#379: Unveiling the Thanksgiving Miracle: The Power of Prayer with Heather!

Come on this journey with me each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals, overcome adversity, and set you up for a better tomorrow. Fasten your seatbelts. I'm ready for my close up. Hi and welcome back. I'm so glad you're back here with me this week. I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. I know there's a lot of pressure, often with family, with holidays, sometimes with lack of family and holidays. Right. That the holidays might be negative. And I'm hoping that you can find something to be grateful for today, even if it's just listen, we alive. We here, we are together. We are breathing. I'll take it.

Right.

My feet hit the floor this morning and that's something to praise God about, to be grateful for and thankful for. And when we look at those simple things as a reason to be grateful, so much more gratitude and reasons to be grateful come to us. That is for sure. I'm living proof of it. Okay, so. Oh my gosh. I need to tell you about my Thanksgiving. Not what I had expected. First of all, let's take it back a year ago. This is a bummer. It's a tradition that I spend Thanksgiving, my son and I with some of my best friends back in Boston. They have kids my son's age, he's grown up with them. I mean, it's literally like my extended family. And there's so many people there I love and you know, I grew up there. So these are people I've been friends with for over 30 years. They are my ride or die team. And it's always so fun, but it's super overwhelming because there's so many people. We go out like, right, you're going back home. It can be crazy. And last year, the last night we were there, I had on Celine 6 inch winter over the knee boots which I don't usually wear. Remember I live in Miami, right. So I thought it was so cool.

And.

And I live in a condo which is one floor and I'm walking up like three winding flights of stairs at my girlfriend's house after we've been out for the night. I'm carrying my computer, my winter coat, my scarf and my big Louis Vuitton like purse that I bring everywhere with me when I travel. Kind of like a catch all. I don't know why at midnight I'm doing all of that ridiculous, horrible decisions all the way. Why didn't I take my shoes off? Anyways, my ankle gave out. I fell down the stair. I'm not someone who falls often, right? I hit my head. I went to bed that night, but the next day they took me to one of those minute clinics. The doctor was like, listen, this is serious, but you're seriously fine, right? Like, you're lucky you didn't hit your actual eye. Obviously you're gonna have a lot of bruising, you're gonna have swelling. Anyways, it has not been for the faint of heart, I'll tell you that much. For a couple weeks, I had half. My face was black and blue. I couldn't leave the house. I had to cancel a speaking engagement. That's the first time I've ever canceled a speaking engagement. It was horrible. I mean, I just did not look well. And even for a couple months after that, I is so much smaller. It's still not back to normal. My dermatologist told me I'm going to need to have surgery if I want to make it, you know, back to normal completely. First world problems. But bottom line is this. It was super upsetting. Again, totally my own fault. I made a bad decision. Bad call. Should never worn those shoes up the stairs. Makes no sense when I think about it. And why did I need to carry all that stuff upstairs? I could have done it the next morning. It wasn't going to ruin anyone's life. Everyone was going to bed. So move on. Learn from lessons. And I am grateful that that fall wasn't worse because it could have been a heck of a lot worse, right? So that's really what I took from it. But over the last year, definitely have been disappointed in that decision and was certain that this year, going to Thanksgiving, I was gonna make much better decisions. Cause sometimes when I'm with my friends that I grew up with, I revert to being a knucklehead. Okay, not happening this year. Well, it did not happen this year. However, it's incredible what did happen this year. So our first night, we get there, we're having a great time, blah, blah, blah. Okay. Now it's Thanksgiving Day, and my best friends have, you know, their extended family over, friends, et cetera. So it's a, you know, pretty big group of people. My friend's father had just had a heart attack five months prior to this. And so I was so excited to see him over. I was commenting on how good he looked. You know, he had lost weight. He just looked great, vibrant. I was so happy for him and just so grateful he was there that he survived this, you know, awful situation. And one of my girlfriends and I are at the island in the kitchen. Everyone's about getting ready to eat. You know, it's in the late afternoon, we hadn't eaten yet and all of a sudden we heard a thump like nothing I'd ever heard before. As I looked over, I could see my friend's father down, face down on the hardwood floor. The thump was his head hitting the floor, his whole body. He was out cold. I didn't know if he was alive.

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Okay, so pause for a second. I've never been in a situation like this before. However, thankfully I was a lifeguard for all through high school and college and one of the trainings when you're a lifeguard and I share this with you because I want you to remember it in case anything like this ever happens to you. One of the things they train you on is wherever there is injury, chaos, challenge, you're supposed to run into it. Everybody else is running away from it. Like if you're at a beach, right, and you run into it, that's your job. But the other thing is you're supposed to always stay calm and they do a lot of things to you when you're training for it to be a lifeguard to ensure that you can do your best to stay calm. I mean it's hard but like anything, if you practice it over time, if you see the movie, you know what's going to happen, you know the outcome. It's your job to stay calm. Well, here's what's weird. I almost said I'm 39. Lies. I'm 49. And I haven't been a lifeguard in over, you know, 20 years. 20 something years, right? So I don't remember exactly, but it's kind of cool. Immediately in that moment, my lifeguard training popped into my head. And I remember thinking, my job is to go over there and save him. However, I don't remember. I couldn't remember in the second, like, I hadn't taken a CPR class in a while. And I just started thinking, shoot, like, I don't know what the counts are. My brain shifted to next thing is call 911. Call someone who knows how to do these things, right? I was shaking so profusely, the phone was falling out of my hands. Like, this was not me showing up as my best, calm, cool leader in a moment of chaos and crisis. No, definitely not, right? I got the phone in my hand. Everyone's screaming. People are crying. I mean, it was horrible. So chaotic. Everything seems really slow. Which is another weird thing in a moment of crisis like this. But it's not. I'm sure it's moving just regular. But to you who are in it, and I'm telling you this in case this happens to you, it's totally normal to feel like everything. I felt like me dialing the phone was taking, I don't know, 20 minutes. It just. Everything was so slow in your brain. So all I could do is I got the phone in my hand, I dialed 911. The next thought that came into my mind was, get out of the house. Because what if the phone call drops and I can't? My one thing I could hold onto is I have to get through to 911 and get the EMTs here. Cause he was out cold. He was not getting up. And so I didn't know if he was alive. I didn't know if he was breathing. And I just thought to myself, get out of the house. Don't lose your cell signal, Mind you, I'm in Boston, right? And it's, I don't know, 20 degrees out. And so I just walked outside. I'm shaking profusely. My best friend, who. It's her husband's father, that had fallen down on the ground and passed out. At this point, we didn't know if he was alive. We didn't know what was going on. She follows with me because we're both shaking, crying. I'm on the phone with 911, okay? So here's what happens. They say to you, 911, what's your emergency? I said, an 80 year old male, I think he just had a heart attack. I don't know if he's alive or not. Someone needs to get here immediately. Right? That was something like that. I don't know, it was like the best that I could get out of my mouth. And the lady started asking me all these questions, super interesting. So I didn't have the answers to them, right? She's like, is he blue? Is he breathing? Is he this, Is he that? And I'm outside now, there's so many people inside and there's chaos inside. Like I can hear some people are crying. I don't know, it was just everything's so confusing in that moment. And I just said to her, I'm like, lady, I don't know, just get the EMTs here now, please. I'm begging her. And my friend is as well in the background. And so she's like, give me the address again. I gave it to her again. And my friend keeps yelling, where are they? Where are the EMTs? Where are the EMTs? So anyhow, at some point my friend starts getting upset, like more aggressive. And so we said, please tell us when are they going to be here? She said, you have been on the phone with me for 1 minute and 15 seconds. I need you to stay calm. What was interesting is when she said that I was very grateful and I thanked her because in my mind I thought we'd been on the phone for 10 minutes and that he'd been laying in there for 10 minutes and we don't know if he's alive or not. And I didn't know what to do to save him. But I guess when you panic to that level, everything's distorted. So I'm just telling you this in case anything like this ever happens. Number one, focus on just picking up the phone and calling 911. Listen to what the 911 operator tells you to do. And so she started saying to me, get someone else, Heather, to go into the house and see if he's breathing. So my friend's mother in law ran in and checked and he seemed to be breathing. He was not blue. Right? These were all good signs, right? But he's still not coming too. He's still out cold. Okay? So all I'm seeing is what's happening on the outside and what they're yelling back to me to report back to 911. So 911 just says, leave him on the floor, don't touch him. The firefighters actually are the ones that get there first to a situation like this or the police, but not the EMTs. And I didn't know that. So it was interesting. And so don't be surprised if you ever are in a situation like this that the firefighters or police will come first. Obviously, they're trained on cpr. They are very well versed and trained in this, and they see this all of the time. And actually, they had just come from another call. Very, very similar, like almost exact same thing, not the same outcome that we had. So anyhow, what I didn't know is I didn't know what was going on inside the house, and I'm going to tell you about that in a minute. So all I see is what's happening on the outside. I have no idea what's happening inside. I just didn't want to lose the cell service, I didn't want to lose the call, and I wanted to flag down the team coming in to help him to get him in the house as fast as possible. Every second counts when you're in a crisis situation. All of a sudden I see the fire truck first and they come running in. You know, we had the door open for them. They went running right in. Another thing they said to do is secure all pets, get all pets out of the home so that you can have the doors open. And the firefighters, EMTs, police, don't have to worry about managing pets. Coming after them makes a lot of sense, right? They wanted to know the vitals, whatever we could tell them about my friend's father and so that they know what they're walking into. But again, we didn't really know what we're doing. Right? So anyhow, cut to. I see them all go in. First the firefighters, then the police arrive. Next, the police go running in, and we're still standing outside waiting for the EMTs. And we ask, how long till the EMTs get here? And they said, probably another four or five minutes. Oh, my gosh. When you're in that situation, just let me tell you how scary that is. The good news is, once the firefighters are there and then the police are there, I mean, again, they're not rookies. They've seen this many a times, and they know what to do. So we can hear them talking, but we don't know what's going on. Then the EMTs arrive, and so we yell, the EMTs are here. The police come out and they start debriefing them, which was interesting to watch, and telling them what situation they're walking into, what he looks like, what they've Observed what they've done. The EMTs what listening intently. There's two of them, and they go running in the door. They get him into a chair, they put a neck brace on him because obviously he'd hit the floor so hard. He's now awake. I don't know how long this is at this point, from the time he actually hit the ground and passed out, I have no idea. Anyhow, we're now back in the house, and I can see his granddaughter is praying. I can see my son's praying, and I don't really know what else is going on. There's just so much chaos, so much crying, so much upset. But he's now sitting in the wheelchair, miraculously, with a neck brace on, and he's speaking a little bit. Okay, so this first of all, miraculous, now it's happening fast. Now that he seems to be getting better and that they're there because you feel so safe. Once the police, the fire truck, and the EMTs are there, you know, the best hands in the world are on him, right? That they can handle this. They know how to handle this. So this happens pretty quickly. The EMT says, you've passed every single check I need to give you. You're now speaking clearly. How do you feel? And he says, I actually think I feel pretty good. Can you do this test with your hands? This test with standing, this test? He keeps testing him, and over a few minutes time, he says, I think that you're fine to stay. I think he just had potentially passed away. I'm so beside myself at this point, but obviously I'm not the professional they are. So they're saying it's up to you. If you want to go in, we'll take you in in the ambulance. If you don't, you can go in on your own, or you can stay home with your family and see how you feel. You can always call us who can come back. He says, if you think I'm fine, I'd like to stay. You know, it's Thanksgiving. I really like to stay. They said, okay, that's your choice. So they all go outside for a minute. The EMT's still inside with them, but everybody else goes on the front lawn. They're talking. We run out to ask them to stay for dinner. What can we give you? We do anything. We're so grateful for you. I mean, literally, these guys saved us. Thank God for first responders and the work that they do, the fact that they work on holidays, how fast they responded, how gracious they were to us. Being so crazy and not making sense and just how amazing they were. Okay, so now we go back inside and my friend's father is saying, I want to walk out and thank everybody. Of course. Emotional. Everyone's so emotional. Everyone's crying and all he wants to do is thank everyone for saving his life. Right? And it was just, it was so beautiful. I've never felt so full of gratitude in my life. Going from in one moment thinking we just lost someone that we love to literally minutes later. I mean, maybe it's 15 minutes later he's talking. I still can't even wrap my head around it. It was the biggest miracle I've ever witnessed in my life. Miracles are alive and well. Okay, That's. I'm just gonna say, open your mind and heart to miracles. They are all around us and we saw one and even the team of firemen, police and EMT said that to us. They said, you just witnessed a miracle. We hope you know that because we just left another call. This is when they were out in front after everything had happened and he was not outside with us. They said, we just left another call. Very similar. It did not turn out like this at all. And you know what that means, right? So, wow. We felt so grateful. Their perspective was so powerful because they see this so often that this is not how it turns out. 99% of the time when an 80 year old man who just had a heart attack recently unexpectedly passes out and hits the floor, typically they're not going to come too. And for what? I believe there's a very clear reason why this happened and I'll share that with you in a moment. This outcome is very different. Regardless, we were so grateful. They were so kind, so generous of spirit, so good at their job, so, so giving. And then my friend's father was so amazing. All he wanted to do was to thank everyone and be grateful for everyone. And it was just, I don't know, it was pure magic, miracle in motion. I feel so blessed. I'm so grateful I was there. I'm so blessed for the outcome that we had. Okay, here's what I found out. And this is what is so crazy is that we didn't know this was happening inside because remember, we're outside on the front lawn, we didn't want to lose a cell signal. Well, come to find out, when I ran out front and then my girlfriend followed right behind me, her daughter, who's 24 years old, ran to the cupboard to get the holy oil brought out, the holy oil got down on her hands and knees to pray and put her hands on her grandfather and started praying out loud with the holy oil. And it was after she started doing that for a couple of minutes, he opened his eyes and if you don't think that that is a miracle from God, I am telling you it is. Right? And so she said, sat with him with her hands on him, praying to God to save him. And within a couple of minutes his eyes opened. And then within a couple of minutes the firefighters were there. And then a couple of minutes the EMTs were there. Everything changed. And she never stopped praying from the moment she put her hands on him and got down on her hands and knees. Even when the firefighters arrived, she moved herself to the corner of the room and continued praying out loud. And so she was telling us a story, everyone was telling us a story after because they were all in there witnessing this. We were not. And I was just so proud of her that this young woman of 24 years old could have the foresight, the clarity, the knowing to do this. And it was interesting. My 16 year old son was saying to me later on in the afternoon, mom, I knew that was the right thing to do what she did, he said, but for some reason I didn't activate and go do it. And I of course gave him grace. I said, don't worry, first of all, she did the right thing. She knew to do the right thing. She's a lot older than you, but now you've seen the experience and now you know that that's a power you have within you that you can offer to someone else, that you can put your hands on someone else and pray for them and play some role in being a conduit to access God in this moment and bring prayer to light and the possibility of a miracle. And so it was just this incredible experience. And to see this grandfather and granddaughter together for the rest of the day, I couldn't stop crying. I have to tell you, I just felt so grateful. We had just witnessed a miracle. The power of this young woman and her healing power and her relationship with God and God's ability to provide and heal and just miracles. It was miraculous and it ended up being the most incredible day. So grateful and he's doing incredible.

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With you one, because I want to share. I didn't know what it was like to go through a 911 experience like this. I didn't know how to confusing it would feel or how long it would feel. And how your timelines are so off and how panic is not helpful.

Right.

Getting clarity of give yourself one job, whatever that is. Maybe your job is to pray. Get down and pray with the person, the victim. Or maybe it's to grab the phone and call 911. Or maybe it's to, you know, shut all the ovens off and get the pets out of the house. I don't know. But fixating on. Okay, what can I do right now to help? You know, whatever it is, if you know cpr, do cpr, right? So just having that clarity and knowing and then give yourself grace. Because no one's going to do this perfectly, that's for sure. The people in the room that were the most calm were the oldest people in the room. And when I talked to everybody after, they were saying, well, Heather, I've seen this happen. It happened to my wife who passed away. It happened to me. It's not as scary or jolting to you when you've seen it before. And that made a lot of sense. So, sadly, the older you get, the more you're gonna be exposed to situations like this. But I will tell you, I'm just so grateful for the miracle that I witnessed. I'm so grateful to know how good God is in my life and to have seen how many people saw firsthand that day that miracles do happen. And I'm grateful that we got to experience one. It was incredible. God is so good. And stay open to miracles. They're all around you. Okay, so cut to. I'm back home now, and I went to church today with my son. And the message today in church was all about miracles are alive and real. And when God puts a vision on your heart, know that you need to plant that seed. You need to do that work, but you also need to have faith that it's going to come together. You might not know how, you might not know when. It might be frustrating, you might get hurt along the way and lose hope. But the message today was, don't lose your faith in God. Don't lose your faith in that vision. That idea was given to you for a reason, and it will come to fruition. Don't lose your faith. Keep your hope. Keep moving forward. Things don't always happen in a day. And actually our pastor used the example that when he was very young, he was in his teens. He had the vision of VUE Church. And, you know, here he is in his late 30s, and Vue Church is alive and well and seven years in. But for many, many years, he worked, worked and worked and saw no return. But he didn't lose his faith in God. He didn't lose his faith. And his vision that God had put on his heart, no matter how much he might feel hurt, he didn't lose his hope. And he's so grateful he did. And we're also grateful he didn't as well. So I don't want you to lose whatever that vision is, that big plan, that idea that you're chasing down. Listen, we all get hurt, we all get discouraged. We all have people that tell us it's not gonna happen. Keep your faith, Stay focused on the vision, stay focused on the outcome. You don't need to know exactly how it's all gonna happen. In fact, we probably very rarely do. But stay committed to that, knowing that it will, that hope that it will, and that expectation that it's coming. You just don't know exactly when or how yet. And I promise you it will. And that was an incredible message today. Again, it's VUE church. Rich Wilkerson Jr. If you go, you can see the actual Mass that I'm at, if you go on YouTube and look at his most recent sermon. So it's incredible. I really, really loved today's message. And it was so timely coming out of this situation at Thanksgiving where I was right there to witness a miracle right in front of me and just feeling so grateful for it all. So if you're feeling discouraged, if you are feeling down, tough times don't last, right? It's not going to stay this way. There are so many great people out there in the world. Miracles are happening every day all around you. And your miracle is coming, too. You just have to keep your faith. So, oh, my gosh, I can't let you go today without telling you this. 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