My mom lay in a hospital bed in Searcy for almost a month. We four siblings made sure she was comfortable and knew at least one of us would always be there with her.
With congestive heart failure, she needs medications. At that time, she had a tough time breathing. The problem was so dramatic she could barely put three words together without having to pause to catch her breath. Walking ten feet to the bathroom in her hospital room left her dizzy and exhausted. She would close her eyes and take shallow breaths until she felt a little better.
Nutrition was a challenge. Food or drink would sometimes travel down her windpipe into her lungs. The flap in her esophagus wasn’t functioning properly. So she swallowed anything liquid mixed with a thickener. It was like drinking a soft gel. We secretly discovered that she preferred Dr. Pepper with thickener or a thickened Route 44 sweet tea.
She also suffered from atypical pneumonia, which is similar to severe bronchitis. Specialists discovered her aortic valve didn’t work correctly, so the doctors tried to make her strong enough to have heart surgery.
After much trial and error, Mom’s doctor explained that his plan hadn’t worked, and she was sent to Little Rock for surgery.
Alarmed and scared, we kids prepared for an uncertain future. Would this be Mom’s final journey before heaven?
Mom, of course, loved having us there. She bragged about us to all the nurses and doctors. Even though she struggled to breathe and get words out, the staff would, in their hurried kindness, listen and encourage her.
One night, sitting beside her on her hospital bed, I rubbed her arm and held her hand. She smiled and then looked away for a minute. She turned back to me and, with a serious, searching look in her eyes, said, “You know, the older you get, the more you look back at your life and realize you didn’t always make the best choices for your kids. Sometimes you wish you handled things differently.”
I smiled, brushed back her hair, and leaned down and kissed her on her forehead. I squeezed her hand. “Well, Mom, there are no perfect parents. And there are no perfect kids. All of your kids love Jesus. All of us are involved in the church. The ones who have kids have raised them the same way. None of us are drug users or alcoholics. None of us have ever gone to jail. Well, except that one time after a late-night play rehearsal in downtown Nashville, when I ran a red light and the officer sitting at the opposing green light pulled me over and discovered my tags were expired, and I already owed a ticket for that, so he hauled me in for a couple of hours. Other than that, in spite of our flaws, eccentricities, drama, and self-imposed dysfunctions, you did a pretty good job. I think you did an outstanding job.”
Her sweet eyes glistened as she reached up, brushed my cheek with the back of her hand, and whispered, “I never regretted any of my babies.”
The doctors worked hard to get Mom strong enough to have a procedure called transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR).
I felt intense anxiety, not knowing if that was right for her. Then Christina, the TAVR coordinator, came in and meticulously explained the strength building and tests needed to get her as prepared as possible for the procedure. She gave me several brochures to read, with pictures so I could understand better.
I devoured every page. TAVR is much less invasive than open-heart surgery. Instead of having to crack the sternum, the doctors go in with a tube through the groin, knock the old valve out of the way, and replace it with a new one. It expands outward and takes over the work of the original valve.
During that period of waiting, I heard from several friends who had experienced the same procedure or had family members who were walking around with the little miracle device, which looks like a crown. They willingly shared how the procedure reduced recovery time and said they’d observed almost immediate and noticeable improvement in the patient’s health.
I felt calm and reassured after reading the information and talking to other people. Peace replaced fear. I had knowledge and understanding of the procedure instead of insecurity and the mystery of not knowing, which dispelled apprehension and worry.
We stood around her bed, all her babies and a couple of nurses, and prayed. The attending nurse wheeled Mom into the surgery room, and we waited. After two hours, Dr. Glover came and told us the procedure had been successful. We went to her room later and hugged her. Each of us told her we loved her and encouraged her to sleep. She did.
The next morning, when I walked into her room, she would not shut up. She talked nonstop, and her cheeks were pink and pinchable. Her coherent words came in complete sentences without her stopping every few seconds to breathe. It’s incredible how good she felt when blood actually flowed through her body again.
I said, “Mom, do you hear yourself?”
She stopped talking just long enough to smile and then said, “Yeah.” She continued her verbal torrent about the hospital’s overuse of carrots in some form or other on every food tray.
It was a miracle. Mom returned to rehab in Searcy for a couple of weeks and then moved back to her assisted living home. All her friends waited for her to come in sipping on her unthickened sweet tea and jump into an aggressively vicious game of bingo.
When I was a child, we didn’t talk much about heaven. One Bible verse seemed to restrict discussion about our future home. In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul says he knew a man who was caught up to Paradise and heard inexpressible things that no one was permitted to tell us. Since no one was allowed to tell us, apparently, we all assumed we weren’t supposed to talk about it.
I was much older before I began to wonder why nothing ever brought me complete joy, happiness, or a sense of any project being perfectly finished. When my thoughts turned toward heaven, I couldn’t feel excited about being a disembodied spirit in a place that could become fairly boring after a while, even with Jesus there.
So I began a journey to discover if there was something more I had missed.
And guess what? There was.
I found a book that has become like my second Bible: Heaven by Randy Alcorn. I read it and have just started rereading it. I have never looked at this life and planet the same since devouring this book.
Again, it’s about knowledge. Not knowing or believing I had a right to search out information about heaven left me unnerved. What could I reasonably expect about my forever home?
Knowledge has made all the difference. We will not be strumming harps all day. The extraordinary, magnificent reason no earthly experience has ever felt ultimately fulfilling to me is because God has put eternity in my heart.
The knowledge of heaven has changed how I live. Our future home is vibrant and bright with color—colors we can’t even imagine. We’ll have real bodies and real jobs that were originally created for us to do.
Heaven is rich and full with the presence of God, the star-breathing Creator of the universe. We enjoy perfect relationships with each other and close face-to-face, lying-in-the-grass, looking-at-stars conversations with Jesus.
We’ll eat, drink, work, play, travel, worship, and discover a New Earth as God always meant it to be.
We will see God and fully realize he is the one we have longed for all along. In his presence, all the dreams that seemed to continually diminish here on Earth will forever expand.
I love how Randy Alcorn paints a portrait of heaven:
We, on this dying Earth can relax and rejoice for our loved ones who are in the presence of Christ. As the apostle Paul tells us, though we naturally grieve at losing loved ones, we are not “to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). Our parting is not the end of our relationships, only an interruption. We have not “lost” them, because we know where they are. They are experiencing the joy of Christ’s presence in a place so wonderful that Christ called it Paradise. And one day, we’re told, in a magnificent reunion, they and we “will be with the Lord forever.” “Therefore, encourage each other with these words.” Picture it. Think of friends or family members who loved Jesus and are with him now. Picture them with you, walking together in this place. All of you have powerful bodies, stronger than those of an Olympic decathlete. You are laughing, playing, talking, and reminiscing. You reach up to a tree to pick an apple or orange. You take a bite. It’s so sweet that it’s startling. You’ve never tasted anything so good. Now you see someone coming toward you. It’s Jesus, with a big smile on his face. You fall to your knees in worship. Then He pulls you up and gives you the biggest bear hug in all of history. Every kingdom work, whether publicly performed or privately endeavored, partakes of the kingdom’s imperishable character. Every honest intention, every stumbling word of witness, every resistance of temptation, every motion of repentance, every gesture of concern, every routine engagement, every act of worship, every struggle towards obedience, every mumbled prayer, everything, literally, that flows out of our faith-relationship with the Ever-Living One, will find its place in the ever living heavenly order which will dawn at His coming.
One dazzling, sun-drenched morning, I hear distinct laughter, familiar, as it echoes through pure, fragrant breezes. My perfect attention, drawn across a verdant, impossibly lush valley, spies a picnic table overflowing with exquisite fruits, cheeses, wine, and joy. The table, by design, is shaded under a towering, ancient tree so laden with fruit that its bowed branches bring to mind the wings of an eagle. And there’s my mom, surrounded by family and friends, sipping her unthickened sweet tea while playing an aggressive, vicious game of bingo. I hear laughter. It is coming from Jesus, who is calling out the numbers.
