A few weeks ago marked the 5-year anniversary of the death of my best friend Holli. She passed away at age 37 during the H1N1 pandemic of 2009. I guess you could say I had Heaven on the Brain, because around this time of year ever since she died, one of the things I do to cope and avoid depression is to really think and pray about Heaven.
It was almost exactly a week past this anniversary when my husband and I were headed out of town on a little mini-vacation, just a few days of R&R time sans kids (only our second such trip in seven years). I found myself in the airport looking for books to read on the plane and on the beach during our trip.
With Heaven on the Brain, I chose three books:
- The First Phone Call from Heaven: A Novel
by Mitch Albom
- The Map of Heaven: How Science, Religion, and Ordinary People Are Proving the Afterlife
by Eben Alexander, MD - Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy’s Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back
by Todd Burpo with Lynn Vincent
At first I hesitated to buy three books about Heaven. I mean, that’s pretty weird, right? Even for someone in ministry, it just seemed a little over the top. But I reasoned to myself that if it is perfectly acceptable — even normal — to binge watch an entire season of Orange is the New Black on Netflix in a day… so then it shouldn’t be so weird to binge-read about Heaven over a few days. After all, two of these books are on the New York Times bestseller list and the third was #1 for a good while. Re-convinced of my normalcy, I made the purchase.
While the subject matter of Heaven is certainly a common denominator in the three works, each book is quite different. The first one I read, The First Phone Call from Heaven, is a fictional novel. Set in a made-up northern Michigan town, First Phone Call tells the story of a select group of residents who begin receiving phone calls from the deceased. A flurry in the town erupts as miracle after miracle seems to occur. I can’t really say much more about the story without spoiling, but what struck me about this fictional account was how real I imagined people’s reactions to the miracles were. We so badly want to believe there is a Heaven, but when presented with possible proof, we are all skeptical. We have been duped so many times, we all have a penchant toward non-belief in the face of something that could be truly miraculous. I wonder how much we miss because of our bias.
I switched gears when I finished First Phone Call, and read some non-fiction: The Map of Heaven. OK, I’ll be honest, I started reading The Map of Heaven and got a few chapters under my belt. This book is dense. One of those ones that if you didn’t pay attention in science class (I didn’t), you have to read reallll slooooowwww. So I am continuing to slowly read. But man, it is fascinating stuff. Written by a neurosurgeon who previously did not believe in God and had a near-death experience that changed his mind, as a Christian there is an angle that takes getting used to as you read. It’s a cross-cultural, cross-religious view of the scientific and philosophical principals that support the concept of Heaven and the assertion that there must be a creator. For someone who is accustomed to reading about Heaven purely from a Christocentric perspective, in reading this book that mentions Jesus as one of the “possibilities,” I almost felt like I was cheating at first. One the other hand, as I read, I enjoyed getting the more cross-cultural view. The more I know, the better I can communicate with anyone struggling to believe.
So I didn’t finish reading Map yet, but, give me a few weeks and I’ll get ‘er done. For the plane ride home, I decided to dive into Heaven is for Real. The movie came out this year, and I hadn’t seen it because I really wanted to read the book. But yet I didn’t want to read the book, because I honestly felt like I had heard so much about it, what was the point of reading it? I felt the same way when I went to see the movie Titanic in 1997. One of the most colossal movies of all time, and I had a bad attitude going in, because, really, didn’t we already know how it was going to end? And then of course by the end of the movie I was bawling my eyes out to Celine Dion. Well, the same thing happened in For Real. Except the Celine Dion part. This book got a grip on me, largely because my own children are very close in age to Colton Burpo, the little boy featured in the book. During his illness and hospital scare, I think I held my breath for the entirety of two chapters. The story is well-told, and a nice read.