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CBN.com – A winter storm was making driving tough. Amber Nesbitt swerved to avoid a deer in the road. She lost control of her car and slammed into a tree at 60mph. Rescue workers had little hope that she would even survive the trip to the hospital.
Her parents, John and Joanne Nesbitt, remember getting a call….
“I could tell by her voice that this wasn’t just a minor accident,” John says.
Joanne adds, “It was the longest ride of my life.”
But even getting to the hospital was a challenge. John and Joanne had to travel the same icy road that caused Amber’s wreck.
“I just said, ‘God, I want two warring angels. Not angels playing harps. I want two warriors by my daughter’s head.’ I could feel it. I can still feel it,” John says. “Because I knew that God would watch over my daughter. I just knew.”
When they arrived at the hospital, they got bad news. Amber had massive head trauma, a neck fracture, multiple facial fractures, a fractured hip and a collapsed lung. She was in a coma.
But most of all Amber’s doctors worried about the swelling of her brain. They put Amber on high doses of medication to keep the swelling down, but it didn’t seem to be working.
Joanne says, “The threat of the brain swelling was that it would swell so much and push down on the brain stem, and then that creates death. Normal pressures in the brain are from 15 to 20, and some of Amber’s spikes were up into 65.”
“They were all conditioning us that she was gonna pass on,” John recalls, “that she was going to die.”
Against the odds, Amber survived the first few critical days. Her friends and family spent Christmas at the hospital. For Amber’s friend, Dr. Chase Miller, it was an especially difficult situation.
“To know how serious her condition was, it was a frightening experience,” Dr. Miller says, “and I was very afraid that we were going to lose her.”
Two days after Christmas, Amber’s doctor pulled the family aside. John remembers it well.
“He said, ‘Mr. Nesbitt, my best percentage of her speaking another word or regaining consciousness is zero.’ 'I know you’re telling me the truth,' I said, 'but Heaven is my source.’ I could feel that intimidation. I could feel that pressure come off my back. I knew I had to believe in God’s promises. The opposite of that is unbelief. So I just believe that my daughter’s gonna be healed, in the name of Jesus.”
Joanne says, “I can remember talking to Christopher, my son-in-law, and I just said, ‘This is not God. He is not going to allow her to lay in a nursing home, hooked up to a ventilator.’"
So what made them feel like they wouldn’t believe what the prognosis was?
John replies, “We knew what they were saying. We knew what it was leading towards, that what they told us was really what was taking place, that the brain swelling was out of control. They were doing what they could to control it, but they couldn’t control it. But I just had a peace about it. I just believed the Word of God was true.”
Amber’s sister, Jennifer and her husband, Christopher were also at Amber’s bedside.
“My wife looked at my father-in-law, looked at me and said, ‘Well good. Now we have something to prove ‘em wrong about.’ It was just like a 2 x 4 in my spirit,” Chris says.” I realized that there was this determination that we’re gonna go forward, no matter what anybody says.”
Amber’s loved ones filled her hospital room with scripture and praise. Hundreds of people around the world prayed for her and believed God for her healing.
Chris continues, “We were sending out emails to our connections all over the world. Nations were praying, conferences were praying for her. It was amazing how God used technology to allow that ripple to really touch the whole body of Christ globally.”
Then, on December 30th…
“The nurse spoke something loudly,” Joanne says. “Amber looked at me and shut her eyes. It was the first time I’d seen her open her eyes.”
Chris recalls, “It was in that moment that things just turned—it was a God moment.”
Amber was waking up! The process was slow, and Amber’s doctors were confused. All the scans still showed interrupted brain activity. But each day brought an improvement.
“Every day kept getting better and better and better,” John says.
On January 6, Amber began breathing above her ventilator. Soon her intracranial pressure dropped to normal levels and remained there. Then on January 19, Amber did something the doctors said would never happen: she spoke. Less than a week later she was transferred to rehab at St. Mary’s Hospital.
Dr. Miller recalls, “She was at a place where we as doctors could have absolutely no control over. Everything was going wrong. She couldn’t have gotten any sicker than she was and be in a more desperate situation, and it was at this point where His glory was revealed and she was healed.”
The girl who had a zero percent chance of survival had defied the odds and the prognoses of the doctors. She had a little something to share with her dad.
“The first thing that I saw when I woke up was two angels, one on each side of my bed,” Amber says. “That’s what my dad had prayed for on the way to the hospital. No one told me that.”
After spending 35 days in ICU, Amber went through nine weeks of rehab. On February 20, Amber took her first steps with assistance. She spent the next three weeks in outpatient rehab. At the end of March 2006, Amber was discharged from the hospital for good -- less than four months after the accident!
“What the devil meant for evil, the Lord meant for good,” Amber says. “So even though we wonder why things like this happen, the Lord’s just gonna use it for His glory. My favorite verse is Jeremiah 29:11, which says, ‘For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a hope and a future.’ And I think that just says a lot.”
“The Bible says that greater love has no man than he who lays down his life," Joanne quotes. "Jesus laid it all down for us so we could have what we have today -- so that Amber could be healed and whole. I’m just awed at His wonderful love for us.”
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