Not many people expected Roger Lewis to actually teach at BYU Education Week Aug. 21-24.

He had been scheduled months ahead to give lectures on health and wellness, but a stroke on July 2 paralyzed the left side of his normally healthy body, and doctors said there would be permanent paralysis.Lewis, however, decided to practice what he would be preaching at Education Week and began visualizing himself teaching the class. Two months later he actually fulfilled his dream by walking across the classroom stage with only a slight limp.

"I never thought for a minute I would not present [my lectureT in Education Week, although I was fully aware of the irony of it," he said in a Church News interview. "Many thought I wouldn't be able to, but I assumed from the outset that it would be an opportunity to share my experience."

Lewis, a medical doctor, sold his practice one-and-a-half years ago to read and write materials on wellness and stress reduction in preparation to lecture.

With a healthful lifestyle, a stroke - caused by an aneurysm - was entirely unexpected by Lewis, 48. He ran 5 1/2 miles a day and was on a low cholesterol diet rich in potassium, to cut down on the likelihood of a stroke.

"I have been particularly healthy and health-minded and used preventive medicine and the power of the mind to bring about a healthy state. This just shows you that it can happen to anybody."

Lewis distinguished himself at Education Week not only by his story of recovery, but by wearing a florescent pink hat during his lectures. The hat covered an incision doctors made on the right side of his skull to remove a blood clot and to pinch off an artery.

His wife, Jan, said the family and now Education Week participants had witnessed a miracle with Lewis' remarkable recovery.

"I don't know that anybody can explain it," he said. "In medicine we try to be cautious. The brain is so complicated, it's hard to predict what is going to happen. It was anticipated that there would be enormous damage to part of the brain that influences the left side, yet there is always a certain amount of spontaneous recovery.

"I am very fortunate to be able to walk. I have more function in my left arm now and I am starting to move my fingers."

Lewis, a member of the Sharon 4th Ward, Orem Utah Sharon Stake, was given a priesthood blessing within minutes after the stroke. A ward fast followed and a temple session was held in his behalf.

"There have clearly been hundreds of people who have been praying for me," he noted. "Obviously that's a significant part of my recovery. There is an invisible network in wards and friendships - much more powerful and sustaining than I knew of before."

Focusing on spiritual wellness has been the key to a quick recovery, he said.

"I can make a victim of myself and be consumed by fear that my life is not going to be normal. I could even choose to be angry at God if I supposed He had done this to me. Or I could be irritated at the people in the hospital who are trying to help me."

But it's those thoughts that block out the whisperings of the Spirit and cause a person to be depressed, Lewis said.

"If I choose to see everyone working with me as friends who bear the light of Christ and am grateful for them, then it is much easier to have hope for the future and feel the encouragement of Christ's Spirit.

"Our thoughts are a million times more powerful than we realize. Thoughts of kindness and acceptance are magnified for our good in life while anger and fear are magnified several times for the bad. To set up an environment that invites Christ's influence to be expressed through us sets up an environment for a real miracle."