“You were in heaven?”
He nodded again.
I realized I was starting to accept that, yes, maybe Colton really had
been to heaven. I felt like our family had received a gift and, having just
peeled back the top layer of tissue paper, knew its general shape. Now I
wanted to know what all was in the box.
“Well, what did you do in heaven?” I ventured.
“Homework.”
Homework? That wasn’t what I was expecting. Choir practice, maybe,
but homework? “What do you mean?”
Colton smiled. “Jesus was my teacher.”
“Like school?”
Colton nodded. “Jesus gave me work to do, and that was my favorite
part of heaven. There were lots of kids, Dad.”
This statement marked the beginning of a period that I wished we had
written down. During this conversation and for the next year or so, Colton
could name a lot of the kids he said were in heaven with him. He doesn’t
remember their names now, though, and neither do Sonja nor I.
This was also the first time Colton had mentioned other people in
heaven. I mean, other than Bible figures like John the Baptist, but I have to
admit that I sort of thought of him as... well, a “character” more than a
regular person like you and me. It sounds kind of dumb since Christians
talk all the time about going to heaven when we die. Why wouldn’t I expect
that Colton would’ve seen ordinary people?
But all I could think to ask was: “So what did the kids look like? What do
people look like in heaven?”
“Everybody’s got wings,” Colton said.
Wings, huh?
“Did you have wings?” I asked.
“Yeah, but mine weren’t very big.” He looked a little glum when he said
this.
“Okay... did you walk places or did you fly?”
“We flew. Well, all except for Jesus. He was the only one in heaven who