Book Review
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Sheldon Lawrence. Heaven Will Find You: A story of hope, healing, and the afterlife
Stillwaters Press, July 2023. 173 pages.
ISBN-13 978-0997707045
Reviewed by Margaret Blair Young
There is a shift in Latter-day Saint thinking. The “restoration” continues, and we are re-learning some things which time has distorted.
All Things New, by Terryl and Fiona Givens, was a harbinger of this shift when it was published by the Faith Matters company in 2020. The Givens’ new vocabulary replaces “guilt” with “woundedness,” which recognizes the complexity of generational traumas and invites “sinners” into a circle of mercy and progress rather than punishment. The word “punishment” itself is re-imagined as “restoration”—a process of refinement. This shift has not been without controversy or resistance, but it seems to speak to many young people who have made the Faith Matters conference “Restore” an annual celebration.
Sheldon Lawrence’s Heaven Will Find You is a significant sign of the shift.
Like C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce, Lawrence’s Heaven Will Find You presents a “supposal” about life after death. It imagines a man, newly killed in a car accident, settling into the afterlife, confronting his mortal failings and learning that mortality was only one part of an eternal school (consistent with Joseph Smith’s King Follett Discourse). He continues to learn. The opening lines of the book show us the recently deceased soul in his son’s bedroom: “They have let me come and speak to you in your sleep,” the soul says. “They said it would help us heal but that I should not go alone because seeing my son again in the flesh could pull me back down—my love could lapse into need or self-pity.”
The life-after-life experience spans generations, from the man to his son and to his father, where all things are relational. “Escaping Hell was not about leaving a certain space,” says the guide.
In a sense, you are not returning to Hell to rescue your father. You are still there with him, still bound to him in all the wrong ways. Only mending and binding your hearts according to God’s plan will make things right. Generations of ancestors await your reconciliation. It will cause a chain reaction that will work backward through your soul family as they are released from their contribution to your brokenness. Your change of heart will free you, and it will also free them to continue their journeys.
The richness of Latter-day Saint language is pervasive in the book. The recognition that growth is an inherent part of our eternal DNA is thematic throughout. Recent discussions of replacing the word “worthy” with “prepared” in a temple recommend interview are relevant as we read these insights:
It’s not about how much glory you have or attain to. It’s about the light and glory you are willing to receive. The more you purify your body, the more it becomes a receptacle of powers far beyond anything you could muster of your own will. In Heaven there are no accomplishments to brag about or congratulate yourself for. There are no high achievers. God gives, and you receive or choose not to receive. The choice is always yours. Right now, your body is a vehicle of resistance. You and I are still filled with energies that resist God’s power and insist on our own will. The more we remove these barriers, the more our bodies become perfect receivers of grace.
This book was significant for me personally. As I negotiate the many gaps (sometimes canyons) between the way my generation (baby boomers) understands the gospel and the ways our children understand it (or reject it in its current iteration), books like this one are a balm and a bridge.
Heaven Will Find You holds its own when compared to Lewis’s “supposals.” Sheldon Lawrence thinks deeply, and serves as the readers’ spirit guide with occasional surprises, perpetual invitations, and heavenly visions. The book does not pretend to be an actual “Near Death Experience,” but an imagined conversation between higher powers and lower ones, between the self-seeking man and the God-seeking spirit; between souls learning how deep their own healing must go, and those same souls becoming empowered to heal others—especially their own ancestors.
Though Heaven Will Find You was published well before Patrick Kearon’s conference talk of April 2024, it anticipates his words: “God is in relentless pursuit of you. He wants all of His children to choose to return to Him, and He employs every possible measure to bring you back.”
This review was submitted by the reviewer.