B V O V
:
1 1
by Melanie Hemry
As far as Lynette could fi gure, her faithful
attendance at church began nine months
before she'd been born. Her dad was a
deacon and leader in their denominational
congregation. They always arrived early. Her
dad had meetings afterward, so they left about
two hours after service ended.
Not that Lynette minded. She loved her
parents so much that, as a child, she'd formed an
opinion that anyone who believed di erently
was just wrong. She'd never questioned that
judgment.
She loved the way her parents loved God.
She loved their wisdom. The day her fi ancé
had broken o their engagement, she'd rushed
home and fallen into her father's strong
arms. Brokenhearted and sobbing, she'd been
stunned at what he said.
"We prayed him out of your life."
Looking back, she could only thank God for
that.
Waking up, the sun shone in Lynette's eyes.
At that moment, she lost consciousness and
su ered convulsions. Her frantic parents
stopped the car. They knew what it was. A
grand mal seizure. Her great-grandmother had
a history of epilepsy. So did her aunt.
This wasn't Lynette's fi rst. At 9 years old,
she'd been at vacation Bible school making a
craft project of tie-dyed T-shirts. Pausing a
moment to look up at the sun, she had a seizure.
Back then, all the tests came back normal. The
doctor told her parents to bring her back if she
had another one.
This time the results did not come back
normal. She was diagnosed with photosensitive
epilepsy.
A Questioning Mind
"I was diagnosed with epilepsy in 1996,"
Lynette remembers. "I was put on medication
to control the seizures. Within two months, I
met Keith Miller at college. We started dating
and really liked one another. Keith had been
raised in the same denomination I was. Then
his parents started listening to some guy
named Kenneth Copeland. That's when they
switched to Pentecostal churches.
"That was awkward territory for me. I
believed that any man whose teaching could
pull a family out of the right denomination was
just wrong. I thought he was a quack.
"I've always been a very collegiate kind
of person. I like to dig through the Bible and
search out truth. I earned a bachelor's degree
in ancient civilizations, especially Greece
and Rome. I enjoy things that require a lot of
research. I'm willing to accept truth when I see
it in the Bible. Until then, I'm the heckler in a
crowd.
"When I told Keith about my diagnosis, his
response was not what I expected."
"You know you can be healed of that, right?"
Sometimes obeying
God runs contrary to our
natural inclination. I had an idea
of how to handle our fi nances,
but God showed me
a different way.
