Miracle Story #10
“June 17, 1989. It was the summer after my Sophomore year in high school. It was about 7:45am and I was riding to work with a guy I worked with. I was the passenger and he was driving. And I remember that in part of our conversation we had determined that we were invincible and that we didn’t need our seatbelts. I remember talking about that.
So we were driving down this dirt road that day, running late, and he decided to change the cassette tape. Van Halen’s, “Black and Blue,” was playing at the time.
And right about at that moment, we hit thick sand on a washboard dirt road, in a front wheel drive car, and he lost control. He was driving too fast for his level of experience on that kind of road condition. So he over-corrected, which sent us into a ditch.
The car hit the ditch and then it rolled. I don’t know why but I always put my hand on the roof for some reason. So as the car rolled and the top hit the ground, it broke my wrist and knocked me out. And as it rolled further, it threw me out of the passenger window.
When I woke up I was on my back but my head was in my friend’s lap and he was screaming. My head had been cut open so there was a lot of blood. And I think he thought I was dead at first.
The strangest thing about me is that I tend to be more calm in high stress situations.
And I remember telling him, “Dude I’m okay.”
So for some reason he went over and tried to start his car. Well the steering wheel was hanging down and I don’t know what he thought he was going to do. He was holding onto it during the roll-over and it had broke. The car was in such bad shape, the seats were twisted. It was pretty beat up.
We were in a freshly plowed field and I remember him taking off to try to run to the nearest house, which was about a half mile away, but he kept stumbling. He was trying to run with a sprained ankle in that field and he kept falling about every third or fourth step.
Now I didn’t know what he was seeing on me but he was pretty freaked out. So when he took off, I tried to get up but my left wrist was broken and my tricep was all torn up on my right arm and into my right armpit area.
So I rolled over and I had to push up on my elbows. And I remember the first thing I thought was, ‘My toe hurts like hell.’ I thought I broke my toe and it was hard to walk. But I started walking and I remember looking at the car and thinking that we were pretty lucky.
Then I realized that my shirt was missing and so I glanced down to look for it, and I noticed that on my right side there was this gaping hole in my side. The skin had been sliced down and it was just spread wide open. It was probably six inches across.
So I about passed out. But I kept thinking, ‘Why is that not bleeding?’ And I was real smart back then, and so I touched it. (laughs)
Muscles store blood and as soon as I touched it, blood just started pouring out. I wasn’t really in my right mind and I was feeling woozy. And that’s when I did a quick, ‘Oh my God, this is the end.’
So God and I had a conversation.
I felt like He was saying, “You know, you had an opportunity to put your seatbelt on, and you didn’t do it.”
And that’s how I feel like He has done my whole life.
“I’ve tried to warn you but you didn’t listen.”
And then I had a real calming sensation. He just kept telling me, “You’re going to be okay.”
I had this feeling in that moment that there were things I needed to be doing different, like I had taken things for granted. And I guess a lot of people in those circumstances probably feel that way.
So I made it to the road and my friend had found this farmer nearby who was like, eighty-five years old. He called the ambulance and then he brought his little pickup out. I remember it was this little GMC S-15 pickup.
And I’ll never forget. We started to get in the cab of the truck and he goes, “Oh no no no! You’ve got to get in the back.” (laughs) I was bleeding all over.
So we got in his pickup and we met the ambulance and they got us loaded up.
We were going to the hospital in St. John, Kansas and they called ahead but the staff said they weren’t prepared for us in our condition. And I remember thinking, I’m going to die in this ambulance. I kind of freaked out.
The next hospital was only eight miles away though, so we ended up in Stafford and got in and they assessed all of my injuries. I didn’t know how bad I was at the time.
I had three broken ribs, a broken wrist, and nearly punctured a lung. And I didn’t know until a couple of days into my stay there, that the wound up my right side and arm had missed the artery in my arm by ¼ inch.
I knew I was lucky but when the doctor had come into my room and said, “No, you don’t understand. You’re really lucky,” it kind of really sank in.
And the first time I was by myself at the hospital after that, I just bawled for a little while. It was like a release of the combination of realizing the potential in what had happened, and how it could have been so much worse, with just a raw appreciation of still being here.
That car had thrown me about sixty feet and by the time it stopped rolling, it had missed me by eight feet. If any of those circumstances were any different, I would have probably died.
Over something as simple as not putting my seatbelt on.
The ironic thing is that the windshield had broken down into a point when the car rolled over. It was still together, because it was safety glass, but it had broken away from the roof, like a crease. It was still intact but it was sharp, like a sharp point. And had I actually stayed in the car, that point would’ve ended up where my head or my neck would have been.
I had grown up in a Methodist church, went to Sunday school. I wanted to sleep in church and I remember trying to stay awake a lot of the time. And my Dad would nudge me. It was boring to me. I just didn’t feel connected and it just didn’t interest me much when I was real young.
I was 15 years old at the time of the accident. And in March, just three months before, I had accepted Jesus while at a church lock-in. So this was all kind of encompassing I guess.
During the lock-in, when I made the conscious decision to accept Jesus, the guy talked to me about how good my heart was and how it was obvious how I felt about other people.
So after the accident, I reflected on that. Part of who I became stemmed from that experience. Literally at any point in time our opportunity to help or change people’s lives could be over. And it’s ultimately one of the reasons why I started coaching, because I love kids.
You see what happens these days. A lot of kids don’t get a fair chance, with all the absentee dads and kids not being raised by their parents. And they just don’t get a real sense of feeling like somebody cares. And they need that. But also sometimes you have to be hard on them. So I could see the need there and felt like that was a place where I needed to be to help out.
Before the accident I had always felt like I was a good person but you know, there are times when you make mistakes. I went out of that experience appreciating another opportunity to make right what was wrong.
And my mortality was shown to me. When you’re a kid, you’re a kid. And you don’t feel like anything can happen. It made me realize that at any point in time, anything can happen.
So I no longer felt invincible. I knew that at any point in time that I could go.
So it’s important to me, to be a good person as best you can. You don’t want to be laying there dying and thinking about all the things you should and shouldn’t have done. Or who you should’ve treated better, while on your deathbed.
I like to see the good in people. I’m writing a book that will hopefully help other people do better in their own lives and their own relationships.
That experience started a real change in the way I did things, even though I got older and arrogant and didn’t always appreciate those lessons at times.
It was definitely one of the moments that changed my life. And sometimes I have to look back just to understand that there’s another plan.
Because I should’ve been gone.”
© 2017 by One Million Miracles. All Rights Reserved.
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My name is Travis, and I live in Winfield, Kansas.
In the midst of a roll-over accident that could have taken my life, I AM miracle story #10.