Heaven Is for Real is the true story of the four-year old son of a small town Nebraska pastor who during emergency surgery slips from consciousness andenters heaven. He survives and begins talking about being able to look down and see the doctor operating and his dad praying in the waiting room. The family didn't know what to believe but soon the evidence was clear. Colton said he met his miscarried sister, whom no one had told him about, and his great grandfather who died 30 years before Colton was born, then shared impossible-to-know details about each. He describes the horse that only Jesus could ride, about how "reaaally big" God and his chair are, and how the Holy Spirit "shoots down power" from heaven to help us. Told by the father, but often in Colton's own words, the disarmingly simple message is heaven is a real place, Jesus really loves children, and be ready, there is a coming last battle.I unfortunately couldn't find an excerpt from the chapter that started my pregnancy waterworks, but I did find another one. This is an excerpt from chapter six, North Platte from Heaven Is For Real by Todd Burpo (and Colton).
On Wednesday, we broke the news to the Imperial hospital staff that we were taking Colton to the Great Plains Regional Medical Center in North Platte. We considered Norma’s suggestion of Children’s in Denver, but felt it would be better to stay closer to our base of support. It took a while to get Colton checked out, as it does anytime you leave a hospital, but to us it seemed an eternity. Finally, a nurse came in with the discharge papers, a copy of Colton’s test results, and a large, flat brown envelope containing his Xrays. Sonja called ahead to the office of pediatrician Dr. Dell Shepherd to let his staff know we were coming.
At 10:30 a.m., I picked Colton up out of the hospital bed and was shocked at the limpness of his body. He felt like a rag in my arms. It would’ve been a great time to panic, but I tried to keep my cool. At least we were doing something now. We were taking action.
Colton’s car seat was strapped into the backseat of our SUV. Gently, I laid him in, wondering as I buckled him in how fast I could make the ninety-minute trip to North Platte. Sonja climbed into the backseat with Colton, armed with a pink plastic hospital dish for catching vomit.
The day was sunny but cold. As I steered the SUV onto Highway 61, I twisted the rear-view mirror so that I could see Colton. Several miles passed in silence; then I heard him retching into the bowl. When he was finished, I pulled over so that Sonja could empty it onto the side of the road. Back on the highway, I glanced in the mirror and saw Sonja slip the Xray film from the brown envelope and hold it up in the streaming sunlight. Slowly, she began shaking her head, and tears filled her eyes.
“We screwed up,” she said, her voice breaking over the images she would later tell me were burned in her mind forever.
I turned my head back enough to see the three small explosions she was staring at. The misshapen blotches seemed huge in the ghostly image of Colton’s tiny torso. Why did they seem so much bigger now?
“You’re right. We should’ve known,” I said.
“But the doctor . . .”
“I know. We shouldn’t have listened.”
There wasn’t any finger-pointing, no blaming each other.But we were both really upset with ourselves. We had tried to do the right thing at each step. The doctor said Xrays; we did Xrays. The doctor said IVs; we did IVs. The doctor said blood tests; we did blood tests. He was the doctor, right? He knew what he was doing... right? At each turning point, we had tried to make the right call, but we had made the wrong ones, and now Colton was paying for it. A helpless child was suffering the consequences of our mistakes.
Behind me, Colton slumped lifelessly in his car seat, and his silence was louder than any sound I had ever heard.
There is a story in the Bible about King David of Israel. David had committed adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, one of David’s trusted soldiers. Then, in an effort to cover up his sin, David sent Uriah to the front lines, where David knew he would be killed. Later, the prophet Nathan came to David and said, basically, “Look, God knows what you did, and here are the consequences of your sin: the child that you and Bathsheba have conceived will not live.”
David tore his clothes and cried and prayed and pleaded with God. He was so grief-stricken that when the baby died,his servants were afraid to come and tell him. But David figured it out, and when he did, he got up, washed himself,ate, and calmly took care of the funeral. His behavior con-fused his servants, who said, “Hey, wait a minute: weren’t you just freaking out a few minutes ago? Weren’t you just pleading and crying before God? Now you’re so calm...what’s the deal?”David explained, “I was hoping God would change his mind. But he didn’t.”
In his mind, David had been doing what he could while there was still something he could do.When I think back on that drive to North Platte, that’s how I felt. Yes, the X-rays looked bad, and my son’s face was covered in death.
But he wasn’t dead yet.
Now was not the time to quit and mourn. Now was the time for prayer and action.
God, let us get there. Let us help our son.
As a father, I felt I had blown it. But maybe there was still something I could do to redeem myself. That hope was probably the only thing that kept me from falling apart.
We crossed the North Platte line at about noon and made a beeline for the pediatrician’s office. I hustled out of the SUV and bundled Colton in a blanket, carrying him in my arms like a fireman. Sonja gathered up our gear and followed me in, still carrying the hospital bowl. At the reception desk, a pleasant woman greeted us.
“We’re the Burpos,” I said. “We called ahead from Imperial about our son.”
“The doctor has gone to lunch.”
Gone to lunch?!
“But we called ahead,” I said. “He knew we were coming.”“Please have a seat,” the receptionist said. “The doctor will be back in ten or fifteen minutes.”
To read more about the Burpo family, you should not only read the book, Heaven Is For Real, or check out their website: http://www.heavenisforreal.net
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