What's your prognosis?

For the past couple of weeks, Macayla has struggled with her walking. She cannot walk on her own, but we have been able to assist her by holding her up and allowing her to make the walking motion with her legs. We have a gate trainer, but this has had minimal success with her. This is a device that resembles a walker that babies use when they are learning to walk, but it’s made for larger children. With our assistance, she only shuffles at best and for just a few steps. Her therapist got her to walk better on Wednesday by using a slightly different technique. I tried to learn this technique, but have yet to be consistently successful.
All of this to say, Macayla seems to be losing another ability. It is these times that we are reminded of where this is headed. We know what the prognosis is. It will be vegetative and fatal. The word prognosis is from Greek and the “pro” means prior or before and the “gnosis” means knowledge. We have prior knowledge of what will happen. We know what will happen, but that doesn’t prepare me for the grief of watching it happen. That prior knowledge is not a bypass for pain and grief. This is also on top of Macayla’s strange “episodes” that may be seizure activity where she seems to have rigid and repetitive movements accompanied by vocal outbursts and sometimes laughing. Our prior knowledge of symptoms does not compare to the actual experience. I went to a funeral this week for a young teenage boy who died suddenly. I know we will have a funeral for Macayla one day, but as I looked at those parents, I was reminded that there is no preparation for burying your child.I know more abilities will be lost. I know we have new types of seizures to experience. I know we will have feeding tube problems. I know we will have blindness. I know we have a funeral to plan. But I believe in another prognosis. I believe that Christ has her. I received that prognosis before we got our diagnosis. That prior knowledge tells me that Macayla will be with our Lord and she will be whole. She will be kept safe and will experience love and healing in its fullness. But between now and heaven, it means that we will experience Christ in our lives through all of this. A guy named Paul once wrote, “We grieve, but not as those without hope.” Hope is stirred by some sort of evidence. Christ makes himself evident in the midst of our grief through Macayla, Jacob, Jennifer, and so many people around us. Our prognosis tells us that Macayla’s life will and is impacting people around her and at the end of this phase of the journey she will be with Christ for eternity. Because of the fact that I have trusted Christ as my Lord, I have the same prognosis. The good news is that eternity has already started. Here again, the prognosis does not compare to the actual experience. I hope all who read this have the same prognosis as us.