“MOMMY IT HURTS!”
Whether you’ve experienced this in your own life or watched it on the big screen like I did, it is rather excruciating to see and hear a child scream those words in agony. What is even more frustrating is constantly having to travel from doctor to doctor in the hopes that your child will find her miracle physician, when, in the farthest part of your mind, you hold onto the terrifying truth that your little girl is probably not going to survive her rare disorder:
“We’re unclear about obstruction . . . your daughter’s gonna die,” is what the doctors told Christy Beam (played by Jennifer Garner) after diagnosing her daughter Anna (played by Kylie Rodgers) with pseudo-obstruction motility disorder, a rare condition that affects the gastrointestinal system, in the movie Miracles from Heaven.
In the film, 10-year-old Annabel Beam and her mother spend nearly all of their time trying to find the right doctor who can heal Anna of her incurable condition, which inflicted the girl with routine vomiting, relentless and unbearable pain, and, to ice the cake, a pregnant-like belly that restricted her from wearing her usual clothes. And to make matters worse, little Anna couldn’t even eat normal food with her family during mealtime, but instead had to take several pills round the clock––which would only provide an insignificant amount of relief––while sitting around with tubes stuffed up her nose.
What I find to be really remarkable about little Anna is her rather large “childlike” faith. As a viewer, it was really difficult to watch this little girl suffer and to witness the burden––emotional, spiritual, and financial–– that the entire ordeal had placed upon her family. I’m a sucker for kids and for pain, so watching a film about a kid in pain was quite the emotional rollercoaster for me. Yet in the midst of her trials and tribulations, Annabel didn’t lose her faith.
There came a time when Anna was sick in her hospital bed that she’d been in for days, when she looked over at her mom and said that she wanted to die. At first, this really shocked me. I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like for a 10 year old to want to die, and for a mother to have to hear her child say such a thing. How did she even know what wanting to die meant? But then Anna followed her remark with, “I wanna go to Heaven where there’s no pain,” and it clicked. This was no ordinary little girl. This, instead, was a girl who knew that there was more to life than just vomiting and waiting for the mandatory four hour interval to end so that she could get her next fix of painkillers. This, instead was the type of child that I had read about in scriptures. Anna was not afraid of death because she knew that if it were for her, it could only lead to life, and this is what gave her peace through it all.
Her mother, Christy Beam, was not nearly as strong in the faith during the time of hardship. Unlike Anna, Christy had become entirely self-sufficient as a means of solving her daughter’s problems. She wanted answers and she wanted them now. Relying on faith, the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen, in a time like this was just not at the top of her to-do list. Her primary concern was finding a solution––for her daughter’s affliction, to the debt they had acquired, and for her life. And if that solution wasn’t made manifest in her own timing, well then she wasn’t believing!
Now, as much as I may have shaken my head in that theater at Christy’s faithlessness, I’m not going to sit here and pretend I’ve never been there before! Faith is not easy. It’s a very hard thing to hold onto during pressing times, especially since it’s not something that we can actually physically hold! As a mom, it was only normal for Christy to panic and worry about the family’s growing medical bills and her daughter’s incurable illness. Everything had started going wrong, and it was all so sudden. So when she yelled the words, “I don’t have faith about anything. I can’t even pray,” to her cool, calm, collective, and faith having husband, I got it. I understood completely.
You see, Christy’s problem was more than just not having faith. In fact, she did have faith, but she had it only in herself. So when she realized her situation was bigger than her, it was easy for her to give up and let it beat her up––something I’ve fallen victim to on many accounts. But it was always in those moments when I felt bullied and defeated by my circumstances that I realized I needed to get my act together and toughen up, and the only way I could ever do that was through faith and prayer.
Towards the end of the movie, little Anna does ends up getting healed of the unhealable, but only through a miraculous event. She was climbing a tree with her big sister, Abby, like she always had before she got sick. It was probably the first normal kid thing that Anna had done in a long time. Just when she and her sister were finally having fun together again, the tree branch starts to snap, and, like any caring and protective older sibling, Abby tries to rescue Anna first by telling her to go stay in the hole of the tree’s trunk, thinking it would be safer there. The attempt at climbing to safety quickly turns tragic for the girls as Anna plunges 30 feet, head first, inside of the trunk of the tree (which had been hollowed out as it was rotting without the family’s knowledge).
Now, this all sounds pretty dramatic and theatrical, but it’s a surprisingly true story. Of course, at this point, big sister Abby is terrified and frantically notifies her mother of what had happened. After about three hours of trying, firemen are finally able to pull out Anna’s unconscious and scratched up body from the tree.
This scene definitely made me tense. I mean, Anna was already very fragile and her overly bloated belly (not to mention her gastrointestinals) could not risk being tossed aggressively into any sort of pit! She just got released from the hospital, she’s been fighting so hard for her life, and now this fall is definitely going to be it for her, is what I imagine went through her parents’ minds––or at least it’s what went through my own mind! Her mom Christy didn’t seem to really have anything going through her mind for the first three hours of the rescue. In fact, she kind of just stood there in shock with her hand over her mouth as she watched the firemen perform the rescue. And after about three hours, everything finally clicked for her! She had come back to her senses and when she did, it was powerful. After waking from what seemed like a trance, Christy ran to the trunk of the tree, places her hands on it and started praying––so hard, so fervently, and so faithfully. It was like all the faith she had let go of during Anna’s hospital days had come rushing in on this one moment. She was finally herself again.
And once doctors had examined Anna after her fall, they let her go saying that she had no bruises or broken bones, and that she had woken up “with a smile on her face.”
Pause.
She fell 30 feet head first into a pit! And no bones were broken? This was nothing short of a miracle, but it wasn’t the miracle. See, after her fall, Anna went back home to live her her life. She was energetic and playing outside again and hadn’t complained about being in pain. And when her mom noticed her stomach bloat had gone back to being just a flat belly, she freaked. Anna had been healed of the very condition that doctors confirmed would kill her! Her doctors were now saying that it was like her “software had been reset!”
“Mom, stop acting so weird . . . He told me I’d be fine . . . that I needed to come back and that I’d be healed.” Classic faith-having Anna! This was all so normal to her!
It turns out Anna had gone to Heaven and back while she was in and out of consciousness inside of the dark, muddy tree. She was in the presence of her Savior, completely free of pain, and she “knew [she] was safe.” While the Annabel in the movie didn’t go too in depth about her heavenly experience, the real life Anna Beam shares in her interview with LIFE Today, as well her short documentary on the 700 Club, what it was like being in a place of no pain, but of complete fullness, joy, and peace.
In the end, Anna’s miraculous story gets covered by their local news station and tons of people in the area are affected by it. Christy even shares her own testimony in church and tells of how the entire journey had opened her eyes to all of the goodness and life around her, and how it brought her back. But this Christy isn’t the only person who was brought back to the faith. In fact, after filming the movie, actress Jennifer Garner explains how spending time with the actual Anna and Christy Beam and seeing them have such a love and zeal for life has encouraged her to start going back to church! The cycle just keeps getting better!
From both the movie and her actual story, my best take away from Anna is this: in the midst of her pain, she never let her circumstances bully her out of her faith. Staying true to what you know is true is so incredibly vital to getting through any hard time. This is something I’ve only recently come to know. I definitely was not as strong in my faith as Anna is when I was a kid, but I am very glad to know that there are kids out there who are as passionate and as strong as this remarkable young girl!
Miracles from Heaven has shown me how powerful and important our testimonies can be. People see your situations and, most importantly, they see how you handle them. The way that you live, the way that you view the world can either uplift and encourage someone else who is in a rut, or discourage them from ever walking in hope. If little Anna was able to impact others with her view on life, you can as well!
I guess having “faith like a child,” means that we should all live with the hope and expectancy that things will turn out just fine. And for all of the Christys out there living with constant worry and anxiety over your situation, the real life Anna wants to tell you that, “He’s not just forgetting about you and He really does know about you . . . and care, and He has a plan . . . you have to keep faith.”
