I'm an ex-atheist. I was brought up in a family of atheists and for most of my life considered myself to be one. I had a bit of a churchy thing as a teenager - it was a way of rebelling against my atheist family - but for decades was reflexively atheist. Many of the things I read atheist posters on here saying are things I used to think.
Then, gradually, I began to change. There were some external contributory factors. For the first time in my life, I knew some Christians. They didn't try to convert me - not at all, I can't remember any significant conversations with them about faith at this stage. But the way they lived their life really made an impression on me. Not because they were holier than thou, but because their lives had an integrity, and despite their often incredibly difficult lives (I can't go into this, but really awful things) they were people it did you good to be with. So that was one thing. Then I had difficulties with one of my children that I didn't know how I could cope with. I wasn't the practical side, it was my own feelings of despair and hopelessness - feelings that I couldn't land on friends because there is only so much weight that friendship will bear. I found myself praying in my hardest times because there was nothing else I could do. And finally I had a conversation with DH (who was, and remains an atheist/agnostic), who said something like 'it must be extraordinary to take that leap into belief' - and that gave me permission to admit to myself that almost without realising it I had gone from not believing to believing in God.
It took ages and ages before I did anything about this. I had months where I did a kind of internal shudder of 'I can't have joined those weird, weedy, grinny religious types, those uncool religious people' (to be honest, I still have those internal shudders!). I couldn't tell anyone about it. But I couldn't stop either - God was there even though I didn't want him to be. And I kept on praying, often just saying the Lord's Prayer in times of difficulty.
Finally I gave up and went to church. Urgh Yuck! It was so horrible and I felt so out of place and awkward. But somehow it felt right as well. A few weeks later I went back. And back again. I started to read. The first thing I read was Karen Armstrong's book about the Bible. A few books later I came across Rowan Williams's Tokens of Trust. Reading this was the moment for me when everything changed, and I knew that I'd crossed over from being an atheist who was secretly dipping a toe in the God-water to someone who wanted to go into the river and come out again the other side into a new way of living. I asked the vicar if I could get baptised, and there I was ... a Christian.
I still find it bizarre sometimes. Sometimes I still think, oh, how did I get here? Will the old Niminy come back again? But actually most of the time I have a powerful sense that yes, this is who I am meant to be, and how I am meant to live.