Be with Me in Paradise

;You Will
;And Jesus said to him, “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.”
— Luke 23:43
;"What can one wish for someone who already lives in paradise!" my friends wrote to me for my birthday.
In reality, I don’t live in paradise, but in Thailand, on a tropical island.
;Yes, Thailand is often called a paradise. But not all paradises are created equal.
;I ended up in Thailand two years ago, though, alas, not on a holiday package: I arrived straight at a hospital to nurse my husband after a car crash. Is it any wonder that all of this coincided with Lent? Indeed, I found my poor spouse in a purple(!) loincloth with iron pins sticking out of his fractured bones... Yet, it would be black ingratitude on my part to take for granted the fact that by Easter he was discharged on the mend—it was a miracle.
;And the following Lent, I found myself carrying care packages to a Thai prison—my husband had landed inside due to his boss's negligence in processing his work permit. He was released exactly in time for Easter—another everyday miracle!
;For all forty days of this year's Lent, I sat as if on a volcano, thinking you never know what might happen...
;"Lent is an adventure that one should not fear, but humbly endure," a Thai priest reassured me during confession. "It is a journey to Jesus and with Jesus. Wait for Easter!"
;And so I waited for Easter, counting down the days like a conscript waiting for his discharge. I learned to accept all minor domestic and natural cataclysms as a penance, telling myself: "It's fine, things will sort themselves out after Easter."
;Returning with my husband from the Easter service, I breathed a sigh of relief: "Whew, we got off easy this time."
;Alas, even after celebrating Easter, I couldn't rid myself of a tense anticipation of trouble, knowing full well in my mind that this was wrong.
;Is it worth believing in the resurrection of Jesus while simultaneously stressing out over nothing! a righteous soul would tell me.
;At that very time, a good friend of mine flew in to our island from Siberia. Not only did Vika and I use to work together at a newspaper, but we were also born on the exact same day, in the same city, and even in the exact same maternity ward. And this shared birthday of ours was just around the corner, just a few days away.
"It would be lovely to gift her a video clip about vacationing in Thailand," I brainstormed, treating Vika and her husband to mangoes and coconuts in our bungalow.
;A couple of days later, my husband and I, grabbing a video camera, went to visit them at a prestigious hotel on a gorgeous beach. Sasha captured us both in the sea and in the pool, then filmed our stroll through the hilly grounds of the hotel, which resembled a botanical garden.
;"Everything that I struggle so hard to grow at home in little pots on the windowsill blooms and fragrances so wildly here," Vika marveled.
;This is the absolute truth: all this exotica—crotons, bougainvilleas, hibiscuses—easily shoots past human height, sometimes even overgrowing the houses. A yellow-green monstera with immense leaves had wound itself all the way up the trunk of a coconut palm—from the ground up to the fruits and fronds.
;"And these flowers are called 'birds of paradise,'" I pointed to the giant, bright orange petals of a highly unusual shape.
;"Sasha, film them, please!"
;"I am simply proud of this flower," Vika walked up to a large, deep pink bud resembling a peony, with thick, leathery petals. This was a ginger plant in bloom.
;"Well, it can only smell like this in the Garden of Eden," Vika remarked as we approached a plumeria tree, heavy with dense clusters of white blossoms.
;The next day, I had already uploaded the finished clip to the internet. The title suggested itself naturally: "A Stroll Through the Garden of Paradise." After all, that is pretty much how everyone imagines paradise—evergreen palms, fragrant flowers, sweet-singing birds. Vika had already managed to return to Russia, and that was where her birthday gift caught up with her. Judging by the ecstatic comments, the folks loved the video.
;..."What can one wish for someone who already lives in paradise!" I read in the comments. And it made me pause.
;Am I really in paradise? Then why do I notice all this splendor so rarely, being completely consumed by chores and anxieties? This was what I was pondering before the start of Mass, sitting in front of a large crucifix.
;“Thank You for absolutely everything,” I addressed the Savior in my thoughts. “I truly am like in paradise here.”
;“I promised,” Jesus replied.
;“To me?!” I was taken aback.
;“To the Thief,” Jesus specified. “'Today you will be with Me in Paradise.'”
;“Oh come on, I'm no Thief,” I countered. “Though... why not.”
;Who among us is not a thief...
;...I remember, during my very first catechism class before baptism, I was asked a question:
;"How many active participants are there in the Church?"
;"Oh! A lot, I need to count," I said, puzzled.
;"No need: there are only two," the nun smiled.
;"?!"
;"God and I. Or you."
;In essence, the Thief is any suffering sinner. To end up in paradise with Jesus, you don't always have to die—you just have to ask. So Jesus fulfilled His promise regarding me, the Second Character of the Bible. The problem was that I... failed to notice it.
;I wonder, just how long have I been with Him in paradise?
;...I remember when I first arrived on the grounds of that Thai hospital, I was in no condition to appreciate either the blossoming trees, or the local pines where hummingbirds build their nests, or the colorful sunsets stretching across the entire sky. Yet, that was a real paradise, and a real Savior lived in it—there was certainly someone to save in that hospital...
;...When I visited a Thai prison for the first time, I was, of course, surprised that its territory, dotted with neatly trimmed bushes, resembled a park of culture and rest, but I was in no mood for these misplaced beauties. Suddenly, an incredibly blue bird—straight out of a fairy tale—landed on the lawn... A prison in paradise... And Jesus was so clearly present in it too...
;And when in Siberia, just in time for Easter, red roses suddenly bloom on the windowsill in all the pots at once—how is that not paradise? Or the frost-covered trees in winter? Or the wild strawberry patches in July? Or a campfire on a riverbank?
;All in all, if you think about it properly, Paradise is everywhere—you don't necessarily have to die, nor do you have to travel so far. And no one can ever take that away from us.