Part 10 (1/2)
”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 s.h.i.+ning 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 s.h.i.+mmering 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 s.h.i.+nny 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.