“If most people in society didn’t believe in God, would people still believe in God?”

That was the question a young Tori Hope Petersen asked of her high school English teacher. To Petersen, it seemed like people believed in God because of social norms, not because of genuine, personal faith. She yearned for authenticity, and her teacher provided it.

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

Petersen, who had recently moved into her 11th foster home, was struck by her teacher’s candor. His honesty served as a catalyst for Petersen to ask more questions about faith, and to seek the Father she had always wanted. She wouldn’t find that father in her next foster home, where people who claimed Christ acted abusively.

“Before reckoning with abuse and manipulation from people who proclaimed Jesus, I had been on the verge of accepting him,” Petersen writes. “Now, I was further away than ever. More and more, it appeared that Christianity and Jesus talk were masks people wore to hide their sin.

“I didn’t want a mask. I wanted to be seen, known, and loved as I was.”

In her 13th foster home, Petersen would find patience, kindness, and genuine care. Her single foster mother took her to a healthy church and made personal sacrifices for Petersen’s sake.

“My salvation did not happen in a single grand moment, but through small miracles that gradually chipped away at the scales of skepticism,” says Petersen. “I saw God more clearly the more time I spent around people who pursued godliness, who told me who I was in Christ despite what I’d done and what had been done to me.

“In the end, the father I’d always wanted turned out to be the Father who was always there, the Father who revealed himself to me in his own perfect timing.”

May stories like Petersen’s remind us that we are seen, known, and loved, and that in moments when we do not feel we have the answers, our honest uncertainty can be a witness as well.