One of the things I struggled with most growing up was not necessarily the idea of God, but religion itself. I did not grow up deeply rooted in church, and much of the environment around me treated faith almost like something people should be embarrassed by. If someone openly talked about God, prayed publicly, or carried strong beliefs, people often mocked them or labeled them as “one of those people.” Faith was frequently treated as weakness, ignorance, or blind obedience rather than something thoughtful or personal.

That perspective shaped me more than I realized at the time.

 

Even though I never stopped believing there was something greater than myself, I spent much of my life identifying as agnostic because I struggled with organized religion and the way many people represented it. Growing up, I heard people blame God for pain, suffering, tragedy, disappointment, and hardship. Others used fear constantly:

 

“If you do this, you’re going to hell.”
“If you think that, you’re going to hell.”
“If you don’t believe exactly like us, you’re condemned.”

 

Those experiences made faith feel heavy instead of freeing.

 

As I got older, I also started noticing how differently people interpreted religion itself. Even within Christianity, people often disagreed deeply on doctrine, traditions, practices, and beliefs. Some focused heavily on rules. Others focused on ritual. Others emphasized judgment. Watching all of those divisions made it difficult for me to fully connect to religion because I kept wondering: If everyone believes differently, how do we truly know what is right?

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But underneath all the questions, something still remained.

 

I never completely lost the sense that there was a higher power guiding certain moments in my life. Looking back now, I believe those were small seeds being planted long before I understood what they meant.

 

Sometimes it came through a conversation.
Sometimes through a scripture I barely remembered from childhood.
Sometimes through a person who showed unexpected kindness.
Sometimes through a song, a sermon, a prayer, or even something as small as a message on a bumper sticker that somehow arrived at exactly the right moment.

 

At the time, those moments felt random or insignificant. Looking back now, they feel much more intentional.

 

That is what this song became about for me: the quiet ways God continues reaching for people even while they resist Him, question Him, or struggle to understand Him fully.

 

For most of my life, faith felt more like a distant whisper than a certainty. I resisted it often. I questioned it often. But despite all of that, the pull never completely disappeared.

Then life started unraveling.

 

Around 2016, several major crises hit my life at once. Career struggles, emotional exhaustion, legal issues, uncertainty, fear, and pressure all collided in ways that forced me to start looking at life differently.

 

And strangely, during that season, the whispers started becoming louder.

People began inviting me to church more frequently. Others asked if they could pray for me. Conversations about faith started appearing constantly in places I normally would not have expected. Sermons suddenly felt personal. Scriptures I had ignored before somehow began speaking directly into situations I was actively living through. At first, I resisted it.

 

But over time, I started realizing something important: God had likely been present throughout my entire life long before I consciously recognized Him.

 

The mustard seed had already been planted... long ago.

 

The older I get, the more I believe faith often grows that way for many people. Rarely through one dramatic moment alone, but through countless small moments that slowly shape the heart over time. Small whispers. Small encounters. Small reminders that continue appearing even when we are distracted, skeptical, wounded, or resistant.

One of the biggest struggles I eventually recognized in myself was control.

 

I spent much of my life believing everything depended entirely on me:
my success,
my failures,
my future,
my plans,
my ability to fix things,
my ability to hold everything together.

 

And the harder life became, the tighter I tried to control everything around me.

What I eventually discovered, however, was that control itself had become exhausting.

The more I grew spiritually, the more I began understanding that surrender was not weakness. It was peace.

 

That does not mean effort no longer matters. It does not mean we stop pursuing goals, serving people, or working hard. But I slowly started realizing that no matter how hard I force something, manipulate circumstances, or obsess over outcomes, life ultimately unfolds according to God’s will far more than my own.

 

Once I began letting go of some of that control, something inside me changed.

 

Fear loosened.
Anxiety softened.
Perspective widened.

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For the first time, I felt like I could step outside my own constant striving and recognize that God had been carrying pieces of my story all along. And maybe that is part of what faith really becomes: not certainty about every answer, but trust that God is still working even when we cannot fully see what He is doing yet.

 

That is why the mustard seed matters so much to me now. Faith does not always arrive loudly. Sometimes it grows quietly over years through moments we barely recognize at the time.

 

A conversation.
A struggle.
A prayer.
A person.
A whisper.

 

A sermon that somehow feels painfully personal. Small seeds, and eventually, if we allow them to grow, those seeds can become the very thing that carries us through the hardest seasons of our lives.