My mom was also cool about religion! She & my dad are very devout Methodists (yes, that’s a thing).

In early high school, we were at Dairy Queen after running errands and I randomly blurted out, “I’m still gonna go to church/Sunday School/youth group/choir/handbell choir cuz it’s a perfectly fine time and the only time I get to see my church friends cuz they go to another school, but like… real talk, God & Jesus are metaphors and no one literally believes this, right?”

And my mom was like… “Jesus Christ is very literally working hard as my personal lord & savior from heaven right now, and He’s working extra hard to support me as my daughter tells me she’s an atheist.”

And I was like, “My bad. I thought this was a Santa Claus thing & when I got enough you’d tell me God was just a metaphor for why we should treat each other right.”

And my mom was like, “Well, I’m adding your atheism to my prayer list, but as long as you keep treating others right, I’m not worried about whether we’ll spend eternity together in literal Heaven because the very real God is reasonable and loves you very much.”