I was raised in the Presbyterian Church, and yet I am not sure what I really believed about heaven. I never had to know. I know for sure, I believed if I was a good girl, nothing bad would ever happen.

I was very young when I formed my vision of Heaven. It was the great unknown city above the clouds where God lived. My Grandma told me God greeted all the people who die at the Pearly Gates of Heaven. And, my Grandma's name was Pearl, so I thought she must have been someone really special.

Then she died, and I felt like there was so much more I needed to know from her and now, I could never ask. Like, how she made her applesauce and why did she want me to read the Bible? I pictured her arriving at her gates... the Pearly Gates, and everyone would know her because she was Pearl.

The image of heaven I had created as a little girl, followed me as I grew into a woman, a wife, and then a mother. When my beautiful boy died suddenly of bacterial meningitis, the surreal image of the Pearly Gates didn't matter because all of my beliefs were thrown into chaos. I asked, "How can I know if there's a God? Where is heaven?" I demanded. "Is there really an afterlife? Is my Grandma there?"

These are all questions we, as intelligent adults may have at different times in our lives, but never was it more profound than when my child died. My beautiful beloved 16-year old son, Garrett was missing from this earth and I wanted to know why.

Was I angry with God? You bet. How could He have allowed this to happen to me? I did everything right and yet I lost my child! A child! How could that have happened to such a "good girl?"

The truth is, why not me? Others have lost children and they were "good girls" too.

I realized my perceived belief system collided with real human experience.

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, French Philosopher and Jesuit Priest

In this story I will be sharing with you a truly remarkable miracle that changed my life forever, but at this point in time, I had just lost my beautiful son and I was forced to re-examine my faith.

Step One: Did I believe in God? Yes.

Step Two: Was I open to the possibility that God exists and has a plan for my life? Yes.

Step Three: Was I willing to acknowledge that sometimes the human experience involves getting sick, sometimes dying, or having a tragic christian mystic david hoffmeister ? Yes., reluctantly.

Step Four: Am I able to survive such tragic loss? I didn't think so, but, yes, yes, and yes, because at that point in my life, it wasn't about me, I would just as soon die than feel the pain. But this was about love. Love for my husband and my living children.

And so... I chose to be open to and believe in the possibility that there really is something above those clouds called heaven. A place where my beautiful boy crossed through the Pearlie Gates and met his Grandma Pearl for the very first time and felt the comfort of her soft squishy embrace.

Faith was all I had. When you lose your child, you absolutely have to implement faith as a lifeline. I couldn't do it alone. I questioned God and Heaven and Creation, but if I believed in nothing, I was lost.

The "knowing" that there is a God, goes beyond intellect. As a mother, I could look at the miracle that was created inside of me. Together with my husband, we created a child. Is that a miracle explained simply by chance?

Sometimes we think... give me a sign. But isn't a child being born, sign enough that there is something much greater than we can ever fathom?

Science can tell you the story of how it happened, but how does it happen that the body is formed from one chance moment in time, where tiny cells meet and become human. Those little cells joyfully joined together and gave me a child. And that is a miracle.

Just as birth is a miracle, so is death. Just as you know someone is in the next room, even though he's not with you; God is present. And so is my child. We are all made of energy, and energy never dies.