heaven's in my heart

"mommy? is heaven in my heart?" will be one of those moments that will be etched in my heart forever.  since lucy's passing, we have had MANY conversations about angels and heaven and Jesus and all of the beautiful promises about eternal life in our home.  and in case you're just tuning into my blog, i don't have a seminary degree, and i haven't read every word in the bible [or let's be real...anywhere close to that]; however, i've had the gift of my daughter lucy whose life [and death] has made me, as a believer, dig deep, think about big things, and answer deep questions.

we often discuss how lucy is an angel who lives in heaven with Jesus and how she is healthy and healed.  when loved ones have died since lucy's passing [or ellie learns of loved ones who passed away before lucy], we always talk about how they're in heaven with lucy and there's no more sickness or sadness for them.  and how when we're hopefully really old, we'll die and go to heaven too and then live with lucy and Jesus forever.

i don't pretend to have all of the answers about heaven [or otherwise for that matter] when i'm conversing with ellie.  oftentimes, i'll say, "i don't know.  that's a great question!  we'll have to find out when we live in heaven!" or "i don't know. that's a great question!  let's ask God when we get to heaven!"  these are great [and truthful] answers to the questions like...do we wear clothes in heaven, do we live in a house in heaven, etc.  i honestly haven't thought of many of the questions ellie poses...like if we still get older in heaven?  my answer: maybe we do and just keep getting older for eternity?  i tell her i like to think of lucy as having had her second birthday in august, and she'll always be between ellie and charlie in age.

ellie has gotten into drawing our family recently and had drawn a family picture with lucy in it as a little girl, and i told her lucy needed a halo and angel wings because she's an angel now.  these are her first two independent "lucys".  i keep the left one in my agenda because it is just a happy picture.  she drew the right one on her minnie magnetic drawing pad and said, "fly, lucy, fly!" after she finished it.  if those aren't the sweetest angels you've seen, i don't know what is!

heaven is an astonishing place and state to ponder.  truthfully, i haven't spent much time pondering heaven prior to lucy because i just took it in faith that as a christian, i'll go there and live eternally worshipping Jesus when i die...what more did i need to think about?  WELL...since lucy's passing, i will often just pause to picture her running around in heaven, or eating too much cake on her birthday, or popping by to say hello through her wind chimes.  mark and i even joke when our life is chaotic that lucy got out of the madness when she could and how she gets to live in glory until we're all reunited [and we truly believe heaven is unequivocally the most amazing place to be].

within the last year, i read a book by emily freeman called simply tuesday.  in her introduction, she says...

When Jesus said to seek first the kingdom of God, where did he intend for us to look?  And how will we know when we've found it? [. . .]

Someone once pointed out to me how, even though we always think of heaven as up--beyond the clouds, above the weather, and over the rainbow--it may not actually be far up.  

"What if," this person wondered, "heaven is simply one inch above the ground?"  

It's still up, but it's not so far away.  Instead the kingdom of God exists right here in the moments where we live.

i probably think about that concept daily...that heaven is all around us.  it has brought me great comfort and great joy!  but then, leave it to my sweet girl, to make heaven that much more present.  we were climbing into her bed one night for stories, songs, and snuggles, and she asked me if heaven was in her heart.  i had never thought about heaven being in my heart before, but thanks to emily freeman, i had begun to shift my thinking from heaven being "over the rainbow".

i told ellie that heaven could absolutely be in our heart.  Jesus [and the Holy Spirit] is in our heart, and so is lucy, and they live in heaven...so why couldn't heaven be in our heart?!  she seemed satisfied with this answer, and we moved on to our bedtime routine, but i will never forget the moment she made me think about heaven being in my heart.

so now, when i think about heaven...i like to think that heaven is in us, around us, above us...and always in our heart.  and that if we pause long enough to be still and to feel God's presence, we'll get a tiny sliver of a glimpse of heaven.