Day 39- Heaven Is For Real

Today I start with my 4.5 mile walk. It’s a great pace and a glorious morning. I listen to a podcast about a guy who lost his toddler son and a wife in a car accident while he was driving. His older son survives. He talks about the hell he was in having had survived that. Wow. People tell me they can’t imagine surviving what I am surviving. He could not move for months. He could not speak. He could not cry out, could not hit something, could not go for a walk or a run. He will never run again. He lost one leg just above the knee. He didn’t have his wife to support him through it. He did have several visits from her, an OOBE and an NDE, but still I weep for the guy right there on my walk. We can survive so much more than we think we can. I think if he can survive that, I should be able to survive this.

There is a movie I want to see, Heaven Is For Real. It came up in one of my podcasts. It was not on my radar, but my intuition is telling me to see it. I proposed it to Ty on Friday, but we watched Selma with Kayla instead because it was only a buck to rent. Today, I am going to see Heaven Is For Real if it kills me. I don’t know why, but I have to see it today. We are going out with friends tonight, so I’m going to watch it this afternoon. I swing by Kroger to pick it up at Redbox. They are out of it. I check the Redbox app. All my normal pick up spots are out. The closest one is 20 minutes away. I put the destination into Waze and head over there. Traffic on I-275 is horrible. I’m about to abort the mission and just go another day. I try to get over to the exit lane to get off before I hit the jam I see ahead. I can’t get over. So, what is the message? I’m operating on intuition here. Am I getting signals to get the movie since its been planted in my psyche that I have to see it today or should I bag it since traffic and the lack of availability are trying to stop me? I’m determined now. I’m going to get that movie.

I finally arrive at the second Redbox location. The movie is still there. I get it and head home. Surprisingly, Kayla agrees to join Ty and me to watch the movie. It’s pretty good. We get to discuss it while we’re watching it. No one believes the little boy about his visit to heaven. No one believes his Dad, a preacher, when he begins telling his church about it. Kayla asks us if we think she’s crazy because of her visits from Shayna. Absolutely not, I tell her. And I believe that kid, too.

After the movie, is when the weirdness happens. I will describe it in a separate blog, but we were meant to see that movie. I cannot explain what happened, only describe it. It really moved all three of us. I have been trying to come up with an explanation, but I cannot.

After the movie it was time to go watch our friend play music. We had dinner at an Ethiopian/Indian restaurant with our Belgian friends who had invited a Nigerian friend to join them. Our friend plays Cajun music. So it was a United Nations kinda night. I love America. But, as always while we were out having a good time, the loss of Shayna was just below or at the surface. Shayna wouldn’t have been there anyway. We all know that, but she would have been waiting at home. I just know I’m going to have a good cry when I get home. We make our excuses and leave fairly early. Even having fun is exhausting these days. We get home and it’s Ty’s turn to cry, not mine. I hold her and try to offer her encouragement. How is a mother supposed to endure this? What kind of sense does this make? We again wonder how we will take years of this pain, but we come back to the fact it’s only been five weeks and people say it becomes endurable. We can only hope. We close our eyes and tell each other we have made it another day.