Vachon Imagined

How to get into heaven was first presented to me as a step-by-step plan when I was around seven years old.

A pastor at a church my parents attended—meaning my brother and I attended as well—stood before the congregation and said in a remarkably serious tone, “You need to accept Jesus Christ as your Savior. Here’s the prayer.”

Naturally, I didn’t want to go to hell.

So I said the prayer.

Everyone became very serious. It felt a little like completing a task. A box had been checked. I had done the right thing, and what child—or adult, for that matter—doesn’t enjoy a little approval?

I had followed the instructions.

Mission accomplished.

At least, that’s what I was told.

Yet something in me remained curious.

Saved from what?

Even then, I sensed that whatever was around us was already within us. Whatever mystery people called God did not seem far away. It seemed present.

So what exactly was I running from?

The question stayed with me for years.

Over time, the answer became less about theology and more about experience.

The thing I needed saving from was not somewhere out there.

It was the confusion within me.

The fear.

The pride.

The endless stories I told myself about who I was and who I wasn’t.

The self.

Or perhaps more accurately, my attachment to it.

As I grew older, I began to see that the life embodied by Yeshua, later known throughout the world as Jesus Christ, was pointing toward something much deeper than belief.

How could I follow this man if I did not know myself?

The two seemed inseparable.

Something in me understood this long before I could put words to it.

Checklist living is appealing.

It gives us the satisfying feeling of completion.

Done.

Finished.

Handled.

Like leaving a job you hate.

Ending a relationship that no longer works.

Reciting the right prayer.

Joining the right church.

Checking the right box.

But none of those things are transformative by themselves.

Because the real event is not happening in the church, the relationship, or the workplace.

It is happening within you.

If you can remain present for that, you can remain present for anything.

The heartbreak.

The joy.

The uncertainty.

The wonder.

The slow unraveling of everything you thought you were.

There is a love that exists beyond circumstances, beyond age, beyond time itself.

It whispers quietly beneath every achievement, every identity, every spiritual accomplishment:

“That’s not it.”

Not because these things are wrong.

But because they are incomplete.

The whisper continues:

“Follow me.”

And perhaps what it is really saying is:

“Follow yourself deeply enough and you will find what you have been seeking all along.”

Day by day.

Year by year.

Giving away everything that is false until only what is living remains.