Heaven Is for Real Read online

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

  I didn’t tel Colton why I spent so much time with Pop and my Grandma

  El en 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 Pop’s to shield me from that. I didn’t know I was being “shipped away”—

  I 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

  we’d take him out and hunt rabbits.”

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

  Wel , I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said, “The dog’s 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. “We’l 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 ful back in the days before the pass. His wife, my

  Grandma El en (the same grandma who sent money to help with Colton’s

  hospital bil s), 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. Pop’s

  Crown Victoria hit a power pole, cracking it in half. The top half of the pole

  keeled over and smashed into the Crown Victoria’s roof, but the car’s

  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

  didn’t end there. As I got older, I’d sometimes catch her in prayer, with

  tears gently sliding down her cheeks. When I asked her what was wrong,

  she would share with me, “I’m worried about whether Pop went to heaven.”

  We didn’t find out until much later, in 2006, from my Aunt Connie, about

  a special service Pop had attended only two days before his death—a

  service that might hold answers to my grandfather’s eternal destiny.

  The date was July 13, 1975, and the place was Johnson, Kansas. Mom

  and Aunt Connie had an uncle named Hubert Caldwel . 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 cal ed my mom and told her what

  Colton had said. That was on a Friday. The next morning, she pul ed into

  our driveway, having made the trip al 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 what’s happening on earth. Or is it that in heaven, we’l

  know our loved ones—even those we didn’t get to meet in life—by some

  next-life way of knowing we don’t 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

  enthusiastical y. “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 real y

  happy.”

  I just about fel 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. Orvil e Butcher delivered a message about how

  God cal s people to ministry and uses them to do his work al over the

  world.

  Pastor Butcher was a short, bald, lively preacher—energetic and

  engaging, not dul and dry the way kids sometimes expect an older pastor

  to be. He chal enged the group of 150 teenagers that night: “There are

  some of you here tonight whom God could use as pastors and

  missionaries.”

  The memory of that moment of my life is one of those crystal-clear ones,

  distil ed 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 reverend’s voice receded into the background. I felt a pressure in my

  heart, almost a whisper: That’s you, Todd. That’s 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 tel 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, I’m 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 fal , we talked with Colton

  about heaven every now and then. But one running conversation did

  emerge: when Colton saw Jesus in heaven, what d
id 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 churches—al 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, we’d 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 hair’s not right,” he would say. Or, “The clothes aren’t

  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 master’s painting hanging on the wal of an old

  folks’ home, Colton’s reaction was always the same: He was too young to

  articulate exactly what was wrong with every picture; he just knew they

  weren’t 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 dol s at her feet. I heard Colton’s footsteps padding

  up the hal way 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 didn’t. 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, didn’t you?”

  At that moment, time stopped in the Burpo household, and Sonja’s eyes

  grew wide. Just a few seconds before, Colton had been trying

  unsuccessful y 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 he’d just dropped,

  Sonja was just getting started. Before our son could get around the couch,

  Sonja’s voice rang out in an al -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?

  I knew what my wife had to be feeling. Losing that baby was the most

  painful event of her life. We had explained it to Cassie; she was older. But

  we hadn’t told Colton, judging the topic a bit beyond a four-year-old’s

  capacity to understand. From the table, I watched quietly as emotions

  rioted across Sonja’s face.

  A bit nervously, Colton slunk back around the couch and faced his mom

  again, this time much more warily. “It’s okay, Mommy,” he said. “She’s

  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. “Don’t 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 . . . was—is!

  —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

  smal er, and she has dark hair.”

  Sonja’s dark hair.

  As I watched, a blend of pain and joy played across my wife’s 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 wife’s eyes.

  Now Colton went on without prompting. “In heaven, this little girl ran up to

  me, and she wouldn’t stop hugging me,” he said in a tone that clearly

  indicated he didn’t enjoy al this hugging from a girl.

  “Maybe she was just happy that someone from her family was there,”

  Sonja offered. “Girls hug. When we’re happy, we hug.”

  Colton didn’t seem convinced.

  Sonja’s eyes lit up and she asked, “What was her name? What was the

  little girl’s name?”

  Colton seemed to forget about al the yucky girl hugs for a moment. “She

  doesn’t have a name. You guys didn’t name her.”

  How did he know that?

  “You’re right, Colton,” Sonja said. “We didn’t even know she was a she.”

  Then Colton said something that stil rings in my ears: “Yeah, she said

  she just can’t 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 spil ed 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.

  “You do al the right things, eat al the right things, and you pray for the

  baby’s health, but stil this tiny baby dies inside you,” she had once told me.

  “I feel guilty. I know in my mind that it wasn’t my fault, but there’s stil this

  guilt.”

  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 pastor’s wife has to put up

  with being used as a sermon il ustration a lot. If I died first, she’s always

  told me, she’d final y get to tel the congregation al 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 boy’s name—

  Colton—but 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 doesn’t have a name yet, we

  constantly tel each other, “I’m going to beat you to heaven and name her

  first!”

  EIGHTEEN

  THE THRONE ROOM OF GOD

  One night near Christmas 2003, I fol owed 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 can’t persuade her to give up the surviving