Heaven Is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back (8 page)

Yep, sure did, I said.

Was he your mommys daddy or your daddys daddy?

Pop was my moms dad. He passed away when I was not much older than you.

Colton smiled. Hes really nice.

I almost drove off the road into the corn. Its a crazy moment when your son uses the present tense to refer to someone who died a quarter century before he was even born. But I tried to stay cool. So you saw Pop? I said.

Yeah, I got to stay with him in heaven. You were really close to him, huh, Dad?

Yes, I was, was all I could manage. My head spun. Colton had just introduced a whole new topic: people youve lost, and meeting them in heaven. Crazily enough, with all the talk of Jesus and angels and horses, I had never even thought to ask him if hed met anyone I might know. But then, why would I? We hadnt lost any family or friends since Colton was born, so who would there have been for him to meet?

Now this. I probably drove another ten miles toward Benkelman, thoughts charging through my mind. Soon, the cornfields were broken by neat squares of bronzed stubble, wheat fields past the harvest.

I didnt want to make the same mistake Id made when Id put ideas in his headthat people had to die, for example, before being admitted to heaven. I didnt want him just feeding me back stuff to please me. I wanted to know the truth.

On the left, a quarter mile off the road, a white church steeple seemed to rise from the corn. St. Pauls Lutheran Church, built in 1918. I wondered what the people of this longstanding local fixture would think of the things our little boy had been telling us.

Finally, as we crossed into Dundy County, I was ready to start asking some open-ended questions. Hey, Colton, I said.

He turned from the window where hed been watching a pheasant pacing us amid the corn rows. What?

Colton, what did Pop look like?

He broke into a big grin. Oh, Dad, Pop has really big wings!

Again with the present tense. It was weird.

Colton went on. My wings were really little, but Pops were big!

What did his clothes look like?

He had white on, but blue here, he said, making the sash motion again.

I edged the truck over to avoid a ladder someone had dropped in the road then steered back to the center of the lane. And you got to stay with Pop?

When I was a little boy, I said, I had a lot of fun with Pop.

I didnt tell Colton why I spent so much time with Pop and my Grandma Ellen on their farm in Ulysses, Kansas. The sad truth was that my dad, a chemist who worked for Kerr-McGee Petroleum, suffered from bipolar disorder. Sometimes, when his episodes got bad enough, my mom, Kay, an elementary school teacher, had to put Dad in the hospital. She sent me to Pops to shield me from that. I didnt know I was being shipped awayI just knew I loved roaming the farm, chasing chickens, and hunting rabbits.

I spent a lot of time with Pop at their place out in the country, I said to Colton. I rode on the combine and the tractor with him. He had a dog, and wed take him out and hunt rabbits.

Colton nodded again: Yeah, I know! Pop told me.

Well, I didnt know what to say to that, so I said, The dogs name was Charlie Brown, and he had one blue eye and one brown one.

Cool! Colton said. Can we get a dog like that?

I chuckled. Well see.

My grandfather, Lawrence Barber, was a farmer and one of those people who knew everyone and whom everyone considered a friend. He started most of his days before dawn, beating it from his farmhouse in Ulysses, Kansas, down to the local doughnut shop to swap stories. He was a big guy; he played fullback in the days before the pass. His wife, my Grandma Ellen (the same grandma who sent money to help with Coltons hospital bills), used to say it would take four or five tacklers to bring Lawrence Barber down.

Pop was a guy who went to church only once in a while. He was kind of private about spiritual things, the way a lot of men tend to be. I was about six years old when he died after driving off the road late one night. Pops Crown Victoria hit a power pole, cracking it in half. The top half of the pole keeled over and smashed into the Crown Victorias roof, but the cars momentum carried Pop another half mile into a field. The accident knocked out the power at a feed yard a little way back in the direction Pop had come from, prompting a worker there to investigate. Pop was apparently alive and breathing right after the accident, because rescue workers found him stretched across the passenger seat, reaching for the door handle to try to escape from the car. But when he arrived by ambulance at the hospital, doctors pronounced him dead. He was only sixty-one years old.

I remember seeing my mother in anguish at the funeral, but her grief didnt end there. As I got older, Id sometimes catch her in prayer, with tears gently sliding down her cheeks. When I asked her what was wrong, she would share with me, Im worried about whether Pop went to heaven.

We didnt find out until much later, in 2006, from my Aunt Connie, about a special service Pop had attended only two days before his deatha service that might hold answers to my grandfathers eternal destiny.

The date was July 13, 1975, and the place was Johnson, Kansas. Mom and Aunt Connie had an uncle named Hubert Caldwell. I liked Uncle Hubert. Not only was Hubert a simple country preacher, but he loved to talk and was the type who was easy to talk to. (I also enjoyed Hubert because he was short, shorter than me. Looking down to visit with anyone happens so rarely for me that even the opportunity feels like a privilege.)

Uncle Hubert had invited Pop, Connie, and many others to revival services he was leading in his little country church. From behind his pulpit at the Church of God of Apostolic Faith, Hubert closed his message by asking if anyone wanted to give his life to Christ. Uncle Hubert saw Pop raise his hand. But somehow, that story never made it back to my mom, and she worried about it off and on for the next twenty-eight years.

After we got home from Benkelman, I called my mom and told her what Colton had said. That was on a Friday. The next morning, she pulled into our driveway, having made the trip all the way from Ulysses to hear what her grandson had to say about her dad. It surprised us how quickly she arrived.

Boy, she beelined it up here! Sonja said.

Around the dinner table that evening, Sonja and I listened as Colton told his grandma about Jesus rainbow horse and spending time with Pop. The thing that surprised Mom most was the way Colton told the story: Pop had recognized his great-grandson even though Colton was born decades after Pop died. That got Mom wondering whether those who have gone ahead of us know whats happening on earth. Or is it that in heaven, well know our loved oneseven those we didnt get to meet in lifeby some next-life way of knowing we dont enjoy on earth?

Then Mom asked Colton an odd question. Did Jesus say anything about your dad becoming a pastor?

Just as I was wondering privately why in the world something like my vocation would even come up, Colton surprised me when he nodded enthusiastically. Oh, yes! Jesus said he went to Daddy and told him he wanted Daddy to be a pastor and Daddy said yes, and Jesus was really happy.

I just about fell out of my chair. That was true, and I vividly remember the night it happened. I was thirteen years old and attending a summer youth camp at John Brown University in Siloam Springs, Arkansas. At one of the evening meetings, Rev. Orville Butcher delivered a message about how God calls people to ministry and uses them to do his work all over the world.

The memory of that moment of my life is one of those crystal-clear ones, distilled and distinct, like the moment you graduate from high school or your first child is born. I remember that the crowd of kids faded away and the reverends voice receded into the background. I felt a pressure in my heart, almost a whisper: Thats you, Todd. Thats what I want you to do.

There was no doubt in my mind that I had just heard from God. I was determined to obey. I tuned back in to Pastor Butcher just in time to hear him say that if any of us had heard from God that night, if any of us had made a commitment to serve him in ministry, we should tell someone about it when we got home so that at least one other person would know. So when I got home from camp, I walked into the kitchen.

Mom, I said, when I grow up, Im going to be a pastor.

Since that day decades before, Mom and I had revisited that conversation a couple of times. But we had never told Colton about it.

SEVENTEEN TWO SISTERS

As the green days of summer gave way to a fiery fall, we talked with Colton about heaven every now and then. But one running conversation did emerge: when Colton saw Jesus in heaven, what did he look like? The reason for the frequency of this particular topic was that as a pastor, I wound up spending a lot of time at hospitals, in Christian bookstores, and at other churchesall places where there are lots of drawings and paintings of Christ. Often, Sonja and the kids were with me, so it became sort of a game. When we came across a picture of Jesus, wed ask Colton, What about this one? Is that what Jesus looks like?

Invariably, Colton would peer for a moment at the picture and shake his tiny head. No, the hairs not right, he would say. Or, The clothes arent right.

This would happen dozens of times over the next three years. Whether it was a poster in a Sunday school room, a rendering of Christ on a book cover, or a reprint of an old masters painting hanging on the wall of an old folks home, Coltons reaction was always the same: He was too young to articulate exactly what was wrong with every picture; he just knew they werent right.

One evening in October, I was sitting at the kitchen table, working on a sermon. Sonja was around the corner in the living room, working on the business books, processing job tickets, and sorting through payables. Cassie played Barbie dolls at her feet. I heard Coltons footsteps padding up the hallway and caught a glimpse of him circling the couch, where he then planted himself directly in front of Sonja.

Mommy, I have two sisters, Colton said.

I put down my pen. Sonja didnt. She kept on working.

Colton repeated himself. Mommy, I have two sisters.

Sonja looked up from her paperwork and shook her head slightly. No, you have your sister, Cassie, and . . . do you mean your cousin, Traci?

No. Colton clipped off the word adamantly. I have two sisters. You had a baby die in your tummy, didnt you?

At that moment, time stopped in the Burpo household, and Sonjas eyes grew wide. Just a few seconds before, Colton had been trying unsuccessfully to get his mom to listen to him. Now, even from the kitchen table, I could see that he had her undivided attention.

Who told you I had a baby die in my tummy? Sonja said, her tone serious.

She did, Mommy. She said she died in your tummy.

Then Colton turned and started to walk away. He had said what he had to say and was ready to move on. But after the bomb hed just dropped, Sonja was just getting started. Before our son could get around the couch, Sonjas voice rang out in an all-hands-on-deck red alert. Colton Todd Burpo, you get back here right now!

Colton spun around and caught my eye. His face said, What did I just do?

A bit nervously, Colton slunk back around the couch and faced his mom again, this time much more warily. Its okay, Mommy, he said. Shes okay. God adopted her.

Sonja slid off the couch and knelt down in front of Colton so that she could look him in the eyes. Dont you mean Jesus adopted her? she said.

No, Mommy. His Dad did!

Sonja turned and looked at me. In that moment, she later told me, she was trying to stay calm, but she was overwhelmed. Our baby . . . wasis!a girl, she thought.

Sonja focused on Colton, and I could hear the effort it took to steady her voice. So what did she look like?

She looked a lot like Cassie, Colton said. She is just a little bit smaller, and she has dark hair.

Sonjas dark hair.

As I watched, a blend of pain and joy played across my wifes face. Cassie and Colton have my blond hair. She had even jokingly complained to me before, I carry these kids for nine months, and they both come out looking like you! Now there was a child who looked like her. A daughter. I saw the first hint of moisture glint in my wifes eyes.

Now Colton went on without prompting. In heaven, this little girl ran up to me, and she wouldnt stop hugging me, he said in a tone that clearly indicated he didnt enjoy all this hugging from a girl.

Maybe she was just happy that someone from her family was there, Sonja offered. Girls hug. When were happy, we hug.

Colton didnt seem convinced.

Sonjas eyes lit up and she asked, What was her name? What was the little girls name?

Colton seemed to forget about all the yucky girl hugs for a moment. She doesnt have a name. You guys didnt name her.

How did he know that?

Youre right, Colton, Sonja said. We didnt even know she was a she.

Then Colton said something that still rings in my ears: Yeah, she said she just cant wait for you and Daddy to get to heaven.

From the kitchen table, I could see that Sonja was barely holding it together. She gave Colton a kiss and told him he could go play. And when he left the room, tears spilled over her cheeks.

Our baby is okay, she whispered. Our baby is okay.

From that moment on, the wound from one of the most painful episodes in our lives, losing a child we had wanted very much, began to heal. For me, losing the baby was a terrible blow. But Sonja had told me that to her, the miscarriage not only seared her heart with grief, but it also felt like a personal failure.

We had wanted to believe that our unborn child had gone to heaven. Even though the Bible is largely silent on this point, we had accepted it on faith. But now, we had an eyewitness: a daughter we had never met was waiting eagerly for us in eternity. From then on, Sonja and I began to joke about who would get to heaven first. There were several reasons she had always wanted to outlive me. For one thing, a pastors wife has to put up with being used as a sermon illustration a lot. If I died first, shes always told me, shed finally get to tell the congregation all her stories about me.

But now Sonja had a reason for wanting to reach heaven first. When she was pregnant with the child we lost, we had picked out a boys nameColtonbut we never could agree on a name for a little girl. I liked Kelsey, she liked Caitlin, and neither of us would budge.

But now that we know our little girl doesnt have a name yet, we constantly tell each other, Im going to beat you to heaven and name her first!

EIGHTEEN THE THRONE ROOM OF GOD

One night near Christmas 2003, I followed Colton into his room at bedtime. According to our usual routine, he picked a Bible story for me to read to him, and that night it was The Wise King and the Baby. The story was based on the one in the book of 1 Kings in which two women live together, and each one has an infant son. During the night, one of the babies dies. Overcome with grief, the mother of the dead child tries to claim the other boy as her own. The real mother of the living boy tries to convince the grieving mother of the truth but cant persuade her to give up the surviving baby. Desperate to get her child back, the mother of the living boy suggests that King Solomon, widely known for his wisdom, could settle the matter and determine who the real mother was of the living infant. In the biblical story, King Solomon devises a way to find out what is in each womans heart.

Cut the child in half! the king decrees. Give half to one and half to the other.

The grieving mother agrees to the solution, but the real mother reveals her love, crying out, No! Let her have the child! And thats how the wise king figured out which mother was telling the truth, and its where we get the common phrase, a Solomonic solution.

I came to the end of the story, and Colton and I had our usual good-natured argument over reading it again (and again and again). This time, I won. As we knelt on the floor to pray, I laid the book aside on the carpet, and it fell open to an illustration that pictured King Solomon sitting on his throne. It dawned on me that the Bible talks about Gods throne in several places. For example, the author of the book of Hebrews urges believers to approach the throne of grace with confidence,1 and says that after Jesus had completed his work on earth, he sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.2 And theres that glorious chapter in the book of Revelation that describes Gods throne:

I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.

He who was seated on the throne said, I am making everything new! . . .

I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.3

Hey, Colton, I said, kneeling next to him, when you were in heaven, did you ever see Gods throne?

Colton looked at me quizzically. Whats a throne, Daddy?

I picked up the Bible storybook and pointed to the picture of Solomon seated in his court. A throne is like the kings chair. Its the chair that only the king can sit in.

Oh, yeah! I saw that a bunch of times! Colton said.

My heart sped up a little. Was I really going to get a glimpse into the throne room of heaven? Well, what did Gods throne look like?

It was big, Dad . . . really, really big, because God is the biggest one there is. And he really, really loves us, Dad. You cant belieeeeve how much he loves us!

When he said this, a contrast struck me: Colton, a little guy, was talking about a being so bigbut in the next breath, he was talking about love. For one thing, Gods size clearly wasnt scary to Colton, but it was also interesting to me that as eager as Colton was to tell about what God looked like, he was just as eager to tell me what God felt like toward us.

And do you know that Jesus sits right next to God? Colton went on excitedly. Jesus chair is right next to his Dads!