Brittany O'Neill and her family packed up everything and moved to Berkeley, California for a fresh start. Her brother and she were excepted into Berkeley University and she thought it would be the great college experience. With little to no stresses...
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Chapter One
If God were to give you a novel based on your entire life, from beginning to end, would you read it? Would you want to know the details of your life in every detail? Would you want to change what would happen in your life, were you not to like it? Or would you simply leave the book on the shelf to collect dust until your last dying breath?
Possibly giving it to your children to look at once you're gone? It would be God's first and last gift to you before he welcomed you at the gates of Heaven. Whatever you did with it was entirely up to you and you alone. It wouldn't be a test of strength or a test of weakness, but simply his gift to you.
I was always told God loved us and he would always love us no matter what we did. If we were to sin, all we had to do was ask for forgiveness and he would forgive us. Everyone sinned, I learned. It was inevitable, yet we could still go to Heaven when we died.
And that confused me when I was younger.
How could someone as important and superior as God forgive someone as puny and insignificant as us for our sins when it clearly stated in the Bible, we weren't allowed to commit such unforgivable sins?
There were so many questions running through my mind as a child as I sat in church with my mother and elder brother. So, one night as my mom was tucking me into bed, I asked her how God decided who went to Heaven and who went to Hell. I was seven at the time and it shocked her I asked such a question. It was a question way beyond my years, yet she answered me.
"He just knows, baby." She had said.
"But how?" I asked as she kissed my forehead.
She smiled slightly down at me, rubbing my bangs back countless times. Her big blue eyes, which mirrored my own, danced with understanding. She had always known me, and my brother were smarter way beyond our years, but she still saw us as the seven- and ten-year-old that we were.
"He gives us a choice, sweetheart. Whether we want to go to Heaven or Hell." She explained.
My face contorted in confusion. "Why would anyone want to go to a place as hot and sticky as Hell, mommy?" I asked, in a treble voice I could only have at seven.
She laughed lightly, brushing my brown hair back. "Some people choose not to believe in God, sweetie. Others may not be entirely saved before they die."
I frowned, thinking about daddy. He had become sick when I was five, but I could still remember on Sunday mornings he wouldn't go with mommy and us to church.
"Is Daddy in Hell?" I asked, thinking he didn't believe in God.
Mom's smile faltered as she sucked in a shallow breath. She shook her head, "No, baby. Daddy is in heaven watching over you and Jayden."
"How do you know God let him?"
"Because when Daddy got sick, he dreamed God had visited him one night while he was in the hospital. He said in this dream he and God sat down at our favorite spot at the park; under the cherry tree overlooking the lake. You and your brother were splashing around in the water, and he asked Daddy if he wanted to be there for you and Jayden.Of course, your daddy said yes right away, as you and Jayden were his pride and joy. So, God said he'd allow your daddy to watch over you from Heaven."
