My Virgin Flight To Heaven

Have you been to heaven? I have. Seriously! This last week I flew Virgin America to get there. After deplaning, I plopped my cowboy boots on to the pavement, following my husband and three kids to our Minivan rental car, and my blue jeans began to travel through a space where I had never been before.

“We are HERE!” I exclaimed to my exhausted family, as though the pearly gates had opened for us.

The 70-degree air tasted different. Sweeter, kinder, and fresher. My eyes saw a landscape smiling and arcing upward to blue space, lined with little rectangular buildings painted pretty pastel colors, reflecting dots of light before the hills came back down, pouring out gentle rolling paths and roads. I saw spots of peach-colored poppies springing up in surprising places, then yellow and white wildflowers scattered across green expanses of curves. Purple cone flowers poked up like Dr. Suess had propped them next to the curves on the roads just to make me smile. Soft purple grey mountains whispered a wise welcome from far away.

Snap, snap, snap. I took pictures. I wanted more more MORE of this place. I wanted to save it. Bottle it. Package it in a to-go container.

I was in heaven. I was back home, in Marin County, where my husband and I had raised our kids for eight years. I had not been back since our departure just one year before.

My oldest had thrown a tantrum as we had waited for our car. But the air had been circling like medicine, filling my nose, brushing my ears with a strange harmony. As I blocked my boy from hitting my daughter next to the rushing traffic, I barely felt much fear. Worrisome thoughts tried to surface, but they then sort of popped into the atmosphere like little bubbles, disappearing. (Like I said, it HAD to have been heaven.)

Later in the car, over my oldest boy’s nervous banter and flying fists, I tossed out random happy words as though they were freshly picked wildflowers blowing in the wind, “Oh look! Look at that HILL. Look at that SKY. Look at that WATER. Look at the BRIDGE.” I couldn’t stop. My kids peered up at me with slightly concerned faces as I stuck my head out the car window on the highway, smiling at the air blowing my hair into tangles. They became quiet.

It looked like I had devolved into a very naïve toddler. (My 6-year-old once told me that kids live in heaven, here on earth— all the time!)

We had driven these roads countless times before, but in the past, I had not been able to suck in their splendor in quite this way. My tightly wound mind had been cluttered with school issues, with flashing clocks, beeping times and dates. My focused stare had been distracted by my mistakes of the week, reminders of after-school activities, grocery lists, and corners of the house needing cleaning. I could not see this place, all of its richness, very often. In the past, there had just been tiny glimpses, but then my brain had flipped back to the ruckus. Back inside of the blinding atmosphere of stress that had encircled me, stealing heaven right from under my nose.

And all that time, the gates had been right there. Inviting me in.

As our visit continued, I ran along trails similar to those that I had jogged down hundreds of times before when we had lived in Marin. But back then I had been thinking about other things. Problems. What school, what teacher, what way to help my son? Support my other kids. What friend? What way to help myself? So I had not felt the mist that poured down on to the land from the warm sky. I had not slowed down to observe the stripes of pink in the rocks, the tiny green pieces of rock, thousands of years old, buried in the dirt. Often in the past I had taken pictures of the beauty, (I love taking pictures) but I had not FELT it. You know? I had not lived in it. I had not listened to the hum of the wind. Not like this.

And then came the people. I swear, it was like they all wore white wings. Halos danced above their heads. And their smiles were so big that I had to wear my sunglasses everywhere. The moms from school, the church friends, the pastor, the babysitters, the home-school teachers, the nature teacher, the therapists, the old neighbors, the new babies, the work friends, the grandfather, the grocery store clerks, the swim friends, the swim coaches, the old friends from the city, the old gecko Eddie (OK, he isn’t a person, but…) These people were not like REAL people. No sir. They were like those people you picture in heaven. Smiling, hugging, laughing, eating, drinking, playing. Being honest. Looking me in the eye. Loving my kids. Loving.

Or maybe I was different? Seeing differently. I was not afraid anymore. Not afraid to hug. To smile. To share. Not afraid to be disappointed. Joy felt like it was dripping from me.

“What is this?” I wondered. Oh yea— heaven.

And the grumpy people? Of course they were there sometimes, too. I sort of saw that one tall blonde mom with a great big chest who turned her extra long back into my face so I had to back away and end the conversation I was having (cause I couldn’t see or be heard anymore.) She didn’t remember me, of course. And I saw her, um, back. But I saw her image differently… Maybe her stress was too thick. Her insecurities too opaque. Maybe she couldn’t smile much because she couldn’t see the sky. (I felt no better or worse than her. Just undeservedly someplace else on that day.) But anyway, I turned my face away, toward another smile, and POOF, she was GONE. It was that simple. I didn’t look at her again.

I wonder— could heaven be found so easily— any old day, in any old place? Could it be a simple spin of the heart toward the good, away from that other place that pulls down our souls? Could it be a glance upward toward the sky?

Here’s the greatest part: I’m not writing this so that you wish you TOO could go to Marin (if you aren’t there already.) Or live there. Or go on my runs. Or know the same people. See, on my trip I learned that you don’t have to travel Virgin Air to get to heaven. God is not living somewhere else, somewhere far away. I think He is sitting right there next to you. In you. With us all— all the time. Patiently waiting for us to notice. He taps his foot, holding the door opened for me, for you, my friend, my reader, the person who believes he or she isn’t worthy. He opens it for the one who doesn’t believe heaven or God exists at all. He opens doors in pretty places like Marin County, but also in seemingly dreary places like, well, like the slushy East Coast where I live now! (I know, I know, that coast is gorgeous too, but in March, at times, one might think otherwise.)

Anyway, I think heaven waits in the arms of a tree on a grey slushy cold street in Connecticut. It is dressed as a sunset, smiling through a window in a crowd of slightly stuffy people. Heaven is gleaming from the dimples of the messy-haired homeless child holding a fluffy cupcake at the soup kitchen. Heaven is in the embrace of the teacher with the sparkle in her eye who loves my child despite his moods and struggles. It is in the stranger, or the new friend who smiles and asks you how you are feeling.

And so I came back from my trip to heaven with HOPE. Hope that I captured a little bit of my magical, undeserved experience in these words. Who knows, maybe I flew to heaven just so I could share it with you.

And if I remember what I learned from leaving my beloved Marin behind, from my flight to that wonderful place, then maybe I can live there more often, wherever I go. Forever and ever.