Heaven

There was a documentary on the weather channel the other day about the Challenger disaster. I was half watching it while doing laundry, and Liam came in and was excited to see a rocket ship so he hung around. He knows a lot about space (mostly that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs!) and that people can go to the moon. I told him that this rocket didn't make it into space and that it exploded. He asked some questions about why that happened, and then asked what happened to the people. I told him that when the rocket exploded the people died and went to heaven. He is starting to understand what it means to die, but he's so little yet that it's just not anything he can comprehend fully. I don't want him to dwell on it, but I don't want to pretend that it doesn't happen if he asks about it, either.

We were driving to the park yesterday, a full 24 hours after this conversation, and I watched him in my mirror as he looked out his window and up into the sky.

"How do they get back down, Mom?" he asked.

"Who, buddy?"

"The people that died on the rocket and went to heaven. Do they get down on a ladder?"

I could imagine what he was thinking so clearly. I tried to explain it as best as I could. I told him that when someone dies and goes to heaven, they can't come back again. They stay in heaven and wait for us to get there, too.

"How do you get to heaven, Mom?" he asked.

He knows about Jesus and Easter, but he wanted to know more than that. Where is it? I told him that we don't know the way to heaven, but that God will make sure that we get there.