Something about K

     People remember McKala.  Today she was told her childhood librarian mentioned her lately.  I was on the phone this past week with our newly elected NC State Representative.  Her granddaughter played basketball with McKala, and Rep. Turner called her by name.  I know some are just good with names, but McKala has a presence that leaves people with an impression.  She is immovable.  She is someone whom everyone can depend on.  She means what she says and backs it up. 

     She rubs some people wrong.  I've narrowed it down to the reflection they get of themselves when mirrored off her.  She has no trouble believing The Word of God.  She has no trouble defending it.  Her confidence can portray itself as arrogance.  Grace isn't easy for everyone.  Truth be told, it's awfully difficult to be grace"full" with people who have it all and are in irreverent disregard of God's ways and blessings.

     She cuts to the chase.  She works hard.  She can do more than most grown women are capable of or willing to do.  She's a rock.  But every now and then, she confuses her opinions, right as they may be, with moral grounds.  She got on one of those kicks last week and I cut her down to size.  In so doing, I said I thought with all she'd been through, she'd have done away with that.   I don't know exactly how I put it, but she was left feeling like I said she's deserved to be so sick, as if she's gain no humility from it.  She's cried more than once over it since, which is hard for me to witness because I know how much gravity it must hold to happen.

     To the left, sleeping with her dying calf under a heat lamp, in the fall of 2011, she lost 3 of her 4 calves she'd bought. She suffered right alongside them.  In the spring of 2012, she was First Base for her travel softball team.  Their sponsorship fell through and she lost something else she cherished.  Those same months she raised money and prepared to volunteer at Uplands Reach last summer.  It's a Christian camp, not your run of the mill, but with high behavioral and work ethics.  She's always loved horses and was to help be in charge of them; I'm not sure she'd ever been that excited about anything.  They'd even mentioned sending her out West for extensive training.

     She was put on an inhaler in late 2011.  I was shocked that it wasn't a "passing thing".  McKala was born strong.  She even had hamstring muscles when she was a toddler.  She literally only got sick about half the times that the other kids did.  I began to wonder if she'd contracted something from the calves and had her tested for Tb.  I still wonder, just like I do about whether or not Macklynn had West Nile Virus when he was paralyzed (afterall they'd just left The Florida Keys).  She knew she was already declining in softball before it ended, but held high hopes for camp.

     We didn't know that it would rain almost daily the summer of 2012.  We didn't know she was allergic to mold and how much she'd be exposed to, and that we'd also find it at home.  We didn't know it would take such a toll that they would find one of their hardest workers all but passed out in front of the fans for the horse ring.  We didn't know that her oxygen levels would drop and drive up her pulse.   We didn't know that she'd have to come home. 

     One of the camp owners had taken me aside and told me how different McKala was.  She told her later that she compares her in character to her own daughter.  This is what McKala wanted to do with her life.  Instead, she was on bed rest (sleeping over 15 hours a day) while we waited, as Mike was losing his business, for Medicaid to kick in so that she could be tested.
     Sure enough, she's become allergic to a good many things, thankfully not to the animals themselves.  She showed improvement once she was on a course of medicines.  In December though, the whole family came down with something, which we now firmly believe was The Whooping Cough.  Don't confuse that with The Croup.  I mean "The Whooping Cough".  No one was well again until February.  McKala took the brunt of it.  There were nights that she would wake up coughing so violently that she would vomit and the pressure would cause her nose to bleed.  It was pitiful.  We were told she had pneumonia. 
     Of course, she relapsed in progress after missing her allergy shots for 6 weeks because of her weakened state.  Then in March during a consultation, I insisted on more blood work but not for what we found.  She tested positive for Walking Pneumonia.  It disguises its mutated self as a virus; therefore, customary antibiotics don't destroy it and if left undetected, it has the ability to kill.
     The suspicion is that she's had it since December.  She was given 2 antibiotics.  One has 2 weeks left.   I told a couple of people tonight that I'm about ready to have her anointed with oil.  It is Biblical, you know.  
     You see, there's no way she "deserved" this.  That's like saying the 19 month old child we know deserves her brain cancer.  We all learn through suffering, but what McKala has taught us is how to suffer well.  She is Philippians 4: 11-13.  The doctor has to prod her with questioning to get details.  She's smiling when she must feel like her world is caving.

     Guess what, her testimony is stronger for it.  She put in writing herself.  Her empathy for others is stronger.  There's no possible way to know others' pain without going through it.  Her will is stronger.  Satan would have her lame and useless.  She won't settle for that destiny. 

      Before, she would walk faster than us all.  She could raise the roof with her voice.  She'd volunteer in a heartbeat for a good cause.   She'd love babies and children until there were no more.  She'd cook and clean to perfection.  She'd enjoy weed eating and all the great outdoors.  She always, since she was little, got up first and got dressed nicely for the day.  She's always smiled and been resilient to no end.  And some people can't stand her for it.  But I know the image they see of themselves when projected off her.  God is in her, plain and simple.

     She's lost her efficacy at most things, yet there is a young man who has grown to love her for her heart in midst of her sickness.  It gives definition to "in sickness and in health".  He's known her in health also; he's been a family friend since she was 7 years old.  They talk of their future.  He's asked her to his senior prom.  She has something to be excited about again.   For most of us, "The Prom" is nothing more than an opportunity to get away with the worst, but for McKala it will be a time to shine, to be prim and proper, or silly and sassy.  Whatever it is for her, I thank him for it ...and for loving my daughter, when so many things she loves have slipped through her fingers.  And I can't blame him; there's something about K. 
     And for you, K, "Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." ~ Philippians 1:6.