Schlimm - Five years in heaven: the unlikely friendship that answered lifes greatest questions

What if you had the chance to learn the answers to lifes greatest questions? And what if you realized you only had a limited time to embrace a divine intervention that would help you discover who you really are and your true purpose in this world?

At age thirty-one, lost and disoriented at a crucial crossroads in my life, I found Heaven on earth. It was a humble, colorful placelong forgotten and tucked away on the manicured grounds of a 150-year-old convent in my small hometown. It was filled with beauty, light, laughter, peace, healing, blessings, and answers. I never knew it was there, practically under my nose for my entire life, but I found it when I most needed it.

There to greet me was eighty-seven-year-old Sister Augustine in full traditional habit. Standing barely over five feet tall and slightly hunched, she welcomed me with a warm smile and twinkle in her eyes that all but said, Ive been waiting for you. She had started the convents ceramic shop in the 1960s, but by now she had mostly receded from public view. Still, six days a week, she was content to work alone in her studio, quietly painting and creating while the frenzied world outside passed her by. Until I walked in one late winters afternoon.

Over the next five years, I visited Sister Augustine just about every week. Her cloistered world became my refuge and my most important classroom. From the beginning, we were teacher and student in ever-changing roles, traversing the ultimate once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage. Two unlikely friends brought together at the last minute, coasting along on what I came to think of as a gift of borrowed time.

Within those walls, I could ask any question, confide any secret, vent any frustration, and float any brainstorm. No topic was off-limitsfrom forgiveness, death, and even the existence of God, to love, success, creativity, sin, and my own lifelong struggles with personal demons. Throughout our hundreds of visits, I always knew Sister would have the divinely guided words and lessons I needed at each step along the way. Her advice was as wise and straightforward as her colorful clayware pieces were precious and rare.

During our time together, I was able to return the favor by showing my frienda gifted artist long hidden awaythat her life still had one very important last chapter left to go. And how even in the most remote corners of our existence, second acts are always possible.

Five Years in Heaven is my portrait of the most memorable and life-changing visits I shared with Sister Augustine, who once described herself as only a messenger. Within these pages, I invite you to pull up a chair and glimpse Heaven on earth as I once did in that sacred place as Sister and I discussed the timeless and universal questions we all have about living a full, purposeful life at any age. May you then find your own inspiration, peace of mind, and meaning in the answers that are revealed.

Where there is darkness, light.

T HE P RAYER OF S AINT F RANCIS

On that early spring day, the sun had started its descent when I pulled into the convents back entrance. On one side lay the sisters pond and tiny cemeteryrows of names and dates on simple weathered headstones. On the other side, St. Joseph Monasterys stone walls soared into the blue sky. When the sun reflected off the windows, the building seemed made of gold.

This is the time of day when everything is either bathed in a brilliant, hopeful light or plunged into sharp shadow. This is when you can either bask in the glow, as if eye to eye with God Himself, or cower in darkness.

Sister Margoretta waited just inside, next to the gift shop she had managed for years. She had closed a few minutes early in expectation of my arrival. Tall, dressed in a traditional habit from head to toe, she always reminded me of Ingrid Bergman in The Bells of St. Marys. Her timeless beauty remained in her wide smile and eyes, framed by black and white. Sister Dolores, petite and blind, stood next to her. She had joined the Benedictine order and moved to St. Josephs after a life on the outside that included a husband and son. With her gracious poise, I always wondered what she could see that the rest of us couldnt.

I made it, I said.

They both smiled, and Sister Margoretta told me to follow them.

Sister Dolores took hold of her friends arm and they proceeded down a steep staircase. I followed them into an inner maze of darkened hallways in which I had never stepped foot before. Large paintings and statues of the Blessed Virgin, Christ, Saint Benedict, various other saints, and biblical scenes lined the corridors. Once inside those walls, even for a few minutes, it was easy to forget that a world outside existed.

I imagined that if peace had a scent, it would be the sacred perfume culled from decades of scrubbing, polishing, candles, prayers, incense, communal meals, and a certain waft of sweetness that I couldnt quite identify, but was inhaling as deeply as possible. Like at Christmas Eve mass, when for those few moments I can close my eyes, inhale the churchs warm aroma, and allow myself to believe all is okay in the world. I wanted to fill myself with as much of that rare oxygen as I could. It was like a gift you can only hold on to for a few moments before it must be let go.

I lost all track of time. It could have been minutes, hours, days. Time as we know it doesnt have much use in a place where the aim is eternity. Part of me wanted to walk those halls forever.