Chapter One

So, I’d consider myself a religious person. I go to church. I actually love going to church. The singing, getting to be surrounded by beautiful stained glass, seeing my friends. The free snacks.

I help out in youth group when I can and always, always, pray before a big test. I guess I took my faith for granted, it was just a thing that was there, that both felt a part of me and separate from me. I’d participate, but then leave, focusing more on school or what else I needed to do that day. I believed in God, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say He was in my every thought and action. So, it’s an understatement to say that nothing prepared me for meeting Mary for the first time. Like, the Mary, mother of Jesus.

She came to me in what I first thought was a dream, light pulsating around her, muffling her features. When she smiles though, I feel the jolt of recognition in my heart.

I’ve seen paintings of her my whole life, but that isn’t how I know it is her. She fills me with a light of knowledge. In an instant, everything becomes clear—my life, my purpose, the history and future of humanity. I can’t put words to the knowing, but it feels like a physical thing resting in me. The place we are in is warm and comforting. The heat radiates through my body, coursing as it if is a part of me. Maybe it is. Flowing through me alongside my blood.

I look around, but I can’t make out anything that surrounds us. Just soft forms. Objects without clear borders, existing on the edges of my vision.

She is the same softness, features barely discernible beneath her purple robes. The fabric looks lush and heavy, and I want to reach my fingers out to touch it, but find I don’t have the energy to lift my hand. Instead, I just sit and look at her, and enjoy being in her presence.

I’m not sure how long we stay there, her standing and me staring, but when I feel wakefulness pull at me, I fight it. I don’t want to leave this place. I want to live here forever. When my lids open, I frantically search for her. My eyes dart to each corner of my darkened room, but she is gone, the knowledge she brought dissipating into the nothingness around me.