, I did not really see it. 

Part of the problem was the meaning I had attached to those labels. To me, they represented limitation rather than understanding. As a Christian mother, I was busy praying, believing God’s promises and speaking life over my child. I wasn’t looking for neurodivergence; I was looking for breakthrough. Only later did I realise the two were not mutually exclusive. 

I home-educated my son for 18 months and saw his neurodivergence up close in his learning. With secondary school approaching, I needed to understand how to support and advocate for him, so I prayed for wisdom and began researching. 

What started as a desire to understand my son became a deep dive into neurodivergence. The more I read, the more uncomfortable I became. Not because I was learning about him, but because I kept recognising myself as well. It wasn’t one particular symptom. It was the overall picture of emotional intensity, a feeling of being overwhelmed, of inconsistency, of wondering why I could achieve so much in some areas of my life and yet struggle so much in others, and with things that seemed effortless for other people.* It all felt incredibly familiar. For years, I had simply assumed that I needed to be more disciplined, more organised or try harder. I had no reason to think there might be another explanation. 

Researching my son slowly became a mirror. Instead of only helping me understand him, it helped me begin understanding myself. I started asking the question I had unknowingly been asking for most of my life: ​“Why am I like this?”, which became a book with the same title, a pre-assessment tool and practical resource for others. 

My son and I are both still waiting for formal diagnoses. After recognising so many traits in myself, I spoke to my GP and have been referred through the Right to Choose pathway for a full ADHD assessment, which I am currently waiting for. More than anything, it has been a relief to start this journey. Years of little questions are gradually forming a much bigger picture. As I learned more about neurodivergence, I found myself looking back across my own life differently. Experiences that had always felt disconnected suddenly seemed to make sense. For so much of my life, I had measured myself against people whose brains appeared to work differently from mine.

Rather than asking, ​“What’s wrong with me?”, I started asking, ​“What if my brain has simply been working differently all along?” How I saw myself began to change. Though there is sadness at how parts of my life might have been different if I had understood myself better, mostly I feel grateful. Grateful that I can understand myself better and parent my son with greater empathy. Grateful that I have stopped seeing myself as someone who simply isn’t trying hard enough.

Learning more about neurodivergence helped me stop seeing myself as broken and start seeing myself as someone God had designed intentionally. I had always believed Psalm 139:14: ​“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made”. What changed was my understanding of that truth. It applied to every part of me. God wasn’t surprised by the way He had created me, and my wiring and creativity weren’t a mistake. 

Every person is created in God’s image. Neurodiversity doesn’t change someone’s value. Some of us experience the world differently, and when we replace judgement with curiosity and assumptions with understanding, we create space for people not only to cope, but to flourish.

1. Neurodivergent people are not lazy
   One of the biggest misconceptions I’ve witnessed is that if someone isn’t doing something, it’s because they don’t care enough or aren’t trying. That certainly hasn’t been my experience. Many neurodivergent people are trying incredibly hard. The effort just isn’t always visible. Sometimes the greatest battle isn’t doing the task. It’s getting started in the first place.
    
2. You can’t always see neurodivergence
   People often assume that if someone is capable, articulate or successful, they can’t be struggling. I’ve discovered that’s simply not true. Many people become experts at masking. They can appear to be coping while privately carrying an enormous amount of exhaustion and self-criticism. Success doesn’t necessarily mean something is easy.
    
3. Understanding isn’t making excuses
   Some people worry that recognising neurodivergence means lowering expectations or making excuses for behaviour. I see it differently. Understanding gives us the opportunity to respond wisely. It allows us to put the right support in place, to develop healthier strategies and show greater compassion to ourselves and others. Understanding is often the beginning of taking responsibility in ways that actually work.

As I continued to seek God, I began asking Him: ​“How do you want me to use the creativity you’ve given me?” The answer came through writing, music, books and resources to encourage others.

When I reached Isaiah during my Bible in a year plan, I felt compelled to write my own songs. Its themes of restoration and God’s faithfulness spoke deeply into my journey. Later, reflecting on all God had done, I was drawn back to Isaiah 43:19: ​“See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” 

It captured what God had been doing all along. For years, I had focused on what was lost. He was inviting me to look at what He was growing. The verse became the seed for Bloom, a collection of songs, books and creative projects centred on God’s faithfulness through difficult seasons. 

Looking back, the greatest lesson I have learned is this: God is faithful. The God I stopped trusting never stopped pursuing me. The God I doubted never stopped loving me. The God I walked away from never walked away from me.

If you find yourself in a difficult season, questioning your faith, your purpose or even yourself, I pray you remember this: God did not make a mistake when He made you. And He is not finished with your story. 

*The traits and experiences described in this article may feel familiar, but identifying with some or all of these traits does not necessarily mean someone is neurodivergent. If you have questions about your own experiences, you may find it helpful to seek advice from a healthcare professional.