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amazing story

Brittany Has a Deathbed Visitor

By Amy Reid and Tim Branson
The 700 Club

CBN.com Brittany Bakenhaster was a precocious 3-year-old. She sang a lot in church. She knew her ABC’s. She knew Bible scripture and loved life, full of life. That all changed one morning when her mother Jamie heard a strange noise coming from Brittany’s room.

“It was a biting and almost choking noise. Like a gurgling, can’t breathe, struggling,” Jamie said. “And I ran to her. I immediately picked her up and said, ‘Oh, God, touch her.’”
 
Brittany was having a grand mal seizure.  Her parents rushed her to the doctor and Brittany was diagnosed with epilepsy, a condition all too familiar to Jamie.

“I understood it, because I had them myself. And I thought she would be just like me. I’d get her on medicine and everything would be all right,” Jamie said.

It wasn’t that simple. Brittany’s doctors started her on the first of many medications, but the seizures just got worse.

young Brittany“She couldn’t sit up and she couldn’t look at me to focus; and when I’d call her name she was just totally out of it, just totally gone,” Jamie said.

“As a mother you feel so responsible. They’re your flesh; they’ve lived in you. And when she would pull at me to help her and I couldn’t,” Jamie said. “I blamed myself a lot; I thought, ‘I’ve given my daughter this sickness.’”

Over the course of the next two years, Brittany’s illness took its toll on her parents.

“Physically, spiritually, mentally, emotionally, even financially,” Jamie said. “One bottle of medication would cost $50 and we couldn’t afford it.”

“She needed 24 hour-a-day care. It didn’t matter if it was night or day, the seizures continued,” said Bruce, Brittany’s father.

Her seizures got so bad that Brittany had to wear a helmet to keep her from injury. Her parents found comfort in God’s word.

“God gave me my promise in Psalm 37:4, 5. He said, ‘Delight thyself also in the Lord and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart,’” Jamie said. “God said, ‘Don’t look at what you see, look at what you don’t see. Tell me and speak what you want.’”

“I put her in the car and started down the road and I ended up at a school playground.  And I said, ‘God, that’s what I want. I want my little girl back, normal, like those kids I see that are running and playing. And He said, ‘It will come to pass,’” Jamie said.

On the outside, things just got worse.

“She had been in the hospital for almost three weeks and they had tried everything; there was nothing else to try,” Jamie said.

“They ran one more brainwave and they said, ‘Her whole brain is seizureing, so we can’t even take out that part of her brain or put a shunt in to help her; there’s nothing else we can do.’ They just said let her go home where she’ll be more peaceful in her own bed. 
I knew she was close to death. But I thought, ‘Lord, you said you would bring it to pass,'” Jamie said.

Jamie spent a sleepless night praying for her daughter’s recovery. In the morning, Brittany began to speak.

“She kept saying, ‘Jesus, Jesus.’ And I could tell from the look on her face. Well, she’s responding and she hasn’t responded or talked to me in a good year at all. So when she could look at me and describe Jesus, with eyes like fire and the bright lights and the angels; who could tell a five-year-old child that? I knew that she had encountered Christ,” Jamie said.  

They took Brittany back to the doctor.

“They just looked at her and they said the same thing, that they saw the healing in her eyes,” Jamie said. “They just knew. One of the nurses said, ‘It’s a higher power.’ And I said ‘Yes, it’s Jesus. He healed her.”

A couple of months after Brittany was healed, Jamie began having headaches.

“My doctor thought it was just the stress I went through, but every time I’d take my medicine, my headaches would be stronger,” Jamie said.

Jamie’s neurologist performed an EEG and found out why.

“He said, ‘A miracle has taken place. Your brainwave’s now clear. Would you like to come off your medicine?’ And sure enough I did. I have been seizure free and drug free for 18 years,” Jamie said.
 
Brittany is now in college, studying to be a psychologist. She still loves to sing in church. And she still remembers her encounter with Jesus Christ.Brittany Bakenhaster

“The glory of God shone all around Him and angels were all around Him, in front, behind, everywhere,” Brittany said. “And you just felt so peaceful, so at ease. All I can say is there’s nothing like it and I’ve never experienced anything like it on this earth.”

Today, Brittany and her mother are both completely healthy.

“God kept his promise,” Jamie said. “And he will. And he does.”

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