Religion is a touchy subject to talk about. Everyone seems to believe different things: different Gods, different ideas of the afterlife, or not believing anything at all. I haven't experienced Heaven or had an encounter with God personally, but my grandmother has. I want to tell her story. I want everyone to know that Heaven is real, that there is something to look forward to after this life. God is real and so is Heaven.

A few years ago my grandmother was put into the hospital to have a hernia in her stomach removed. While in surgery, they also removed some scar tissue the size of a football. That's a lot of scar tissue. She was doing great after her surgery! Recovery was coming along nicely and everything seemed to be going the way it was supposed to. Some of my family and I had gone to visit her that night not knowing that she was going to take a turn for the worst. Her health had plummeted. When I heard the news, the only thing I could think was how? How could my grandma be doing so well before and so awful now? I was scared. The next thing that my grandmother remembers is seeing a bunch of white lights in her hospital room. She heard the doctor say, "Hurry and shove a tube down her throat and let God take over". After that, my grandma saw red and orange lights that resembled the northern lights. There were arms waving and a voice telling her to go back because her work here was not done. She didn't see any people, she just saw the arms and heard the voice. That's all she remembers. The next thing my grandmother remembers is being a patient in the ICU. My aunt was in the room with her at the time, so she asked for a piece of paper and a pen. She took that pen and wrote, "I saw the Pearling Gates".

My mom told me this story after my aunt had told my parents, and I was in shock. I didn't know what to think. All I knew is that I was thankful that she was alive and that God wasn't ready for her yet. I went and saw her in the ICU, and all I could do was cry; she had tubes down her throat and she was hooked up to a ton of machines. I had never seen my grandma like that before. She saw me crying and she couldn't talk because of the tube down her throat, but she grabbed my hand and managed to mouth, "I'm gonna be okay".

I've told this story to a lot of my friends when the conversation about religion or Heaven has been brought up. Most of them think it's amazing that this happened. There are others that have their doubts, and I don't blame them. There are people that refuse to believe that there is someone greater than us, someone, who created earth and gave us everything that we have in life. I know my grandmother, and she did not make this up. People can say what they want, I will continue to believe that there is a God and a Heaven and that my grandmother almost went to Heaven that night. Believe it or not, Heaven is for real.