Sonja and I looked at each other, astonished.
“Colton, don’t you recognize anyone else in the picture?” I said.
He shook his head slowly. “No . . .”
I leaned over and pointed to my grandma. “Who do you think that is?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s Grandma Ellen.”
Colton’s eyes turned skeptical. “That doesn’t look like Grandma Ellen.”
I glanced at Sonja and chuckled. “Well, she used to look like that.”
“Can I go play?” Colton said, handing me the picture.
After he left the room, Sonja and I talked about how interesting it was that Colton recognized Pop from a photo taken more than half a century before he was born—a photo he’d never seen before—but didn’t recognize his great-grandma whom he had just seen a couple of months back.
After we thought about it, though, the fact that the Pop Colton said he spent time with was no longer sixty-one but somewhere in his prime, seemed to us a good news/bad news scenario: The bad news is that in heaven, we’ll still look like ourselves. The good news is, it’ll be the younger version.
TWENTY-THREE
POWER FROM ABOVE
On October 4, 2004, Colby Lawrence Burpo entered the world. From the moment he was born, he looked like a carbon copy of Colton. But as with all kids, God had also made him unique. If Cassie was our sensitive child and Colton was our serious one, Colby was our clown. From an early age, Colby’s goofiness added a fresh dose of laughter to our home.
One evening later that fall, Sonja had settled in with Colton to read him a Bible story.
She sat on the edge of his bed and read him the story as Colton lay under his blanket, head nestled in his pillow. Then it was time for prayer.
One of the great blessings of our lives as parents has been listening to our kids pray. When they are small, children pray without the showiness that sometimes creeps into our prayers as grown-ups, without that sort of “prayer-ese,” a language meant to appeal more to anyone listening than to God. And when Colton and Cassie offered prayers in their plain, earnest way, it seemed that God answered.
Early on, we developed the practice of giving the kids specific things to pray for, not only to build their faith, but also because praying for others is a way to develop a heart for needs outside your own.
“You know how Daddy preaches every week?” Sonja said now as she sat beside Colton. “I think we should pray for him, that he would get a lot of good study time in this week so that he can give a good message in church on Sunday morning.”
Colton looked at her and said the strangest thing: “I’ve seen power shot down to Daddy.”
Sonja later told me that she took a moment to turn these words over in her mind. Power shot down?
“What do you mean, Colton?”
“Jesus shoots down power for Daddy when he’s talking.”
Sonja shifted on the bed so that she could look directly into Colton’s eyes. “Okay . . . when? Like when Daddy talks at church?”
Colton nodded. “Yeah, at church. When he’s telling Bible stories to people.”
Sonja didn’t know what to say to that, a situation we’d grown used to over the past year and a half. So she and Colton prayed together, sending up flares to heaven that Daddy would give a good message on Sunday.
Then Sonja slipped down the hall to the living room to share their conversation with me. “But don’t you dare wake him up to ask him about it!” she said.
So I had to wait until the next morning over breakfast.
“Hey, buddy,” I said, pouring milk into Colton’s usual bowl of cereal. ”Mommy said you were talking last night during Bible story time. Can you tell me what you were telling Mommy about . . . about Jesus shooting down power? What’s the power like?”
“It’s the Holy Spirit,” Colton said simply. “I watched him. He showed me.”
“The Holy Spirit?”
“Yeah, he shoots down power for you when you’re talking in church.”
If there were comic-strip thought-bubbles over people’s heads, mine would’ve been filled with question marks and exclamation points right then. Every Sunday morning before I give the sermon, I pray a similar prayer: “God, if you don’t help this morning, this message is going to fail.” In light of Colton’s words, I realized I had been praying without really knowing what I was praying for. And to imagine God answering it by “shooting down power” . . . well, it was just incredible.
TWENTY-FOUR
ALI'S MOMENT
After Colby was born, Sonja and I had found that the dynamics of taking the kids with us everywhere had changed. Now we were outnumbered three to two. We decided the time had come for a regular babysitter, so we hired a very mature, responsible eighth grader named Ali Titus to watch the kids for us. On Monday nights, Sonja and I still played coed softball on our “old people’s” team, though my sliding days were over.
One Monday evening in 2005, Ali came over to babysit Cassie, Colton, and Colby so we could go to our game. It was around 10 p.m. when we pulled back into the driveway. Sonja got out and went inside to check on Ali and the kids while I shut the garage down for the night, so I didn’t hear what happened inside until a few minutes after the fact.
The interior garage door leads into our kitchen, and when she walked in, Sonja later told me, she found Ali at the sink, washing up the supper dishes . . . and crying.
“Ali, what’s wrong?” Sonja said. Was it something with Ali, or something that had happened with the kids?
Ali pulled her hands from the dishwater and dried them on a towel. “Um . . . I really don’t know how to say this, Mrs. Burpo,” she began. She looked down at the floor, hesitating.
“It’s okay, Ali,” Sonja said. “What is it?”
Ali looked up, eyes full of tears. “Well, I’m sorry to ask you this, but . . . did you have a miscarriage?”
“Yes, I did,” Sonja said, surprised. “How did you know that?”
“Um . . . Colton and I had a little talk.”
Sonja invited Ali to sit on the couch with her and tell her what happened.
“It started after I put Colby and Colton to bed,” Ali began. Cassie had gone downstairs to her room, and Ali had given Colby a bottle and then put him down in his crib upstairs. Then she headed down the hall, tucked Colton into his bed, and came out to the kitchen to clean up from the evening meal she’d fed the kids. “I had just turned the water off in the sink when I heard Colton crying.”
Ali told Sonja that she went to check on Colton and found him sitting up in his bed, tears streaming down his face. “What’s wrong, Colton?” she asked him.
Colton sniffled and wiped his eyes. “I miss my sister,” he said.
Ali said she smiled, relieved that the problem seemed to have a simple solution. “Okay, sweetie, you want me to go downstairs and get her for you?”
Colton shook his head. “No, I miss my other sister.”
Now Ali was confused. “Your other sister? You only have one sister and one brother, Colton. Cassie and Colby, right?”
“No, I have another sister,” Colton said. “I saw her. In heaven.” Then he started to cry again. “I miss her so much.”
As Ali told Sonja this part of the story, her eyes welled with fresh tears. “I didn’t know what to say, Mrs. Burpo. He was so upset. So I asked him when he saw this other sister.”
Colton told Ali, “When I was little, I had surgery and I went up to heaven and saw my sister.”
Then, Ali told Sonja, Colton began crying again, only harder. “I don’t understand why my sister is dead,” he said. “I don’t know why she’s in heaven and not here.”
Ali sat on the bed beside Colton, as she put it, “in shock.” This situation definitely wasn’t on the normal “in case of emergency” babysitting list, as in: (1) who to call in case of fire; (2) who to call in case of illness; (3) who to call in case child reports supernatural experience.
Ali kne
w Colton had been extremely ill a couple of years before and that he’d spent time in the hospital. But she hadn’t known about what had happened in the operating room. Now she had no idea what to say, even as Colton shrugged off his covers and crawled up in her lap. So as he cried, she cried with him.
“I miss my sister,” he said again, snuffling and laying his head on Ali’s shoulder.
“Shh . . . it’s okay, Colton,” Ali said. “There’s a reason for everything.” And they stayed that way, with Ali rocking Colton until he cried himself to sleep in her arms.
Ali finished her story, and Sonja gave her a hug. Later, Ali told us that for the next two weeks, she couldn’t stop thinking about what Colton had told her, and how Sonja had confirmed that before his surgery, Colton hadn’t known anything about Sonja’s miscarriage.
Ali had grown up in a Christian home but had entertained the same doubts as so many of us do: for example, how did we know any one religion is different from any other? But Colton’s story about his sister strengthened her Christian faith, Ali said. “Hearing him describe the girl’s face . . . it wasn’t something that a six-year-old boy could just make up,” she told us. “Now, whenever I am having doubts, I picture Colton’s face, tears running down his cheeks, as he told me how much he missed his sister.”
TWENTY-FIVE
SWORDS OF THE ANGELS
From a kid’s perspective, maybe the best thing that happened in 2005 was the release of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. During the Christmas season, we took the kids to see the movie on the big screen. Sonja and I were excited to see the first high-quality dramatization of C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia series, books we had both enjoyed as kids. Colton was more excited about a movie that featured good guys fighting bad guys with swords.
In early 2006, we rented the DVD and settled into the living room for a family movie night. Instead of sitting on the furniture, we all sat on the carpet, Sonja, Cassie, and I leaning against the sofa. Colton and Colby perched on their knees in front of us, rooting for Aslan, the warrior lion, and the Pevensie kids: Lucy, Edmund, Peter, and Susan. The house even smelled like a theater, with bowls of Act II buttered popcorn, hot out of the microwave, sitting on the floor within easy reach.
In case you haven’t seen The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, it is set during World War II when the Pevensie kids are deported from London to the home of an eccentric professor. Lucy, Edmund, Peter, and Susan are bored to death, until Lucy stumbles on an enchanted wardrobe that leads into a magical kingdom called Narnia. In Narnia, not only can all the animals talk, but the place is also inhabited by other creatures, like dwarves, hobgoblins, and centaurs. The land is ruled by the lion Aslan, who is a good and wise king, but his archenemy, the White Witch, has cast a spell on Narnia so that it will always be winter, but never Christmas. Back in the real world, the Pevensies are just kids, but in Narnia, they are princes and princesses who also become warriors fighting on the side of Aslan.
That night, as we were watching the final, fantasy/medieval battle scene, Colton, then six, was really getting into it as winged creatures dropped boulders from the sky and the battle-dressed Pevensie kids clashed swords with the White Witch’s evil army. During the fight, Aslan sacrificed himself to save Edmund. But later, when he came back to life and killed the White Witch, Colton leaped to his feet and pumped his fist. He likes it when the good guys win.
As the credits rolled up the television screen and Colby picked at the dregs of the popcorn, Sonja said offhandedly to Colton, “Well, I guess that’s one thing you didn’t like about heaven—no swords up there.”
Colton’s giddy excitement vanished as quickly as if an invisible hand had wiped his smile off with an eraser. He drew himself up to his full height and looked down at Sonja, who was still sitting on the floor.
“There are too swords in heaven!” he said.
Surprised at his intensity, Sonja shot me a sideways glance, then kind of drew her head back and smiled at Colton. “Um . . . okay. Why do they need swords in heaven?”
“Mom, Satan’s not in hell yet,” Colton said, almost scolding. “The angels carry swords so they can keep Satan out of heaven!”
Again, Scripture leaped to my mind, this time from the book of Luke where Jesus tells the disciples, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.”1
And I remembered a passage from Daniel in which an angel visits Daniel in answer to prayer, but says he was delayed for twenty-one days because he was engaged in a battle with the “king of Persia.”2 Theologians generally take this to mean some kind of spiritual battle, with Gabriel fighting dark forces.
But how did a six-year-old know that? Yes, Colton had had two more years of Sunday school by then, but I knew for a fact that our curriculum didn’t include lessons on Satan’s living arrangements.
As these thoughts flashed through my head, I could see that Sonja didn’t know what to say to Colton, who was still scowling. His face reminded me of his irritation when I’d suggested that it got dark in heaven. I decided to lighten the mood. “Hey Colton, I bet you asked if you could have a sword, didn’t you?” I said.
At that, Colton’s scowl melted into a dejected frown, and his shoulders slumped toward the floor. “Yeah, I did. But Jesus wouldn’t let me have one. He said I’d be too dangerous.”
I chuckled a little, wondering if Jesus meant Colton would be a danger to himself or others.
In all our discussions of heaven, Colton had never mentioned Satan, and neither Sonja nor I had thought to ask him. When you’re thinking “heaven,” you’re thinking crystal streams and streets of gold, not angels and demons crossing swords.
But now that he’d brought it up, I decided to press a little further.
“Hey, Colton,” I said. “Did you see Satan?”
“Yeah, I did,” he said solemnly.
“What did he look like?”
At this, Colton’s body went rigid, he grimaced, and his eyes narrowed to a squint. He stopped talking. I mean, he absolutely shut down, and that was it for the night.
We asked Colton about Satan a couple of times after that, but then gave up because whenever we did, his reaction was a little disconcerting: it was as if he changed instantly from a sunny little kid to someone who ran to a safe room, bolted the door, locked the windows, and pulled down the blinds. It became clear that in addition to rainbows, horses, and golden streets, he had seen something unpleasant. And he didn’t want to talk about it.
TWENTY-SIX
THE COMING WAR
A few months later, I had some business in McCook, a town about sixty miles from Imperial and the site of the nearest Wal-Mart. For many Americans, an hour is an awfully long way to drive to get to Wal-Mart, but out here in farm country, you get used to it. I had taken Colton with me, and I’ll never forget the conversation we had on the way back, because while our son had spoken to me about heaven and even about my own past, he had never before hinted that he knew my future.
We had driven back through Culbertson, the first town west of McCook, and were passing a cemetery. Colton, by now out of a car seat, gazed out the passenger-side window as the rows of headstones filed past.
“Dad, where’s Pop buried?” he asked
“Well, his body is buried in a cemetery down in Ulysses, Kansas, where Grandma Kay lives,” I said. “Next time we’re down there, I can take you to see where it is if you want. But you know that’s not where Pop is.”
Colton kept peering out the window. “I know. He’s in heaven. He’s got a new body. Jesus told me if you don’t go to heaven, you don’t get a new body.”
Hang on, I thought. New information ahead.
“Really?” was all I said.
“Yeah,” he said, then added, “Dad, did you know there’s going to be a war?”
“What do you mean?” Were we still on the heaven topic? I wasn’t sure.
“There’s going to be a war, and it’s going to destroy this world. Jesus and the angels and the good people are going
to fight against Satan and the monsters and the bad people. I saw it.”
I thought of the battle described in the book of Revelation, and my heartbeat stepped up a notch. “How did you see that?”
“In heaven, the women and the children got to stand back and watch. So I stood back and watched.” Strangely, his voice was sort of cheerful, as though he were talking about a good movie he’d seen. “But the men, they had to fight. And Dad, I watched you. You have to fight too.”
Try hearing that and staying on the road. Suddenly, the sound of the tires whirring on asphalt seemed unnaturally loud, a high whine.
And here was this issue of “heaven time” again. Before, Colton had talked about my past, and he had seen “dead” people in the present. Now he was saying that in the midst of all that, he had also been shown the future. I wondered if those concepts—past, present, and future—were for earth only. Maybe, in heaven, time isn’t linear.
But I had another, more pressing concern. “You said we’re fighting monsters?”
“Yeah,” Colton said happily. “Like dragons and stuff.”
I’m not one of those preachers who camps out on end-times prophecy, but now I remembered a particularly vivid section of Revelation:
In those days men will seek death and will not find it; they will desire to die, and death will flee from them. The shape of the locusts was like horses prepared for battle. On their heads were crowns of something like gold, and their faces were like the faces of men. They had hair like women’s hair, and their teeth were like lions’ teeth. And they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the sound of chariots with many horses running into battle. They had tails like scorpions, and there were stings in their tails. Their power was to hurt men five months.1
For centuries, theologians have mined these kinds of passages for symbolism: maybe the combination of all those different body parts stood for some kind of country, or each one stood for a kingdom of some sort. Others have suggested that “breastplates of iron” indicate some kind of modern military machine that John had no reference point to describe.
Heaven Is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back Page 11