I think heaven might be a little like watching my mom and daughter deadhead flowers this morning.
As I feast my eyes on the scene, I remember what was — I remember the suffering and the agony and the ache. I remember the weeping in the night, the road that seemed endless, the exhaustion I thought might eventually consume every last cell of me.
I remember the long, dark tunnel where the pinprick of light we aimed for was a brutally moving target, and how the walls closed around us toward the end so that I had to force myself not to panic as I wormed my way forward, continually slashing at clinging vines trying to bind me in place.
I remember — I tell you — and I am amazed — because this morning my mom and my daughter deadhead together, the little voice and the calm, twisting around each other like giggling vines. I observe from a comfortable distance, marveling at the interaction of those two beloved heads in close proximity.
Ancient promises of green pastures and spacious places and the joys of the morning flit through my mind as the shade, the light, and the trees surround me. My bare feet are firmly planted in the grass — will I ever get enough of grass?
And the stillness. My word.
Where are those walls that nearly trapped me? Behind me. Forever.
The ever-multiplying vines that gouged and grasped and tore? Lifeless. Dead.
The tunnel I thought we would never escape? It collapses in on itself, like a submarine gone too deep, unable in the end to handle the overwhelming pressure of Light.
Even the harsh memories are already tinged with a different flavor, as if my mind is roasting each one on a spit, over a warm fire fragrant with grace. I wonder what these memories will taste like in a month? In a year? In the moments my daughter grasps, each time more fully, what was done for her?
I knew it in the tunnel, when the darkness was so deep sometimes I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face — I knew that it all mattered. And when I reached down and ripped each thorny vine from my body and thrust it to the ground — I knew those were victories. And when I could no longer run, nor even walk, yet kept inching forward, a centimeter at a time — I knew that was progress.
But that knowledge was all theoretical.
Today, this morning, my faith has become sight. The joy that has been dancing before my mind’s eye has now been set before my actual eyes, and I am gorging on the banquet.
And, my friends, are not glimpses like this a sliver of the heaven that awaits us? The briefest glance through the veil, seeing through the glass clearly, realizing the frail brittleness of the temporal chains that bind us.
No doubt tomorrow, or even later today, my vision will cloud back over and I’ll land back on earth. But I’ve guarded this moment close to my heart, and the next time I’m shivering in a cold tunnel I’ll pull it out and be warmed by its Light.
And one of these days — oh, my friends — one of these fine, fine days, we’ll crawl through the mouth of another awful tunnel and find that even these marvelous little glimpses did not do justice to the glory that is to come.
But for this moment, for this glimpse, I am grateful. I watch the deadheading, and I am content.
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The phrase “even the briefest glance through the veil”, caught my attention. What a gift those brief glance are. I am grateful.