An update on Miracle survivor, MacKenzie Grace Hollister, who suffered brain and physical damage after nearly freezing to death when she was two years old, and her continuing journey towards normalcy.
Heather Hollister is my name, and I am married to Chuck Ryan, my husband; and we have two beautiful children, Gage, who is now one and a half, and MacKenzie Grace, who is four years old. We seem to be a happy family by all standards, but when you first see our daughter, and the sadness in our faces, you will know that we are anything BUT normal.
MacKenzie has been through so much since wandering outside when she was two years old; and because of it, she is not the same little girl. She is now disabled, both mentally and physically, and she is now in a wheelchair and can't talk; and it breaks my heart because it was something we could have prevented, and for a while, Chuck and I were on the verge of seperating because he couldn't deal with our daughter's problems or the stress. But we have since reconciled, and we are now back together, trying to pick up where we left, and trying to make life a little easier for our daughter. There is some talk that she may be able to walk by the end of the year, and she has been making strides in her physical and occupational therapies; but time will only tell before whether this will become a reality; and she has also been having speech therapy, but so far hasn't said anything other than a soft "Mama".
Gage has gotten used to his sister and her wheelchair; but I am sure that, somewhere in his young little mind, he is feeling sad because his big sister can't play with him, and this must bother him. He was adopted too; he came from Guatemala, and he has grown into a beautiful young boy with dark tan skin, wavy, black hair, and huge, dark eyes. Our daughter, meanwhile, was adopted from China shortly before she wandered outside, and she is a little looker herself with her dark, silky-straight black hair done up in pigtails, slanting brown eyes, and chubby, yellow-tanned face; but people feel uncomfortable with her whenever they see her wheelchair or her braces, and they feel uncomfortable because some of them knew Mackie before her accident. Now whenever they see her, they feel sad and turn away because the memories are just too painful for them to deal with.
One of the ways we have managed to get through the worst of times is through the prayers and support of our church family at Christ Community Assembly of God. If it were not for the prayer team or the support and love from our pastor, Bruce Bilkey, and his wife, Toni, we would probably have never made it as far as we have. We probably would have never been able to get through the dark times when little Mackie was still in her coma and then emerged, a shell of her former self, and then the long, arduous physical and occupational therapies, or the long recovery process, and then, finally, the acceptance of the fact that our daughter would never probably be the same.
God has been good to our family, even when Mackie was so sick and was lying unresponsive and hooked up to tubes in the hospital; and He brought her back; and now we are starting to see glimpses of the old MacKenzie Grace in her brief, tentative smiles, or the momentary flashes of recognition in her eyes whenever we come into a room; and see her grinning at us. Still, she has a very long road ahead of her, and we are hopeful that she will get back some of what she had lost before she nearly froze to death, and we are hopeful that she will become a productive member of society, even with her disabilities! Most of all, we are just grateful that she survived, and that she is slowly starting to come back to us; and we are hopeful that she will learn to walk and talk again.
Spoken Word
This CD will touch the deepest inner part of your humanness and spirit, you will never be the same after listening to the depths of struggle, the reality of life, the touching voice of truth. It will shock you, move you to tears. It w
Spoken Word
This CD will touch the deepest inner part of your humanness and spirit, you will never be the same after listening to the depths of struggle, the reality of life, the touching voice of truth. It will shock you, move you to tears. It w
Rovella is a beautiful woman with a cold heart whom blames herself for an unfortunate old family secret that is literally ruining her life. This secret impedes a gorgeous woman from having happiness in her childhood, and throughout her life. Dark sec
