I’m nearly swallowed whole as we start 2019 two weeks ago. (Two weeks?! Feels like a whole term!) Kiara is back in the mix with her sister and brothers, sitting around the dining room table and getting on with Grade 8. Absolute values and negative numbers are followed by Organic Chemistry, and even a bit of Zulu. She concentrates all morning, speeding through her schoolwork with her usual determination and focus, and by lunchtime each day she has completed her work. I watch her face closely, but she doesn’t seem tired. She’s off to ballet with her old class.
By the end of each day I expect her to collapse, but she asks to play the brain challenge app recommended by the O.T. Her scores given by this comprehensive app place her skills as above average compared to others her age in the world. She’s in the 95th percentile for Problem Solving, 98th percentile for Attention, 80th for Memory and 68th for Speed. By this week, as she’s verbally relaying to me everything she has been learning and reading at school, I listen carefully for deficits in her brain function, and find myself finding nothing.
The plasters are off! Kiara has had her first shower this year! It has been a milestone we’ve both been longing for. Countless times, I stood in that shower, warm water washing tears off my face as I prayed for the day she would be able to stand and shower independently, with no idea if that day would ever arrive. I prayed that she would learn to shave her legs in there, that she would wash her beautiful hair again.
God has done this and it is marvelous in our eyes.
A few skeptics have started to emerge, and who can blame them? What eyes have seen or ears have heard of the likes of this miracle that has happened while thousands looked on? The tens of thousands prayed with faith, but yet the unexpected ‘yes’ surprised us all. I myself can’t help replaying the doctors words, relooking at the brain scans, and wondering how it could be.
Why would God do this for us? We don’t understand his ways. But we know that he is not done. He’s not done with Kiara, and he’s not done with you! He brings life in abundance into every area of our lives. The more we surrender, the more his life is free to flow. As always, we continue to plant our hope in our future glory, trusting God through the death and pain of this world. And yet, as always, life trickles from the future into the ‘Now’, and we become stewards of heaven on earth.