Former Texas Longhorn and NFL receiver Jordan Shipley praised God for his miraculous recovery after a scary farming accident.
In early January, the 40-year-old sustained severe burns on 20% of his body when a machine he was operating on his ranch near his hometown of Burnet, Texas, caught fire and trapped him inside.
Earlier that day, Shipley took his 5-year-old son, Swayde, to school. During the car ride, Swayde asked his dad, “When are you going to go to heaven? And who’s going to take care of me if something happens?”
According to the Christian Post, he chuckled and didn’t really answer the question. Those questions came screaming back into his mind several hours later as he tried to escape the cab of a fiery bulldozer.
“The door wouldn’t open,” Shipley explained. “It was stuck. I was scared. I was praying and screaming. I was yelling ‘Please let me out, Lord’ at the top of my lungs.”
He eventually escaped, and after he reached the hospital, Shipley miraculously spent only 11 days in the intensive care unit and didn’t need the skin grafts he and his doctors expected. He felt his faith and the prayers of others sustain him.
“I saw people I know praying who don’t ever pray,” he said. “The fact that I’m here is a miracle.”
Shortly after he was discharged in January, his wife, Sunny, wrote on Facebook that “Numerous doctors, nurses and specialists kept telling us, as we were being discharged, that he is nothing short of a miracle and they’ve never seen someone come into their care in his condition and leave this soon…much less be out of the hospital bed.”
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However, Jordan and Sunny were unprepared for what came next in the road to recovery.
According to The Christian Post, Shipley had nightmares for two months and Sunny became claustrophobic.
“I was stuck in a place where I’m about to end my life, thinking, ‘What’s my wife going to do?’” the former Longhorn recalled thinking. “My kids are about to live their whole life without a dad.”
Now, nearly 10 months after the accident, Shipley enjoys each moment he gets with his family.
“I take every moment I can get with my family now, and it’s changed everything about the way I think about time and work-life balance,” he said. “I know enough that I’m not in control. God is. A lot of times I think He uses struggles that we have to walk through to bring us closer to Him.”
For a man who once measured his life in touchdowns and Saturdays in Austin, the real victory is waking up, being present and calling his life a miracle every single day.
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