Jayne Dowle: Slowly but certainly, how I put my faith in Christianity

My faith crept up on me, until about five years ago I started putting "C of E" in the box marked "religion" on official forms. I had sat in Sunday school from the age of three, wondering what it would be really like to suddenly "find God".

I expected it to be an earth-shattering moment, one which would make me revoke the temptations of pop music, make-up and boys and become good overnight. Rather, it was a gradual realisation that I did believe in something bigger than myself, that I did accept that there was some force that helped to shape my life. And also, I recognised my growing respect for religion. Through creating a community history book with our local church, I met some lovely people who quietly got on with believing in God without trying to shove their opinions down my throat. This experience also proved to me that the church, so often criticised, can be a force for good.

Too often, we criticise religion for dividing us. But perhaps the Pope's visit to Britain will make us all think a little bit more about how we accommodate committed believers of all faiths into a modern, multi-cultural society.

I read a jokey magazine article about middle age recently which identified "getting religion" as one of the sure signs you are getting older. Although the premise was humorous, it made a sober point. For me, experiencing bereavement, serious illness in the family, and the births of my two children, certainly made me ponder some of the big questions. Why do we die, and what happens afterwards? Why are we tested, sometimes seemingly to the limits of our endurance?

The year or so when my husband developed a brain tumour, then I had two miscarriages, followed by the birth of a healthy son, and my sister had her daughter prematurely at 29 weeks, stands out. And why do random things – redundancy, deciding to uproot my family from London back to Barnsley – happen for a reason, and somehow fit into a grand plan?

My family aren't especially committed. My mother is vaguely C of E and sang in the church choir as a girl. My father is best described as cynical, and gives any religious canvassers at his door short shrift, with the words: "If God really did exist, why did my mother die when I was 14?"

Back when I was girl, Sunday school was where children went on Sundays. Mine was old-fashioned Methodist. As we got older, we would be taken to attend rallies all over Yorkshire, where individuals would

stand up and testify to the assembled how God had come into their lives.

If you've read Oranges are the Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson's semi-autobiographical account of growing up in an evangelical family in 1960s Lancashire, you will know exactly what I mean. If anything, their fervour frightened me. I couldn't, at that age, imagine it happening to me. And as a teenager, I didn't like the idea that yet another being would be telling me what to do.

After parents, religion is one of the easiest things to rebel against. I was having none of this control stuff, so I left, and got a job delivering newspapers on a Sunday morning instead.

I still don't go to church very often. When my son Jack was small we enjoyed it, but these days Sunday mornings mean football.

But I do like being in churches, and the sense of peace and contemplation they offer. When a friend lost his brother suddenly a few years back, the first thing I did, instinctively, was to drive around Barnsley looking for a church I could sit in and light a candle. And at Christmas, it has become an absolute non-negotiable that I take the children to the Christingle service on Christmas Eve. They aren't even christened, because my husband and I differ on this matter, but that doesn't mean that they can't learn about the real meaning of Christmas. And at times like this, the Church acts as a magnet for the whole community, pulling together school-friends, neighbours and distant relatives.

I realise that I have developed a distinct pick 'n' mix approach to my religion that some might disapprove of; it involves vehement blaspheming on occasion and the daily checking of my horoscope. I know I am not the only one among my friends to have come to this compromise, and I think it is time that religious leaders realised that although church attendance is plummeting, individuals still want to believe.

Just because I don't actually belong to an established Church, and turn up every Sunday morning to prove it doesn't mean that I don't have faith. It's just my faith, and how I got there is between me, God and anyone else I think may be interested.