Ava and I have relinquished the past week of our lives to a determined and merciless cold (hence the serious lack of blogging). While I have felt much better the past few days, I realized last night that I have completely lost my sense of smell and with it the ability to taste. My nose is clear, but I can’t smell a thing.

So today, I was sitting in Bruegger’s Bagels with Ava enjoying my half of a seemingly delicious chocolate chip cookie; until it occurred to me that I could not taste it. Yet, there I was chewing away, enjoying a tasteless cookie. And if my mind had not reminded my mouth that it could not taste the cookie, it would have been none the wiser. My teeth and tongue were satisfied with the texture, but again, the cookie was all one flavor–an imagined, remembered flavor. I realized that if I had never had a sense of taste, I would have been unaware and “satisfied” with my diminished enjoyment of chocolate chip cookies.

So, is this ignorance, in a small and obscure portion, the way earth is in relation to Heaven? Is this what it means that “these are a shadow of the things that were to come”? Not cookies, but our senses, our enjoyments and experiences here. I think that I can smell and taste and see and hear and feel now, but what of Heaven? What will it be like to taste and see what I was created to taste and see?

Losing our little, unknown babe in December has made Heaven seem a lot closer and eternity not nearly so far away. Having this new connection to Heaven has helped to shake the sediment that grounds me to earth and keeps my eyes downward. It is so easy to forget that we were not created for this earth and that these joys are not the only joys or even the best joys. We were designed to be in the presence of God forever and in His presence is “fullness of joy” and in His “right hand there are pleasures forever” (Psalm 16:11). How encouraging it is to be reminded that our child did not “miss out” on life on earth.

If gaining back my sense of smell increases the pleasure of chocolate ten fold, just think of how infinitely greater the pleasures of Heaven will be with a perfected nose, a perfected tongue, and yes, perfected chocolate. In some silly, yet tangible way, this muted sense of taste has helped me grasp anew that “now we see through a glass darkly,” but someday soon, very soon, I will behold the brilliance of the Lord with eyes created to see the Son.