One Woman’s Thoughts on the Mystery of Heaven

I never thought much about heaven. The idea of dead friends and relatives dressed in white robes singing hallelujah while they wandered inside the pearly gates seemed a little…. well….. boring. Not that I didn’t want to be with God, but it seemed easier for me to find Him here in everyday life. I didn’t need to consider eternity.

When Neil died I became far more interested in heaven. There was so much I needed to understand. Is heaven a parallel dimension img_2336where the dead can see and hear us but we can’t see them? Is it a jeweled city of marble palaces and heavenly music playing unceasingly? Is it a physical place on the other side of the universe in an alternate galaxy? And at the end of the world, where will all the billions of resurrected bodies fit? So many questions plagued my thoughts!

Then I had a dream of Neil.  In it, I walked out onto the patio where we always enjoyed morning coffee and evening sunsets. I found him waiting on the bench at the picnic table. “What are you doing here?” I asked him. Pointing up to the sky, he said, “The Big Guy sent me to tell you a few things.”
“Ummm…Ok…” I answered hesitantly. Continue reading →

Living and loss: how it all started……

halo: getting ready for heaven
halo: getting ready for heaven

“It’s not a stroke,” the ER doctor seeing my husband said into the phone lines from 500 miles away. Oh thank heavens, I thought to myself as I sat down on my sister’s couch. “It’s worse,” she said bluntly. “He has a large brain tumor, looks like it’s a metastasis from an equally large lung cancer. We’re transferring him down to Roanoke immediately. I’m so sorry,” she said. Absorbing this news, all I could say was “okay, thanks, I’m on my way.” But after I hung up the phone I screamed – a primordial, deep, gut-wrenching, brutally painful scream like nothing I had ever screamed before, barely aware I was even doing it, and totally oblivious to the fact that it was 1 o’clock in the morning and most of the world was asleep……… Continue reading →