September 24th came and left without the hundreds or maybe thousands of people who expected to be taken up to heaven. I'll admit to checking in to Facebook that day as unraptured and still in Tennessee. I do feel a little bad about that, but just a little because, like many people in the Southeastern U.S., I know people - Heck, I'm related to some of them- who talk about the rapture in wistful tones. To them, the world is a terrible place and their lives are so relentlessly hard that what comes after has to be an improvement.
My usual response is that Heaven is probably pretty great compared to, say Gallatin, Tennessee. However, their lives are already considerably better than most of the people in the rest of the world. They are arguably living better than a lot of my clients in Gallatin. Their response is inevitably some variation of, "Heaven!" and "They can come, too!"
Yeah. Heaven. About that...
How do I write this without sounding crazy? I'm not sure I can. Either you'll believe me or you won't.
In 2020, my heart fired a warning shot in late November. Then it responded to my reaction of, "Well, that was interesting. All tickety-boo now!" with my valves and some other chunks of it dying in my chest and me dying on the table and then spending a little over a week in a coma developing the annoying habit of coding so often that the critical care staff and the slightly resentful cardiologist took great care of me; but it reached a point where I'm pretty sure they were saying, "Her again?"
What was I doing while this was going on? Binning two years of math, engineering, physics, astronomy, and nearly all of the German I'd learned. Frolicking around unencumbered by a body and seeing people arriving and departing the hospital in ways that didn't require street clothing or a designated driver. I made a friend and saw that Heaven is real, God is real, and Jesus is real. (Get over it!) You know how there's that one weird kid who doesn't want to go home from camp at the end of the Summer? That was me when they woke me up.
I think about this when people talk about how they wish the world would end and they would be taken up. Many of these same people have families, tribal affiliations, well-defined roles in their lives, and there's that sense of purpose tick-tocking away in their brains. I would be lying if I said I understood why they were and maybe still are anxious to doff all of this and ascend. Will they be okay or will they have nagging feelings that some things were left incomplete?
When I was waiting for the cow parts to get in so the Great and Powerful Oz aka my thoracic surgeon could get me going again, random people would come into my room and tell me what they thought my mission was going to be once I was well again. Some of them charged me for it, weirdoes. It amazed me how many people felt the need to tell me what I was supposed to do once I got out of the hospital.
A couple of years later, a nurse recognized me and referred to me as "the lady who died and came back." Then a lot of those awkward encounters made a lot more sense. It serves as a qualifier of sorts that I carry like my library card and some spare cash for farm stand peaches. I pull it out whenever someone speaks wishfully of Jesus coming back and the world as we know it ending, but I don't use it and I should.
Friends and relatives sit next to me on the benches at Drake's Creek Park or watch their kids play on the swingset at Haebeggar's Roadside or they look out at the beautiful, wooded hills that surround Nashville and they talk about how they can't wait to leave.
I'm not. Even though I know my time here is a matter of running the clock out with no promise of connection or accomplishment, I still feel the urge to do good and make art and enjoy music and movies and books and observe humanity in it's beautiful, heartbreaking, hilarious glory, whether it's from behind a pulpit or a lectern. To ask for anything else is to look at what God has created for us and say, "Eh. No thanks!"
Even if I don't say it out loud, my experience has qualified me to at least think we're lucky we don't get exactly what we want.
So quit looking for that divine Uber to come get you and carpe diem already!
XOXO,
Jas
My usual response is that Heaven is probably pretty great compared to, say Gallatin, Tennessee. However, their lives are already considerably better than most of the people in the rest of the world. They are arguably living better than a lot of my clients in Gallatin. Their response is inevitably some variation of, "Heaven!" and "They can come, too!"
Yeah. Heaven. About that...
How do I write this without sounding crazy? I'm not sure I can. Either you'll believe me or you won't.
In 2020, my heart fired a warning shot in late November. Then it responded to my reaction of, "Well, that was interesting. All tickety-boo now!" with my valves and some other chunks of it dying in my chest and me dying on the table and then spending a little over a week in a coma developing the annoying habit of coding so often that the critical care staff and the slightly resentful cardiologist took great care of me; but it reached a point where I'm pretty sure they were saying, "Her again?"
What was I doing while this was going on? Binning two years of math, engineering, physics, astronomy, and nearly all of the German I'd learned. Frolicking around unencumbered by a body and seeing people arriving and departing the hospital in ways that didn't require street clothing or a designated driver. I made a friend and saw that Heaven is real, God is real, and Jesus is real. (Get over it!) You know how there's that one weird kid who doesn't want to go home from camp at the end of the Summer? That was me when they woke me up.
I think about this when people talk about how they wish the world would end and they would be taken up. Many of these same people have families, tribal affiliations, well-defined roles in their lives, and there's that sense of purpose tick-tocking away in their brains. I would be lying if I said I understood why they were and maybe still are anxious to doff all of this and ascend. Will they be okay or will they have nagging feelings that some things were left incomplete?
When I was waiting for the cow parts to get in so the Great and Powerful Oz aka my thoracic surgeon could get me going again, random people would come into my room and tell me what they thought my mission was going to be once I was well again. Some of them charged me for it, weirdoes. It amazed me how many people felt the need to tell me what I was supposed to do once I got out of the hospital.
A couple of years later, a nurse recognized me and referred to me as "the lady who died and came back." Then a lot of those awkward encounters made a lot more sense. It serves as a qualifier of sorts that I carry like my library card and some spare cash for farm stand peaches. I pull it out whenever someone speaks wishfully of Jesus coming back and the world as we know it ending, but I don't use it and I should.
Friends and relatives sit next to me on the benches at Drake's Creek Park or watch their kids play on the swingset at Haebeggar's Roadside or they look out at the beautiful, wooded hills that surround Nashville and they talk about how they can't wait to leave.
I'm not. Even though I know my time here is a matter of running the clock out with no promise of connection or accomplishment, I still feel the urge to do good and make art and enjoy music and movies and books and observe humanity in it's beautiful, heartbreaking, hilarious glory, whether it's from behind a pulpit or a lectern. To ask for anything else is to look at what God has created for us and say, "Eh. No thanks!"
Even if I don't say it out loud, my experience has qualified me to at least think we're lucky we don't get exactly what we want.
So quit looking for that divine Uber to come get you and carpe diem already!
XOXO,
Jas
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