I Saw Heaven

We all have dreams...some we remember for a moment after we wake up, some we remember vaguely, if at all.  But, the morning I saw heaven, I knew I wasn't dreaming.  I wasn't dreaming and I have never forgotten the vision that I had or the feeling...yes, the feeling...  (Give me a moment now to pray that the Lord guides my fingertips and I am sufficiently able to tell you, dear reader, what I saw)...

I was lying in my bed, when I was quickly awakened.  By what?  Nothing in particular, but I was lying on my back looking straight up to the ceiling..Then, I wasn't.  Before me was a beautiful green landscape.  Like those you would see in a National Geographic magazine, except when I see those I still think about all the bugs and spiders and snakes and yucky stuff that is lurking in all that beauty (sorry, I'm a realist!), but while I looked upon this lush landscape, I had no worries of bugs, no fear of snakes.  I had a feeling of total safety, like I had never felt before in my life.

To my left side, there was a man, dressed in white.  I never turned my head to look upon his face, I didn't feel like I needed to.  He was Jesus and what He was showing me was important.  Standing there on the edge of this beauty, I felt peace.  No, not just peace.  Peace beyond my own comprehension.  I felt that stress I didn't even know I had was washed away from me.  I felt light and free.  Friend, I would give anything to feel that in its entirety again.

This was heaven.  And the way I know that is that I would have immediately left this old world and stepped over into that world.  I would have left my family and friends.  I thought of them in my mind, my two darling children, my husband, parents--those who would mourn losing me.  Yet, after seeing heaven and feeling the reality of eternity, I knew that no matter what they suffered on this Earth, it would not matter.  All of it would be wiped away in eternity with God.  Before in my life when I have thought of leaving Earth, I would mourn.  I wring my hands thinking that I might lose my children to be raised without me guiding them!  I hate the thought of my husband crying over losing me!  If given the chance, I would have told you that I would have asked God to wait and let me stay just a little longer on Earth.  But, in THAT moment, looking at heaven, with Jesus beside me, I wanted to step over.  I wanted to step over into my eternal rest.

Jesus wiped his arm across the scene before us, and a translucent veil came down between me and heaven.  Jesus had said, "Not now."  I immediately felt the loss of euphoric, heavenly peace.  It wasn't completely gone, but lessened as I stood there looking longingly into that paradise.  I immediately mourned the loss of that peace.

Then the vision was gone and I was lying on my back in my bed looking at the wood ceiling of my bedroom.  I lay there silently contemplating what I had just seen.  Why had God shown it to me?  What had just happened?

Later, when a friend of mine lost his mother, I thought of my vision and how she was rejoicing in death.  When my own daughter continued to struggle with a chronic condition, I rejoiced in knowing that eternity lay ahead of us.  There are days I so long for that heavenly home, that I could cry.  I long to be able to show you what I saw, to give you the homesickness I feel...Oh, Beulah Land, Sweet Beulah Land.