Heaven Is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back

by Todd Burpo; Sonja Burpo; Lynn Vincent; Colton Burpo

  I felt the same way. But it was also about this time that I also started feeling sorry for myself. For one thing, I was tired of loping around on crutches. Also, a mastectomy isn’t exactly the manliest surgery in the world. Finally, I’d been asking the church board for a long time to set aside money for me for an assistant. Only after this second round of kidney stones did the board vote to authorize the position.

  Instead of feeling grateful as I should have, I indulged myself with resentment: So I have to be a cripple and be on the verge of a cancer diagnosis to get a little help around here?

  My pity party really got rolling one afternoon. I was down on the first floor of the church property, a finished basement, really, where we had a kitchen, a classroom, and a large fellowship area. I had just finished up some paperwork and began working my way upstairs on my crutches. Down at the bottom, on the first step, I started getting mad at God.

  “This isn’t fair,” I grumbled aloud, as I struggled up the stairs, one crutch at a time, one step at a time. “I have to suffer and be in this pathetic state for them to give me the help I’ve needed all along.”

  Feeling pretty smug in my martyrdom, I had just reached the top landing when a still, small voice arose in my heart: And what did my Son do for you?

  Humbled and ashamed of my selfishness, I remembered what Jesus said to the disciples: “A student is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master.”1 Sure, I’d had a rough few months, but they were nothing compared with what a lot of people in the world were going through, even at that very minute. God had blessed me with a small group of believers whom I was charged to shepherd and serve, and here I was griping at God because those believers weren’t serving me.

  “Lord, forgive me,” I said, and swung forward with renewed strength, as if my crutches were eagles’ wings.

  The truth was, my church was serving me—loving me through a special time of prayer they’d set aside. One morning in the beginning of December, Dr. O’Holleran called me at home with strange news: not only was the tissue benign; it was entirely normal. Normal breast tissue. “I can’t explain why,” he said. “The biopsy definitely showed hyperplasia, so we would expect to see the same thing in the breast tissue removed during the mastectomy. But the tissue was completely normal. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how that happened.”

  I knew: God had loved me with a little miracle.

  THREE

  COLTON TOUGHS IT OUT

  That next month, the cast came off. With the cancer scare and kidney stones behind us, I spent a couple of months learning to walk again, first with a walking cast, then with a pretty nasty limp, slowly working my atrophied muscles back to health again. By February, I finally achieved some independence—just in time for a district board meeting of our church denomination in Greeley, Colorado, set for the first week in March.

  “You need to get away,” Sonja told me a couple of weeks before the board meeting. “Just get away and have a little fun.”

  Now, here we were at the Butterfly Pavilion. A monarch butterfly fluttered past, its bright orange wings segmented in black like stained glass. I breathed a prayer of thanks that our trip had happened at all.

  Two days before, on Thursday, Colton had begun telling Sonja that his stomach hurt. I was already in Greeley, and at the time, Sonja was teaching a Title 1 class at Imperial High School. Not wanting to put the school to the expense of a substitute, she asked our good friend Norma Dannatt if she could watch Colton at her home so that Sonja could go to work. Norma, who was like a favorite aunt to our kids, immediately said yes. But at midday, Sonja’s cell phone rang. It was Norma: Colton’s condition had taken a nosedive. He had a fever with chills and for most of the morning had lain nearly motionless on Norma’s couch, wrapped in a blanket.

  “He says he’s freezing, but he’s sweating like crazy,” Norma said, clearly concerned. She said Colton’s forehead was covered in beads of sweat as big as teardrops.

  Norma’s husband, Bryan, had come home, taken one look, and decided Colton was sick enough that he should go to the emergency room. Sonja called me in Greeley with the news, and just like that, I saw our trip to celebrate the end of a string of injury and illness being cancelled by . . . illness.

  Sonja checked out of work early, scooped up Colton from Norma’s house, and took him to the doctor, who revealed that a stomach flu was working its way around town. Through that night, our trip remained up in the air. Separately, in Greeley and Imperial, Sonja and I prayed that Colton would feel well enough to make the trip and by morning, we got our answer: yes!

  During the night, Colton’s fever broke and by afternoon on Friday, he was his old self again. Sonja called to tell me: “We’re on our way!”

  Now, at the Butterfly Pavilion, Sonja checked her watch. We were scheduled to meet Steve Wilson, the pastor of Greeley Wesleyan Church, and his wife, Rebecca, for dinner that evening, and the kids still wanted to get in a swim at the hotel pool. There was zero chance of them swimming in Imperial in March, so this was a rare opportunity. “Okay, we should probably head back to the hotel,” Sonja said.

  I looked at her and then at Colton. “Hey, bud, it’s time to go. Are you still sure you don’t want to hold Rosie?” I said. “Last chance to get a sticker. What do you think?”

  Emotions played over Colton’s face like sunshine and clouds in a fast-moving weather front. By now, even his big sister had been ribbing him a little about being afraid. As I watched, Colton narrowed his eyes and set his jaw: he wanted that sticker.

  “Okay, I’ll hold her,” he said. “But just for a little bit.”

  Before he could change his mind, we all trooped back into the Crawl-A-See-Um, and I corralled the keeper. “This is Colton, and he wants to give it a try,” I said.

  The keeper smiled and bent down. “Okay, Colton, are you ready?”

  Stiff as a board, our son held out his hand, and I bent over and cradled it in my own.

  “Now, this is super easy, Colton,” the keeper said. “Just hold your hand out flat and still. Rosie is very gentle. She won’t hurt you.”

  The keeper raised his hand, and Rosie sidled over to Colton’s hand and back to the keeper’s waiting hand on the other side, never even slowing down. We all broke into cheers and clapped for Colton as the keeper handed him his sticker. He had faced his fear! It was a big victory for him. The moment seemed like icing on the cake of a perfect day.

  As we left the Butterfly Pavilion, I reflected back over the past several months. It was hard to believe that the broken leg, the kidney stones, the lost work, the financial stress, three surgeries, and the cancer scare had all happened in half a year’s time. In that moment, I realized for the first time that I had been feeling like I’d been in a fight. For months, I’d had my guard up, waiting for the next punch life could throw. Now, though, I felt completely relaxed for the first time since the previous summer.

  If I’d let my mind roll with that boxing metaphor just a little longer, I might’ve followed it to its logical conclusion: In a boxing match, the fighters absorb some vicious blows because they’re ready for them. And usually, the knockout punch is the one they didn’t see coming.

  FOUR

  SMOKE SIGNALS

  Later that evening, with a swim under their belts, Cassie and Colton sat in a big round booth at the Old Chicago Restaurant in Greeley, Colorado, coloring happily while Sonja and I chatted with Pastor Steve Wilson and his wife, Rebecca. We had already chowed down on some terrific Italian food, including the usual kid favorites—pizza, spaghetti, and garlic bread.

  Steve was senior pastor of a church of between fifteen hundred and two thousand people—nearly as many people as lived in our hometown of Imperial. It was a chance for Sonja and me to get to know another pastor in our district and to get some ideas on how other pastors do ministry. We planned to visit Steve’s church, Greeley Wesleyan, the next day. Sonja especially wanted to get a look at how the church’s Sunday morning children’s program worked
. Rebecca divided her time between the grown-up conversation and coloring with the kids.

  “Wow, Colton, you’re doing a really good job coloring that pizza!” she said. Colton offered a thin, polite smile but had fallen unusually quiet. Then, a few minutes later, he said, “Mommy, my tummy hurts.”

  Sonja and I exchanged a glance. Was it the stomach flu coming back? Sonja laid the back of her hand against Colton’s cheek and shook her head. “You don’t feel hot, hon.”

  “I think I’m gonna throw up,” Colton said.

  “I don’t feel so good, either, Mommy,” Cassie said.

  We figured it was something they ate. With both kids feeling under the weather, we ended our dinner early, said good-bye to the Wilsons, and headed back to the hotel, which was just across the parking lot from the restaurant. As soon as we got the door to our room open, Colton’s prediction came true: he upchucked, beginning on the carpet and ending, as Sonja whisked him into the tiny bathroom, in the toilet.

  Standing in the bathroom doorway, I watched Colton’s small form bent over and convulsing. This didn’t seem like any kind of food poisoning.

  Gotta be that stomach flu, I thought. Great.

  That was how the evening began. It continued with Colton throwing up every thirty minutes like clockwork. Between times, Sonja sat in an upholstered side chair with Colton on her lap, keeping the room’s ice bucket within reach in case she couldn’t make it to the bathroom. About two hours into this cycle, another kid joined the party. As Colton was in the bathroom, heaving into the toilet with Sonja kneeling beside him, a steadying hand on his back, Cassie ran in and threw up in the tub.

  “Todd!” Sonja called. “I need a little help in here!”

  Great, I thought. Now they both have it.

  Or did they? After we were able to move both kids back to the bedroom, Sonja and I put our heads together. Colton had seemed to kick that stomach flu the day before. And all day long at the Butterfly Pavilion, he was his normal self, completely happy except for the strain of holding Rosie to get that sticker. Cassie had held Rosie too . . . could Goliath tarantulas trigger a case of double upchuck?

  No, dummy, I told myself and pushed the thought aside.

  “Did the kids eat the same thing at the restaurant?” I asked Sonja, who by then was lying on one of the double beds with one arm around each of our two green-at-the-gills kids.

  She looked at the ceiling and thought for a moment. “I think they both had some pizza . . . but we all had pizza. I think it’s that flu. Colton probably wasn’t over it quite yet, and he passed it along to Cassie before we got here. The doctor said it was pretty contagious.”

  No matter what, it looked like our relaxing, post-turmoil celebration trip was abruptly coming to an end. And a few minutes later, I heard the magic words that seemed to confirm my thoughts: “Mommy, I feel like I’m gonna throw up again.”

  Sonja snatched up Colton and hustled him to the toilet again, just in the nick of time.

  When the pink light of dawn began peeking through the curtains the next morning, Sonja was still awake. We had agreed that at least one of us should still go visit Greeley Wesleyan and get some large-church ministry knowledge we could export to Imperial, so I tried to get at least a little sleep. That left Sonja with nursing duties, which included an almost hourly trek back and forth to the bathroom with Colton. Cassie had gotten sick only one other time during the night, but whatever this bug was, it seemed to have latched onto our little boy’s innards and dug in deep.

  We checked out of the hotel early and drove over to the Greeley home of Phil and Betty Lou Harris, our close friends and also superintendents for the Wesleyan church district that includes all of Colorado and Nebraska. The original plan had been that our two families would attend the Wilsons’ church together that morning. Now, though, with a pair of sick kids, we decided that Sonja would stay at the Harrises’ home. Betty Lou, sweet lady that she is, volunteered to stay home and assist.

  When I got back from church just after lunch, Sonja gave me the status report: Cassie was feeling a lot better. She had even been able to eat a little something and keep it down. But Colton continued to vomit on a clockwork basis and had been unable to hold anything down.

  Colton was in the Harrises’ living room, huddled in the corner of the huge couch on top of a blanket/drop cloth with a bucket standing nearby just in case. I walked over and sat down beside him.

  “Hey, buddy. Not doing so great, huh?”

  Colton slowly shook his head, and tears welled up in his blue eyes. I might’ve been in my thirties, but over the last few months, I’d learned only too well what it was like to feel so sick and miserable that you just wanted to cry. My heart hurt for my son.

  “Come here,” I said. I pulled him into my lap and looked into his little round face. His eyes, usually sparkling and playful, looked flat and weak.

  Phil walked over and sat down beside me and reviewed the symptoms: abdominal pain, profuse vomiting, a fever that had come and gone. “Could it be appendicitis?”

  I thought about it for a moment. There was certainly a family history. My uncle’s appendix had burst, and I’d had a wicked case of appendicitis in college during the time Sonja and I were dating. Also, Sonja had had her appendix out when she was in second grade.

  But the circumstances here didn’t seem to fit the bill. The doctor in Imperial had diagnosed him with stomach flu. And if it was appendicitis, there would be no reason Cassie would be sick too.

  We spent Sunday night with the Harrises in Greeley. By morning, Cassie had completely recovered, but Colton had spent a second night throwing up.

  As we packed our duffel bags and headed outside to load up the Expedition, Phil gazed at Colton, cradled in Sonja’s arms. “He looks pretty sick to me, Todd. Maybe you should take him to the hospital here.”

  Sonja and I had discussed that option. We had sat in emergency room waiting areas with a sick kid before, and our experience was that we could probably make the three-hour drive back to Imperial before we would be seen in the emergency room of a metro-Denver hospital. So instead, we called ahead to Imperial and made an appointment with our regular family doctor, the one Colton had seen the previous Friday. I explained our reasoning to Phil. He said he understood, but I could tell he was still worried. And by the time we’d been on the road for an hour or so, I began to think that maybe he had been right.

  For Sonja, our first red flag waved when we stopped at a Safeway just outside Greeley to buy Pull-Ups. Colton, who had been potty-trained for more than two years, had tinkled in his underwear. It worried Sonja that he didn’t even protest when she laid him down in the backseat of the Expedition and helped him into a pair of Pull-Ups. Under normal circumstances, he would have been indignant: “I’m not a baby!” Now, though, he didn’t utter a peep.

  Instead, once strapped back into his car seat, he only clutched his belly and moaned. Two hours into the drive, he was crying constantly, stopping about every thirty minutes to throw up again. In the rearview mirror, I could see the heartbreak and helplessness on Sonja’s face. Meanwhile, I tried to focus on the goal: get him to Imperial, get some IVs in him, stop the dehydration that surely must be setting in as this flu ran its course.

  We reached Imperial in just under three hours. At the hospital, a nurse took us back to an examination room pretty quickly, with Sonja carrying Colton, cradling his head against her shoulder the way she had when he was an infant. Within a few minutes, the doctor who had seen Colton on Friday joined us, and we brought him up to date on the situation. After a brief exam, he ordered blood tests and an Xray, and I think I took a breath for the first time since we rolled out of Greeley. This was progress. We were doing something. In a short while, we’d have a diagnosis, probably a prescription or two, and Colton would be on the way to recovery.

  We took Colton to the lab, where he screamed as a tech tried her best to find a vein. That was followed by Xrays that were better only because we convinced Colton that there wer
e no needles involved. Within an hour, we were back in the exam room with the doctor.

  “Could it be appendicitis?” Sonja asked the doctor.

  He shook his head. “No. Colton’s white blood cell count isn’t consistent with appendicitis. We are concerned, though, about his Xrays.”

  I looked at Sonja. It was at that moment we realized we’d been banking on a really nasty virus. We were completely unprepared for something more serious. The doctor led us into the hallway, where there was already an Xray clipped to an illuminator. When I saw what was in the picture, my heart dropped into my stomach: The Xray of our son’s tiny little torso showed three dark masses. It looked for all the world as if his insides had exploded.

  Sonja began shaking her head and tears, which had hovered just beneath the surface, spilled onto her cheeks.

  “Are you sure it’s not appendicitis?” I asked the doctor.

  “There’s a family history.”

  Again he said no. “That’s not what the blood tests show.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said.

  FIVE

  SHADOW OF DEATH

  That was Monday, March 3. Nurses placed Colton in a room and inserted an IV. Two bags dangled from the top of a stainless steel pole, one for hydration and one with antibiotics of some kind. Sonja and I prayed together for Colton. Norma stopped by with Colton’s favorite toy, his Spider-Man action figure. Normally, his eyes would’ve lit up at the sight of either Norma or Spider-Man, but Colton didn’t react at all. Later, our friend Terri brought Colton’s best little buddy, her son Hunter, to visit. Again, Colton was unresponsive, almost lifeless.

  Sitting in a side chair near Colton’s bed, Norma looked at Sonja grimly. “I think you should take him to Children’s Hospital in Denver.”