Another long stretch of Texas interstate went by while I sat there trying to wrap my head around what she was telling us-which was like trying to wrap my head around the literal meaning of Annabel is in the tree. There was not a hint of "let's pretend" in the way she put her experience out there, and she hadn't really put it out there for discussion, just as something she'd chosen to share. I didn't know quite what to make of it all, but I felt the significance of it, and I discreetly used my phone to send myself some notes. I wanted to remember exactly what she said.

Everything she said was in keeping with the beliefs we held-the Christian faith in which Anna and her sisters were raised. In the context of that faith, there was nothing strange about a little girl's prayers being answered-though not in the way any of us expected-and nothing impossible about what she was telling us.

With G.o.d all things are possible, Jesus said in the Gospel of Matthew, but isn't it our inclination to want that promise in a trial-sized box? That whole surpa.s.seth all understanding thing-that's very disconcerting! Over the centuries, the Christian church has been very good at setting up rules we can adhere to, boundaries that are clearly defined. Anna wasn't telling us she'd crossed that boundary; she was telling us the boundary does not exist. That's a lot to take in while you're rolling down the highway between the children's hospital and Buc-ee's Beaver Nuggets.

I was raised in the Southern Baptist tradition. Daddy was a deacon in the church and made sure we were there every Sunday morning and evening. We prayed sincerely, but at a safe distance. Kevin was raised within a more charismatic tradition: fundamentally the same beliefs, but a much less reserved way of expressing praise and submitting prayer requests. The good people at P Paw and Gran Jan's church had prayed over Anna a great deal. They prayed for healing, and that healing didn't come. To say our faith had been tested in the past few years-that's like saying a rope is "tested" when it's frayed to its last thread.

Kevin has gone through such an arduous journey as a husband and father-always the Breadwinner, the Promise Keeper, the Mighty Good Man. People have told him he has the patience of Job. But I think it's important to remember that Job got dang frustrated sometimes. People tried to blame him for his own troubles, saying, "Well, if your faith was strong enough, G.o.d would protect you," but that's just something people say to protect themselves-to separate themselves from other people's troubles. "If your faith is strong enough, she'll be healed." If I've heard that once, I've heard it a thousand times. The problem is, when someone tells you that, they're not asking you to put faith in the power of G.o.d; they're asking you to put faith in the power of your own faith. And I can't even pretend that my mustard-seed faith measures up to the promises of G.o.d.

AFTER ABBIE AND ADELYNN woke up, we stopped for gas and a bite to eat, and from there on, the trip was the jolly holiday we were accustomed to: games, songs, nonstop shenanigans, and trying to get the truck drivers to blow their air horns. Annabel tells me that she always thinks of Nonny when she hears Taylor Swift singing "Ours," because it was playing that day on the radio. Kevin cranked the volume, and we all sang along, jamming as a family as we cruised down Ocean Drive and pulled up to Nonny's condo on the water.

This was the kind of balmy afternoon Nonny envisioned when she bought this place: palm trees lazing on a light breeze, birds wheeling in the sunshine over the Gulf of Mexico, just enough clouds to promise a spectacular sunset. The girls couldn't wait to get their shoes off and run for the rocky sh.o.r.e.

"Please," I called after them, "please, be careful!"

Inside, Nonny was already laying out her traditional New Year's Eve feast. Everyone was happy to see us and wanted to hear the entire blow-by-blow of the wild ride that had begun less than twenty-four hours earlier. I waited until Gran Jan and I were alone in the kitchen to tell her what Anna had said to us in the truck on the way down. Gran Jan listened with wide-open eyes and a wide-open heart. She received it like a child, fully on faith, never questioning. As we continued to tell the story, privately at first and then more publicly, I don't recall anyone else ever hearing it the way she did. I will never forget that.

"When He told her that," said Gran Jan, "when He said there would be nothing wrong with her, then... that means she's healed."

Of course, Gran Jan was the one with the courage to speak the word, but I wasn't ready to hear it.

"Well, I suppose you could interpret it that way," I said, "but I was taking it more as... like in the immediate sense. It's amazing that she walked away from this thing, you know? Everyone-the first responders, the ER docs, the flight nurse-they all were positive she'd have some kind of spinal injury. One of them even said, Jesus was with her.' But, Gran Jan, let's not build her hopes up with regard to the rest."

She wouldn't be swayed. She was overjoyed, overwhelmed, praising G.o.d. I hated to be the doubting Thomas, but I wasn't ready to go there, and neither was Kevin. We had our armadillo skins, and more important, we didn't want Anna to be set up for a crushing disappointment.

"I can't even think how that would work," he said to me that evening. "On a medical, physiological level-I'm trying to figure out what that would mean."

Sitting on a sofa in the living room, we looked out at the Gulf beyond the balcony. The kids had come in as dusk fell. I could hear the cousins laughing and playing out in the hall.

"Do you believe she really went there?" I asked.

"I believe she believes it," said Kevin. But then he squared his jaw and said, "Yes. I believe it."

"Me too."

We sat for a moment not knowing quite what to do with that.

"I guess we just let her digest the whole experience in her own way," he said.

"I agree. We just listen if she wants to talk about it again. Don't poke her for details or put any of our own ideas in her head. All that matters right now is that she's okay, and we take it one day at-"

"Anna!"

Before I even saw what he was seeing, Kevin was off the couch and out on the balcony, where Annabel was calmly strolling along the top of the railing as if it were a tightrope three stories above the patio pavement. In less than a moment, he'd hooked his arm around her waist and swept her off the railing into a bear hug. Clutching her against his chest, he stepped inside and slid the door shut while I stood frozen in front of the sofa, breathing her name, one hand pushed against my juddering heart, the other hand covering the knot in my stomach.

Kevin set her down and gripped her shoulders, making her look him in the face.

"Anna! What... what the h.e.l.l? What were you thinking? Why would you do that?"

"I was just playing." Anna tried to shrug and wriggle away, but he held her fast.

"Don't you ever do that again."

"Yes, sir," she said, avoiding his eyes.

"Never. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, I understand," she said, as if she was baffled that anyone would make such a big deal about such a little thing. She said it the way Abbie and her friends had recently begun saying the word "what-ever" as an exasperated comeback to just about anything.

"Anna," I managed, "go get cleaned up for dinner."

Chapter Nine.

But Jesus turning and seeing her said, "Daughter, take courage.

Your faith has made you well."

Matthew 9:22 WE LIVE IN A rural community outside a tiny town, so a little girl getting swallowed up by a tree was pretty big news. I wasn't surprised when I started getting voice mails about it, because the night of the whole tree thing, when I called Debbie to see if she could stay with Abbie and Adelynn, she said, "I just heard something on the radio about a little girl stuck inside a tree, and I immediately thought, I bet it's one of the Beam girls!' "

All the local news outlets reported on the incident. A crew from a local station came over to the house and shot all kinds of film for a segment featuring our family and a couple of the Briaroaks firefighters.

"Mommy, it's on! Daddy! Annabel! Abbie! We're on right after the commercial!" Adelynn summoned us all to the TV room. She couldn't wait to see herself in living color.

"It's on!" Adelynn read the headline with great dramatic flair: " Firefighters rescue child stuck inside a tree'!"

I pulled her onto my lap. "Is it recording? We need to record it for Gran Jan and P Paw."

"Yes! Now everybody shush!" Abbie snuggled close to Annabel in a big chair.

"Children have climbed these trees hundreds of times," said the reporter. The camera panned across the little grove and up, up, up into the branches of the cottonwood. "But they've never had a story like this when a giant cottonwood tree swallowed little Anna Beams."

A groan went up from the girls. "Beams? He said Beamzzz!"

They cut to a shot of our family just in time to show Adelynn dancing across the rug and hopping onto Kevin's lap, all decked out in her floaty mermaid princess sundress and tiara. With flip-flops. In January. That's our Adelynn.

I hadn't had time to coordinate anything in particular for anyone to wear. We just all looked like ourselves, and I kinda loved that. Abbie exuded her beautiful tweenage cool in skinny jeans, UGGs, and a yellow T-shirt with a selection of funky string bracelets. Annabel was demure and academic in a plaid school jumper and white blouse-but barefoot, of course. Kevin was fresh home from work in his ever-present surgical scrubs, and I was keeping up with everyone in mom jeans and sneakers and one of those quilted cool-weather vests (you know, the ones that look a little bit like a life preserver but are so comfy and functional, you don't want to take them off until Easter). I loved seeing us all snuggled together on the sofa: a beautiful, happy family. A happy, healthy family. That was the overall impression that blew my mind a little bit.

We were all smiling-including Anna.

In photos from the preceding three years, including pictures from the Happiest Place on Earth, Disney World, we are smiling-there's joy and laughter, for sure-but Anna's smile is wan at best, sometimes downright pained, and her eyes are underscored with dark circles. She was a naturally buoyant, happy kid, but there was always that shadow. It could be seen in those photos, and when I looked at her in that news segment, the shadow wasn't there.

"I tried to climb back outta there," said TV Anna, "but my feet slipped and I ended up going headfirst about thirty feet into the ground."

They cut to a shot of Abbie and a fireman by the tree.

"Abbie!" Adelynn clapped and laughed. "There's Abbie!"

"Shush, y'all!"

"Her sister Abbie still can't believe her little sister went through that hole, all the way to the base of the tree-and their mom couldn't believe it either..."

The segment went on with me saying something about Abbie shining her light down the tree and then cut back to the grove to show the neighbor's ladder and the hole in the tree.

"Mom and Dad tried to use their own ladder and rope, but after two hours, they finally decided to call 911, and the Briaroaks Fire Department answered the call."

"It wasn't two hours," I said. "What kinda parents would wait two hours to call 911?"

"The opening of the tree is like this," one of the firemen was saying, spanning his hands to show the approximate circ.u.mference of a manhole. "Certainly nothing any of us are gonna be able to go down into. None of us are gonna fit down this hole..."

"It took the entire department to find a solution," said the reporter. "The tree was too unstable for chain saws and no one knew how healthy Anna might be..."

I have to laugh when I think about that statement from the perspective where we are now. No one knew how healthy Anna might be? Understatement of the year, we would soon discover.

"Finally Cleburne Fire Department came in with a bigger ladder and pulley, and rescuers convinced Anna to tie her own harness."

"We were really worried about that," said the fireman. "We didn't know if she was gonna start going downhill and we'd have to do something more aggressive and immediate to get her out."

"Anna never panicked," the reporter cut in. "After blacking out at the bottom, she says she saw Heaven and knew she was safe when she saw the firefighters' rope."

"The only way I knew how to get out, what to grab ahold of," said TV Anna, "was because of my guardian angel's light."

In the real world, Kevin and I exchanged glances. We were surprised when Anna volunteered this information to the news crew, and truth be told, we had mixed feelings about them using it. We were being very circ.u.mspect about our reaction, simply listening to her without any big reaction one way or another. We didn't want her to feel pressured to embellish the story or to feel that the experience was any less meaningful as if it were just a dream.

On the flip side, we wanted her to know that we were prepared to take her at her word; no one who loved her was telling her that she was silly or crazy or that things like that just don't happen. In any case, it was immediately clear that this was a powerfully meaningful experience for her, and we wanted her to be able to sort through her feelings about it without any comments from the peanut gallery.

"And the firefighters have a story of their own."

"We were high-fiving and all that stuff, because this is a big day for us-well, for any fire department, really, but especially for a little volunteer fire department like us."

I'd missed that part, focused on my little family as Anna and I flew away that night, but Kevin had told me about the emotional response on the ground. A lot of gruff throat-clearing, while these burly firemen shook hands with him and slapped each other on the shoulders with tears in their eyes. I say a warm prayer of thanks every time I think about them-especially Tristan, who had refused to move from his perch, and Mike, who refused to even take a break or straighten his back for the two hours or so he was at the top of the ladder holding the flashlight on Anna and painstakingly bringing her out.

"Anna was kept overnight at the hospital with a possible concussion. Once her bruises heal, she says she'll head back to the woods."

"I love to climb trees," said TV Anna, "it's just-I'm not gonna listen to Abbie anymore!"

A warm chuckle went around the TV version of our living room, but my heart sank when I saw Abbie's face at the corner of the screen. Between that little ripple of laughter and the reporter's pithy wrap-up, there was a brief glimpse of Abbie, pain evident in her face, as she shrank away from her sister, who was still the center of attention.

When I tapped on her door at bedtime, she was still in a deep funk about it.

"Abbie, she didn't mean it the way it sounded," I told her.

"Well, it sounded like I tried to hurt her on purpose-like I'm the most horrible sister in the world, or I'm just stupid, and that's what everybody's going to think, Mommy, because it was on TV!"

"Well, then they're also going to think I sat there twiddling my thumbs for two hours instead of calling 911. How do you think that makes me feel?"

"It's not the same," Abbie said. "You didn't actually do that. I did tell her to step in there. And she could've gotten killed."

"Yes, she could have, Abbie, but she didn't. Instead, something miraculous and strange and terrifying and possibly wonderful happened, and I'm still trying to make sense of it, but whatever it was, Abigail, it was part of G.o.d's plan. And you were part of that plan. You were essential to that plan. G.o.d chose you to play that role. Because G.o.d knows your heart, sweet girl. He knew in that place and that moment, you would be smart enough to come up with that idea to get you both down off that branch, and He knew you'd be strong enough to tell her what to do, and He knew you'd be brave enough to own up to it and come get me when things went sideways."

She blocked my hug, arms locked tight in front of her.

"Abbie..." I sat on the bed and lifted her feet into my lap. "I remember one time when you were a very little girl, I found you sitting on the sofa crying your eyes out-half hysterical, crying-and I said, Oh, baby girl! What's the matter?' And you said, People are dying of cancer, Mommy, and I'm doing nothing about it! I'm not helping them!' I told your aunt Angie that, and we had to laugh, because it was so cute, but then I thought, wow, this itty-bitty girl has such a big heart for others. I love that. But you can't take on everything in the world like it depends on you, Abbie, because it doesn't. I hate to break it to you, sister, but sometimes it ain't about you."

Abbie's eyes brimmed with tears. "I would never hurt her, Mommy."

"I know that, Abbie. Don't latch on to that part about her big sister said this or that. I know your heart, and so does Annabel. And Daddy and Adelynn. Who cares about anybody else? Anybody who thinks you could hurt Annabel-well, they don't know you, so nuts to 'em."

Abbie didn't say anything, but I could see the gears turning.

"It might take her a while," I told Kevin as we lay in bed that night. "She's always taken on the role of protector and caregiver to her sisters. She's always this force of light and joy and good in the middle of all the heartache and struggle. I hate that it all turned around on her-through no fault of her own. It's just... what's that old saying? The road to h.e.l.l is paved with good intentions.' "

"Road to Heaven, in this case," he said sleepily.

"Don't joke."

"Has she said anything else to you about all that?"

"No," I said, "but I was walking by Adelynn's room earlier, and Adelynn was asking her something about it, and I heard Anna tell her, It was a strange and wonderful experience.' Strange and wonderful. That's what she said."

"Well. Let's just keep an eye on her," Kevin said. "See how it goes."

This was easier said than done. Anna had a lot more energy than she'd had in quite a while, and she seemed determined to test the boundaries of G.o.d's hand and my patience. I'm all about the Texas tomboy country kids, but she was pushing it with risk-taking behavior that had us genuinely concerned. First there was that horrifying moment on the balcony at Nonny's. After the holidays, on the school playground, instead of swinging on the swings, she'd climbed up and strolled along the crossbar like it was the balance beam at gymnastics. She didn't try the cottonwood tree again, but she made her way up just about every other tree on the property. I'd be in the field below, scolding and cajoling her to come down, and by the time she was finally back on solid ground, I'd be so frustrated, I didn't know whether to hug her or swat her on the backside.

We stuck to the plan, though, keeping an eye on her, listening, being available to her without nudging. Every once in a while, she'd make some oblique, offhand comment-like that "strange and wonderful experience" comment to Adelynn-but it was months before she brought it up with me again. One afternoon when the house was quiet and I was sitting at the computer answering e-mail, she sat down beside me. She didn't say anything, but I could feel her wanting to.

"I sure was scared when you fell down in that tree," I said without looking up. "I still think about it sometimes." I pecked away at my e-mail for another minute. "Do you still think about it? That must have been incredibly scary for you."

"It was," she said. "I was really scared, and I was wondering how they were going to get me out. I'm glad I'm a very calm person. I'm not afraid of small s.p.a.ces. I'm glad of that because if I was claustrophobic-and that means you don't like small s.p.a.ces-I would have maybe stressed myself out, and it would have been even harder for them to get me out."

"When you were trying to just step in the opening," I said, "why didn't you step in feetfirst?"

"I tried to! I tried to go in feetfirst, but it had just rained a few days before, so the dirt inside the tree had turned to mud. I was holding on to a piece of wood on the edge, and it snapped, and my feet went over my head, and I hit my head three times on the way down. I was really glad that I didn't break my neck."

"Me too!"

I kept typing, taking down her words now.

"When you fell," I said, "did you kind of slide down gradually or did you just go flying down?"

"I guess it was sort of in the middle. I started out sliding, and then it was like wheeesh-BAM! It's done."