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Visits from Heaven
One Man's Eye-Opening Encounter with Death, Grief, and Comfort from the Other Side
By Pete Deison Thomas Nelson
Copyright © 2016 Pete Deison
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7180-8404-2
CHAPTER 1
In the Beginning
If heaven is a world of love, then the way to heaven is the way of love.
— Stephen J. Nichols, Heaven on Earth
Head over heels in love is a literal memory I can't forget. After only a few short weeks, I knew the woman I was dating was the woman of my dreams. It was my junior year at the University of Texas, and one day, walking up to the classroom building with my head in the clouds, I started up the staircase but missed the top step. I tripped, fell, tore my pants, and cut my leg. Trying to stand on the steep bank, I tumbled down the hill, landing in the gutter. I was still thinking about Harriet as the water in the gutter seeped into my shirt and I heard the bell ring. Scrambling up the hill, I ran into the classroom and everyone gasped. There I stood with torn pants, mud and leaves everywhere. The first words out of my mouth were, "I'm in love!" Everyone laughed and went right back to talking. They all understood. Why? Love makes you do crazy things.
When love seems divine, it captures you in a world of wonder. Everything changes. Everything feels different and fresh. The feeling is hard to explain. Songwriters try, and poets embellish it; everyone knows it when it happens. It feels like a bit of heaven. I have since learned that visits from heaven occur more regularly than we know. We just don't recognize their true origin.
Today as I look back on how I met Harriet, the heavenly source of our connection is as clear as crystal. I am amazed at how perfectly God was working behind the scenes to bring us together and fulfill our desires for love. God had been preparing us for that moment for many years.
* * *
I was the seventh child born to my parents, arriving more than four years after my closest brother. My parents were strongly religious, loving, and willing to accept whatever God gave them — but another child was not on their wish list. My mother later admitted to me that when I was born, she said to God, "I don't need another child; this one is Yours. I just pray that he will go into the ministry." I may have been unintended, but I was not unloved. I was cherished and my needs were met.
With a highly religious mother and pastor father, I grew up with a strong God-consciousness. But when I was eleven, my family endured a trauma that unsettled me. We lived in the pine-forested logging area of East Texas, and my parents were driving home after picking up my sister from college. As they topped a hill on Highway 75 near Centerville, they suddenly faced a logging truck stalled in the road. My father slammed on the brakes and swerved to the right. But it was too late. The left side of the car crashed into the truck, killing my father. By God's grace, my mother and sister survived. My mother's recovery took months, and she bore scars until the day she died.
I struggled to absorb this tragedy and understand why it had happened. But I was just too young and immature to have any comprehension of God and His mysterious ways.
After graduating from high school, I enrolled at the University of Texas in Austin. During my first semester, I met someone who asked me about my faith. Sensing that I was uncertain about it, he helped me fit together the pieces about God and faith and the Bible I had collected over the years but had not yet connected. At that point, I realized God was seeking to have a personal relationship with me, and that changed the whole trajectory of my life. I finally understood my faith to be in a Person, not in an idea, and I came into a real relationship with God. With this new understanding of faith, my life took a different direction.
I had always wanted to marry a girl who was pretty and personable, but after I became a committed believer, I wanted a wife who would also be a partner in my new journey of faith. But I had no idea how to go about finding such a girl. For some reason, it never entered my immature mind to ask God to send me a life mate. As I floundered on my own, my first experiences in dating and courtship were disasters.
By the time I began my junior year at UT, I had already been through three relationships that ended in heartache and pain. At the young age of twenty, I realized I needed help. I was determined not to put another girl through the pain of rejection, and equally determined to avoid a repeat of it myself. So I gave up my search and decided to leave it up to God: "I don't want to date anymore. I want You to choose my lifelong mate and bring her to me."
Since I had put my marital future in God's hands, I decided I no longer needed free evenings for my social life, so I took a job that required me to work seven nights a week. Don't get me wrong: I wasn't punishing myself for my relational failures. The job provided good pay and good discipline, both of which I sorely needed. Two years of goofing off at college taught me I might never get out if I didn't get serious. The job gave me considerable free time to study — and did I ever need that! I even had an office and a title, and a fairly impressive one, I thought. I was the assistant night sergeant at arms for the senate chamber of the Texas state legislature. My job was to prepare the night meeting rooms for the senators' committee meetings as needed. Most of the time I just sat at my desk, on call, and studied.
The Texas senate does not meet during Christmas break, which freed me to go on a trip to Chula Vista, Mexico, to restore an old mission. The following week the student campus ministry that supervised the trip had its weekly meeting, and I was asked to make a report on the trip.
A girl who came often to our campus ministry asked a Pi Phi sorority sister to accompany her to that meeting. The friend's name was Harriet Schoellkopf. When I met Harriet, I remember thinking she was exceptionally pretty, very nice, intelligent, and possibly a committed Christian — just the type of person our campus ministry ought to have in the student group. And I also thought she might be a great date. In other words, I saw her both as a project and a prospect. But such thoughts remained submerged in my subconscious. At that moment, I had a report to give.
Two weeks later, a coworker at the capitol offered to cover for me if I wanted to go to the next campus ministry meeting. I hadn't dated anyone in more than six months, but out of the blue the thought hit me that I should take a girl to the event. Since I had determined not to date until God pointed the way, I prayed and asked Him for guidance. Harriet came immediately to my mind. I got the number of the Pi Phi house and picked up the phone to dial it.
At that exact moment, I heard the voices of people coming into my office — a thing that seldom happened. I was on the second floor of the capitol in the senate wing. It wasn't a place anyone would accidentally run across, nor was it easy to find even if one was looking for it. I quickly replaced the phone receiver and turned around just as Harriet and her friend walked through the door. I stood there gaping like an idiot, speechless. I had just asked God whom I might take to the meeting, thought of Harriet, gotten her number, and started to dial — and right at that moment, there she was. Not merely a voice on the phone, but in the flesh. I know now that it was a visit from heaven. I don't mean Harriet was an angel, though ironically the Pi Phi nickname is "angels." But believe me, at that moment she looked heavenly.
I recovered my composure and greeted my two visitors. In response, Harriet's friend explained why they had come. "My dad is an attorney in an office across the street," she said. "I needed to see him and invited Harriet to come with me. Afterward we remembered that you worked here, so we just thought we'd drop by and say hi."
So the girls had dropped by as a spur-of-the-moment afterthought? Hardly! Later I learned they had devised this carefully laid plan just so Harriet could see me again. As I look back on that day, I see God's love at work. He had inspired Harriet to come by my office as part of His strategy to bring to me my future mate just as surely as He brought Eve to Adam.
When Harriet walked into my office that evening, I had no idea it would be a life-changing visit. Yet I was as surprised as Adam and Eve were when they encountered God. Thank goodness I didn't hide, but I was speechless.
That is how heaven works now, because that is the way it was intended to be in the beginning. If we could only see just how connected heaven and earth are, we could see how many heavenly visits occur every day. In fact, this intimate connection between heaven and earth is the way the whole story begins — not just my story with Harriet but the big story of our lives. It is as plain as the words on a page: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1). Notice the order: heaven existed before earth. Then He created us, male and female, and gave the first couple an idyllic garden as their home. He personally demonstrated to them just how closely earth and heaven are connected and how natural and beautiful this connection is: "They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day" (Genesis 3:8).
God's first visit after setting everything in place was as if He simply stepped out of His back door and took a leisurely walk through His new creation, admiring His magnificent garden and anticipating a joyful conversation with these two new beings He made to bear His very own image. How natural! How normal! Visits from heaven were to be as commonplace to creation as if God were our next-door neighbor.
* * *
Why Harriet was so interested in seeing me that night is a story in itself. She was a religious girl and had been dating a young man who intended to follow his father's footsteps into the ministry. They had even begun to talk of marriage. But the fact that they were both Christians didn't mean they were on the same page spiritually.
As the relationship progressed, the differences in their faith became more and more apparent. These differences began to erode the relationship.
In the weeks before I met her, Harriet expressed to her boyfriend that she wanted to attend a few meetings of various campus ministries. He objected strongly to her getting involved with what he viewed as "extreme" organizations. Harriet resented his attempts to control her life and especially her faith and flatly told him that he was not going to tell her what to do. The conversation went downhill from there and ended with her calling off the relationship the night before I met her.
Harriet was still upset when her sorority sister asked her to attend a campus ministry meeting that same night. She jumped at the chance — probably mostly in defiance. But after hearing me speak that night, she went back to her room and wrote in her diary, "I think I've met the man I want to marry."
I believe it is true that marriage is made in heaven — that is, when two people are seeking God's plan. This is why I can say Harriet's visit to my office was in fact a heavenly visit. Neither of us was aware of it at the time, because we experienced the relationship that grew out of the meeting as natural infatuation that blossomed quickly into earthly love. We had a dim sense that our relationship was directed from above, but we had no conception of the extent to which God had been involved in it. Therefore, we had no way to acknowledge the depth of heaven's intimate and ongoing involvement in our courtship.
Harriet and I spent time together every day and quickly became immersed in each other's lives. We shared our pasts and delighted in our present experiences. She laughed at my jokes, and I endured her practical jokes, which persisted throughout our entire life together.
On one of our early dates, I took her to a fast-food restaurant for burgers. Before we placed our order, she decided she didn't want a burger — just a drink and an order of fries. I wanted the whole meal deal, so we placed our order and sat down. While we waited, I went to the restroom. When I came back, our food had arrived. My burger was wrapped — as they often used to be — with paper around the bottom half, leaving the top half exposed. I ate the top half, and as I removed the paper to begin chomping the rest, I discovered that a huge bite had been taken out of the bottom.
"The waitress must have done it," Harriet said with a straight face.
I knew better, of course, but I could never get her to confess.
Harriet shared my dreams of being involved with campus ministry. She even told me that for years her favorite movie had been A Man Called Peter, a film based on the life of Peter Marshall, a Scottish man who had a life-changing encounter with God and became a Presbyterian pastor and eventually the chaplain for the US Senate in Washington, DC. We didn't know it at the time, but I was her Peter, who would one day also become a Presbyterian pastor.
* * *
Though Harriet and I had not yet discussed marriage, it was clear to both of us that our relationship was heading in that direction. She broke the news to her parents that she had become seriously involved with me, and it appeared that marriage was possible in our future.
Harriet's father was a successful manufacturer of hunting clothing. Naturally, he and Harriet's mother wanted to meet the boy who was pursuing their daughter. Her father had scheduled a javelina hunting trip that happened to coincide with UT's spring break, so he asked Harriet to invite me to the event.
She issued the invitation, and while I was considering whether I could go, I got a call that stopped me in my tracks and threw me into uncertainty and confusion.
"Hello, Pete," said the sweet female voice on the phone. "Do you remember me? I'm Karen. We met last summer."
Karen! She was a student leader I had met who was not only passionate about ministry but was someone I was attracted to. What in the world could she be calling about? I pulled myself together and replied, "Yes, of course I remember. We had a great time at the conference. Did you and your fiancé get married?"
"No, we broke up. He didn't have the commitment I wanted in a man. And you have often been on my mind since. Spring break is coming up in a few weeks, and I was wondering if you might be able to come up to Wisconsin for a visit. We could spend some time together and get to know each other better."
The longer we talked, the more it became clear that she was seriously interested in pursuing a relationship. I mumbled something about getting back to her with an answer and finished the conversation as quickly as I could.
When I hung up, my palms were sweating. Why didn't I just say no to Karen? I was already in a delightful and growing relationship with a wonderful girl whom I was thinking seriously of marrying. Now I had a real dilemma on my hands. Two highly attractive, engaging Christian girls had invited me to spend spring break with them, and I had to make a wrenching decision.
After three broken relationships, I had recognized my inability to navigate the minefield of college dating and had put the whole mate-finding task in God's hands. It seemed clear to me that Harriet was His answer to my prayer, and I still sincerely hoped so. But "clear to me" didn't necessarily mean the relationship was from God. After all, we had only been together six weeks. Maybe I had fooled myself into thinking Harriet was the one. Maybe what I had with Harriet was mere infatuation, which blinded my reason. Maybe Karen's phone call was God's way of telling me she was the one instead. The thought of breaking up with Harriet plunged my heart into an abyss. But if I was to follow God's leading, I had to see clearly what He might be saying to me.
In addition, when I talked to my mother about the possibility of marrying Harriet, she gave me this warning: "You and Harriet come from very different backgrounds — Harriet is from a well-to-do family, and we are a minister's family. So realize that you are going to have to face that issue."
I wrestled with my dilemma for several days before I decided to contact an old friend and mentor. I laid my dilemma before him, and his simple answer surprised me.
"Go with Harriet," he said. "She and her family live right here in Texas. Karen is in Wisconsin, a two-day drive at least. Long-distance relationships seldom work. Stick with a Texas girl and you'll be with people, attitudes, and a culture you understand, not to mention a climate you enjoy. In Wisconsin you'll encounter a different culture and freezing weather. To you it will be like moving to a foreign country. Keep the Texas girl, Pete."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Visits from Heaven by Pete Deison. Copyright © 2016 Pete Deison. Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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