What a Career Shift taught me about Heaven

I'm being entirely open and vulnerable here. Be kind.

"That's great!"
"Exciting!"
"What an adventure!"
Many have been very supportive and encouraging with regard to my acceptance of a position within a travel PT agency just 2 weeks ago. But I suspect there are some other exclamations left unsaid...
"How rash!"
"Unsettling."
"Not quite loyal!"
"How completely and utterly frightening."
(the last phrase definitely comes from me)

The emotional roller coaster continues to oscillate between excitement & trepidation and fear & sorrow, and though the curves have softened considerably, they have grown accentuated. I mourn more each day moving away from people I have grown to respect and to love. I have invested a portion of my life to this place, to these people, to this career, and have been abundantly rewarded. So why give it up? Why go away? Why change?!?

I abhor change. Loathe. Despise. Detest. Abominate.
My mother continuously challenges me to peek out of the top of my box, since she has come to the realization that I will likely never break free from my cuboid comfort compartment of plans and predictions and routines.
The unknown is my absolute greatest fear.


I was 9, maybe 10 years old. It was a beautiful summer Sabbath, and I was sitting in my favorite pine-lined chapel. The speaker was waxing eloquent on the beauty of heaven, the joys to be shared there, the things that cannot be expressed in human terms. It was all so lovely! Until he mentioned that forever thing.

"And we'll be there forever! Without end! Do you guys get that? FOREVER!"

Yeah. I got that. That, and chills and bronchoconstriction. My face felt flush and the speaker's voice grew muffled, replaced by the reverberating, body-shaking thump of my racing heart. I focused on breathing, trying to think of something else, with only the word FOREVER resounding in my head with that strange echoing, yelling quality oft used in horror scenes.

A very long time later (probably 30 seconds in real-time), I recovered, panting and reeling. I wasn't listening so intently anymore, just in case he said that F-word again.

I was confused. Heaven IS a wonderful place! Yes, I want to go there! I hate saying goodbye to good things, and there, I wouldn't have to. Day after day of fellowship with friends and family and Jesus - what's not to anticipate? What more could I want? Is it not what my heart was created to desire?


I still struggle with that F-word. My most recent Forever Freak-Out (I'll call it that, since I wouldn't consider it a panic attack, but it's somewhere on the spectrum) was within the past few months. There have been many over the years. I always feel ashamed after a Freak-Out, wondering why such a glorious plan of eternity should invoke such terrible fear. I love reading the Bible, mining new nuggets of God's words writ for me, but struggle with passages that deal with forever, everlasting, eternal – and kick myself when I do.


"And so we will be with the Lord for a while." 
"For this God is our God for now and for a time; He will be our guide for a predetermined time only."
"Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures for a very long time that has a specific end-date." 

Nope. I'd never trade for those promises. That's why this clash of uncontrollable feelings is so frustrating!



So here's what my most recent life-changing, uprooting, coaster-riding decision has taught is teaching me:
The unknown is worth it.

So many grand things in my life have come about when I've been willing to leave my known, predictable senses and leap off the unexplored cliff. For example, I'd never be experiencing the sorrow of leaving Manitowoc and people I love if I hadn't moved to a completely unknown situation 2.5 years ago. That was scary. And unpredictable. And rash. And completely and utterly frightening.
But worth it.

I don't know exactly what heaven is like. I do know it's REALLY good, and I know Someone who wants me to be there. And I trust that Someone. So even though it's scary to think about something I've never experienced (F-word!), I know it's an experience I was created for.
So, Freak-Outs and trepidation and shaking in my boots and all, I'll accept the new environment training I'm getting right now. And look forward to a heavenly home that I won't move away from.

:)