My journey toward Orthodoxy didn’t begin with a fall or a leap.
It was more like a slow, silent cracking in the invisible walls I didn’t know surrounded my faith.
I loved God from an early age. My faith was genuine. The foundation was strong.
But my understanding of the afterlife was rooted in fear.
Heaven and hell. The saved and the damned. Eternal reward or eternal punishment.
I accepted this binary view without question because I believed that to be faithful meant to affirm it.
And yet… the cracks had already begun to appear.
What if I was in heaven… but knew others were suffering in hell?
Could I really be joyful?
What about people who never heard of Jesus?
What about pets?
Children would ask me those questions, and though I gave the ‘correct’ answers, my heart always ached.
But those cracks didn’t destroy my faith.
They saved it.
Through those tiny fractures, light began to shine in.
Not light that led me away from God—
but light that led me deeper into Christ.
This chapter isn’t about theology.
It’s about one simple realization:
God’s mercy might be far bigger than I had been taught.
And once that thought took root in me, I couldn’t go back.