Personal Narrative: Defining Moments In Life

We all have defining moments in life. For some it’s a moment of brief joy, accomplishment, or satisfaction. These occurrences can define and lay foundation for a core belief. For me, a moment of unwavering sadness and grief, laid foundation for me to question everything I thought I knew about God and Heaven. This is because during the end of my sophomore year in high school, I found myself in the middle of a chaotic storm. One day on my way home from school, I received a call from my mother. She urged me to have my carpool drop me off at the hospital, because my grandmother was ill. Thus, I arrived in the ICU wing at St. Anthony’s Hospital, and found myself at an unraveling. Here, my defining moment wasn’t seeing my father cry for the first time in my life, it wasn’t holding my grandmother’s hand, praying with her, reading to her, or even watching her die after a month of hospital stay. My defining moment was found in a second of

My grandmother dying, left me in a gray area of insecurity and instability. During her hospital stay, I don’t think it hit me how much her fright, affected me. In fact, for months I hid it in the back of my mind, so that I would not approach my fears. This is because I grew up with a silent and firm stance, that life had meaning and heaven was our end. But reflecting on my grandmother’s fear, I came to an uncertainty of my faith. Why was it that I could pray with her every day, and still have this uncertainty? She was a devout catholic, so why it was that she became paralyzed with fright as her death approached? I thought that if Heaven and God were real then she would comforted and feel at ease. So, instead of turning away this notion of Heaven and God, I began to look for affirmations of God’s existence. This is because, the foundation of Heaven lays upon my belief in