From Disaster to Destiny
It was the beginning of a long and eventful summer. I had just finished a blessed first year of college and I was excited about the idea that in as little as a year, I could be turning professional. My college coach sent me to Liberal, Kansas, to a semi-professional, summer league in order to improve on my God-given ability to throw a baseball. It was a bit of a disappointment when I first arrived and found that you could drive through the entire town in less than five minutes, and the nearest town, about an hour away, was twice as small. Growing up in east Texas, I had become accustomed to tall trees, and a lot of them. In Kansas the lack of natural shade, along with my unfamiliarity with anyone or anything, called for a hot and boring summer. On top of that, there was a cow slaughtering plant less than a mile away, and the smell was absolutely unbearable for 3 solid months. I knew as soon as I arrived that many of my days would be occupied getting closer to God and staying in his word.
Unsurprisingly, God prospered whatever my hands touched, and just about every time I stepped on the field I had an outstanding game. Although our team lacked the defense needed to make it to the national tournament, my pitching velocity had increased and I was able to do so with great precision. Not once, but twice, I came close to throwing no-hitters; a feat only dreamt of by most pitchers at any level. College recruiters were calling and the scout who drafted me kept in touch with me frequently. God had truly blessed the work of my hands. Around mid-summer was the Major League Baseball draft, and I was drafted a second time by the New York Yankees. My future plans were to go to college unless I was offered a tremendous amount of money. School was paid for, so it seemed as though my future was set. My destiny appeared to be in the palm of my hands, but that’s where I was wrong! God made sure of letting me know that he was still in control of everything.
When it came time for me to return home, I was more excited than ever. I was really looking forward to showing my college coach and teammates how I had improved over the summer. At the time, I still didn’t own a vehicle, and I had a hard time finding a way home, since I really didn’t want to make my parents drive the nine hours to Liberal and drive back afterwards. There was another guy on our team that was also from Texarkana, Jermaine Mitchell, who lived only an hour from my home town, but he had already returned home. Chad Rhodes, a great friend, teammate, and fellow believer, would have to pass through east Texas to get to where he lived, but he decided to join another team, and wouldn’t be going home until later in the summer. This was the case with two other guys as well, also believers.
There was an unusual instance earlier in the summer, where I rode with a teammate by the name of Kerr Foster. We were friends although we really didn’t spend much time together. We usually went our separate ways after we left the field, but on this day, I rode to his house with him during our pre-game lunch break and noticed that I felt unusually uncomfortable in his vehicle; so much so that I rode back to the field with someone else. I had the most peculiar feeling deep in my chest that was surprisingly alarming, but I never told him or anyone else about it. I just kept it to myself and credited it to my own cautiousness. I would soon find out that this was much more than a feeling. It was the still small voice of the Holy Spirit attempting to warn me of future disaster.
A month and a half after that incident and searching and asking every player on the team heading in my direction for a ride, I finally found someone. It was Kerr. I was so caught up in the excitement of returning home, that I had forgotten about the earlier incident. I was ready to get out of Liberal. Kerr, Ryan Riddle, and I made plans to make the journey home together, so I assumed that we would be okay. I remember packing my bags the night before and thinking of how great it would be to see my family and friends and spend the next night in my own bed. The excitement of being home kept me from getting much sleep that night. We said our goodbyes to our host families, coaches, and teammates and left Liberal the next morning with a storm brewing behind us. We had about ten summer games get cancelled because of the rain. It seemed to find us the entire summer. We were headed for Athens, Texas, the place where Kerr lived, also an hour away from my house.
A couple of hours outside of our destination, we stopped to grab something to eat. We were all restless from 6 hours of driving, and home was only a couple of hours away. With food on our stomachs, anxious to get home, we set out again without changing drivers. That was the last thing I remembered. To my knowledge, I had fallen asleep in the back seat, but instead of waking up closer to home, I awakened to my father’s smiling, yet worried expression at the end of a hospital bed, and I was lying in it. I was groggy. There were numerous tubes, plugs, and IV’s running in and out of my mouth and everywhere else. I tried to move my hand, but it was moving faster in my mind than it was in reality. After observing my predicament, in my mind I immediately began asking the expected questions. What am I doing here? What happened? As if I actually spoken the words aloud, my dad informed me then, that I was involved in a serious car accident, and I had no recollection of anything. He also told me that the doctor said that I would, one day, walk again, but it would be a process potentially lasting in excess of 3 months. He told me that the doctor said that I would, in all likelihood, never be able to throw a baseball the way I once could, but in all that he said, he never agreed.
Kerr, who attempted, and probably insisted on making the remainder of the drive on his own, had fallen asleep at the wheel while changing lanes after passing a minivan. Waking up partially off the road, he realized what was happening and made a common mistake. He immediately overcorrected and flipped the truck, ejecting Ryan out of the front window and me out of the rear. Ryan ended up in the road on the same side of traffic as we were traveling. He had suffered a broken back and quite a bit of road rash. Kerr came to rest in the vehicle with a few bruises and scratches. I came to rest on the other side of the large grass median, a few feet from opposing oncoming traffic, with the truck only a few more flips from crushing me. I had broken two vertebrae in my neck (C3 and C4), and one in my back (L6), along with numerous cuts and scrapes to my head, and limbs. There was internal bleeding in my lungs, and overactive bladder, a seriously infected kidney, a severely bruised spinal cord, and from the report of medics on the scene, I was approximately thirty minutes from death. Mrs. Dona Kitchen, driver of a minivan traveling a few hundred feet behind our truck and believer in Christ Jesus was there by my side through it all. She immediately began praying and caring for me until help arrived. I was amazed to hear her tell me that God instructed her to take her car out cruise control. After falling behind our vehicle, witness the entire accident. If she had not slowed down, she would have run over Ryan who had landed in the road ahead.
I was flown, unconscious, in a chopper to Harris Methodist Hospital and taken immediately to the Emergency Room, and now I was in the intensive care room with tubes running in and out of everywhere. My parents had made the drive from Kilgore to Fort Worth, three hours away, where I was now and never stopped exercising their faith. When my father heard the news, he immediately began praying under the carport of my grandmother’s house. It was all he could do. I had been in life threatening accident 300 miles away, and the outlook wasn’t good, but God had something else in mind.
Often times when you have a dream, or vision of the night, you don’t realize what you’ve seen until you’re awake for a while. While I was in the hospital, this happened to me, and I will never forget what I saw. I was standing under the carport of my grandmothers house, (significant because this is where my dad prayed after being informed of the accident). The first thing I noticed was that the color of the sky. Just above the horizon of the distant trees - the deepest and richest color violet imaginable. I slowly began lifting my eyes, and the color of the sky slowly began fading to a brighter purple, and then eventually to a beautiful magenta. The colors were so vivid that they seemed to inhabit the sky like fog. It was as if you could grab the color straight out of the sky and paint it onto a separate canvas. As my eyes slowly began to track upward, I then began to notice a golden bright light that shined from directly above me, but I couldn’t see the source of the light because I was standing under the carport. I looked to my right and my father was standing there beside me in amazement just as I was. Then we simultaneously looked in the distance to our right, and there in the sky were stars moving. They formed themselves into the shape of a small sailboat and paused. When they began moving again, they formed a larger steamboat. It was if we were watching animated constellations. My father and I both asked each other had the other seen what had just happened. The events didn’t cease but continued. Just to the left of those moving stars, a circular object began to form. Its appearance was like a somewhat dim golden sun setting over the horizon in that moment that you can look at it without straining your eyes. If a time lapse camera could film and then fast-forward a quarter-moon changing into a full moon, this would be the way I saw these circular figures forming in the immense sky above me. As if one weren’t enough, another one began forming, opposite the first, to my left, and then back to my right and left again until the figures met directly in front of me. There ended up being about 12 glowing circular figures in a semicircle in the sky around me. As soon as they finished forming, I felt something gently take hold of me from inside my chest, near my heart, and I immediately began being lifted up and out from under the carport. As I rose into the sky, limbs dangling seemingly weightless behind me, an overwhelming feeling slowly began overtaking me. I arose higher and higher, and I finally saw where the aforementioned immense golden light was shining from. There, in middle of the sky, was a large cross, and illuminating out from behind the cross was the bright golden light. The feeling that I began feeling earlier, then, completely overtook me. Although I cannot fully describe the feeling in words of the English language, I can say that it was greater that anything that I have ever felt before. It was a combination of reverence, awe, and respect combined with love, peace, joy, and weightlessness as if every care of the world had just been lifted from my shoulders. I immediately began crying tears of joy, smiling and thanking and praising God. All I could say was Thank You Jesus over and over and over again. I continued to be lifted by my chest into the sky and I drew nearer and nearer to the cross. I glanced to my right and I noticed that my father had come up with me. Just as we had almost reached the bright light of the cross, we turned over in mid-air, and were immediately on the ground, standing on our own power. Prayer brought me back.
When I regained consciousness, it took me a while to gather myself after what I had experienced. When I did, the same feeling I experienced began overtaking me again as I tried telling my father what I had seen. I cried tears of joy once again and for the remainder of my hospital stay, while those events seemed to carry me and fuel my recovery.
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God Bless!
Jeremiah S.