Crystal McVea - Chasing Heaven: What Dying Taught Me About Living

Howard Books

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Copyright 2016 by Crystal McVea and Alex Tresniowski

Certain names and identifying characteristics have been changed.

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First Howard Books hardcover edition March 2016

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Title: Chasing heaven : what dying taught me about living / by Crystal McVeawith Alex Tresniowski.

Description: First [edition]. | Nashville : Howard, 2016.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015037133 | ISBN 9781501124938 (hardcover)

Subjects: LCSH: HeavenChristianityMiscellanea. | Near-death experiencesReligious aspectsChristianity. | LifeReligious aspects

Christianity. | Christian life. | McVea, Crystal.

Classification: LCC BT848 .M375 2016 | DDC 248.4dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015037133

ISBN 978-1-5011-2491-4

ISBN 978-1-5011-2493-8 (ebook)

This book is dedicated in loving memory to James Wills, the greatest PawPaw a girl could ever have. And also to my dear sweet friend Wendy Cralleyit brings me great comfort to know that one day I will meet you both again at the gates of heaven.

F IVE YEARS AFTER I DIED , I found myself standing on the filthy sidewalk of a desolate street in the worst part of town in the dead of nighton my way into a strip club.

Hey, church ladies, an absolute giant of a man dressed in all black said to me and another woman as we stepped out of a van in front of the club. What you got for me tonight?

While he spoke to us, he ran a metal detector up and down the legs of the men waiting to get into the club, checking them for guns and knives.

I looked down at the small paper bag in my shaking hands. It was filled with cookies. With a plastered-on smile and my heart pounding in my chest, I offered the bag to him.

Ohhh, chocolate chip, he said. My favorite!

Then he waved us inside.

As I walked through the front door, everything hit me all at once. The strong smell of smoke. The thumping, jarring music. The dollar bills and bottles of liquor on the tables. The men, young and old and in between, eager to spend their money. I swallowed hard.

This was no place I should ever have been.

I was a wife and a mother and a schoolteacher, and I lived in a small suburban town smack-dab in the middle of the country. Waiting for me back at home were my precious twins, Micah and Willow, not yet six years old. I also had two teenage children, who knew me as the woman who pestered them to clean up their rooms, not a woman who had to be searched for weapons by a bouncer.

So how in the world did I end up there?

I was there because, through tears of desperation one dark night, I called out to God.

Break my heart for what breaks Yours, I cried.

And God did.

My name is Crystal McVea and on December 10, 2009, I died.

While I was being treated in a hospital for pancreatitis, I went into respiratory arrest. My heart stopped pumping and I stopped breathing for nine minutes while a team of doctors performed CPR and managed to revive me.

And in those nine minutes, I went to the gates of heaven and I stood with God and I was forever changed. The story of those glorious nine minutes, and of the difficult, sinful, mixed-up life that led to them, is a story I told in my first book, Waking Up in Heaven. And since that book came out Ive read thousands and thousands of letters from people who tell me all the ways they relate so deeply to my story. Not just the heaven stuff, but everything that came before itthe fears and the doubts and the bad decisions that defined who I was for my first thirty-three years on earth.

Ive heard from teenagers who are lost, like I was, and single mothers who are struggling, like I did.

Ive heard from women wrestling with the terrible consequences of abortion, same as I did and still do.

Ive heard from women bound and broken by child abuse, same as I was for the longest time.

And Ive heard from people who want to believe God is real but need more proofjust as I did before I went to heaven.

And what I want to tell these peoplewhat I need to tell themis that what happened to me after I came back from heaven was every bit as life-changing and miraculous as my trip to heaven was.

And best of all, it is something that can happen to them. To you.

Because ever since December 10, 2009, my life has been profoundly changed. I have been utterly and fundamentally transformed, straight down to the core of who I am. In every conceivable wayheart, mind, soul, and spiritI am a brand-new person.

By dying, I learned how to live.

And now I know that while heaven is real and our true home and the place we all want to go to someday, we are meant to have meaningful lives full of passion and purpose in Christ right here, right now, this very moment.

We are meant to chase heaven while were still here on earth.

So how, exactly, do we do that? What does chasing heaven mean?

For me, it meant going to a dark and dangerous strip club. Actually, not just one strip club. Sixteen strip clubs.

In one night .

Why?

The short answer is that, after I returned from heaven, I felt a great longing to go back to find a way to be close to God again. I could never just return to the life I had, as beautiful as it was and as much as I loved it. I was different, and my life had to become different, too. Somehow, I had to find heaven again.