My Poppy is pretty special. She’s hilarious, thoughtful, kind, and incredibly smart. Although she’s a performer with nerves of steel, she’s also sensitive and emotionally mature. She takes criticism in stride and rarely requires disciplining. She works hard, practicing her instruments every single day and spends the rest of her free time taking care of animals or writing novels.

She was recently assigned a “self reflection” essay for her school coop. I loved what she wrote and thought I’d share.

I’ve Got a Mansion, And More by Poppy Teague

How have I changed this year? is a question that one doesn’t ask oneself unless they are required to write a paper on the topic. This year, or I suppose last year, on New Year’s Eve I gave a speech. I asked: What if this is it? What if this is our last year on Earth? What if this is the year that the Lord comes and we are judged by him? Well, what do I look like to God?

Last year, in Challenge B, we read a short story about a mansion in heaven, written by Henry Van Dyke. A selfish man died and went to heaven, and while he was led along the golden streets with the other deceased, he noticed that each individual’s eternal mansion reflected the way they had  lived. With this in mind, the man felt sure that his home would be the grandest of all, but when he saw his home he was disappointed. His mansion was a shack. Broken and small. The man realized that this was how his life had been.

Not everyone remembers this story. But I do.     Last year my great grandmother, Nana, died. Before she passed away my mother and I visited her in the nursing home. Nana didn’t want to be in a nursing home, and my grandmother hadn’t yet told her that she would never be able to go back to her own home, and that her things were being divided among her descendants as they spoke. Nana made a few friends in the nursing home during the few weeks before she died. One such friend was a small woman with white hair, who would hum to herself all the time. She told my mother that she used to have red hair like hers about ten times, and we deduced that she had Alzheimers. Her son came to sit with us at the lunch table. “What are you singing, momma?” he asked her. The small old woman looked up at her son, smiled gently and he sang the words with her.

“I’ve got a mansion, just over the hilltop, in that bright land where we’ll never grow old. And someday yonder, we will never more wander, but walk the streets that are purest gold…”

When they finished, the mother was crying.  Wiping her tears, the son asked, “Why are you crying, momma?”  Of course, she couldn’t remember. But I did.

The next day I came back to the nursing home and played the song for the woman on my ukelele. She didn’t remember why I was playing it for her, but I did.  After I sang for the woman I went to find my Nana. When I approached her, she looked up happily. “Have you come to take me home?”

I dodged around the question, trying to be tactful, but when my grandmother took over I fled the scene. I couldn’t bear to tell my great grandmother she couldn’t ever see her photo albums of her children again, that she wouldn’t ever again use the communion plate she had built for herself out of tinfoil and a pie pan when she was unable to go to her church anymore. She soon wouldn’t remember these things anyway, but I would.

What do our mansions look like? What have we done to deserve God’s love? Sure, God loves us unfailingly if we love him, but how do we prove our love? I wondered if I had built my mansion or destroyed it.

Let’s pretend this is the year God is coming, and that one of these day, perhaps in the next few minutes, the sky will open up and God will come down in a ball of fire and choose who are his people and who are not. Who of us has forsaken God? Sometimes we don’t remember God. When we have tough situations we try to solve them in our own way, forgetting that we literally have supernatural help at the tips of our fingers, and a book of answers given to us by the Creator of the universe.

This year I made a resolution to build my mansion. To be a better friend, to think before I speak, to use kindness. Not everyone will remember these things, but God will, and I remember God.

cue the tears.

I couldn’t be more proud of this girl’s heart.