Miraculous healing

Campus Band member Lydia Disher was almost declared deaf as a child

It was two years before Lydia Disher’s parents realized she was not talking, making noises, or responding to them the way most two-year-olds should. What they did not know at the time but was that Disher had been born deaf.

After realizing this, the doctors performed several surgeries to try to give Disher at least some hearing. They were successful in giving her 15 percent in her left ear by placing a tube in it and for the time being, this worked.

“I couldn’t hear many frequencies,” Disher said. “So I couldn’t hear music and loud noises and stuff like that. Basically I could just hear you if you got up right next to my ear and talked to me.”

But her hearing took a turn for the worst when she was almost 8 years old. Her parents found her one night in her bedroom, holding her head, crying and asking God to take the pain away. After taking her to the doctor, the family learned that the scar tissue from previous surgeries was crushing and covering the tube in Disher’s ear.

There was nothing more the doctors could do. Disher and her parents were told to start preparing for the fact that in six months, Disher’s hearing would be completely gone. The verdict was clear — from then on she would be deaf.

Then one Sunday, Disher’s dad, a pastor, gave a sermon from James chapter five, which encourages those who are sick to come before the elders and ask for prayer for healing. Disher asked her dad if he thought the elders could do that for her.

“I was on this ugly paisley covered couch in my parents living room,” Disher recalled. “I just remember being surrounded by a group of men and they anointed me and they prayed over me and I went to sleep, woke up the next morning, didn’t really notice any difference and then I went to the hearing test place again.”

The hearing center was where she would go for periodic tests that marked how rapidly she was losing her hearing. The doctors would place large headphones over her ears and tell her to press a button every time she heard a sound.

The next day after the prayer meeting, Disher remembers hitting the button a lot more than normal. The doctor, who was a different doctor than their usual one and was unaware of her story, brought out the results and informed Disher and her mom that he was not sure why the tests had been ordered. Everything seemed to be fine and Disher had 100 percent hearing in
both ears.

As Disher and her mom left the doctors that day to go home and share the miraculous news, Amy Grant’s “Big Yellow Taxi” was the first song ever to hit her ears on the drive home.

“I just remember thinking ‘Man, I get this and I love this and whatever this is, this is incredible!’” Disher said.

This newfound love for artistry and music is what compelled Disher to pursue art and music wholeheartedly. She enrolled in dance classes and danced professionally. She also learned how to play the guitar, the banjo and the mandolin.

Although the miracle, passion and skill were all there, Disher’s call in life did not come until much later. She was attending a conference in Chicago when she felt the call into ministry and knew that she wanted to become a creative arts pastor one day.

This led Disher to Liberty University where she graduated with degrees in Worship Studies, Studio and Digital Arts, and Theatrical Production in 2013. For the past three years, Disher has been working as a graphic designer and a worship leader at a church in North Carolina. Yet all along, God had a plan to bring her back to her alma mater.

After a friend submitted her portfolio without her knowledge, Disher was initially asked to come back to Liberty for an interview as Liberty University’s Campus Band graphic designer, but when they discovered her talent for music, she was asked to join Campus Band as one of the worship leaders.

Disher’s story spread quickly throughout campus after a video of her testimony was played in Campus Community.

“God has just made it bigger than me, and I am humbled by that, and I can’t boast,” Disher said. “He could take my hearing away from me at any moment. He could say ‘I think she has heard enough’ and that would be fine, but man while I’ve got it, I want to use it and do stuff with it and not take it for granted.”

And that is exactly what Disher is doing through her ministry on Campus Band and with a new position working with LU Send as the promotional resource coordinator. But as her story touches and encourages all those who hear it, Disher explains that God has used her testimony to help her own faith.

After leaving college, she went through a time where she questioned what she believed, but every time she would come back to the miracle of her hearing.

“(God) didn’t need to give me my hearing,” Disher said. “There are plenty of people who do just fine without it, but for some reason He did, so I decided that if He gave it to me then I might as well just give it back in any way that I could and that is what I’m doing.”

Beginning in the spring semester, Disher plans to pursue a Masters in Fine Arts and Graphic Design from Liberty University.

Laforest is a feature reporter.