How Heaven Became Real (pt. 1)

As he ran out the door this morning, hubby asked, "Do you want me to push your coffee button?"

"That would be great," I replied from the other room, not knowing the coffee pot was still in the dishwasher.

The smell of burnt coffee caught my attention. But it took a minute for my meager brain to process that an entire four cups had brewed without the pot in place.

It could have been worse. Coffee grinds clogged three fourths of the liquid, allowing it to only drip  through the small opening onto the  burner blow. There was still a mess to clean. But it leads me to this:

Life brews constantly. While I filter most experiences through a funnel of faith, if I don't have love as the carafe that holds what comes through, my heart can drip a mess of emotion.

And that's where my heaven story begins... with the reality of His love for me; the love that is wide and long and high and deep, and covers over a multitude of sins.

As a devoted follower of Christ and non-rebel type who always loved church, I didn't even realize I failed to understand this love in my early twenties. By the time I graduated from college, birthed two babies, and struggled to transition from academia to stay at home status, though, the pain of rejection nipped at my heels and a life of joy remained out of reach.

After much soul searching,  I realized I was inadvertently blaming broken human relationships on God. And that deep down, I wrestled with the notion that if He allowed such hurt from others, that He, too, must have rejected me.

A light bulb turned on after a long talk with a pastor friend one day. Heaven broke through the cloudiness in my soul and made it clear that what happens between humans on earth is rarely a reflection of God's affection for us.

I was not rejected.

Those words drifted though my mind often, "I am not rejected." My heart sensed there was something better to come but with no real comprehension of what it was. Joy? Hope? Contentment? I wasn't sure. But relaxing into the reality heaven was truly for me prepared me for what lay ahead.

Five months later, we sat in a windowless room on a sunny day while a doctor told us that my husband had only two to three years to live. While Jason went for a Pet Scan, I hunted down my pastor friend again. I left his office with hope and found that word almost every where I went. It had probably been posted on walls for years but my heart had never needed it so much.

There's a lot to this story. But I must jump ahead.

Six weeks later my husband attended a youth camp as a church counselor. Rain fell every day. I was adrift without him at home and fought fear, wondering what I would do with our young boys if he was gone for good.

By the time I attended the closing service with him at the weeks end, I was ready for God to heal him. Ready for the journey to be over. Our future secure.

As I sat in the back of the auditorium, however, I heard the visiting pastor close his sermon with an invitation to know more of God's love. I told heaven I was not leaving my seat unless Jason was healed. To which the Holy Spirit responded, "Is it not enough if I heal you."

The question lingered in my soul till my feet moved forward. I sat at the front with two dear friends and cried and prayed for almost an hour. At the end of that hour, I remember saying, "I can go on now. I can face tomorrow."

As I left the sanctuary, my insides felt different, settled, calm. Peace silenced familiar turmoil - turmoil I didn't know I could live without. And as we drove home the next day, I wrote a song. And as I woke day after day with this new awareness of His love, song after song spewed forth. Thirteen in three weeks.

My inner critique silenced; the writer finally born.

As our journey through Jason's illness continued, I learned to protect that feeling. To fight fear, worry, and angst with these words, "I love you, Lord, and you love me." I repeated them over and over till concerns melted into the reality of His presence and love.

So by the time Jason walked into heaven's door (two and a half years later) and left me a single mom with two small boys, my heart remained confident that the God of Heaven was for me, not against me; that His plan was good and would carry us through.

Walking with the assurance of this divine love led to the place where heaven became real. But I'll get into that with part 2.

For now, I'll close with two things. First, I've copied a portion of a monthly newsletter from John Eldridge and Ransomed Heart Ministries that speaks right to what I'm saying:

 "Disappointment is the ground in us in which the enemy tries to sow seeds against God. Like the seed of resentment... Satan whispers in our disappointments that God does not care, the he is not coming through, that he could have done something but did not... He even tries to sow in us hatred towards God... The heart in pain is the most vulnerable to this... We must not, must not, must not, let the enemy use our disappointments to turn our hearts against God, turn our love "cold". The most effective thing to do, right in the midst of the disappointment, is to begin loving God. Really - right then and there, begin  to love God, out loud, wholeheartedly." (Ransomed Heart Ministries, March 2014, monthly newsletter.)

Second, I'll post a song I began after marching around my back yard in serious prayer while my boys followed as armor bearers with sticks. The chorus flowed seamlessly; the answer to so many, many prayers. He loves us. His children. He really loves us.