Read Heaven Is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back Online

Authors: Todd Burpo,Sonja Burpo,Lynn Vincent,Colton Burpo

Tags: #Near-Death Experiences - Religious Aspects - Christianity, #Heaven, #Inspirational, #Near-Death Experience, #Body; Mind & Spirit, #Religious Aspects, #Christianity, #General, #Religion, #Near-Death Experiences, #Heaven - Christianity, #Christian Life, #Burpo; Colton, #Parapsychology, #Christian Theology, #Eschatology

Heaven Is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back (4 page)

BOOK: Heaven Is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back
11.2Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
Heaven is for real
Page: 12

David tore his clothes and cried and prayed and pleaded with God. He was so grief-stricken that when the baby died, his servants were afraid to come and tell him. But David figured it out, and when he did, he got up, washed himself, ate, and calmly took care of the funeral. His behavior confused his servants, who said, Hey, wait a minute: werent you just freaking out a few minutes ago? Werent you just pleading and crying before God? Now youre so calm . . . whats the deal?

David explained, I was hoping God would change his mind. But he didnt.2

In his mind, David had been doing what he could while there was still something he could do.

When I think back on that drive to North Platte, thats how I felt. Yes, the X-rays looked bad, and my sons face was covered in death.

But he wasnt dead yet.

Now was not the time to quit and mourn. Now was the time for prayer and action. God, let us get there. Let us help our son.

As a father, I felt I had blown it. But maybe there was still something I could do to redeem myself. That hope was probably the only thing that kept me from falling apart.

We crossed the North Platte line at about noon and made a beeline for the pediatricians office. I hustled out of the SUV and bundled Colton in a blanket, carrying him in my arms like a fireman. Sonja gathered up our gear and followed me in, still carrying the hospital bowl.

At the reception desk, a pleasant woman greeted us.

Were the Burpos, I said. We called ahead from Imperial about our son.

The doctor has gone to lunch.

Gone to lunch?!

But we called ahead, I said. He knew we were coming.

Please have a seat, the receptionist said. The doctor will be back in ten or fifteen minutes.

Her routine manner told me she did not feel our urgency, and inside me, a rocket of anger went off. On the outside, though, I kept my cool. I couldve screamed and hollered, but it wouldnt have done any good. Also, Im a pastor. We dont have the luxury of publicly losing it.

Sonja and I found a seat in the waiting area, and fifteen minutes later, the doctor arrived. He had the soothing appearance of maturitysilver hair, glasses, a trim moustache. The nursing staff ushered us back to an exam room, and Sonja handed him the packet of tests wed brought, along with the Xrays. He examined Colton so briefly that it occurred to me he might be making up for lost time.

Im going to order a CT scan, he said. Youll need to head across the street to the hospital.

He meant the Great Plains Regional Medical Center. Ten minutes later, we found ourselves in the imaging clinic in perhaps the most important argument of our lives.

SEVEN "I THINK THIS IS IT"

Heaven is for real
Page: 13

But Colton, you have to drink it!

Noooo! Its yuh-keeeee!

Coltons screams of protest echoed through the clinic. He was so exhausted, so frail, so tired of throwing up his guts, and now we were trying to make him drink a thick, gritty, cherry-red solution that a sane adult wouldnt drink voluntarily in a million years. Finally, Colton took a little sip, but then immediately heaved it up again. Sonja swooped in to catch it in the bowl.

Hes throwing up all the time, I told the imaging technician. Hows he going to drink it?

Im sorry, sir . . . he has to drink it so we can get the best images.

Ple-e-ease! Please dont make me drink it, Daddy!

We tried everything. We played good cop/bad cop, Sonja coaxing while I threatened. But the firmer I got, the more Colton clamped his teeth together and refused the sticky liquid.

I tried reasoning: Colton, if you can just get this down, the doctors can do this test and we can get you feeling better. Dont you want to feel better?

Sniffles. Yeah.

Well, here then, take a drink.

Noooooo! Dont make meeee!

We were desperate. If he didnt drink the fluid, they couldnt do the CT scan. Without the CT scan, they couldnt diagnose. Without a diagnosis, they couldnt treat our son. The battle raged for nearly an hour until, finally, a technician came out and had mercy on us. Lets go ahead and take him in. Well just do the best we can.

Inside the imaging room, Sonja stood with the tech behind the radiation shield while I stood beside a listless Colton as the moving table slid him into a big, scary tube. Showing tenderness and compassion, the tech stopped the table before it slid Colton fully into the machine, allowing him to keep his head out so that he could see me. The machine whirred to life, and Colton stared at me through eyes pinched with pain.

Just like that, the test was over. The technician scanned the pictures, then escorted us out of the lab. He did not take us back to the main waiting room, but to an isolated hallway where a few chairs lined the wall.

The technician looked at me somberly. You need to wait here, he said. At the time, I didnt even notice that he had not asked Colton to get dressed.

The three of us sat in the cold, narrow hallway, Sonja cradling Colton, his head against her shoulder. She was crying pretty steadily now. Looking in her eyes, I could see that her hope had drained away. This wasnt the normal place where you would wait. The tech had separated us out. He had seen the picture and knew it was something bad.

Sonja looked down at Colton, lying in her arms, and I could see the wheels turning in her head. She and Colton did everything together. This was her little boy, her pal. More than that, this little blond-haired, blue-eyed fireball was a heavenly blessing, a healing gift after the baby we had lost.

Five years earlier, Sonja had been pregnant with our second child. We were over the moon about it, seeing this new life as the rounding out of our family. When it was just the two of us, we were a couple. When Cassie was born, we became a family. With a second child on the way, we could begin to see the outlines of the futurefamily portraits, a house filled with the joyful noise of childhood, two kids checking their stockings on Christmas morning. Then two months into the pregnancy, Sonja lost the baby, and our misty-edged dreams popped like soap bubbles. Grief consumed Sonja. The reality of a child lost, one we would never know. An empty space where there wasnt one before.

We were eager to try again, but we worried about whether we would be able to have another child, multiplying our misery. A few months later, Sonja became pregnant again. Her early prenatal checkups revealed a healthy, growing baby. Still, we hung on a bit loosely, a little afraid to fall in love with this new child as we had the one we had lost. But forty weeks later, on May 19, 1999, Colton Todd Burpo arrived and we fell head over heels. For Sonja, this little boy was an even more special gift directly from the hand of a loving, heavenly Father.

Heaven is for real
Page: 14

Coltons face appeared pinched and pale, his face a tiny moon in the stark hallway. The shadows around his eyes had deepened into dark, purple hollows. He wasnt screaming anymore, or even crying. He was just . . . still.

Again it reminded me of those dying patients I had seen hovering on the threshold between earth and eternity. Tears filled my eyes, blurring the image of my son like rain on a windowpane. Sonja looked up at me, her own tears streaming. I think this is it, she said.

EIGHT RAGING AT GOD

Five minutes later, a white-coated man emerged from the imaging lab. I dont remember his name, but I remember that his name tag said Radiologist.

Your son has a ruptured appendix, he said. He needs emergency surgery. Theyre ready for you in surgical prep now. Follow me.

Astonished, Sonja and I fell in behind him. Heat surged in my temples. A burst appendix? Hadnt the doctor in Imperial ruled that out?

In the surgical prep room, Sonja laid Colton on a gurney, kissed his forehead, and stepped away as a nurse closed in with an IV bag and a needle. Immediately, Colton began to scream and thrash. I stood at my sons head and held his shoulders down, trying to soothe him with my voice. Sonja returned to Coltons side, crying openly as she kept trying to brace his left arm and leg with her body.

When I looked up, the prep room was crowded with men and women in white coats and scrubs. The surgeon is here, one of them said, gently. If youll step out and talk with him, well take over in here.

Reluctantly, we stepped through the curtain, Colton screaming, Pleeease, Daddy! Dont go!

In the hallway, Dr. Timothy OHolleran waited for us. Dr. OHolleran was the doctor who had performed the mastectomy on me four months earlier. Now his features were set in grim horizontal lines.

He didnt waste words. Coltons appendix has ruptured. Hes not in good shape. Were going to go in and try to clean him out.

On the other side of the curtain, Colton was still screaming. Daddy! Daaadd-eeee!

Gritting my teeth, I shut out the sound and tried to focus on the doctor.

We asked about a burst appendix in Imperial, Sonja said. They ruled it out.

My brain skipped over the past and looked toward the future, angling for hope. How do you think hell do? I said.

Weve got to go in and clean him out. Well know more when we open him up.

The spaces between his words rang in my ears like alarm bells as Coltons screams rang down the halls. In response to a direct question, the doctor had specifically not given us any assurances. In fact, the only thing he had said about Colton was that he was in bad shape. My mind flashed back to the moment Sonja called me in Greeley from Imperial to tell me Coltons fever had broken, and that they were on their way. What had seemed like the end of a stomach flu had more likely been the first sign of a ruptured appendix. That meant poison had been filling our little boys belly for five days. That tally explained the shadow of death we saw on him now. And it explained why Dr. OHolleran had not offered us any hope.

The doctor nodded toward the noise spilling from the prep room. I think itll work better if we take him back to surgery and sedate him, then put in the IV.

He stepped over to the curtain and I heard him give the order. A few moments later, two nurses wheeled the gurney through the curtain, and I saw Colton writhing. He twisted his tiny form, turning his head until he locked onto me with his sunken eyes. Daddy! Dont let them take meeee!

Heaven is for real
Page: 15

When everybodys freaking out, they all look to Dad especially when Dads a pastor. Now I was finally in a room where no one was looking at me, and I began raging at God.

Where are you? Is this how you treat your pastors?! Is it even worth it to serve you?

Back and forth, I paced the room, which seemed to close in on me, shrinking as surely as Coltons options were shrinking. Over and over a single image assaulted me: Colton being wheeled away, his arms stretched out, screaming for me to save him.

Thats when it hit me. We waited too long. I might never see my son alive again.

Tears of rage flooded my eyes, spilled onto my cheeks. After the leg, the kidney stones, the mastectomy, this is how youre going to let me celebrate the end of my time of testing? I yelled at God. Youre going to take my son?

NINE MINUTES LIKE GLACIERS

Fifteen minutes later, maybe more, I emerged from that room dry-eyed. It had been the first time Id really been alone since the whole ordeal began. I had wanted to be strong for Sonja, a husband strong for his wife. I found her in the waiting room, using her last drops of cell phone battery to call friends and family. I hugged her and held her as she cried into my shirt until it stuck to my chest. I used what little battery was left on my cell phone to call Terri, my secretary, who would in turn activate the prayer chain at church. This was not a ritual call. I was desperate for prayer, desperate that other believers would bang on the gates of heaven and beg for the life of our son.

Pastors are supposed to be unshakable pillars of faith, right? But at that moment, my faith was hanging by a tattered thread and fraying fast. I thought of the times where the Scripture says that God answered the prayers, not of the sick or dying, but of the friends of the sick or dyingthe paralytic, for example. It was when Jesus saw the faith of the mans friends that he told the paralytic, Get up, take your mat and go home.1 At that moment, I needed to borrow the strength and faith of some other believers. After I hung up with Terri, Sonja and I sat together and prayed, afraid to hope and afraid not to.

Time dragged, the minutes moving at the speed of glaciers. Between muted conversations and small talk, the waiting room ticked with a pregnant silence.

Ninety minutes later, a female nurse in purple scrubs, a surgical mask dangling from her neck, stepped into the waiting room. Is Coltons father here?

The tone of her voice, and the fact that it was a nurse and not Dr. OHolleran, sent a surge of hope through my body.

Maybe God is being gracious despite our stupidity. Maybe hes going to give us another day, another chance.

I stood. Im Coltons dad.

Mr. Burpo, can you come back? Coltons out of surgery, but we cant calm him down. Hes still screaming, and hes screaming for you.

When they were wheeling Colton away, I couldnt bear his screams. Now, suddenly, I wanted to hear his screams more than Id ever wanted to hear anything in my life. To me, they would be a beautiful sound.

Sonja and I gathered up our things and followed the nurse back through the wide double doors that led to the surgical ward. We didnt make it to the recovery room but met a pair of nurses wheeling Colton through the hallway on a gurney. He was alert, and I could tell hed been looking for me. My first reaction was to try to get as close as I could to him; I think I wouldve climbed on the gurney with him if I hadnt thought the nurses might feel a little put out.

The nurses stopped long enough for Sonja and I each to plant a kiss on Coltons little face, which still looked pale and drawn. Hey, buddy, how you doin? I said.

Hi, Mommy. Hi, Daddy. The ghost of a smile warmed his face.

The nurses got the gurney under way again, and a few minutes and an elevator ride later, Colton was settled into a narrow hospital room at the end of a long corridor. Sonja stepped out of the room for a moment to take care of some paperwork at the nurses station, and I stayed behind, sitting next to Coltons bed in one of those mesh-covered rockers, drinking in my sons aliveness.

BOOK: Heaven Is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back
11.2Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Devil’s Harvest by Andrew Brown
Deviations by Mike Markel
Gone Rogue by A McKay
The Dreaming Suburb by R.F. Delderfield
The School Gates by May, Nicola
The Searcher by Christopher Morgan Jones
Deliverance by James Dickey