Before we lost Mikail, my draw to heaven wasn’t all that great. Yes, I looked forward to eternity in heaven, but it always felt like ‘there’s so much more life on earth to live first’. I think it was because I hadn’t had, what was for me, a significant loss yet. True, I have lost all of my grandparents.  All four lived long, full lives and were ready to meet their Jesus face to face. There were tears and sadness, but not a grief as deep as we are experiencing right now.

When we lost our first baby to heaven, through miscarriage, my heart was broken. I carried a heavy heart for ten months. I wondered what she would be like when we meet one day. I mourned the future we would never have together, this side of heaven. That loss, was very different, and much healing took place when we found out we were expecting Mikail, and he was born a year and a half after our first loss.

When Mikail passed away, this desperate longing for heaven was born deep within my soul. In 2 Corinthians 5:8 Paul says that he ‘would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord’. He understood this longing.  He wasn’t suicidal, he just had this deep longing for heaven and eternal life with God–away from sin and a broken world.  Yet, he knew, as I do, that God has a calling for us here on earth.