Heaven Is for Real Read online

  using Dr. O’Hol eran’s rigging of plastic tubing and grenades. Slowly,

  gradual y, Colton took a turn for the better. The upchucking stopped, his

  color returned, and he began to eat a little. We knew he was on the mend

  when he began to sit up and chat with us, play with the video game console

  the nurses had stationed at his bed, and even take an interest in the brand-

  new stuffed lion that Cassie had brought him several days before. Final y,

  seven days after we checked in to the hospital in North Platte, the medical

  team said we could take our son home.

  Like soldiers after a long but victorious fight, Sonja and I were both

  exhausted and overjoyed. On March 13, we packed up al the debris of a

  lengthy hospital stay in a hodgepodge of shopping bags, duffel bags, and

  plastic bags and headed for the elevators, me pushing Colton in a

  wheelchair and Sonja holding a thick bouquet of going-home bal oons.

  The elevator doors had begun sliding shut when Dr. O’Hol eran

  appeared in the hal way and literal y yel ed for us to stop. “You can’t go!

  You can’t go!” His voice echoed in the tile corridor as he waved a sheaf of

  paper in our direction. “We’ve stil got problems!”

  A last-minute blood test had revealed a radical spike in Colton’s white

  cel count, Dr. O’Hol eran told us when he caught up to us at the elevator.

  “It’s probably another abscess,” he said. “We may have to operate again.”

  I thought Sonja was going to pass out right there. Both of us were

  walking zombies by then and had nearly reached our limit. Colton burst into

  tears.

  Another CT scan revealed new pockets of infection in Colton’s

  abdomen. That afternoon, Dr. O’Hol eran and his surgical team had to

  open up our little boy a second time and clean him out again. This time,

  Sonja and I weren’t terrified; the shadow of death had long since passed

  from Colton’s face. But now we had a new worry: Colton hadn’t eaten for

  something like ten days. He had weighed only about forty pounds to begin

  with, and now he had melted away so that his elbows and knees appeared

  abnormal y large, his face thin like a hungry orphan.

  After the surgery, I brought our concerns to Dr. O’Hol eran. “He hasn’t

  eaten more than a little Jel -O or broth in almost two weeks,” I said. “How

  long can a kid go without eating?”

  Dr. O’Hol eran placed Colton in the intensive care unit and ordered extra

  nutrition for him, administered through a feeding tube. But the ICU bed was

  as much for us as for Colton, I suspect. We hadn’t slept for nearly as long

  as Colton hadn’t eaten, and we were absolutely ragged. Putting Colton in

  ICU was the only way the doctor could get us to go get some rest.

  “Colton wil be fine tonight,” he told us. “He’l have his own nurse at al

  times, and if anything happens, someone wil be right there to take care of

  him.”

  I have to admit, those words sounded like an oasis in a desert of

  exhaustion.

  We were afraid to leave Colton alone, but we knew Dr. O’Hol eran was

  right. That night was the first night since leaving the Harrises’ home in

  Greeley that Sonja and I spent together. We talked. We cried. We

  encouraged each other. But mostly, we slept like shipwreck survivors on

  their first warm, dry night.

  After a night in the ICU, Colton was moved to yet another hospital room,

  and the wait-and-see cycle began al over again. When can Colton get out

  of here? When can we go home and be normal again? Now, though,

  Colton’s bowels seemed to have stopped working. He couldn’t use the

  bathroom, and hour by hour, he grew more miserable.

  “Daddy, my tummy hurts,” he moaned, lying in bed. The doctor said that

  even if Colton could pass gas, that would be a good sign. We tried walking

  him up and down the hal s to shake things loose, but Colton could only

  shuffle along slowly, hunched over in pain. Nothing seemed to help. By the

  fourth day after the second surgery, he could only lie on the bed, writhing as

  constipation set in. That afternoon, Dr. O’Hol eran came with more bad

  news.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know you’ve been through a lot, but I think we’ve

  done everything for Colton we can do here. We’re thinking maybe it would

  be best to transfer him to a children’s hospital. Either the one in Omaha or

  the one in Denver.”

  Between us, we’d managed something like five nights’ sleep in fifteen

  days. After more than two grueling weeks at Colton’s bedside, we had

  nearly hit the road back to normal—with the elevator doors literal y closing,

  our family inside with bal oons—when the whole thing crashed around us

  again. And now, our son was back in excruciating pain with no end in sight.

  We couldn’t even see a horizon.

  Just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did: a freak spring

  snowstorm was moving into the Midwest. Within a couple of hours, thick

  drifts of snow lay piled against the hospital doors and wheel-wel high in the

  parking lots. Whether we chose the children’s hospital in Omaha, eight

  hours away, or Denver, three hours away, there would be no way short of

  an airlift that we could reach either one.

  That’s when Sonja lost it. “I can’t do this anymore!” she said and broke

  down in tears.

  And right about then was when a group of people in our church decided

  it was time for some serious prayer. Church friends began making phone

  cal s, and before long, around eighty people had driven over to Crossroads

  Wesleyan for a prayer service. Some were in our congregation and some

  from other churches, but they had al come together to pray for our son.

  Brad Dil an cal ed me on my cel to tel me what was going on. “What,

  specifical y, can we pray for?” he asked.

  Feeling a little odd about it, I told him what Dr. O’Hol eran had said would

  be a good sign for Colton. So that night might be the only time in recorded

  history that eighty people gathered and prayed for someone to pass gas!

  Of course, they also prayed for a break in the weather so that we could

  get to Denver, and they prayed for healing too. But within an hour, the first

  prayer was answered!

  Immediately, Colton began to feel better. That evening, he was able to

  use the bathroom. By the next morning, he was up in his room, playing as

  though none of this nightmare had ever happened. Watching him, Sonja

  and I couldn’t believe our eyes: except for being skinny, Colton was

  completely and utterly himself again. In less than twelve hours, we had

  cycled from completely desperate to completely normal.

  Around 9 a.m., Dr. O’Hol eran came in to check on his patient. When he

  saw Colton up, smiling and chipper, and playing with his action figures, the

  doctor was speechless. For a long moment, he actual y just stood and

  stared. Astonished, he examined Colton and then scheduled another round

  of tests to be triple-sure that Colton’s insides were on the mend. This time,

  Colton literal y skipped al the way to the CT scan lab.

  We stayed in the hospital another day and a half just to be certain

/>   Colton’s turnaround stuck. During those thirty-six hours, it seemed we had

  more nurses in and out than usual. Slowly, one at a time and in pairs, they

  would slip into the room—and each time, their reaction was the same: they

  just stood and stared at our little boy.

  ELEVEN

  COLTON BURPO, COLLECTION AGENT

  After we got home from the hospital, we slept for a week. Okay, I’m

  exaggerating—but not much. Sonja and I were completely drained. It was

  like we had just been through a seventeen-day almost-car-crash. Our

  wounds weren’t visible on the outside, but the soul-tearing worry and

  tension had taken its tol .

  One evening about a week after we got home, Sonja and I were

  standing in the kitchen talking about money. She stood over a portable

  table next to our microwave, sorting through the enormous stack of mail

  that had accumulated during Colton’s hospital stay. Each time she opened

  an envelope, she jotted down a number on a sheet of paper lying on the

  counter. Even from where I stood leaning against the cabinets on the

  opposite side of the kitchen, I could see that the column of figures was

  getting awful y long.

  Final y, she clicked the pen closed and laid it on the counter. “Do you

  know how much money I need to pay the bil s this week?”

  As both the family and business bookkeeper, Sonja asked me that

  question regularly. She worked part-time as a teacher so we had that

  steady income, but it was a relatively smal stream. My pastor’s salary was

  also smal , cobbled together from the tithes of a smal but faithful

  congregation. So the bulk of the earning came from our garage-door

  business, and that income waxed and waned with the seasons. Every

  couple of weeks, she presented me with the figures—not only on

  household bil s but on business payables. Now there were also several

  massive hospital bil s.

  I performed a rough tal y in my head and offered her a guess. “Probably

  close to $23,000, right?”

  “Yep,” she said, and sighed.

  It might as wel have been a mil ion bucks. With me unable to work the

  garage-door jobs because of my broken leg and then the hyperplasia, we

  had already burned through our savings. Then, just when I was getting back

  into ful swing, Colton’s il ness hit, knocking me out of work for nearly

  another month. We had about as much chance of coming up with $23,000

  as we did of winning the lottery. And since we don’t play the lottery, those

  chances were zero.

  “Do you have any receivables? Anything due you can col ect?” Sonja

  said.

  She asked because she had to, but she knew the answer. I shook my

  head.

  “I can put off some of these,” she said, nodding toward the envelope

  stack. “But the tenth bil s are definitely due.”

  Here’s a great picture of how smal a town Imperial actual y is: folks have

  tabs or accounts they run at places like the gas station, the grocery store,

  and the hardware store. So if we need a fil -up or a loaf of bread, we just

  swing by and sign for it. Then on the tenth of the month, Sonja makes a

  fifteen-minute trip around town to settle up. Our “tenth bil s” are one of the

  cool things about living in a smal town. On the other hand, when you can’t

  pay, it’s a lot more humbling.

  I sighed. “I can go explain the situation, ask for more time.”

  Sonja held up a sheaf of papers a little thicker than the others. “The

  medical bil s are starting to come in. One of them is $34,000.”

  “How much wil the insurance cover?”

  “There’s a $3,200 deductible.”

  “We can’t even pay that right now,” I said.

  “Do you stil want me to write the tithe check?” Sonja asked, referring to

  our regular weekly donation to the church.

  “Absolutely,” I said. God had just given us our son back; there was no

  way we were not going to give back to God.

  At just that moment, Colton came around the corner from the living room

  and surprised us with a strange proclamation that I can stil hear to this day.

  He stood at the end of the counter with his hands on his hips. “Dad,

  Jesus used Dr. O’Hol eran to help fix me,” he said, standing at the end of

  the counter with his hands on his hips. “You need to pay him.”

  Then he turned around and marched out. Around the corner and gone.

  Sonja and I looked at each other. What?

  We were both a little taken aback, since Colton had seen the surgeon as

  the source of al the poking, cutting, prodding, draining, and pain. Now here

  we were, just a week out of the hospital, and he seemed to have changed

  his mind.

  “Wel , I guess he likes Dr. O’Hol eran now,” Sonja said.

  Even if Colton had found it in his heart to forgive the good doctor,

  though, his little proclamation in the kitchen was weird. How many not-

  quite-four-year-olds analyze the family financial woes and demand

  payment for a creditor? Especial y one he never particularly liked?

  And the way he put it too: “Dad, Jesus used Dr. O’Hol eran to help fix

  me.” Weird.

  Even weirder, though, was what happened next. With $23,000 in bil s

  due and payable immediately, we didn’t know what we were going to do.

  Sonja and I discussed asking our bank for a loan, but it turned out we didn’t

  need to. First, my Grandma El en, who lives in Ulysses, Kansas, sent us a

  check to help with the hospital bil s. Then, in a single week, more checks

  started arriving in the mail. Checks for $50, $100, $200, and al with cards

  and notes that said things like, “We heard about your troubles and we’re

  praying for you,” or “God put it on my heart to send you this. I hope it helps.”

  By the end of the week, our mailbox was ful again—but with gifts, not

  bil s. Church members, close friends, and even people who only knew us

  from a distance responded to our need without our even asking. The

  checks added up to thousands of dol ars, and we were astonished when

  we found that, combined with what my grandmother sent, the total was

  what we needed to meet that first wave of bil s, almost to the dol ar.

  Not long after Colton became a pint-size col ection agent, he got in a little

  bit of trouble. Nothing huge, just an incident at a friend’s house where he

  got into a tug-of-war over some toys. That evening, I cal ed him to the

  kitchen table. I was sitting in a straight-back chair, and he climbed up in the

  chair beside me and knelt in it. Colton leaned on his elbows and regarded

  me with sky blue eyes that seemed a little bit sheepish.

  If you have a preschooler, you know it can sometimes be hard to look

  past their cuteness and be serious about discipline. But I managed to put a

  serious look on my face. “Colton,” I began, “do you know why you’re in

  trouble?”

  “Yeah. Because I didn’t share,” he said, casting his eyes down at the

  table.

  “That’s right. You can’t do that, Colton. You’ve got to treat people better

  than that.”

  Colton raised his eyes and looked at me. “Yeah, I know, Dad. Jesus told

  me I had to be nice.”

&nb
sp; His words caught me a little by surprise. It was the way he said it: Jesus

  told me . . .

  But I brushed it aside. His Sunday school teachers must be doing a

  good job, I thought.

  “Wel then, Jesus was right, wasn’t he?” I said, and that was the end of it.

  I don’t even think I gave Colton any consequences for not sharing. After al ,

  with Jesus in the picture, I’d pretty much been outranked.

  A couple of weeks later, I began preparing to preside over a funeral at