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 a.n.a.lgesic; 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 grat.i.tude 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 partic.i.p.ate 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 G.o.d think?"

And then the young woman asks Anna, "Do you think G.o.d 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 pa.s.s 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 cla.s.sic 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 pa.s.sed 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."

"Pa.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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: "G.o.d 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 G.o.d's well-tuned instruments of peace, His gift to one another, each of us a miracle, according to His strange and wonderful plan.

Acknowledgments.

From the cowardice that dare not face new truth, from the laziness that is contented with half truth, from the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth, good Lord, deliver us.

Kenyan Prayer.

This story is my truth as I remember it. Some events and people had to be composited, and dialogue was reconstructed for narrative purposes, but I've done my best to stay true to the content of those conversations, the facts of the events, and the spirit of the relationships portrayed in this book. Others, of course, may have their own recollections or perceptions of events.

Though I learned a great deal about pseudo-obstruction motility disorder and antral hypomotility disorder on our journey, I do not consider myself a medical expert, and no part of this ma.n.u.script should be construed or misconstrued as medical information or advice. My opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Alsbury Baptist Church or any other const.i.tuencies or organizations who've hosted or will in the future host me as a speaker.

Kevin and I are more grateful than we can express to Dr. Nurko, Dr. Siddiqui, Dani Dillard, and all the wonderful caregivers who looked after Anna at Cook Children's and Boston Children's Hospital. Same goes for the amazing Briaroaks Volunteer Fire Department. We also cherish and appreciate our church family at Alsbury Baptist, my wonderful family, Kevin's wonderful family, Angela Cimino, Nina and the Cash crew, and many other friends who stepped in to help us, feed us, and look after our girls. They are too many to mention, but each one is special in my heart, and I am deeply grateful.

Heartfelt thanks to my agent, the fabulous Nena Madonia of Dupree/Miller & a.s.sociates, who's been a tireless advocate for this book through some stormy seas. Mauro DiPreta's faith in our story and belief in this project has been life-changing for me. Huge thanks to him and everyone at Hachette.

Abigail, Annabel, and Adelynn-listen, sisters, you know that you are my heart and soul. When you read this book to your children someday, I hope you'll tell them, "Yes, my mama was a little nutty sometimes, but she loved me. Of that there is no doubt." When I praise G.o.d from whom all blessings flow, you are the best, brightest blessings a mom could ever imagine.

And to my husband, Dr. Kevin Beam... babe, you already know. But I plan to keep telling you for the rest of my life.

Christy Beam.

Burleson, Texas.

Spring 2015.

About the Author.

CHRISTY WILSON BEAM was born and raised in Abilene, Texas, where she was a teacher for several years. After marrying her college sweetheart, she left teaching to focus on raising the couple's three girls. Christy and her family now reside near Burleson, Texas, where they are members of Alsbury Baptist Church.

end.