Patricia Heaton was reading the Bible by herself in her kitchen at ten in the morning when she stumbled across something so unexpected that it started as laughter and ended in tears she could not stop — a moment between the disciples at the end of the Gospel of John that looked so much like a scene from Everybody Loves Raymond that she could not believe it was actually in there.

She broke down completely and asked God what was happening inside her — and the answer she felt in that moment, that the only possible explanation was that it was all true, is something she said she has never been able to shake since. Some people spend their whole lives searching for that one moment of certainty. Patricia Heaton found it alone in her kitchen on an ordinary morning.