November 4, 2002
WALKING BY FAITH:
UMHB student Brentney Feild
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___BELTON--Brentney Feild wasn't supposed to walk again.
___Now, she's planning a return to the life she loves as a cheerleader.
___The 22-year-old senior at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor believes God has worked a miracle in her body and in her spirit in the three months since she was thrown from a 15-passenger van on a stretch of Alabama highway.
___Feild, a member of First Baptist Church of Lampasas, was traveling the country this summer with a team of Christian Cheerleaders of America, conducting cheerleading clinics for youth.
___In the early morning hours of July 20,en route to a clinic in North Carolina, her summer of adventure came to an abrupt halt. She and four other passengers were thrown from the van after a rear tire blew and the van flipped eight times.
WHEN she was first taking steps again and still used a wheelchair for longer distances, Brentney Feild addressed fellow students at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor.(UMHB photo)
___Only the driver, 22-year-old Cory Smith, was not thrown from the vehicle. Nevertheless, he suffered multiple lacerations and bruises.
___Two of the cheerleaders were killed, 24-year-old Adam Kellerman and 17-year-old Tina Maciasz.
___Feild and two others sustained critical injuries but are recovering.
___When Feild was removed from the scene of the accident, she was paralyzed from the middle of her chest down. Her sixth vertebrae was crushed.
___Laying there half-conscious, she thought she would die. Even so, she said, she felt a remarkable peace about her condition due to her faith in God through Jesus Christ.
___The extent of her injuries proved a blessing, because she could not feel pain.
___Another blessing, she noted in retrospect, was that the accident occurred just 15 minutes away from the University of Alabama at Birmingham Medical Center, the only Level 1 trauma center in the region.
___And that was only the beginning of what some people might consider coincidences but Feild and her family consider miracles from God.
___The radio built in to her hospital bed played only one station, a Christian music station. When a nurse heard the station coming through clearly, she told the family that was unusual because the bed radios normally don't work and the station they were hearing has such a weak signal that most people in Birmingham can't pick it up even in their cars.
___Then there's the series of incidents related to Psalm 91, a Scripture that brought Feild great comfort throughout her ordeal.
___A card arrived in the mail from a friend at UMHB. On that card were words from Psalm 91. Later, a nurse came into her room and saw her crying. He went to get a Bible and came back to comfort her by reading from it. The passage he chose to read was Psalm 91.
___A few days later, a chaplain came to see her. The chaplain asked Feild if she had any favorite verse. Feild told her to just pick a verse and read it. The chaplain chose Psalm 91 and read it as a prayer for Feild: "He who dwells in the shelter of the most high will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, 'He is my refuge and fortress, my God, in whom I trust.'"
___ A friend called in the middle of the night and, without prompting, read Psalm 91 to her. Cards poured in to the hospital room, most of them with words from Psalm 91.
___After Feild was moved from Birmingham to Austin for rehabilitation, a stranger walked in her room one morning and announced: "I am a prayer warrior. I have been praying for you ever since your accident. I've been praying Psalm 91 over you since the accident."
___That made a believer out of Feild, who now says she has "claimed that psalm as mine."
___Another incident Feild sees as evidence of God's care involves the journey of her mother's suitcase from Texas to Alabama. Because of the haste in which her mother went to the hospital, she needed another suitcase delivered.
___Through some family connections, the suitcase was supposed to be delivered with the help of one of her mother's friends. The line of contact, however, stretched from the friend to her son to his girlfriend to the girlfriend's dad and then a brother.
___The brother walked into Feild's hospital room, looked at her and said, "Do I know you?"
___As it turns out, he did. He and Feild had met two years earlier at a party in Belton--a party Feild had not wanted to attend but at which she had met this young man and talked with him about recommitting his life to Christ.
___Their conversation at the party had been cut off abruptly, and he left without settling the spiritual matters they had discussed.
___In her hospital room more than 600 miles away from where they had first met, Feild again discussed spiritual matters with the acquaintance. That day, he recommitted his life to Christ.
___Feild's miraculous recovery has changed her family in another way. Her father, who had been away from the church and beset by significant personal problems, started changing his life. He's changed his behavior, begun reading the Bible and praying regularly and started attending church.
___"He called me in last night and read a Bible verse to me," Feild said with amazement during a recent interview. "This is a huge answer to prayer."
___Given events such as these, it should be no surprise that Feild has defied doctors' predictions about recovery from her own injuries, she said.
___"The doctor looked me right in the eye and said, 'You are paralyzed and will never walk again,'" she recalled.
___Feild and her mother both were determined that would not be the case, however. And within a month, she was beginning to walk.
___One day, she felt sensation in her little toe. The next day she could lift her foot. Then each day after, she regained a bit more feeling and use of her right foot and legs.
___Today, she continues in rehabilitation and is able to walk slowly with only minimal aid.
___She is recovering well from back surgery also. A titanium rod was inserted in her spine between vertebrae T2 and T10.
___Now she has her sights set on returning to cheerleading.
___When she does, an enthusiastic message of God's power to heal and to provide for every need will tumble out also.
___That's a message she's already given a number of places, including a chapel service at UMHB and before other youth groups.
___The heart of her message is a wake-up call to youth who think nothing bad can happen to them and that they have plenty of time to get right with God.
___"Kids think they have all the time in the world," she said. "I tell them: 'You don't have all the time in the world. You are not invincible.'"
___She also attempts to answer one of life's hardest questions.
___"Why does God let bad things happen to good people?" she wonders, then answers: "God has a bigger plan."
___
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