Brad and Misty Bernall

You look in your child's room and you find letters which leave you speechless. You see your child dabbling in drugs and alcohol and witchcraft. You see your child enthralled with the idea of suicide. What do you do? You look into your child's room and see a computer with internet footprints to incredibly violent sites. You hear that your child is threatening neighbors and classmates. You see your young person plunging deeper and deeper into hate-mongering and the worship of Adolf Hitler. What do you do? Misty and Brad Bernall saw things in the life of their daughter Cassie that disturbed them. They understood that a thirteen year old is still a child and not entitled to one hundred percent privacy, that a person of that age needs discipline and guidance, and that it was their obligation as her parents to provide that discipline and guidance. To that end, they knew her friends, and they checked on the kinds of things Cassie kept in her room. They found hidden letters, read them, and were disturbed by what they read. Misty and Brad decided that their daughter was more important than a teenager's notions of privacy and betrayal, and drew the line. They searched her room regularly. They searched her book bag. They cut off all contacts with friends they believed were bad influences on Cassie. Said Brad, "It's the hardest thing a parent will ever do, to put your foot down and say, 'It stops right here.'" But Bernalls put a unified parental foot down, and the things in Cassie's life that were damaging and dangerous stopped. Cassie's parents said a loud and loving, "No." Seconds before she died, Cassie Bernall said a loud and loving, "Yes." Cassie's "Yes" came in response to the question, "Do you believe in God?" posed by one of the two deranged classmates who shot her to death at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Kevin Koeniger, one of Cassie's friends said Cassie hesitated a long second before she answered. It was not a hesitation of doubt, but a hesitation of affirmation. She knew, Kevin said, if she answered "Yes" she would die. In between "no hope" and "eternal hope" something powerful happened. Cassie's parents determined that they were not going to lose their daughter to the dark forces that were clawing for their child's life. One weekend, they permitted Cassie to go on a church youth retreat. Her father said, "When she left, she was this gloomy, head down, say nothing youth. When she came back, her eyes were open and bright and she was bouncy and just excited about what had happened to her and was just so excited to tell us. It was like she was in a dark room, and somebody turned the light on, and she saw the beauty that was surrounding her." Her mother said, "She looked at me in the eye and she said, 'Mom, I've changed. I've totally changed. I know you're not going to believe it, but I'll prove it to you.'" When Brad and Misty Bernall forced themselves into the middle of Cassie's life, what they really did was give Cassie a chance to get to know Jesus. By refusing to give in to their dark, sullen child, they became evangelists and gave her a chance to find Jesus. Misty Bernall chronicled the life and faith of Cassie in the best-selling book, "She Said Yes: The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall." In her book, Misty Bernall portrays Cassie's tranformation from a distraught teenager to an amazing young martyr for Christ.