Colton Burpo's Account of Heaven

Heaven is For Real

Heaven Is for Real. When Colton Burpo made it through an emergency appendectomy, his family was overjoyed at his miraculous survival. What they weren’t expecting, though, was the story that emerged in the months that followed—a story as beautiful as it was extraordinary, detailing their little boy’s trip to heaven and back. Colton, not yet four years old, told his parents he left his body during the surgery—and authenticated that claim by describing exactly what his parents were doing in another part of the hospital while he was being operated on. He talked of visiting heaven and relayed stories told to him by people he met there whom he had never met in life, sharing events that happened even before he was born. He also astonished his parents with descriptions and obscure details about heaven that matched the Bible exactly, though he had not yet learned to read.

For more information behind the true story of Colton Burpo, please visit Heaven is For Real.

A Very Sick Little Boy

A very sick little boy. By the second afternoon in the hospital, I saw something that terrified me: the shadow of death. I recognized it instantly. As a pastor, you sometimes find yourself on a deathwatch. In a hospital. A nursing home. A hospice. There are telltale signs: the skin loses its pinkness and fades to a jaundiced yellow. Breathing is labored. The eyes are open but the person is not present. And most telling of all, a sinking and darkening around the eyes. I had seen this look many times, but in a context where you might expect it, in a patient suffering from terminal cancer or in the final phases of old age. You know that person’s life on earth has come down to days, then hours, then minutes. I would be there to comfort the family, to pray with them prayers like, God, please take her soon. Please take away her pain. This time, though, I was seeing the shadow of death again—and I was seeing it on my son. My not-quite-four-year-old son. The sight hit me like a bullet.

Something Extraordinary

Something extraordinary. It wasn’t until four months after Colton’s surgery, during our Fourth of July trip to meet our new nephew, that Sonja and I finally got a clue that something extraordinary had happened to our son. Sure, there had been a string of quirky things Colton had said and done since the hospital. Colton’s insisting we pay Dr. O’Holleran because Jesus used the doctor to help “fix” him. His statement that Jesus “told” him he had to be good. And his strenuous, almost vehement funeral performance. But rushing by as brief scenes in the busyness of family life, those things just seemed . . .well, kind of cute. It wasn’t until we were driving through North Platte on the way to South Dakota that the lights came on. I was teasing Colton a little as we drove through town. “Hey, Colton, if we turn here, we can go back to the hospital,” I said. “Do you wanna go back to the hospital?” It was that conversation in which Colton said he “went up out of ” his body, that he had spoken with angels, and had sat in Jesus’ lap. And the way we knew he wasn’t making it up was that he was able to tell us what we were doing in another part of the hospital: “You were in a little room by yourself praying, and Mommy was in a different room and she was praying and talking on the phone.” Not even Sonja had seen me in that little room, having my meltdown with God.

Meeting Pop

Meeting Pop. On a sun-drenched day in August, four-year-old Colton hopped into the passenger seat of my red pickup, and the two of us headed off for a drive. Acres of farmland fanned out around us, cornstalks six feet high bright green against the sky, and the asphalt cutting through it like a blade. Suddenly Colton spoke up. “Dad, you had a grandpa named Pop, didn’t you?” “Yep, sure did,” I said. “Was he your mommy’s daddy or your daddy’s daddy?” “Pop was my mom’s dad. He passed away when I was not much older than you.” Colton smiled. “He’s really nice.” I almost drove off the road into the corn. It’s a crazy moment when your son uses the present tense to refer to someone who died a quarter century before he was even born. But I tried to stay cool. “So you saw Pop?” I said. “Yeah, I got to stay with him in heaven. You were really close to him, huh, Dad?” “Yes, I was,” was all I could manage. My head spun. Colton had just introduced a whole new topic: people you’ve lost, and meeting them in heaven. Crazily enough, with all the talk of Jesus and angels and horses, I had never even thought to ask him if he’d met anyone I might know.

But then, why would I? We hadn’t lost any family or friends since Colton was born, so who would there have been for him to meet?

Two Sisters

Two sisters. One evening in October, I was sitting at the kitchen table, working on a sermon. Sonja was around the corner in the living room, working on the business books, processing job tickets, and sorting through payables. Cassie played Barbie dolls at her feet. I heard Colton’s footsteps padding up the hallway and caught a glimpse of him circling the couch, where he then planted himself directly in front of Sonja. “Mommy, I have two sisters,” Colton said. I put down my pen. Sonja didn’t. She kept on working. Colton repeated himself. “Mommy, I have two sisters.” Sonja looked up from her paperwork and shook her head slightly. “No, you have your sister, Cassie, and . . . do you mean your cousin, Traci?” “No.” Colton clipped off the word adamantly. “I have two sisters. You had a baby die in your tummy, didn’t you?” At that moment, time stopped in the Burpo household, and Sonja’s eyes grew wide. Just a few seconds before, Colton had been trying unsuccessfully to get his mom to listen to him. Now, even from the kitchen table, I could see that he had her undivided attention. “Who told you I had a baby die in my tummy?” Sonja said, her tone serious. “She did, Mommy. She said she died in your tummy.”

Jesus Loves the Little Children

Jesus really, really loves the children. For months in late 2003 and early 2004, there was a certain set of things that Colton seemed to fixate on. He talked about death and dying more, weird—really weird—for a kid his age. He also shared more about what heaven looks like. These details came out in bits and pieces over dinner, while he ran errands with Sonja and me, and during the general flow of life. He saw the gates of heaven, he said: “They were made of gold and there were pearls on them.” The heavenly city itself was made of something shiny, “like gold or silver.” The flowers and trees in heaven were “beautiful,” and there were animals of every kind. No matter what new tidbits he revealed, though, Colton had one consistent theme: he talked constantly about how much Jesus loves the children.