Entering Paradise

Sometimes you enter paradise but are not aware of it at the time. Then you pass out of it too quickly, and you finally begin to sense that something special has happened, which may not come again. Or if it should come again, you realize you want to be ready for it, fully available to it, so as to take in as much of it as you can.

In my life such paradise moments often involved being together with our children when they were young. I remember especially camping together. Of course, during those times my wife and I had so many issues we were dealing with, that we hardly realized how wondrous our time together was. During the camping we had many concerns that needed to be addressed, such as food, cooking, clothes, sunblock, insect repellent, medications, rain, water safety, morning activities, afternoon activities, evening activities, fires, “s’mores.” While one eye was on the children and having fun, the other eye was on making sure everything went safely and smoothly.

We did of course catch glimpses of the specialness of those times while we were in them. There were moments my wife and I just looked at each other and smiled; moments we even said to one another, “It doesn’t get better than this.” Yet at the time, we didn’t realize just how true that really was.

Sadly, it is only in retrospect that life’s nonrepeatable specialness shows its wondrous face. The meaning and magic of those days did not fully hit me until our last child left home. Our daughter graduated high school a year early so she could spend the next school year in Mexico, through Rotary International’s marvelous youth exchange program. Then my mourning arose. Even though I would later realize that life could be very satisfying post “empty nest,” nevertheless, I still mourned as if for the loss of a loved one. Grief is after all, nonrational.

I never forget one particular day during the height of my mourning the loss of at home children. I drove to the house in Des Moines where we had lived during many of our greatest family days. I turned off the engine and sat in my car across the street from that house; I stared at it and I remembered those days like a lost Camelot. The fervent desire arose in me to go back and relive those paradise days, when the Green family was in its “all-together” heyday. I could have enjoyed it more; I should have enjoyed it more. Some of my career concerns I thought mattered so much really didn’t; some of the family time I assumed would always be there, wasn’t.

At that moment I would have given up the remainder of my days, if I could have gone back to relive even one day, during those underappreciated days of paradise camping and family enjoyment. Fortunately, God did not grant my tearful appeal, and the passion gradually, gracefully passed. But not my recollections or hushed yearning to relive those days.

Finally, I drove away and back to my present life, full of meaning and surprises and promising paradise moments still to be entered. Yet to this moment, when I think of that house, so different now than when the Green family inhabited it, I remember moments of paradise on earth. The truth is, you do not have to wait until heaven to enter heaven. If you could just recognize and rejoice in what you have, while you have it.