Chapter Ten

They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream.

It does not fear when the heat comes; its leaves are always green.

Jeremiah 17:8

IT’S BEEN ALMOST THREE years since Anna and I last went to Boston—two years, eleven months, and a week, to be exact—so I’ve lost a bit of my travel-wrangling edge. I used to have this trip down to a science, but this time, Anna and I end up sprinting for the gate. Frankly, it feels good to have gotten rusty, to have this trip to Dr. Nurko’s office be so out of the routine. It’s a final follow-up Kevin and I felt we needed for a seal of approval on Anna’s wellness, and we felt Anna needed it for closure as she continues to process this incredibly traumatic phase of her life.

Waiting for our flight to board, loaded up with hats, scarves, and winter coats, we have just enough time to snap a mom-and-daughter selfie I can text to Kevin and post on Facebook.

“Oh, Anna, look!” I nudge her with my elbow and show her my iPhone. “Angela posted a picture of that little pipe-cleaner bracelet you made her last time we saw her.”

“What? No way!” Anna giggles.

“Way, sister. Look right here.”

I remember the chill that went down my spine when Annabel said, I made this for you so you won’t forget me. Purple, because that’s your favorite color, and pink, because that’s my favorite color. And white is for peace. It was clear that Anna did not expect to see this sweet friend again. At that low moment, we thought God didn’t get the memo, but it turns out the memo was for us. We just didn’t know it yet.

In his book The Purpose Driven Life, Pastor Rick Warren says, “Your greatest life messages and your most effective ministry will come out of your deepest hurts.” That has been true for our family in ways we couldn’t have imagined—in small ways that are intimately personal and in ever-expanding circles that take us farther and farther out into the world.

And that started with Angela and the little pipe-cleaner bracelet. She e-mailed me later and told me this:

“When I got home, I was talking to my children about Anna’s health—physical and mental. My son went on a rant about how much he hated God and how unfair this all was, not just for Anna and her family, but for all the pain and suffering in the world. My daughters were quick to agree. Not knowing what to say or whose side to take, I went to bed. I lay there holding my bracelet, and I cried for the longest time. Over and over, I asked, ‘What can I do for her?’ Then without even thinking about it, I found myself praying. I humbly asked God for forgiveness and asked for strength and peace for Anna and her family. I felt a wave of peace come over me, and I had to believe and accept that He had a reason and a plan better than ours, so I had to just let it be…”

A moment of peace and prayer, from one heart to another—that’s where it starts, and where it goes, we never fully know. After Anna’s rescue, the Briaroaks Fire Department started training and equipping crews to anticipate tight-space rescues. I love the idea that she may have already helped save the life of someone she’ll never meet, maybe someone who isn’t even born yet.

In Boston, we’re met at the airport as usual by Beth and Steve Harris. Their ministry to us has meant more than they’ll ever know. I could go on about what godly folks they are and what prayer warriors they are, but c’mon—as much as I appreciated it whenever someone said, “I’m praying for you,” it was the practical application of love that was life-changing for us in that moment. Anna was always glad to have Beth come and stay with her at the hospital so I could duck out for a quick shower or a breath of cold air. We were weary travelers, and the way they took us in makes me think of Jesus in the “upper room” the night before he was taken away to be crucified. His disciples gathered there to celebrate Passover with their Lord, but they’d walked many, many miles to get there. Before they did anything else, Jesus sat them down and washed their dirty, aching feet.

That humble, loving gesture brings tears to my eyes. I have received the love of Jesus so many times in so many small but powerful ways through people like Angela and the Cashes and Beth and Steve—who are smack-yer-daddy amazed when they see Annabel galloping down the concourse in pink jeans and a bedazzled shirt that says “Love to Smile” in big sparkly letters.

Catching up over dinner, Beth says, “Anna, I can’t believe you turned twelve years old in September!”

I can’t believe it myself.

Anna is a happy, healthy middle schooler who wants to be a child life specialist when she grows up. She’s at that pivot point in a girl’s life where she dreams of seeing Paris, but she still thinks that the word chicken is completely hilarious. We told her she could celebrate her birthday any way she wanted. She thought it over.

“How about…” Anna’s eyes lit up. “Pool party!”

“Doable,” I said.

“But not a big party. Just a few people.”

As we made the short guest list, I asked her about some of the girls in her class with whom she liked to hang out individually, even though she wasn’t part of their clique.

“No,” she said, “that group of girls makes fun of other people and causes drama. I don’t need that.”

In addition to a few good friends who’d stuck by her when she was sick, Anna invited a little girl who was new in school and shy about making friends. She also wanted to include a little girl who’d been getting bullied and had never been invited to a birthday party. This little girl’s mom actually called me to verify that it wasn’t a cruel joke being played on her daughter. (You know what sixth graders are capable of.)

“Oh, Lord, no,” I said. “Not at all. Anna knows how it feels to be the odd one out. She just wanted to have a small group of girls who’d be chill and happy to hang out in the pool with her for the day.”

That’s Annabel’s rubber-meets-the-road brand of ministry. You just love people, and you act on that. Today. In this moment.

That’s the kind of pragmatic, service-minded ministry Kevin and I always expected to practice, so it took us a while to figure out what we were supposed to do with all this. We weren’t sure we wanted to put ourselves out there when Pastor Scott asked if Kevin, Anna, and I would be willing to make a video to show to the Sunday school classes at church and then to get up and speak in front of the whole congregation. This was not long after Anna’s encounter with the cottonwood, so the changes in our lives were very new, and we were still feeling vulnerable.

But when he asked us, before I could politely decline, Annabel breezed by with a cheerful, “Okay!” Didn’t break stride. Didn’t wonder if she’d be any good at that. Didn’t twist herself into an anxiety pretzel about what to wear or how to phrase things or who might have blah-blah-blah to say about it.

“Well, how would that work?” I asked. “Would you give us the questions in advance so I could prepare?”

“Sure,” he said. “But I really want you to just be yourselves. We’ll keep it casual. Conversational. You know.”

No, I certainly did not know. I knew no such thing. Never in my life had I considered getting up and speaking in front of… well, figure about 250 people, three services… oh, God in Heaven. That was eight million people. Okay, 750 people, but still!

In the end, after all the worrying, it was rather wonderful.

One night when I was grilling myself, I asked Kevin, “Do you want to go over this list of questions?”

“No,” he said, flipping the page of a mystery novel he was reading. “I’ll wing it.”

“Don’t make me smack you, Dr. Beam.”

“Christy, you’ll be fine. He said be ourselves. I don’t know how to be someone other than myself, and I love your self. I happen to think your self is pretty fine.”

Our church, like our family, was going through a major transitional period. The quaint old sanctuary had been outgrown, and the new sanctuary was in the planning phase, so worship took place in a big multipurpose space. The stage up front was set with a sofa and chair. Very casual. Conversational. While the opening songs were sung, I instructed myself to breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth. Finally, it was time for us to step up there. Abbie squeezed my hand, and Adelynn gave me an encouraging smile.

I don’t remember what all I said; I just told the story—where we’d been, where we were now, how we felt God’s hand on us. There were moments when I heard sniffles, gruff clearing of throats, and saying some of those things out loud—especially how Anna had expressed the desire to go be with Jesus—I felt tears burning in my own eyes. I used the notes I’d typed on my phone and computer to reconstruct what Anna had told me about her experience in Heaven. I wanted to get it right. Then Kevin spoke, and he pulled it all together so beautifully with the heart of our family, I felt myself welling up again.

Apparently it went well, because after the first service, someone in the congregation got on the phone and arranged for someone to be there with a video camera at the third service. I told our story again, and then Kevin spoke.

“We’ve been in the exact same seat where you’re sitting right now,” he said, “and I’ve been in a lot of pain. Times can be challenging and very rough, and some of you may be in that place today. I’ve been out there and listened to these songs that just brought tears to my eyes, as I knew my daughter and wife were in Boston in a children’s hospital, and I was here, trying to take care of the other two. We’ve been through hard times, and we probably will have others. Certainly you have also. The thing I have found is that the faithfulness of God has been what I can count on and rest assured upon.

“I’m a positive person. I try to say, ‘Everything’s going to be okay.’ But I’ve had to allow myself times to say that it’s hard, and that’s okay. When you spend three weeks living in a children’s hospital, you get a different perspective on life. Many times I prayed, ‘Lord, I can take this. Let me have what she’s dealing with, and let her be okay.’ I’m sure many parents and grandparents have prayed that prayer. But God had different plans for Anna’s life, for our lives, for our entire family, and for your life and your children’s. God knows a lot better than letting me or you write the script.

“Very few of us get to say, ‘I sat in Jesus’s lap, and I’m okay.’ That’s something we will cherish as a family, and Anna will cherish as her personal testimony her entire life. But even without that visual representation, He is with us every single day. I was beside myself thinking, ‘She’s been inside this tree by herself for hours. She is going to be hysterical. What is she going to be like?’ She actually came out of this experience better, knowing that God has a plan for her life, and she wants to be able to fulfill her purpose in life. That’s made me rethink—maybe I do need that childlike faith a kid has. Learning something from your nine-year-old daughter can be humbling and beautiful.

“We’re here in church and hear amazing messages and things, and then we go home and go about our daily life. But this is something that has had a profound influence on me. This is real. This is life. It has been hard, but it’s real, and God is real. It’s given me the chance to learn from my daughter, and maybe go and jump up onto Jesus’s lap myself a little bit.”

Kevin started to hand the wireless mic back to Pastor Scott, but Anna suddenly decided she wanted to say something too. There was a brief moment of Oh, dear. She’s bogarting the mic! She’s bogarting the mic! Please, God, don’t let her say anything about the time her daddy tipped his motorcycle over and swore his head off.

“We were rock solid till that point,” Kevin said to me later. “I thought, if all of a sudden Anna says she saw My Little Pony, then—kaboom. We all look ridiculous. I handed her the mic, and I’m thinking, God, this is on you. If you don’t stop it, then…”

“Then what?” I asked him.

“Then let her be God’s vessel.”

“I have been believing in God before I was even in pre-K,” she began. “I don’t hear Him every day, but I hear Him a lot. I heard Him and saw Him that day inside the tree. So I know that God is real, and I know that He has glory, ’cause if He wasn’t real, I would have broken my neck when I fell in that tree. I would have died from my stomach problems ’cause I’ve had them since I was born. I would have not been what I am today. I’d be hurting, and I’d be dead probably, if there wasn’t glory from God and if He didn’t love us. He always does, and if He didn’t, He would have just let me die. He wasn’t going to do that. He led me to different doctors, and two or three of them actually knew how to help me. So God does care about me. And He does have glory. And He has a purpose for every single person in the world. You weren’t just made for fun. You were made to be a beautiful creation. So if we all come together and we all believe in God, then I’ll see you in Heaven later.”

Like I said. It’s about where the rubber meets the road.

A year later, Anna and I were invited to speak at a United Methodist church in Alvarado on Mother’s Day. By this time, Kevin and I were certain of Anna’s healing, and I was ready to claim that promise, loud and proud. But I wasn’t about to do that unless it was absolutely okay with Anna and Kevin.

“I just want to get it right,” I told her. “And I never want you to feel bad or uncomfortable about any of it.”

“About all that stuff you wrote down, you mean?”

“Right. Anna, if there’s any part of this story that maybe I didn’t understand correctly… or maybe now you remember it differently… or if there’s anything you’d just rather we didn’t talk about…” I kept pausing, trying to give her a chance to wriggle out of any or all of it, promising her no one would be mad or disappointed. “Is there anything I should say differently when I speak in church?”

“No,” she said, “that’s right.”

“Would you like to say a closing prayer at the end?”

“Okay,” she said brightly. “Sure!”

“Great.” I smiled. “Maybe we should practice that part.”

Annabel gave me the tweenage whatever eyebrow look. “Practice praying?”

“Well, there will be a lot of people there,” I said. “You might feel nervous. I already feel nervous, and we’re not even there yet.”

“Am I still praying to God?”

“Yes.”

“Then what difference does it make?”

Busted.

On Mother’s Day, she got up there and prayed her little prayer—a heartfelt, unrehearsed altar call, inviting others to know the peace and love she’s found with her Savior—and there was not a dry eye in the place. “Honey, I want you to know this was the best Mother’s Day of my life,” an elderly lady told us. Two weeks later, the girls and I were out having a mani-pedi day, and a lady approached us to say, “Are you the Beams? You spoke in my church, and it changed my life. I just want you to know, I’ve been going to church all my life, but since that day, I’ve been looking, and I can see God’s faithfulness all around me. In all the ways you said. He is faithful. And now I want to prove to Him that I will be faithful.”

She left us sitting there amazed and humbled. I lay in bed that night thinking about it, and a thrill went through me when I thought about being a small, sparkling drop in God’s great ocean of love. That peace Angela had felt as she held the pipe-cleaner bracelet, the loving-kindness that includes a lonely little girl in a backyard pool party—the profound healing effect of Anna’s miraculous story had begun to ripple out into the world.

OUR FINAL APPOINTMENT WITH Dr. Nurko is scheduled for midmorning, but Anna wakes up insanely early, excited about seeing him, excited about going to the Children’s Museum later, excited about how cold it is on the streets of Boston, which are already decked out for the holidays. She’s excited that the cab smells very strongly of garlic bread. She’s excited about life.

Arriving a little early at Boston Children’s, Anna catches sight of Dr. Nurko in the hallway, and she runs to him and throws her arms around him, squealing, “Hello!”

“Well, hello… Anna, my gosh!”

“You still have your Elmo lanyard,” she notes happily.

“I do, yes. And look at you!” He hugs her and smiles his great, wide smile. “Amazing! I’m so glad I get to see you.”

“When it’s our turn,” I tell Anna, steering her into the exam room.

As the nurse prepares to take Anna’s vitals, she hands me two pages listing all the medications Anna was on last time Dr. Nurko saw her.

“Could you please go over these?” she says. “I need you to review for accuracy so I can update on the computer. Just mark the ones she’s still taking.”

Prevacid (lansoprazole), a proton pump inhibitor; Align/Culturelle probiotic supplement, for digestive upset and immune support; MiraLAX (polyethylene glycol), a laxative; Periactin (cyproheptadine), an antihistamine with additional anticholinergic, antiserotonergic, and local anesthetic agents; Neurontin (gabapentin), a medication used as an anticonvulsant and analgesic; rifaximin, a semisynthetic antibiotic based on rifamycin; Augmentin (amoxicillin and clavulanic acid), an antibiotic for bacterial infections; tramadol hydrochloride salt for moderate to severe pain; hyoscyamine, a tropane alkaloid and secondary metabolite; Celexa (citalopram hydrobromide), a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor…

“She’s not on any of these,” I tell the nurse, who is astonished.

Anna and I smile at each other. We look smug, no doubt about that, but I’m certain she’s experiencing the same rush of gratitude I feel. We get to crow again when Dr. Nurko comes in. After proper greetings and more hugs and an uneventful palpating of Anna’s belly, he glances at the unmarked list and asks, “What’s she taking now?”

“Nothing.”

“Amazing.” He looks at her, contemplative. “Nothing at all?”

“Nothing.”

He studies her for a long moment. “You look wonderful, Anna. I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you so well.”

It is a graduation of sorts. A commencement.

That calls for celebration. Anna and I duck into the food court at the Galleria for strawberry banana smoothies and French fries. Because she can eat French fries! We spend the afternoon with Angela, tromping the Freedom Trail and visiting Anna’s favorite places. At the Boston Children’s Museum, she runs circles around Angela and me, taking in all the colors and taking part in all the activities that she is just on the verge of leaving behind. I know if we bring her back here even one year from now, she’ll be too grown up to experience it the way she does today. She’ll wise up like Abbie has, but I hope she won’t lose her joy or her simple sweetness.

“Oh, look over here!” She dodges into a corner with a big magnetic letter board and asks, “What should I make?”

“Whatever you want to tell the next person who comes along,” says Angela.

Anna thinks about it and then slides the letters into place, spelling out the words YOU MATTER.

As we wander the exhibits, a young woman calls Anna over and asks her if she’d like to participate in a psychology study, and of course, Anna is immediately fascinated and willing. The topic is “morality”; the yes-or-no questions have to do with basic right and wrong. Is it good or bad to make cookies, steal a cookie, copy an answer on a test, give a birthday present, accept a present when you’re sick? Then the questions are repeated, asking, “What would God think?”

And then the young woman asks Anna, “Do you think God is real?”

“Oh, I know He is!”

Anna starts telling the young woman how she knows, but the young woman quickly wraps things up.

“This is a study,” she says, very sweetly but with not an inch of give. “We don’t want to skew the answers.”

“Oh! Okay,” Anna agrees readily, and dodges away to play in front of a green screen where you can see yourself on TV with Arthur and friends. She’s never felt that she has anything to prove, and she doesn’t pass judgment on anyone else’s views. If you’re willing to be kind, you’re welcome at her pool party.

There’s a wonderful line in The Song of Bernadette by Franz Werfel: “For those who believe, no explanation is necessary. For those who do not believe, no explanation is possible.”

I suspect Anna will see a lot of both in her life. She has this thing in her heart—an intensely bright “this little light of mine” shine—that she wouldn’t want to keep to herself, even if she could. Abigail and Adelynn are exactly the same way.

Abbie struggled for a long time with what happened, because her greatest gifts—her heart full of mercy and her staunch sense of responsibility—worked against her in that moment. I worried briefly that it might make her doubt herself or clamp a lid down on that wildly creative and adventurous spirit, but she worked it out in classic Abbie fashion. In high school now, she excels in acting and debate and keeps her grades up, because she hopes to be a veterinarian like her daddy. I see so much of him in her. She devours books like a wood chipper. When she sees someone being bullied, she stands up and gets involved.

Kevin has taken both Abbie and Anna on long motorcycle trips across Montana, and each time, he brought headsets so they could communicate as they rode. Kevin says that when he was traveling with Abbie, they burned through the eight-hour battery life of the headsets every day. When he was traveling with Anna, at the end of the day, the batteries were still strong; they’d roll on for hours without saying a word.

When it’s time for Adelynn’s father-daughter trek, he’ll probably have to bring spares. She has blossomed into an all-out-there theatrical diva who charms the socks off everyone she meets. Perhaps because she was shuffled around so much in her formative years, she’s one of those people who fits in anywhere. She keeps the three- and four-year-olds entertained in the nursery at church and loves to “work” in the front lobby at the veterinary clinic. It terrifies and thrills me to see her engage with anyone of any age as if they were part of her family. It’s hard to teach a little girl to be wary of strangers when everyone she comes in contact with is instantly a friend—from the little old cat lady at the veterinary clinic to the punk rocker in line behind us at the grocery store.

As each has received a gift, says 1 Peter 4:10, use it to serve one another.

I’m confident that each of the uniquely gifted Beam sisters will be a remarkable woman in the world, but more than that, I cherish knowing that they will always be there for each other.

BAREFOOT AS USUAL, ANNABEL hops the gate and sets off down the road, but Abigail holds out her arms like a crossing guard and stops her little sisters in their tracks.

“We have just entered Narnia,” she says, and they proceed with due reverence.

“I want to be the good witch,” Adelynn pipes up.

“There is no good witch,” says Abbie.

“Then I want to be Dorothy!”

“There is no Dorothy in Narnia. No good witch. No Dorothy. You’re confusing it with the Wizard of Oz.”

“I’ll be the cowardly lion,” Kevin calls from the gate.

“Daddy,” says Anna, “that’s the Wizard of Oz, and you know it. You’re being silly.”

“Oh, and we’re all too mature for that now.”

“I am,” Abbie says to Annabel. “I don’t know about him.”

But I know. Kevin has definitely gotten his silliness back.

As I write this, 2014 is almost done. Three years have passed since our world changed. I used to say “since Anna fell” and later I started saying “since Anna was healed,” but now even that has receded into a world of miracles, large and small, as countless as the stars—far more than any of us will ever know. One of the loveliest is Kevin’s return to the joyful, playful, wonderfully silly daddy he was when Abbie was a baby. He still does the hard work and keeps the hard promises, but he never wanted to be the dreaded father in the “just wait till your father gets home” scenario. He wanted his children to be happy when he walked in the door. And they are.

These days, Kevin rolls up at the end of a long day and is met in the driveway by Cypress, River, Trinity, Jack, and Arnold, our most recent edition. (All the other dogs are named after rivers, but Arnold is just so Arnold.) Even though Kevin’s been on his feet and up to his elbows all day, instead of kicking back in a recliner, he shuts off the TV, shrugs off the Greek chorus of woe, and within five minutes, there’s an adventure under way. He’s got the girls trooping out the door and down the drive, which gives me a moment to catch up on e-mail and get dinner started.

By the time they roll on home for supper, there’s always a huge story to tell, and we gather at the table, everyone talking at once. “We went hiking about three miles, and there was this road—” “Go wash those hands, please.” “Yeah, a road where the bridge washed out, and tunnels under, and a culvert that follows a dry creek bed.” “Anna, put some salad dressing on the table.” “The road’s abandoned, and people dumped some furniture back there.” “Mommy, I need my other jeans washed tonight.” “Within twenty steps, you’re exploring Narnia.” “What jeans?” “You know! The ones I like.” “No cars go there anymore, so we explored.” “And we danced! It was so fun.”

“Shall we say grace?”

We hold hands in an unbroken circle around the table.

“Heavenly Father,” Kevin says, “we thank you for this beautiful day. For these beautiful children. For this food we’re about to eat. Bless it to our bodies. Let it strengthen us to do your will and be your light in the world. Amen.”

“Pass the potatoes, please.”

“Daddy,” says Anna, “what did you watch on TV when you were a kid?”

“Not much,” he says. “We were only allowed thirty minutes a day.”

The Greek chorus wails at the very idea: Nooooooo! Oh, Gran Jan! How could she be so cruel?

Kevin says, “We liked Dukes of Hazzard. Luke Duke. Daisy Duke.”

“Daisy Duke?” says Abbie. “Like the shorts?”

“Yeah, that’s why they’re called Daisy Dukes. Didn’t you know that?”

“Lies!” says Adelynn. “Lies and blasphemy.”

“Mommy,” says Anna, “I really, really need those jeans.”

And now you know everything there is to know about the elevated spiritual conversations that go on around the Beam family supper table. Believe me, it only gets worse, because this family was ruthlessly trained not to be uptight about the discussion of bodily functions. After the girls go to bed, Kevin and I will sit with a glass of wine and discuss important matters like the cooler weather coming and how astonishing it is that Christmas is just a few weeks away and what will be the budget for that, or he might tell me something about castrating bulls today. That’s as philosophical as it gets most evenings.

Beyond our kitchen window, across the field, the cottonwood stands in the moonlight. The branch that formed the castle bridge gave way and crashed down to the ground one windy night when the Beam sisters were snug in their beds, but the tree itself has grown taller. The heart-shaped leaves rustle on the wind. Birds nest in the branches. Squirrels sit on the spiky lip of the decaying grotto and spy on comings and goings over on the road. We keep trying to recall if it ever blossomed before—and Kevin swears it didn’t—but it does now. High, high, high in the branches, those soft white tufts bloom and let go, and the wind takes them to who knows where.

After we were in the news, people kept asking Kevin, “So, Dr. Beam, have you cut down that old cottonwood tree yet?”

Finally one day, he reluctantly went out there with a chain saw. He took down a few of the smaller trees—the ones the girls had used to climb up to the grotto—but he couldn’t bring himself to take down the cottonwood. He stood there for a while with the chain saw in his hands, studying the dense bark and soaring branches. Then very carefully, he stepped up to the broad trunk and carved a cross. Straight and true. A symbol of both suffering and salvation.

I cried the first time I saw it, and some days I go out there to pray. It makes me feel small and awestruck and glad. It makes me think about something Anna said: “God is always there, and He has His own ways of working things out.”

Could there be a greater source of peace than that simple affirmation? When life brings hardships beyond our understanding, it’s not up to us to look for the silver lining. We are the silver lining. We become God’s well-tuned instruments of peace, His gift to one another, each of us a miracle, according to His strange and wonderful plan.