Can you believe in God and not “feel” God? Yes! Yes you can.

This is a topic that I am especially interested in. When I was growing up, “feeling God” was a big thing, and it left many people feeling like something was wrong with them or that they just weren’t “spiritual.” For years, I went along with this idea of “feeling God.” And now—I’m not saying people can’t or don’t feel God—but for many of us, we don’t experience God in the way people have traditionally described.

I wanted to feel God. I think I convinced myself I felt God because I did believe in God, and so I thought this was part of the deal. To be honest, though, it took me well into my 20s to realize I’m a very logical person. I’m not super emotional, so “feeling God” never really sat well with me. I didn’t really get it, and it caused me to question a lot of things that maybe I shouldn’t have had to question. I didn’t “hear” God speaking to me or “feel” the Spirit. I didn’t have many experiences that were “God moments,” as people say.

Now, I did feel pain, and joy, and love, and laughter, and anger. These feelings, I realized, are how I feel God. These feelings are real, and they are meant to communicate something to us. I believe that in our creation, God was a part of the process, and so God uses our intellect to connect with us. This is why, for me, “my gut” is how I feel God. I believe God is a part of me and created my brain and my personality, and so to be in tune with myself is to be in tune with God.

Once I started thinking about things in this way, I felt way more connected to myself. I stopped overthinking: “How am I supposed to feel a spiritual essence?” or “What does it mean that I don’t feel it—am I just not one of those people who can have a relationship with God?”

I believe God works through humans as they are. For someone, sports might be the way they connect with God. For another, it may be nature. And yet for another, it’s humor. God is so much bigger than we can think or imagine, and so for God to intimately know you and connect with you the way you would with another human being is one of the most natural things.

Now, I feel God whenever I connect with my best friend on the phone and we trade stories about the newest thing our toddler girls have done—or when I go out to dinner and get overly excited about the possibility of getting dessert. I feel God when I’m so impatient waiting in traffic, and when someone says something to me that I just can’t believe. My “feelings” of God are rarely moments of awe, but normally everyday, mundane moments that we share together as I go through the human experience.

If you are concerned that you are not “spiritual” enough, or don’t understand God enough, or that there is something wrong or missing about you—there isn’t. And you are. Sometimes, we do ourselves a disservice by talking about something in a way that only some people can relate to, and deciding that’s the norm. There is no norm when it comes to what your relationship with God looks like—and that’s precisely what makes it so beautiful.

So keep being confused or curious, because that’s where God is too.