Heaven on the inside

I've been thinking a lot lately about how heaven is something that lives in me. It is a feeling, not so much a place right now, until one day it will become a place. I set up a lawn chair on the roof of Hacienda Buena last night, and it took two trips to get my book, journal, and smoothie up there. The sun was setting over this hill that I sometimes run on. I could see the dip of the city, the hills bursting up on either side and the glitter of sunlight speckled across the windows of houses. Heaven before has seemed so far off- a vacation that may or may not happen, something I'm trying to save up for and so sometimes I don't have my hopes up about it. 

And I've been wondering if the times when I've felt like I've really lived, fully and wholly, if I will ever feel like that again. How I felt alive in Spain, or with certain people, or when I had no where to go but open roads with zero plans. If I will ever feel free and wild when the pressure of jobs, family, and bills can't be ignored. I miss that feeling. But I'm beginning to feel it again- and here in the most unlikely of places and times. Far from my home and my people, and yet freedom and wildness and love came to me on the roof at sunset. The realization that God and heaven are a part of who I am. 

Perhaps I would acknowledge it more if I turned my phone off, sat in silence, smiled at people more, gave folks the time of day, loved deeper, judged less, forgave more. Remembered and told the story more.

Heaven is a feeling right now. And I can read about it, think about it, see pictures of what people think it will look like. But I can have it now, I think. I have everything I will ever want or need inside me, waiting to take off like a jet. Just gotta say the word, and we're off.