Text title:   miracles from heaven                                                                 Author/ director: Christy Wilson Beam                                                                  Text type: film                                                                                                             Date finished: 31.08.18

In the truly heart warming story, “Miracles from Heaven,” A young girl named Annabelle Beam battles with a rare incurable disease. This film shows how her sickness tested her families faith and trust in god, also how in the end it was her faith in god and a unplanned accident that saved her life.

In the film, themes like faith, religion, family values and the idea of giving up are all present. To begin, throughout the text examples of the religion and christian faith are shown by conversations, actions and inferences strategically placed by the writer. The beam family starts off as a perfect loving family, devoted to their church, however when Ana gets sick, they start too lose their trust in gods power as Ana gets sicker and sicker. When She was in the hospital Ana said she wanted to die.

“i’m sorry, Mommy. I don’t want to make you sad. I… I just want it to be over.” This shows how much pain she was in and she could see how much stress it was causing her family, she accepted her disease and decided that she couldn’t deal with it.

“I lost my faith. Because of that, I didn’t see what was all around me. Albert Einstein said there are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle and the other is as though everything is a miracle. I’m the first to tell you I wasn’t living my life as though everything is a miracle. I missed a lot. Miracles are everywhere.” This quote shows how Christy, Ana’s mum felt as she watched her child lose herself to the pain of her disease. For Christy, once she started to question her faith, she started to pour all her energy into Ana and getting her better, without any success. Ultimately, she was cured when she fell out of a tree and hit her head, causing her nerves connected to her digestive tract to regenerate. Watching the journey this family went through, just shows the value of having close family connections and spending time with the people you love. 

This text connects to the world through the idea of suffering and pain. Many people go through, or know people who have gone a disease or sickness that effects their life and the people around them. Also this shows how many people use religion to give them a purpose in life, also to give them a small relief from their suffering, the belief that heaven is a real place. When she was cured many people didn’t believe her that god cured her, this shows that despite going to church, it can be very difficult to unconditionally believe. Also this displays the idea that many people don’t believe in miracles. because this is based on a true story and written by Christy Beam, this especially connects with the world socially and religiously. 

This shows me that the world can be a beautiful place, full of accidental wonders and miracles, however this also shows me how sceptical people can be of these miracles and ideas. In the text we can see how small inputs from people around her, helped Ana to get better, the waitress taking them on a tour to make her feel better, the receptionist getting her that appointment, the airport assistant, issuing them plane tickets to see Ana despite the declined credit card. This shows me that good energy gets passed on and good karma makes peoples lives better. 

I connect with this film personally, through my family. I have seen many relatives in hospital fighting with mental and physical diseases, seeing this pain has helped shape me into who I am today.  And although I don’t believe in god I feel that religion was good for Annabelle and her family, that It helped them to cope with their pain and stress. 

I  recommend this film to those going through similar situations so they can feel less alone as use it as a support mechanism. Also this is a good family movie that displays good themes suitable for young ages with parental supervision. Its an amazing movie and I really enjoyed it, i think people my age would enjoy it too.

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  1. I connect with this film personally, through my family. I have seen many relatives in hospital fighting with mental and physical diseases, seeing this pain has helped shape me into who I am today. – you could explain this further

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