Heaven for Me Will Be a Porch

A letter to those I love most

My dearest ones,

There may come a time when you wonder what I believed—
not what I said in passing, not what I inherited,
but what I came to know deep in my bones.

And so I offer you this not as a rule,
but as a window.

This is the house I’ve built within myself.
And I want you to know its light.

I was never meant to live in a box.

Not the kind built by fear.
Not the ones labeled by doctrine or tradition.
Even the soft, well-meaning ones
still pressed too close around my spirit.

I was born a house—
and the house was made of Earth,
and the Earth was full of windows.

Each window was different—
some tall and narrow, some round like moons, some crooked with time.
And through each came light—
some bright, some faint, but always light.

I never claimed just one.
Instead, I wandered.
And when someone asked me what I believed,
I would draw the house again—like a child, with my own hand—
and say:

I go and linger in all the light available to me,
searching for the window where truth pours through the brightest,
and stepping gently away from those still learning how to shine.

I believe the Earth is sacred.
Not fallen. Not cursed.
She is womb and altar,
keeper of memory and mystery.
The light that rises from her roots is not damnation—it is rebirth.

I believe we return again and again,
until we learn how to love.
Even those who harm or destroy—
they are not cast away.
They are called back,
until they finally become light.

I do not believe in hell as a place.

Not the kind that burns forever.
I can not reconcile eternal punishment with any true idea of love.
I believe in learning. In mercy. In grace, that stretches beyond this life.

I believe that no one should be forced to believe what I do.

Not my son.
Not my daughter.
Not my husband.
Not even you.

You are free.

Your beliefs belong to you alone.
You may walk through windows I never touched,
see colors I never saw.
That is not betrayal. It is beauty.
Let your seeking be your own.

Symbols never held me long.
I respected them, but I could not stay inside them.
They were too small for what I knew.
I am wind. I am water.
I am not easily contained.

I believe in the sacredness of tending.

Tending gardens, tending the dying,
tending the invisible hurts people carry in silence.

I believe in watching. In listening.
In waiting until the moment is right.
In speaking truth, even softly, even if it shakes a room.

And when my time comes to rest…
Heaven for me will be a porch.

Where time is unkept
and the sun never sets,
where I rock slow
and listen for the laughter of the next soul to arrive.

Where I watch the seeds I’ve planted grow—
each child, each prayer, each stubborn little hope
rising through the soil.

Where hope is no longer something I reach for,
but something I know.

And I’ll wait there—
beneath the wide and golden sky—

until the last grandchild is born.

With all the light I’ve gathered,
and all the love I’ll never stop giving,

Me