Design Your Heaven: The Most Fun You’ll Ever Have Writing

I took this photo last year when my husband and I visited the Bahamas for a second honeymoon to celebrate our 10-year anniversary. No, it’s not photoshopped- the colors really are that vibrant. And yes, plenty of features from that island made their way into my heaven!

This past week as part of my lesson for Singing Time in Primary (children’s Sunday School) I was going to ask the children to close their eyes and imagine what Heaven would be like. I thought maybe I could help them by providing some descriptive imagery, so I started wondering: What would my ideal Heaven be like? 

As I let my imagination wander, my mind was filled with such incredible ideas and images that I thought, This is good stuff. I need to write this down!

I began writing and it was hard to stop. But eventually it was late and I needed to go to bed, so I did. As I laid in bed I couldn’t help daydreaming of more parts of my heavenly existence. The thoughts made me giddy with excitement as I let my dreams go wild and I fell asleep with a smile on my face.

When I got up in the morning, I wrote even more. I’m sure that as time goes by I will continue to fantasize about my magical heavenly place and continue adding on to my description.

Not only is this a great writing exercise- you want to choose the perfect words to really bring your place to life for yourself- but it’s SO much fun. You don’t have to make the setting of your heaven work to further a plot line, it doesn’t need to reflect some aspect of a character’s personality, you don’t have to worry about foreshadowing or symbolism (well, unless you want to). The only person you have to please is you. It’s just you and the limits of your imagination. It doesn’t have to make sense or follow the laws of physics or geography or science. It’s your world. It can be as whimsical and fantastic as you want it to be- it just has to make you happy.

Here is an excerpt from mine:

I am walking through a cool green forest. Golden sunlight filters through the trees. A babbling brook of fresh, clear water cascades over smooth stones nearby. Birds twitter and sing lilting melodies as they flit about the treetops high overhead. The scent of spring lilies and freshly picked lavender wafts in a gentle, warm breeze.
I am treading on a soft green carpet of moss. I see a little stone bridge up ahead that crosses the stream. As I cross over the bridge, there are branches of flowering trees bending overhead, and flower blossoms are gently floating down around me like snow.
Up ahead I see a lovely white stone cottage, with window boxes bursting with leafy ferns and flowers of every color of the rainbow. Roses and ivy climb the sides of the cottage, hanging like garlands about the eaves and creating flowering arches over the windows. Lilacs also hug the corners of the cottage, and their scent drifts on the breeze. The path leading to the cottage is a snowy white carpet of flower petals from the archway of blossoms overhead. 

So tell me about your heaven. Is it a natural setting? A mansion or a castle? What does it sound like? Smell like? How do you feel when you’re there? Do you have any special abilities? (I can fly and breathe underwater!) Just start with describing the most beautiful place you can think of and then go from there.

And the best part about this exercise? We know that Heaven is FAR better than anything our feeble little mortal minds could ever imagine. So when you’re done and glowing in the delight of your imaginary heaven, you can rest assured that it’s just a tiny slice of what is REALLY awaiting you someday....

:-)

Afterthought: Wouldn’t it be cool to have a whole book filled with different authors’ descriptions of their heavens? Now THAT would be a fun book to read! Hmmm....any takers??