She had to be sure!
Several years ago, Cindy Bennett became my hairdresser and friend. She had shared her testimony with me, but I had also seen it in the fruit of her life. I knew her story would be interesting and enlightening.
As her father was in the military, Cynthia Ann Weaver was born in Bittburg, Germany, on Aug.14, 1960. She was the baby with two older brothers, Jeff and Randy. Her father, Lewis Weaver, was originally from Conehatta, and her mother, Sue Pearson Weaver, was from Picayune. They moved from Germany to Spain, to South Carolina, to Mississippi, to Hawaii and to Oklahoma. Then in about 1971, when she was 11, her father retired from the military, and they moved back to make Decatur their home.
Cindy met Danny Lee Bennett from Lake at the skating rink in Newton when they were in the seventh grade. They began dating in the 10th grade and married May 19, 1979, four days after Cindy graduated from Decatur High School. She then attended ECCC Beauty School, graduating from there in 1980.
Their first child, Leeann Marie, was born March 27, 1981, so she decided not to start work as a full-time beautician yet. She did some substitute teaching, and when their son Kevin Lewis Bennett, born Jan. 18, 1986, was in the first grade, she began working at a beauty shop in Union. Later she took over The Beauty Box in Newton.
Her husband Danny worked as a carpenter, and Kevin, now 31, is in business with him, learning how to take it over. Leeann has become a teacher and is now teaching sixth grade at Newton County Middle School. Leeann has two children, Destiny and Daulton; Kevin and his wife Anna have a little girl, Lila, 2 ½.
Cindy recalled that when she was about 9 in Hawaii she was baptized. She thinks that it could have been because her two brothers went up to be saved then. She believed in Jesus ever since, but she says she didn’t really live a Christian life.
When she was 23, she had a life-changing experience. In 1981, at the invitation of Rosalyn and Marlene Blass, she had begun attending Beulah Baptist Church. Then in about 1983, Rev. Danny Lanier preached a revival there and she attended.
Cindy exclaimed, “Back then he preached ‘hell fire and brimstone’! He said you need to know you’re saved so you won’t ‘bust hell wide open’!”
She went to the altar to be “saved,” or to “rededicate her life.”
She continued, “I started really living for the Lord. I realized that, if all I did was just rely on John 3:16, and did not have a close relationship with the Lord, that I was not where I needed to be. I’d be deceiving myself. I have peace and know a fullness of Him now!”
Back then, she said she knew she was saved but still didn’t get in the word on her own. There was such a busy-ness about raising a family, working in her shop, even working in the church. About 12 years ago, both the death of her brother in 2004 and a Beth Moore study called “A Heart Like His” caused her to get in the word with a hunger and thirst for more of God.
When I asked about any miraculous things she remembered about her life, she recalled one rainy night when she was still at the Beauty Box. She was alone, getting things ready for the next day. She went out to a storage room, then back in and locked the door.
Again, she realized she needed something from the storage room, went out, then back in and locked the door again. A man knocked on the door and wanted in! “I told him no, that my husband was coming, and called 911. He left, but we found out that he’d robbed the house next door. I feel like God caused me to lock my door twice!”
She also remembered a time more recently when her granddaughter Destiny was given the opportunity to go on a mission trip to Peru but had only a short time to raise several hundred dollars. She told me of the miraculous way the Lord provided the money, with a woman giving Destiny an envelope full of money she and her husband had saved. The woman said she didn’t know how much was in it, but that God had told her to give it to her. It was only a few hundred dollars shy of being the amount she needed for the trip!
Something else about 12 years ago happened of a spiritual nature.
“I was asleep one night. The Lord woke me up, like turning on a light, and said, ‘You need to be working in Decatur.’”
She put Him off for several months, saying she was scared, but then she says, “It worked out. I found a place to open in Decatur, and I have been blessed there ever since.”
As a friend and a patron of Totally You-nique on Broad Street, I would add that she has been a blessing there ever since!
You may contact me at lagnesrussell@gmail.com or 601-635-3282.
