I've had both a similar experience and pretty much the exact opposite experience so far. I grew up going to church with my mom, but my dad would stay home. Eventually, once I was old enough to actually stay home alone if my dad had to do something Sunday morning, I could choose if I wanted to go or not. For a long time I kept going, but at the same time, I was starting to question my beliefs. By the time I was 12, I had rejected the beliefs of the church, but I continued to attend because I really enjoyed the social and ritualistic aspects, as my maturation lead to more chaos in my life.

For a while in my early teens, I looked around hard for something else to believe in. I probably changed my professed religion every two weeks. I wasn't looking for the religion that worked the best in regards to contradictions, logic, science, and what not, but rather just trying to find something close to world-view. Of course though, I'd read about some cool belief of some minor religion, think it was cool, then "claim" that belief and religion for a bit, then find another one. It was a very interesting thing to do, learning about all sorts of different religions, but it also was deeply unsatisfying. During period throughout the search, I'd end up returning to Christianity, go to church for a while, then stop again.

I think what finally fully stopped my religious trend was that I just couldn't manage to put in the time I needed to in order to get the ritualistic comfort I sought from religion. And so, without really any regard to beliefs, I became nonreligious.

Recently though, I've felt my life sort of start decaying. I've lost a lot of control over new aspects of my life, and it's been rather scary. I started praying again, more as a way to force myself to acknowledge my mistakes, sins and issues, as long as look for ways to fix them. It worked. I'm praying rather regularly now, and I might start the conversion process to Orthodox Christianity, because of the emphasis on prayer there. I don't know what I believe about God. I'm not sure I want to know what I belive, much less try to find the actual truth there. I don't care if someone will meet me after death—that's in another life, and this one's such a mess I need to just focus on it. Even without the belief though, I can talk to God and ask for His help. Sometimes, through the clarity I gain from the practice, I even get His help. Maybe He's helping me in other ways too.

Looking back, I wish I had better seperated my beliefs and my religion. I tried hard to be a spiritual person, but I'm not. I am, I think, a ritualistic person, and therefore religion appeals to me. I can lead a pretty chaotic life, and so having something to fall back on, even if it's just the Lord's Prayer before bed, that I feel a connection to and which helps give me some order is really welcome.