The Miracle of Me

When I say that I am a walking, talking, living, breathing miracle, I see people's eyes glaze over. They don't understand that I am speaking as literally and as honestly as I can. I've watched as doctors have stammered and tried to figure out a way to get past the miraculous part of my still being alive and walking. I have had people tell me that according to the laws of physics and gravity I should be dead. Yet, here I am. Walking, talking, living, breathing. A miracle! Direct from the Hand of God.

I can't tell you all the times God has saved my life. I probably am only aware of a tenth of the times He has miraculously saved my life. But, I will try to tell you about all the ones I do know about. And I know, the amount of times it has happened also makes people wonder if I'm embellishing or making up some of these instances, and I promise you, each and every one of them happened. I can only tell you my perspective of what happened, but I'll be as open with you as I can. These are the times that I should have died as well as the events that should have put me in a wheelchair or into a vegetative state. At least to the best of my knowledge, these are all of the ones I remember or know about.

Somewhere between the ages of 2 and 4 my siblings, Mark, Renee and Darren were playing in a tree house and I wanted to play with them. I climbed the ladder, despite my Mama having forbade me from being in the tree house. As I got to the floor of the tree house I grabbed a piece of lumber to pull myself up with, just as Mark and Renee yelled to not grab that one, and it broke due to being rotted and I fell to the ground. I was unconscious when Mama arrived after Mark ran in the house to get her. I fell more than 15 feet and landed on my head. The joke is that's what happened to me as far as the way I am today, but that seriously should have killed me.

When I was five we were on our way to 6 Flags in Texas when the car broke down. We stayed in a motel while the car was being repaired. It was my step-mother, my brother, step-mother's best friend and her sister and brothers. We were at the pool. I don't remember who all was in the pool other than my brother and I but something happened and I drowned. Not almost drowned, drowned. Thankfully, Carol, Bonnie's best friend saw me, pulled me out and performed CPR and I revived.

When I was six or seven we had visited my grandparents and were on our way home. The back passenger door of the station wagon we had popped open and I began to fall out of the car since I had been leaning on the door. Bonnie was able to grab just my hand and pull me back into the car. To this day I hate 2 door cars and for as long as I can remember Bonnie never owned another 4 door car until the late 2000s.

At the age of 17 my father almost beat me to death. The only thing that stopped him was 4 angels standing outside the car. I did not see them, but he did. And he stopped beating me and left the location we were in rather quickly.

At the age of 20 I was driving home through the mountains of New Mexico when I struck a deer at 2 AM. I locked the brakes and my car headed for a 1,000 foot drop off. I cried out the name of Jesus and my car turned 45° to the left. State trooper said he had never seen the marks from braking tires turn like that before. He probably hasn't seen it since, either.

At 24 I was hit head-on while riding a motorcycle. I cried out the name Jesus and was lifted off the motorcylce by an angel, as witnessed by multiple people in the cars behind me. Two separate accident reconstruction teams deemed there was no way I came off the motorcycle according to the laws of physics and gravity.

At 30 I was locked in a cooler during a robbery of the convenience store I was working in and the robber put the pistol directly in front of my face and pulled the trigger. The gun jammed. I never worked in a convenience store again.

At 40, during a surgery performed after I had been suffering a spinal fluid leak for 3 days, an artery was cut accidentally and I lost half my body's blood volume. I later died. God sent me back even though I tried to argue with Him that I didn't want to come back.

During a surgery in 2010, a scalpel that had not been thoroughly sanitized was used that had 5 bacteria on it. Those bacteria got into my spinal cord and I suffered with that infection for 16 months before it was discovered to be an infection. One of those bacteria is one that was used by Saddam Hussein's head of biological warfare. Another should have killed me within 9 months of infection. I'm still here.

In 2012 I suffered severe opioid induced constipation. I didn't have a bowel movement for over 3 weeks. The toxins in my body were causing me to black out. I blacked out several times while driving my car. I was almost to the point of falling into a coma when my body finally began to get rid of the source of the toxins.

In 2017 I was again involved in a head-on collision, though this time I was driving a Dakota pickup instead of riding a motorcycle.

This does not include all the times I've had pneumonia and came close to death. Or when I suffered with whooping cough, asthma, chicken pox and possibly another childhood disease at the same time at the age of 4. But these are the events that I remember the most and the best. As for the walking part of me being a miracle, that 1987 motorcycle accident led to a condition known as arachnoiditis which is known to put patients in a wheelchair within 6 months to a year. I've had it for at least 25 years and I'm still walking.

Now, I'm not telling you all this to brag or to show how strong I am and I'm definitely not trying to say how lucky I am because I don't believe in luck. Each of these times God miraculously saved my life and has continued to miraculously keep me on my feet. I don't have an explanation as to why. I don't ask why. I ask why not. I'm not anything special in this world. Not even close. I'm not anything special in the Body of Christ beyond the specialness of each and every one of the members of the Body of Christ. Maybe it's my faith. Maybe it's my calling. I don't know. I do know that I'm so very grateful for everything God has done for me. And I know there are probably thousands of other times He has moved on my behalf that I have no clue about. I'm grateful for those, too.

What I do know is this: if it weren't for God I wouldn't be alive. If it weren't for God I wouldn't be standing. If it weren't for God I wouldn't be writing this blog post. And if it weren't for God you wouldn't be reading it.

Wake up. Pray up. Stand up. Be a candle, not a wildfire.