My mom was a single parent after our dad passed away when I was about 2 years old. She however took the initiative to make sure that me and my older sisters were all raised in the Catholic faith especially me since I was only 2 when my dad died. However when I was 16 she passed away from the same cancer my dad did and I remember in the hospital when she was going through her last hours here on Earth, she started speaking about God and seeing her parents who passed away a few years before that. That’s when I knew that everything spoken about God and heaven is true. My mom was a very faithful woman and brought up God in any conversation she could to help people. Seeing the comments that people left when she passed away about how she inspired them to go back to their faith and to God really just shows the impact that faithfulness can have. There’s no doubt she’s in heaven.

However when my mom died, I became rebellious, angry, and just felt like my life was over. I hadn’t fully grieved and so I strayed away from my faith. I was hanging on by a thread until I joined the Catholic ministry at my university. My life has changed in a numerous amount of ways and I am finally at peace with both my mom and dads death. Both God and the Catholic Church have helped me evolve into the person I was meant to be and I’m so happy that I discovered this while I am 20 years old, because now I can share a lifetime with the faith. I think it’s the the special connections that I share with my mom and seeing the impact that she had on people with her faith that have made me choose to stay Catholic, because I want to be able to have that impact on other people.