It was in between waking and sleeping that the images came to me. My wife, Kimmy Sophia, and I were standing in a beautiful English garden, overgrown a bit, but rich in color and fragrance. The images came as a response to my yearning that night to know what life would be like in the spirit world at some point in our future.

Perhaps it was only my imagination, but it was still wonderful. In my sleepy vision, I looked at my wife and then at myself and was very pleased to see that we were both healthy and fit and young, and dare I say it, handsome. Yes, handsome can be used to describe a woman. Her hair was long and thick and curly and flowed in waves down her back to her waist. It seemed perfectly natural at that moment that neither of us were wearing any clothes.

As I looked at her, I realized again how twitterpated I was with my darling wife. For those of you who may not have heard that word, “twitterpated” is what the animals in the movie Bambi felt for each other in the romantic months of springtime. They danced and sang and fell in love.

As I gazed in awe at my wife, a butterfly landed on her breast and fluttered its wings. She smiled at me with the same bright and shining eyes that she has after we make love. I took her hand and we walked through the garden, along paths lined with tall and stately flowers.

I suddenly realized that the bumblebees that were drinking from the flowers posed no threat to me. Having been allergic to bees for a number of years, I was struck with the “rightness” of it all, that we could walk in a garden in the spirit world where the bees didn’t sting and one could completely relax among flowers that would otherwise give one pause.

We continued walking to the edge of the garden, where we stepped onto a large lawn that had a row of trees lining each side of it, all the way down to the end, where we saw a large stone cottage covered with ivy. Somehow we knew it was our home.

We’ve talked many times about the house we’d like to live in, and the surrounding environment. The closest thing that we’ve come to, in our search, is the English cottage. Nature seems so close when you can step out your door and be in the midst of God’s beautiful flowers, and sit under the magnificent trees that the English have so sanely preserved. You know it’s a tree when the trunk is thicker than you are tall. What a tragedy it is that trees like that are no longer common in America.

In a separate experience, I stood with my love on the other side of the cottage, on a stone patio facing the sea. We stood at the terrace wall, holding each other, and gazed out at a sparkling ocean. It was a brief visionary moment, but to me it was indeed the future. If one considers that the spirit world is the land of true love, then the future is what we make of it.

The “path of love” attracts us powerfully, like bees to flowers. It is a path that revives us as we walk along it. Yet, as many have experienced, it’s also painful beyond words, when one’s heart is hurt. To pray to have the strength to love, even when one feels pain and rejection, is perhaps the most important prayer of all. I’ve often mentioned to our boys (and frequently told myself) that no one can stop us from loving others. It requires fighting spirit to fight our way through our emotional brambles, so that we can step into the garden of true love where the bees don’t sting.

One might say that this is all fantasy and no one knows what the spirit world will be like, or even if it exists at all. It is natural to doubt. Yet, we know that love, which is invisible, exists. We feel it, we see it; we experience it down to our cells. That’s all the proof  I need.

Contemplating the possibility of our English garden in the spirit world gives me the strength to continue here, in the physical world, with all of its trials. It is extraordinary to me that God created such a beautiful spirit world for all of us to live in forever. Considering that, our physical life, although often extremely difficult, is placed in a new perspective. It is not all there is. It is not the end. In fact, there is no end, for we will all eventually live in our own gardens, with our spouse and children and family and friends, not for a brief span of one hundred years, but forever and ever and ever.