"What was it like inside the tree? Was it all moldy and gross?"

"Muddy," said Annabel. "You could see mud going all the way up to the hole where I came in. It was wet and dirty pretty much. Not dry. I couldn't see much, but there were cracks in the wood that let in a little light. Not much. Enough light to let me know where I was and to feel around, but not enough light to see exactly where I was or how I got there or what was above. Even the light from the hole I came in through was hard to see."

"Did you hear Abigail shouting down to you?"

"I could hear her semi-well," said Anna. "Not the greatest."

"Do you remember falling asleep or pa.s.sing out at any point? Pa.s.sing out feels like falling asleep."

"I sorta felt like I got down to the bottom, and then I woke up and saw Abbie shining a light, so I a.s.sume I pa.s.sed out. I'm not entirely sure what happened during that time period."

"Anna, you never say anything about getting really scared and crying."

"I don't think I did. I was trying to keep my cool."

I smiled at that but didn't say anything.

"I kept telling myself, It's okay. They are going to get you out.' I was trying to keep myself from freaking out."

"Then did it feel like you were awake the rest of the time? Or like asleep and then awake and back and forth?"

"I think there were a few times-I don't think it was on and off a lot-but I wasn't awake or asleep the whole time. It was like I woke up, went out again, then woke up, and was up the rest of the time. That's pretty much how it was."

When I caught up with what she was saying, I decided to go for it. "Anna, when you were down in there... and you had a vision... did that seem like a dream? Or did it seem like your eyes were open and you were looking at the inside of the tree and something appeared to you?"

"It seemed like I wasn't in the tree," Anna said intently, trying to puzzle through the best way to articulate it. "I knew I was awake. I was alert. And not in the tree. I knew I wasn't dreaming, because it was real. I could feel everything. It wasn't like I was in the tree and something appeared. It kinda was like I was taken to another place... and then I was brought back to the inside of the tree."

"Were you aware of Mommy and Daddy and Abigail and Adelynn at all when you were talking to Jesus?"

"I was not alert to anyone on Earth, really. I don't remember hearing anyone's voices until the end, when I was back from Heaven and inside the tree again. Hearing the firemen confused me, because I was somewhere else. It was like traveling to another place in your mind, except that it was real. Like when I'm in a deep sleep and you try to wake me up. It begins with me hearing your voice. Your voice is there at the end, but not at the beginning or middle."

"Anna," I said carefully, "remember in Boston... when it was just you and me there, and you said you wanted to die and see Jesus, and then you talked with the therapist? Does that have anything to do with all this? Are you still feeling like you want to die?"

"No, Mommy, I wasn't thinking about suicide or anything like that while I was in the tree. I'm not thinking about suicide now, either. Back when I said that, I was just thinking, Wouldn't it be great if I could be with Jesus and not be in pain anymore.' But I'm not in a lot of pain now, and I wasn't even thinking about pain when I was in the tree."

"What did Jesus look like?"

"He had a beautiful long white robe. And he had dark skin and a big beard-kinda like Santa Claus, but not really-and dark hair. And there was a sash on his robe."

"Sometimes you talk about Jesus and sometimes you talk about G.o.d."

"Well," Anna said, enjoying the opportunity to Sunday-school me, "they are both the same. Jesus is G.o.d."

"You know where the Bible talks about Jesus sitting on a throne at the right hand of G.o.d-"

"I don't know what you're talking about." She stood up and shook it off. "Now you're confusing me. Can I go play?"

"Of course." I looped her into my arms, kissed her temple, and blew a raspberry on her cheek. "I love you. Get outta here."

Anna danced out the door, and we didn't go into it again at any great length. It was just a thing. She'd said what she wanted to say about it, and I nudged her as far as I felt was comfortable.

Over the years, I've let myself imagine what she saw and heard, but I haven't let my curiosity or spiritual longing get the better of me. The experience belongs to Anna, and for now, she's chosen to keep it close. Needless to say, I'm burning with curiosity, and I'm sure others are as well. But first and foremost, I want what's best for Anna, and she's still figuring out how she feels about it all. Pondering it in her heart. I won't take that away from her.

After coming up with any number of parables and possibilities, trying to make his disciples understand the concept of G.o.d's home base-many mansions, wedding feasts, wheat fields-Jesus finally flat-out told them: The kingdom of G.o.d is within you. For all our curiosity, our craving to know what Heaven is like, maybe in the stillness of our own hearts, if we ever quiet down enough to listen, we already know. I haven't seen it with my eyes, but I know as surely as I know the wind is in the trees that it's a place of utter love, absolute peace, and eternal joy. Once I'd seen it through my daughter's eyes, I could see shimmering slivers of it in the world around me.

"I HEARD ANNABEL TOOK a tumble and had to be rescued by the fire department."

It didn't surprise me at all when I started hearing from some of the other mommies at school. Teachers and cla.s.smates of all three girls had seen the news coverage, and while Annabel is the type of person who'd rather go with the flow than be in the limelight, she wasn't about to deny it when other kids challenged her about saying she went to Heaven and saw Jesus. Abbie was, as always, Annabel's staunchest defender, and now she was a regular apostle, spreading the good news of this amazing miracle in which she had played a key role in G.o.d's plan. Meanwhile, Adelynn-well, she is the one who would rather be in the limelight. A big limelight. With roses being strewn at her feet. That's our Adelynn. As is often the case, the playground was a microcosm of the world around it, and we live on the giant silver buckle of the Bible Belt, so the response was overwhelmingly positive.

After I'd gotten more than a few phone calls about it, I asked Anna after school one day if anyone was bothering her or making her feel uncomfortable. She couldn't wriggle away fast enough.

"It's fine, Mommy. I just answer their questions. I don't mind talking about it."

I caught Abbie on her way outside to her favorite reading spot and asked her the same question.

"Mom, she tells the story the same way every time. It doesn't change. And you should see the look on her face. They just see the honesty and how she comes alive when she talks about it, and then they know there's no way this little girl is making this up. And the way she speaks... just the other day, she said she wanted to tell me more about it and I asked her what it was like when she was floating,' and she said, It was like being suspended above the universe.' That's so not a nine-year-old thing to say. But it's totally Annabel."

Functioning out in the pragmatic and down-to-earth world of rural Joshua County, Kevin caught his share of blowback from the news coverage, but most of it was people asking him, "When are you gonna cut down that tree?" He didn't have an answer. In fact, he was struggling with it, and so was I. Of course, the girls' safety was our number one concern, but clearly they were not about to go climbing up there again, and just in case their curiosity overcame their better judgment, Kevin had immediately trimmed away the saplings and low branches that made it possible for them to shinny up there.

None of us looked at the tree as an enemy. Staring up at the ceiling at night, I thought about some of the dark places we'd dropped into during our life together. Now the tree seemed to express what we'd been through better than any words I could come up with. In my mind, it became a metaphor for how isolated Anna was by her illness and how desperately we'd tried to save her. It gave me a new way to think about my own struggle with depression, which feels a lot like being dropped into a deep, dark hole that you can't claw your way out of. The people who love you are right close by-oh, they could reach out and touch you, and they want to, they are desperate to get to you-but you're locked inside this impenetrable sh.e.l.l, and it seems like there's no light, no air, no way out that you can see, and so you just curl up into a little ball and sit there. There's no way your loved ones can know what's really happening to you, and there's no way you can ever understand what h.e.l.l they're going through as they struggle to save you.

Getting someone out of that hole takes a team: technical expertise, faith, love, and a lot of patience. It was a place I never could have completely gotten out of on my own. Thank G.o.d that Kevin is incapable of giving up on me. He is a realist who named his daughter Faith.

Most people kidded or questioned him about the tree, but he told me later that there was one client at the clinic who is an atheist and heard about Anna's rescue and brought it up with him on her next visit.

"So tell me, Dr. Beam, how do you respond to people who don't believe like you do? I can't be the only one who's a little skeptical about the idea that a little girl fell into a hollow tree and met up with Jesus. I mean, c'mon. You're a doctor. You're a scientist. You know how this could be explained."

"Honestly," he said, "I can't explain what happened to her physically while she was in that tree-and I've given it a lot of thought. I wasn't there, so all I have to go on is the radiological data and the medical records from before and after. The proof is in the pudding. She wasn't well before. Now she is. Those are the only facts I have. All I know beyond that is that she believes she went to Heaven. And I believe her when she tells me she believes it."

The proof is in the pudding, we kept saying, because we didn't want to say anything else. The idea that Anna was truly and completely healed was too dangerous to even contemplate. She was well, but we couldn't ignore the reality that pseudo-obstruction motility disorder has no cure; the best we'd been told to hope for was a reasonable quality of life if we were able to find that balance with the right barrage of medications, continual constant care, periods of going without eating, and surgery when necessary. If we were to start chiming the church bells about how our daughter was healed and then she relapsed, she'd be crushed. The faith of anyone who believed it-including Abbie and Adelynn-would be crushed.

Beyond that, we felt like we'd jinx it or something by even talking about it.

When one of us noticed that Anna's tummy remained flat or that another week had gone by with no complaints or requests for pain relief, we'd look at each other, hoping and waiting, unwilling to say the word.

"Watch and wait," Kevin said, and Lord knows I was familiar with the phrase. We'd done a prodigious amount of watching and waiting since Anna was four and began presenting with the first serious symptoms of the disorder. From the time she was in pre-K, not surprisingly, the school nurse and I had been in contact on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis.

When I saw her number pop up on my phone sometime around Valentine's Day, I realized I hadn't heard from her in the weeks since school had started again in January.

"I just saw Annabel in the hallway," she said. "I told her I've missed you!' She was so sweet and funny. Gave me a big hug and told me all about her big adventure over Christmas break. Christy, I can't believe how much better she is since school let out for the holidays. I just wanted to give you a call and let you know I'm so happy to see her doing so well."

When Annabel got home, I asked her, "How's your tummy, sweet girl?"

"It hurts," she said, and nestled into my lap on a kitchen chair. But a few minutes later, she was raring to go, barefootin' it out the door.

"She says her stomach hurts," I told Kevin later that night, "but she never asks for pain meds. In fact, now that I think about it, she hasn't asked for anything since..."

I couldn't finish the sentence, and Kevin didn't finish it for me.

"How often does she complain that it's hurting?" he asked.

"Pretty much only when I ask her. If I don't mention it, she doesn't seem to have any problem."

He considered it for a moment and said, "Maybe it's because normal kids pretend they have a stomachache when they need a little extra attention or don't want to do their homework."

In effect, he was saying, Think horses, not zebras. And I was so used to thinking zebras, I didn't even know the horse when it trotted into the kitchen looking for an extra hug. I know this sounds strange-and I'm certainly not complaining-but it wasn't easy adjusting to the idea that Anna's health issues weren't the most pressing item on the agenda. She was still on a range of medications, but the daily coping and coddling were suddenly displaced by less dramatic concerns like spelling tests and math homework.

Anna had spent more than sixty days in the hospital and countless more convalescing at home on the couch, not to mention the half days or full days she spent in waiting rooms and doctors' offices or the nurse's office at school. She had a lot of catching up to do, and she was feeling well enough to do it. We hooked her up with a tutoring program and took her in every day after school. This didn't go down well initially, and for the first time in her life, we actually saw Anna exaggerating rather than minimizing phantom tummy aches. And so we proudly earned yet another b.u.mper sticker n.o.body wants on their car: "My kid is pretending to have a tummy ache!"

We were in constant contact with her teachers, who were nothing short of astonished at the change in her-not just physically, but also academically, emotionally, and socially. Dr. Siddiqui had noted on her chart when he first started seeing her that Annabel tended to use baby talk-a common coping mechanism in children who are chronically ill, which is traumatic and casts them in a terrifyingly vulnerable position. Kevin and I did notice that her speech wasn't at the level Abbie's had been at her age, but Abbie was always way ahead of other kids her age, so we weren't super concerned.

Now her speech began to improve, and I don't just mean diction. She was communicating and socializing with a whole new spirit, really engaging with kids in her cla.s.s and at church in a way she never could before. Chronic illness can be terribly isolating for an adult, but it's a thousand times worse for a little kid who's just figuring out how to interact with others.

By the end of February, the dramatic change in Anna was undeniable. For a long time, she'd been on a rotating regimen of antibiotics, two weeks on, two weeks off. When it was time for her to start a new course, I called Dr. Siddiqui and said, "Annabel is remarkably better. Can we skip this round of antibiotics and see how it goes?"

As the words came out of my mouth, I felt a rush of grat.i.tude.

Annabel is remarkably better.

I looked at the complicated spreadsheet that mapped out the times and dosages for her medications. Some were given on a regular schedule. Others, like the painkillers, were given as needed. For years, everything about my day revolved around the schedule for her medication and nutrition needs, which I had timed almost to the minute, including a dose that had to be administered every four hours, even at night-and many nights we'd be getting up to administer pain relievers or just sit with her while she suffered.

Now the every-four-hours medication was scaled back to every five and then every six hours. Instead of ten different medications every day, she was now taking three. And the stipulation "as needed" had dwindled to mean "not at all." Annabel was keeping up with her schoolwork and-more challenging-keeping up with Adelynn and Abigail, tearing around the property, climbing, jumping, running, swinging. And Kevin and I were sleeping for six blessed, luxurious, uninterrupted hours every night.

We were nervous about the continuing step-down with the cisapride. That was our big gun, the very scary but very effective drug that had restored some semblance of normalcy to Anna's life.

During the previous two years, when she wasn't on cisapride, she hadn't been able to eat at all. Liquid diet only, which left her cranky and unsatisfied and feeling wretchedly left out and dysfunctional during family meals and school lunches. When she was on cisapride, she could eat soft, bland foods like chicken soup, soda crackers, and Jell-O. Not much better. The first thing doctors did whenever there was a flare-up was take away her food. When she was in the hospital, she was fed with peripheral nutrition through IVs or the PICC line until she could be slowly transitioned to liquids with hopes of graduating to real food. She felt singled out and punished when other kids in the cla.s.s got a Halloween cupcake or when she attended a birthday party where tacos, chips, and Frito Pie were on the menu.

We held our breath the first time we saw her eating pizza with Adelynn and Abbie two hours after skipping her cisapride. The first time she was actually able to eat a McDonald's Happy Meal, we celebrated like she'd sunk the Spanish Armada.

THE WHOLE TIME ANNA was on cisapride, we had to take her to Boston as often as every four to six weeks to see Dr. Nurko, but when the time came for her February appointment, we decided to cancel. He and Dr. Siddiqui were always in contact, and with their blessing, we took Anna off the cisapride, which meant there was really no pressing urgency for Dr. Nurko to see her. Six more weeks went by, and we canceled again, because by this time, Anna appeared to be as healthy as any other kid on the playground. Dr. Siddiqui and Dr. Moses, the pediatrician, were over the moon about the progress she'd made. But canceling that next appointment with Dr. Nurko-Anna's powerful advocate and friend-was huge. We were beginning to get comfortable with the idea that Anna was well, but the stakes were so high, and Anna's hopes had been dashed so many times before. Kevin and I thought and prayed on it long and hard. It was thrilling and terrifying to let go of our life raft and drop that last dose of cisapride into the trash.

Cisapride was the big one. The potential side effects were serious, including damage to her heart. Anyone taking this drug had to be closely monitored on a continual basis, so Anna had to have an EKG every six weeks. Blood a.n.a.lysis every four to six weeks kept track of what the drug, in combination with all the other drugs she was on, was doing to her system in general. It was a risk, but it was worth the chance at a seminormal life.

Now she was free of it. For the moment. But we still had all those other meds lined up on the pantry shelf. The antibiotics she took twice a day as part of a concerted effort to keep her out of the hospital and free of bacterial infections that could tip the balance against her. But taking all those antibiotics has an effect on the system, too, so she had to do two weeks on, two weeks off, rotating different types of antibiotics so she wouldn't develop a resistance, always looking for signs that her digestive system had slowed to a crawl or shut down completely. Good bacteria had to be ingested, because it was being eliminated along with the bad bacteria. The nerve damage in her intestines was addressed with a hefty four-times-a-day anticonvulsant, which protected her from constantly gripping pain. She took prescription-strength laxatives and reflux medication, another anticonvulsant for cramping, prescription painkillers as needed, and a rotating schedule of nutritional supplements that became more important during those periods when she wasn't able to consume any food or liquids.

Imagine paddling a canoe with your little daughter next to you, and the canoe is piled high with everything she needs to stay alive. We did not want to tip this canoe. It had taken us so long to get to this balance. But now, everything had changed. It was terrifying and thrilling at the same time. We carefully weighed each decision as we very gingerly eased her off each medication.

"Okay," I'd say. "We seem to be doing all right without that."

"I agree," Kevin would say. And finally one evening, he went so far as to say, "She seems to be doing really great in general. Do you think maybe she really is-"

"Don't say it." I held up my hand. "Let's just... be here."

He nodded. "I agree."

We watched. We waited, not expecting the other shoe to drop but wanting to be emotionally prepared to handle it-and help Anna handle it-if it did.

Oh, ye of little faith.

Remember that story about doubting Thomas? Jesus returned to His disciples after He was crucified and had risen again, but ol' Thomas, he just wasn't going to be that easygoing about it. He wanted to touch the wounds on Jesus's body and hands. He wanted to see some scientific evidence that, yeah, this is really happening. Jesus wasn't mad about it at all. I love that response-oh, ye of little faith-and I hear Him saying it with a smile, a sigh, because He knew that this lack of faith came from a place of having been disappointed before and a place of loving Jesus and wanting it so dearly to be true.

"You're right," said Kevin. "I don't want to say it out loud either, but... you know what's weird?"

"Weird-compared to getting swallowed by a tree?"

"Well, there's that"-he laughed-"but I was just thinking it was easier somehow when we were tracking all the things that were going wrong. We could write on a chart what meds she was taking. We could mark on the calendar whether or not she was able to go to school, what she ate, and what her temperature was."

"But now we're trying to track things that aren't happening."

"Right," Kevin said. "And that's more of a challenge, scientifically speaking. Empirical evidence is about showing that something exists. It's a lot harder to prove that something doesn't exist."

He was absolutely right. Ask doubting Thomas.

BY THE END OF the school year, Anna had blossomed like a little tiger lily and was thriving in all the ways you hope your child will thrive. Her grades were up. She had friends. She had fun. She made plans. She stayed up late reading and invited friends for sleepovers. Kevin and I were able to host all the people who'd helped us over the years for backyard barbecues and be the ones volunteering to help someone else with childcare for a change. Kevin joined the teaching rotation for Homebuilders, a Sunday evening Bible study, and from then on, every other week, the whole group came for dinner at our place. It was such a joy to serve our happily extended family. Feeding our people the way they fed us felt like a great privilege.

One of the sweetest aspects of all this was how happy it made Abbie and Adelynn. The Beam sisters were a trio, as G.o.d intended them to be.

I loved seeing them at gymnastics together. I'd enrolled them the year before, just as a way to get Anna out there and involved in some kind of movement, and Abbie and Adelynn loved it, but it was hard to keep it up with the financial stress we were facing. We were able to attend so rarely, it ended up being more of a frustration than a help.

But this year, Anna was the one pushing everyone to hurry, hurry, hurry out the door so we wouldn't be late for gymnastics. She had big plans for a gymnastics-themed party for her tenth birthday. Tearing around the place, she kept up with her friends and sisters, bouncing and balancing. The year before, her little leotard had stretched thin and uncomfortable across her distended belly. Now she looked just as healthy and normal as all the other little girls.

That summer, instead of remaining cloistered, pale, and in pain, watching H2O: Just Add Water on TV, Anna was out in the swimming pool with her sisters, three sunscreened mermaids splashing and laughing until the sun went down. When Kevin walked in the door at the end of the day and rousted everyone out for a trip to Pirates Cove, they didn't have to beg and cajole Anna to come with them-or worse yet, leave her behind feeling left out and blue. For the first time in years, my attention was evenly divided between my three little fish, and some days, I actually had a little time for myself. I hardly knew what to do with that.

That summer went by like summers are supposed to-in a blur of bike rides and laughter and trips to the farmers' market-but beyond that, there was an intensely joyful aura about it. Autumn came and went with all the back-to-school hustle. We ventured to sign up for a full flight of extracurricular activities the girls had always begged to be involved in. It had been so hard to make a commitment to anything, knowing that Anna would miss out 75 percent of the time and Abbie and Adelynn would be forced to sit out as well unless I made a part-time job of calling around to find them rides.

Now we were all on board and busy. Anna was on track with her schoolwork from day one and never fell behind again. That alone lifted a veil of stress that I hadn't even fully recognized before. We had bigger fish to fry. Now we were frying the same fish as any other happy, healthy, overscheduled family.

In what seemed like the blink of an eye, it was December, and I started decorating for Christmas. We never start before December 2, because that's Adelynn's birthday, and I never wanted her special day to be overwhelmed by holiday doings. We make sure it's set apart as a holy, wonderful day all its own, and then we kick off the festivities.

As I unload box after box of family keepsakes, the girls hunt for their favorite treasures. Just about every single item has some special memory from years gone by. One of the favorites from when they were little was a Disney princess village, but by this time there were only a couple dolls and houses left of it. Those Disney princesses saw a lot of action over the years, so most of it ended up broken, but the Beam princesses were unwilling to let go of the few remaining pieces. The Santa collection is my thing, so they let me handle that myself, and I organize all the items according to size and function, getting everything laid out on the dining room table.

Of course, the big thing is the tree. Our Christmas tree isn't one of those carefully flocked and festooned theme trees-quite the opposite. It's an eclectic tree filled with memories, a living, changing reminder of where we came from and how we've grown and changed as a family. There are lots of mementos from Gran Jan and Nonny. Every year, ever since I was part of the family, they would send each one of us something special right after Thanksgiving-a carefully chosen ornament specifically for that person-just to get the ball rolling and let us know they're as excited about Christmas as the kids are.

The girls are endlessly fascinated by the ornaments Kevin and I made when we were little children, and I'm endlessly fascinated by the ornaments they made when they were little. They love hearing Kevin tell the stories behind all the odds and ends that were given to us as gifts. Of course, there's a heated discussion about the star: who put it up last year, who gets to put it up this year, why someone else is clearly not as well suited for this task. Ultimately, it's Kevin's call, and the lucky winner is lifted up into the air, and the star is placed with a lot of excitement and singing. Then it's time for cocoa and popcorn with Christmas carols playing through the TV.

While Kevin and the girls admire the tree, I just take it all in. The lights. The fragrance. The joy. Even during the tough times, we're able to find hope and joy at Christmas. We didn't have to work hard to find joy and hope that year. Anna was happily horsing around with her sisters, drinking cocoa and eating popcorn. As I continued to bustle around getting things done, Kevin would catch my hand every once in a while, and we'd offer each other a secret smile. But we still weren't ready to say it out loud.

The week after the tree went up, I took Anna in for a prescheduled appointment with Dr. Siddiqui. She knew the drill and stretched out on the examination table. He put his hands under the paper gown and pressed firmly around the bottom of her rib cage and across her belly.

"Does this hurt? How about here? This? No?"

It was a stark contrast to previous appointments, especially when she was very little and the palpation was incredibly painful, and she couldn't understand why she had to be hurt like that. As Dr. Siddiqui prodded and pushed at the structure of her digestive tract, she chatted happily with him about all our plans for Christmas and what she was doing in school.

"This doesn't hurt you?" he interrupted. She shook her head, and he pushed harder. "How about this? And this? No pain here at all?"

The look on his face was what I had been waiting for, I think.

In Hebrews, Paul wrote, Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.