Til We Are Brave

Creative Nonfiction Essay

Summer, 2017 

“Don’t fall out,” Pops cautioned. I giggled, reaching out to let my hand brush over the  leaves as we rumbled past the trees that framed the dirt road. I hung out the window with one  hand holding on to the inside of Pops’ old work truck. We called it Ol’ Crusty and it smelled of  grease and redwoods and cinnamon candy. 

“I won’t fall!” I called back to him, shouting to be heard over the rumble of the truck.  The wind danced over my face and sunshine played hide and seek with the tree branches. If I had  been just a little lighter, I think that I could have flown right off the window of the truck and  soared like the eagle that cried above us. 

“You know how, after you tell God that you’re sorry for something, how your chest feels  so light?” I asked. 

Pops smiled at me, the corners of his face crinkling. 

“I wonder if all our sin is what keeps our feet on the ground. I wonder if,” and my voice  hushed to a whisper, “when we get to heaven and all the sin is gone, if we’ll just lift right off the  ground and be able to fly.” 

My grin spread over my face, and I looked up at the sky peeping through the curtain of  branches and clouds. The thought filled me up so much that I thought I might burst with the  happiness of it. Instead, I sang, letting my voice wind through the trees and skirt the edge of the  valley below us as we climbed further up the hills to where the sun broke out from the trees like  a promise. 

Winter, 2020 

“What do you imagine heaven will be like?” 

We sat on my bed. I leaned against the wall, hugging my knees to my chest and resting  my cheek on top of them. My sister paused, fiddling with the corner of my blue and white quilt. “I always imagined that seeing God would be a little like standing in front of the ocean,”  the evening light from the other side of the window caught the sheen in her green eyes, “to look  at Him, so big and full and to know that He is good. Finally, after all the questions and all the  doubts and all the hurt, to be wrapped up in His love and to know Him more than ever before,”  she said. 

Her words pierced my heart, like an ocean wave crashing over me, shocking me with an  aching homesickness, washing the corners of my soul with hope. 

“What about you?” she asked me. 

I hugged my knees closer and lifted my chin. 

“I don’t know,” I said, “I’ve always just imagined that moment when I’ll see Jesus’ face.  And He’ll hold out his arms and I’ll run to hug Him and I’ll be home. Forever. I think that I’ll  cry, but it will be the very best kind of crying, and everything will be mended.” 

Fall, 2022 

I lifted a fallen leaf between my fingers. A black spot spread over the green surface,  curling the leaf in on itself, looking something like I imagined my heart might look like, curled  in on itself with grief.

“How does no one see it?” The wind caught my question, carrying it away to the clouds  that hung low over the sky. “Our very world is dying, like there is some evil growing and  touching even the innocent things.” 

“All creation is groaning,” my friend said, blue light glinting off her glasses as she looked  at me through my phone screen, “and we groan too, but not for forever.” 

The clouds had broken away, and as I walked along the path hemmed in with berry  brambles and dandelions, I watched the light shine between the silhouetted branches, golden and  unreachable, like a window into eternity. 

“What are you most excited for, when you think about heaven?” I asked. 

Her face lit up as she thought for a moment. 

“I had a missionary friend of mine, once tell me how being a missionary sometimes feels  like an eternal goodbye. Always moving on, always saying goodbye. But in heaven, it will be an  eternal hello. Hello to so many people, those we love, those we’ve never met before. No more  goodbyes, but we will be with Jesus, with all His people and we’ll be saying, ‘hello,” forever.” “Woah,” I whispered. 

As the wind caught my face and wrapped around me, the light touched my very soul and  I knew that the dying world was a shadowland, still riddled with windows through which peeped  tiny glimpses of home. 

Winter, 2024 

We stood in the front row of the little church building. Pink and yellow light from the  stained-glass windows made soft squares on the carpet. It was the first Sunday of Advent, and  the pastor’s words about living our lives in light of Jesus coming again burned in my heart. As  we lifted our voices and sang about joy in the house of the Lord, the room around me seemed to  still. 

I thought of all the people I didn’t care to ever see again because of the hurt they’d  caused my family and I, and I thought of all the times that I had wept over the pain that I caused  another person.

And in my mind’s eye, I saw myself in heaven, standing face to face with these  souls whom I had hurt and who hurt me. And all that I could feel, standing there, was the  overwhelming glory of God, and it reflected back to me from the eyes that stared into mine. As if  we both knew, then more than ever, the depth of our own depravity and the unshakable truth that  God’s grace covered it completely.

And, when there was no more bitterness or shame, all that  was left was the cry of, ‘Glory, glory, glory to God.’ The God who knew our sin and shame and  sorrow more than we could, and who redeemed all of it for good. We were so filled with His  love that it could not help but overflow from our souls to one another, each of us broken, each of  us made whole, not for any other reason than that the God of hosts set His heart upon us and  declared it to be so through the death and resurrection of His Son. 

I think that, perhaps, this is the closest I’ve ever come to getting a glimpse of what  heaven may actually be like: hearts forever filled with the love and glory of God.

---

This Creative Nonfiction Essay originally published in Thin Space, the Art and Theology Journal of Moody Bible Institute.