She Met Me at the Grotto: The Story of My Conversion
By Liah Ostrom
““Never be afraid of loving the Blessed Virgin too much. You can never love her more than Jesus did.””
The Day I Stopped Believing
It was a cool fall day during my sophomore year at Benedictine College when everything I thought I believed fell apart. I remember it clearly: I realized I no longer believed in Jesus Christ.
My faith had been crumbling since the end of freshman year. Oddly enough, it began when I started going to Mass regularly with my boyfriend. I wasn’t Catholic, but the liturgy stirred something deep within me. That summer, I began contemplating the unthinkable: converting.
But I pushed it down.
“No, Liah. You can’t. Your family would be devastated,” I told myself.
I did my research. Most Catholic beliefs made sense to me.
But one thing didn’t: Mary.
Her perpetual virginity confused me. Why did Catholics pray through her? These doubts led me to look into Orthodoxy, but nothing gave me peace.
When I returned to campus, I went back to Mass, and fell in love with it all over again. That only made things more confusing. Why was I drawn to something I didn’t even believe?
I grew frustrated with God. And eventually, angry. My heart hardened.
One night, near midnight, I was sitting in my boyfriend’s truck. He had sensed something was wrong. I looked at him and finally said it out loud:
“I don’t believe in Jesus Christ anymore.”
That night, something dark was awakened.
The Creature
The next day in my philosophy class, I felt it: a sense of being watched. I looked toward the small window on the classroom door. That’s when I saw it.
A creature.
Not of this world.
Its face was made of darkness, twisted with a sickening smile, and eyes that pierced the soul.
I was frozen in fear. No one else noticed anything strange. When I closed my eyes, it disappeared. But that was only the beginning.
For the next two weeks, the creature followed me. Watching. Whispering. And then one day, it spoke:
“Cut yourself.”
It knew my childhood wounds, my history with self-harm. I refused, but the temptation was relentless. I began to unravel. I isolated. I stopped functioning. Until one morning, I woke up, completely alone in my dorm, but I wasn’t alone.
He was there.
Smiling.
The thought of ending my life slipped into my mind, not because I wanted to die, but because I couldn’t bear to see him anymore.
And then he screamed:
“Go to the bridge. Jump.”
And I started planning to do just that.
This is a drawing I drew before I went to the hospital on October 22, 2024 of the creature I was seeing
The Hospital
My boyfriend, sensing something deeply wrong, rushed to my dorm. I hadn’t responded to his texts. He found me and took me to our school therapist. After hearing everything, she gently said:
“Liah, I think you need to go to the hospital, for your safety.”
That night, I was admitted to the psychiatric unit.
I cried for hours. I was convinced I had lost my mind. I got on my knees and prayed to God asking for forgiveness. I apologized that I ever denied Him, and that if I should really pursue Catholicism to show me a sign. The next day, I spoke with the psychiatrist. He seemed puzzled.
“These sound like hallucinations,” he said, “but you’re completely aware they might not be real. That’s unusual.”
He prescribed antipsychotics and discharged me later that day.
The Woman in the Light
My dad had flown in to be with me. He picked me up, helped me fill my prescription, and brought me back to campus. Everything felt... still. The darkness was gone. For a few weeks, life returned to a strange kind of normal.
Then one early morning, around 5 a.m., I woke up with a strange tug in my heart.
Go to Westerman.
That was the feeling.
I couldn’t sleep anyway, so I got up, packed my bag, and walked toward the science building. As I climbed the steps, the feeling returned—that chilling sense of being watched.
I looked up toward the grotto beside the building.
And there she was.
A beautiful brunette woman in a white dress and a blue veil, surrounded by radiant light.
She smiled at me.
And peace—overwhelming peace—washed over me.
I had never felt anything like it. It was holy. Pure. Calming beyond words.
I looked around. Surely someone else saw her?
No one.
Had I taken my medication? Yes.
Was I dreaming? No.
Then the realization slipped into my mind. I was seeing the Mother, the Mother of God.
She slowly faded away. But the moment remained.
The Answer to My Prayer
That vision was the sign I had begged for in the hospital. The sign that God hadn’t left me. That Mary was real. And that she had been with me in the darkness, waiting to lead me home.
Eventually, I found the courage to tell one of the priests on campus. Sharing it lifted a weight off my shoulders. That winter break, I consecrated my life to Mary.
When I returned to school, I enrolled in OCIA. Every question I had, about Mary, the Church, the sacraments, was answered one by one. The knots of doubt were untied.
One More Glimpse of Grace
The week before I entered the Church, during Holy Week, I was given one more gift.
One evening, I felt a deep gut pull to go pray at the grotto again. My boyfriend came with me. When we arrived, the area was crowded, which was unusual. But slowly, one by one, people started leaving until we were the only ones left.
I knelt at the grotto’s kneeler and prayed quietly. When I finished, I walked back to the bench where my boyfriend was sitting and continued to pray silently, gazing at the statue of Mary. I began to pray Hail Marys.
And then, it happened again.
That feeling.
The statue before me changed. There she was again, surrounded in radiant light, smiling down at me. Just as she had that early morning outside Westerman. The peace returned like a flood, and I immediately began to cry.
My boyfriend looked over, concerned.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
I glanced at him to see if he saw it too. But when we both looked back, it was just the statue again, unchanged, still, silent.
But I knew.
She was there.
And she was still leading me home.
And on April 27th, 2025, I entered the Catholic Church.
The statue at Mary’s Grotto at Benedictine College
A Life Transformed
That day remains one of the happiest of my life.
Since then, I’ve fallen in love with Jesus all over again, because of His mother’s love.
I attend daily Mass. I pray the Rosary every day. I’m constantly reading theology books and soaking in the richness of the Catholic faith.
The darkness I once faced tried to destroy me, but Mary stood in the gap. She led me back to her Son, and now my heart belongs to Him.
April 27th, 2025 | Benedictine College OCIA Mass
““In dangers, in doubts, in difficulties, think of Mary, call upon Mary... Following her, you will not go astray.””