painting of angelic-looking figures, idyl ic landscapes, and a profile view of
a man who was clearly meant to be Christ. Then a shot of a young girl fil ing
a canvas with color. But these didn’t seem to be paintings by a young girl,
or even of an adult learning to paint portraits. This was sophisticated
artwork that could hang in any gal ery.
Akiane began painting at the age of six, the voice-over said, but at age
four she “began to describe to her mother her visits to heaven.”
Then Akiane spoke for the first time: “Al the colors were out of this
world,” she said, describing heaven. “There are hundreds of mil ions of
more colors we don’t know yet.”
The narrator went on to say that Akiane’s mother was an atheist and that
the concept of God was never discussed in their home. The family did not
watch television, and Akiane didn’t attend any kind of preschool. So as the
little girl began to tel her stories of heaven, then depict them first in
drawings, then paintings, her mother knew she couldn’t have heard these
things from another person. Slowly, her mom began to accept that
Akiane’s visions were real and that therefore, God must be real.
“I think that God knows where he puts our children, in each family,” Mrs.
Kramarik said.
I remembered what Jesus told his disciples one day when they were
trying to keep some kids from “bothering” him: “Let the little children come
to me.”3
I made a mental note for future sermons: Akiane’s story showed that
God can reach anyone, anywhere, at any age— even a preschool girl in a
home where his name had never been spoken.
But that was not the lesson God had for me that day.
As I watched a montage of Akiane’s artwork play across my computer
screen, the narrator said, “Akiane describes God as vividly as she paints
him.”
At that point, a close-up portrait of the face of Christ fil ed the screen. It
was the same likeness I’d seen before, but this time with Jesus looking
directly “into the camera,” so to speak.
“He’s pure,” Akiane was saying. “He’s very masculine, real y strong and
big. And his eyes are just beautiful.”
Wow. Nearly three years had passed since Colton’s surgery, and about
two and a half years since he first described Jesus to me that night in the
basement. I was struck by the similarities between his and Akiane’s
recol ections: al the colors in heaven . . . and especial y their descriptions
of Jesus’ eyes.
“And his eyes,” Colton had said. “Oh, Dad, his eyes are so pretty!”
What an interesting detail for two four-year-olds to key in on. After the
CNN report concluded, I rewound it to that second portrait of Jesus, a
startlingly realistic picture that Akiane painted when she was eight. The
eyes were indeed striking—a clear, greenish blue under bold, dark brows
— with half the face in shadow. And I noticed that his hair was shorter than
most artists paint it. The beard was also different, ful er somehow, more . . .
I don’t know . . . casual.
Stil , of the literal y dozens of portraits of Jesus we’d seen since 2003,
Colton had stil never seen one he thought was right.
Well, I thought, may as well see what he thinks of Akiane’s attempt.
I got up from the desk and hol ered up the stairs for Colton to come down
to the basement.
“Coming!” came the reply.
Colton bounded down the stairs and popped into the office. “Yeah,
Dad?”
“Take a look at this,” I said, nodding toward the computer monitor.
He turned to the screen and for a long moment said nothing.
“Colton?”
But he just stood there, studying. I couldn’t read his expression.
“What’s wrong with this one, Colton?” I said again.
Utter silence.
I nudged him in the arm. “Colton?”
My seven-year-old turned to look at me and said, “Dad, that one’s right.”
Knowing how many pictures Colton had rejected, Sonja and I final y felt that
in Akiane’s portrait, we’d seen the face of Jesus. Or at least a startling
likeness.
We were pretty sure no painting could ever capture the majesty of the
person of the risen Christ. But after three years of examining Jesus
pictures, we did know that Akiane’s rendering was not only a departure
from typical paintings of Jesus; it was also the only one that had ever
stopped Colton in his tracks. Sonja and I thought it was interesting that
when Colton said, “This one’s right,” he hadn’t known the portrait, cal ed
Prince of Peace: The Resurrection, was painted by another child—a child
who had also claimed to visit heaven.
Final y getting an idea of what Jesus looks like wasn’t the only
interesting thing that came out of our visit to Mountain View Wesleyan. It
was also the first time we realized how Colton’s encounter with his sister in
heaven would impact people on earth.
After the service that evening in January 2007, a young mother came up
to me, her eyes brimming with tears.
“I lost a baby,” she said. “She was stil born. Would your son know if my
baby’s in heaven?”
The woman’s voice trembled, and I saw that she was physical y shaking.
I thought, Oh, Lord, who am I to answer this question?
Colton had said there were many, many children in heaven. But it wasn’t
like I could go and ask him if he’d seen this woman’s particular child. Stil , I
didn’t want to just leave her hanging in her grief either.
Just then, a little boy of about six or seven came and stood beside the
woman, clinging to her skirt. And an answer came to me.
“Ma’am, do you believe God loves me?” I said.
She blinked away her tears. “Wel . . . yes.”
“Do you believe he loves you as much as he loves me?”
“Yes. Yes, I do.”
Then I nodded at her young son beside her. “Do you believe God loves
your son here as much as he loves Colton?”
She paused to process that question, then answered, “Yes, of course.”
“Wel , if you believe God loves you as much as he loves me, and you
believe he loves your living son as much as he loves my living son, don’t
you believe he loves your unborn child as much as he loves mine?”
Suddenly, the woman stopped trembling and smiled. “I never thought
about it that way.”
I breathed a prayer of thanks to the Holy Spirit, who had clearly “shot
down power,” giving me an answer for this grieving woman, because I can
tel you right now, I’m not smart enough to have thought of it myself.
That wouldn’t be the last time Colton’s story put me or Sonja in the
position of trying to answer some monumental questions. But sometimes,
people who walked through the experience with us have had some
questions answered for themselves.
As I mentioned earlier, before we were released from the hospital in
North Platte, nurses kept filing in and out of Colton’s room. Before, when
nurses visited our room, they’d check Colton’s vitals and writ
e stuff on
charts. Now they came with no medical business whatsoever—just stole
glances at this little guy who, only two days before, was beyond their
medical capabilities but who now was up in his bed, chattering and playing
with his new stuffed lion. During that time, one of the nurses pul ed me
aside. “Mr. Burpo, can I speak with you for a moment?”
“Sure,” I said.
She indicated a room across the hal from Colton’s room. “Let’s step in
here.”
Wondering what was up, I fol owed her into what appeared to be a smal
break room. She closed the door behind us and turned to face me. Her
eyes held a deep sparkle, as though something new had just blossomed
inside her.
“Mr. Burpo, I’ve worked as a nurse here for many years,” she said. “I’m
not supposed to tel you this, but we were told not to give your family any
encouragement. They didn’t think Colton was going to make it. And when
they tel us people aren’t going to make it, they don’t.”
She seemed to hesitate for a moment; then she plunged on. “But seeing
your boy the way he is today, this is a miracle. There has to be a God,
because this is a miracle.”
I thanked her for sharing with me, then said, “I want you to know that we
believe this was God. Our church got together and prayed for Colton last
night, and we believe God answered our prayers.”
The nurse looked at the floor for a moment, then back up at me again
and smiled. “Wel , I just wanted to tel you that.”
Then she left. I think maybe she didn’t want to hear a sermon from a
pastor. But the truth was, she didn’t need a sermon—she’d already seen
one.
Speaking of Colton’s experience in heaven, people have said to us,
“Your family is so blessed!”
In the sense that we’ve had a glimpse through the veil that separates
earth from eternity, they’re right.
But I also think, Blessed? We watched our son almost die.
It’s fun to talk about heaven, about the throne of God and Jesus and Pop
and the daughter we thought we had lost but wil meet again someday. But
it’s not fun to talk about how we got there. Recal ing those terrifying days
when we watched Colton cling to life stil brings tears for Sonja and me. To
this day, the miraculous story of his visit to heaven and the story of almost
losing our son are one and the same event to us.
When I was a kid, I always wondered why the cross, Jesus’ crucifixion,
was such a big deal. If God the Father knew he was going to raise his Son
from the dead, how was that a sacrifice? But now I understand why God
doesn’t view Easter as just the endgame, just the empty tomb. I understand
completely. I would’ve done anything, anything, to stop Colton’s suffering,
including trading places with him.
The Scripture says that as Jesus gave up his spirit, as he sagged there,
lifeless on that Roman cross, God the Father turned his back. I am
convinced that he did that because if he had kept on watching, he couldn’t
have gone through with it.
Sometimes people ask, “Why Colton? Why do you think this happened
to your family?” I’ve had to say on more than one occasion, “Hey, we’re just
ordinary people from a one-horse town in Nebraska. The best we can do is
tel you what happened to us, and hope that you find it encouraging, like the
nurse in North Platte who maybe needed to see a miracle to believe there
is Someone greater than ourselves. Or the woman at Mountain View
Wesleyan who needed a glimmer of hope to help her cope with her grief.
Or Sonja, who needed salve on her own maternal wounds. Or like my
mother, Kay, who after twenty-eight years of wondering, final y knows she
wil one day meet her father again.”
When you look at the book of Revelation and other biblical teachings
about heaven, it’s kind of fragmented. As a pastor, I’ve always been very
conscious about what I share about heaven from the pulpit, and I stil am. I
teach what I find in Scripture.
Because I had a lot of questions that I didn’t have answers for, I didn’t
spend much time thinking about heaven on a personal level. But I do now.
Sonja and I both do, and we’ve heard from a lot of people that Colton’s
story has them thinking more about heaven too. We stil don’t have al the
answers—not even close. But now we have a picture in our minds, a
picture we can look at and say, “Wow.”
I love the way my mom sums it up: “Ever since this happened,” she told
me, “I think more about what it might real y be like in heaven. I accepted the
idea of heaven before, but now I visualize it. Before, I’d heard, but now I
know that someday I’m going to see.”
EPILOGUE
Just over seven years have passed since an ordinary family trip turned into
a heavenly trip that changed al our lives. People have often asked us why
we waited so long to tel Colton’s story. Wel , there are a couple of
reasons. First, though it’s been seven years since the hospital ordeal, our
emergency dash from Greeley to the doctor in Imperial turned out to be
only the beginning of the story. As you’ve read in these pages, we received
the details of Colton’s extraordinary journey in bits and pieces over a
period of months and years. So though it’s been some time since his brush
with death, the rest of the story took a while to unfold.
Then, when we began to share with others what had happened, many
people told us, “You should write a book!” to which Sonja and I responded,
“Us? Write a book? Yeah, right.”
For one thing, we couldn’t get our head around the idea that anyone
would want to read about us. Then there was the whole writing-a-book
thing itself. That sounded to us about a notch lower on the huge-
undertaking scale than flying to the moon. Sure, I edited my col ege
newspaper, and Sonja wrote a lot in pursuit of her master’s degree. But we
both had jobs we loved, young children to raise, and a church to care for.
And you have to sleep sometime. It was only after Phil McCal um, a pastor
friend, offered to make some introductions and get the right publishing
people around us that we thought we might actual y be able to make a
book happen. Even that, though, was a matter of timing.
See, as parents we were concerned about Colton. A lot of people love
his story because of al the details about heaven. We like that too. But then
there’s that hospital part when we al walked through terror and misery for
what seemed an eternity. That was stil tender territory and we weren’t sure
how reliving it al would affect Colton. Also, how would he handle the
attention? We were concerned about that. We’re stil concerned. We’re
from smal towns, smal schools, smal churches. “Smal ” is something
Colton knows, but the spotlight? We’re not so sure.
But now, of course, the book is written. Sonja said to me the other day,
laughing, “Wel , I guess we’l have to write ‘become author’ on our bucket
lists just so we can cross it off.”
People have asked us other questions as wel . K
ids, especial y, want to
know whether Colton saw any animals in heaven. The answer is yes!
Besides Jesus’ horse, he told us he saw dogs, birds, even a lion—and the
lion was friendly, not fierce.