In September 2017, my daughter, Jennifer, had just dropped off her three boys at school and was driving to work. Her car veered off the road and went straight into a pole. Her heart stopped. Paramedics tried to revive her three times. Usually after that many attempts, they quit. But they tried once more, and were successful in reviving her. She was rushed to a hospital where doctors tried to keep her alive.
In addition to all her severe injuries, the doctors determined she had suffered some brain damage from a lack of oxygen, so they put her into an induced coma. They said this would help reboot her brain.
They thought she would wake up once they weaned her off the induced coma, but she didn’t.
After a while, the doctors at the hospital encouraged me to take her off life support. They said she would never heal. That if she did wake up, she wouldn’t “be here” and I should let her pass peacefully.
But I refused, saying, “It’s not up to us. When God is ready, He will take her.”
Friends and relatives hit me with this same advice. They told me to let her go. But I just couldn’t. I felt it was my calling to keep loving her as long as God kept her alive.
After a few weeks and, in part, because of this pressure to take her off life support, I had Jennifer transferred to a trauma hospital at the University of Chicago.
I would pray every day on the way to the hospital for the Lord to give me strength, to watch over Jennifer, and to help her come back to life if that was His will. I would sit by her side, talking to her, just so she would hear a human voice. I knew this was something I just had to do. I’d tell her everything that was going on in life, hoping to see some response. But there was none.
After a year at the hospital, she was moved to a nursing home. I couldn’t keep Jennifer at home because I had to continue working my full-time job in order to pay the bills and not lose everything.
When the pandemic hit, my job became one I could do at home. So I’d work half a day, go see Jennifer for several hours and come home and do my other half day of work. It was an exhausting grind, but I had no choice but to keep loving my daughter and giving her every chance to live.
There were so many visitors to her room when the accident first occurred. But that slowed to a trickle after a while, and after a couple months, there were no visitors.
Even Jennifer’s husband moved on with his life after she was in a coma for a year.
The days turned into weeks, the weeks into months, and the months into years. But I kept praying. And constantly talking with her.
I knew God had kept her alive and I believed in His will. I felt it was my calling to keep His child alive. I reflected on how we see signs from God that we need to act on.
My husband had passed away in 2007. We were driving, and at first, I thought he was sneezing. Then I realized he was having seizures. Things kept getting worse, and I thought it may be a heart attack. I prayed that God would give me time to help him. God spoke to me and told me to check his tongue. Sure enough, my husband had swallowed his tongue.
This was the first time I felt God’s strong nudge and am so glad I listened. I was able to save him. But four months later, he passed away from cancer of the brain.
But I knew that God had been there for me.
When Jennifer first had her accident, I reflected back on this incident with my husband, and felt a bit of peace, knowing that God does take care of things, even when things look dire.
I knew God was in on saving her. He was watching over Jennifer the day of her accident. After all, the first person to reach her after she slammed into the pole was another driver, who happened to be a nurse.
So I pressed on. And did what a mother was supposed to do for her child.
In August 2022, it had been almost five years that Jennifer had remained in a coma. Rather than just visiting her in her room in the nursing home, I would sometimes place her in a wheelchair and take her for a walk in the garden.
One day, I was out for a walk with her. As I was talking with her, I apparently said something funny. And she laughed. I was stunned at what had happened. Then she fell back into a coma.
This happened again the next day, and by the time I would get back to her room and tell her nurses, Jennifer was out again and no one believed me. So on the third day, I got my phone and took a video of her laughing. Everyone on the medical staff was astounded.
When Jennifer woke up, I looked her in the eyes, and told her if you decide to fight, I’ll be right here for you. If you want to give up, I’ll let you go.
But I could see she was determined to live. She would wake up each day for longer and longer periods. She started to make sounds, trying to talk.
I continued to pray every day. If she could just eat, if she could just talk. Every time I prayed for something, God would answer my prayers. My faith kept getting stronger and stronger.
A year later, I brought Jennifer home.
She’s still got a long way to go. She still can’t walk and struggles to speak. But her brain continues to improve. She’s now in speech therapy twice a week and we also do therapy at home the other days.
She had to have surgery to help release the tendon in one hand which had been locked up due to the years of inactivity. Other surgeries will likely follow.
Jennifer can’t believe she was in a coma for almost five years. I told her that God needed her to sleep that long in order to heal her brain.
She was stunned to learn that two of her sons had graduated high school, and that one of them had become the father of a little girl, Nyla, making Jennifer a grandmother. And me a great grandmother!
Through this whole ordeal, I look at God’s power and am amazed. God was carrying us through it all. I tell people to never give up hope since you don’t know what will happen. Where there is life, there is hope.
Our story has certainly strengthened my faith but also the faith of others who hear our story. It has spread across the globe and I’m so humbled and touched that it’s bringing people to the Lord.
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