Hoping for the Impossible

Author Robert Hull, 1.cbn.com

During a motorcycle ride near Houston, Texas in June of 2006, Clint’s leather jacket slipped off the back of his bike and became tangled in the bike’s chain, seizing the rear wheel. Clint was thrown over the front of the bike at 70-miles per hour, landing headfirst on the asphalt. Later that night, Clint’s wife Andrea got a phone call about the accident.

“I was instantly worried, shocked and just kind of stunned,” she says. “I didn’t know any details, so it was really—it was scary.”

Emergency responders called for a life flight to a trauma center in Austin Texas. Clint and Andrea’s pastor Don Nordin was also contacted and drove to the hospital
“We were praying as we drove and I was just trying to hear the voice of God about the situation because I knew I’d be walking into a very difficult situation and I wanted to be an encouragement,” says Pastor Don.  “And the Lord spoke to me. He said when you get to the hospital, I want you to tell them that Clint will recover all. Don’t worry about what’s happened here. Don’t look at the situation, don’t look at the circumstances, don’t put too much stock in what the prognosis is, Clint is going to recover all.”

Clint had severely damaged the frontal and temporal lobes of his brain and was in a coma. Doctors said if he survived, he may need full time care for the rest of his life.
Andrea says, “He was just bleeding and had all these IV’s everywhere. He was on a ventilator and he was bleeding out of his ears.”

“It was probably the worst situation I had ever seen. The medical community did not expect him to survive,” says Don.

Their family gathered in prayer at the hospital and word went out to their church community to pray for Clint’s survival.

Andrea says, “Whenever we felt like we needed to pray we would you know, that’s what we needed to do to stay focused and remind ourselves about, you know, our promise that he was going to be healed and that we just had to have patience even though everything looked really bad, to stay hopeful.”

Despite the prognosis they continued to wait and pray for a miracle. Andrea says, “I know what I know, but I also know that anything’s possible with God.”

“They exhibited faith through this entire situation the likes of which I’ve rarely seen in 35 years of pastoring,” says Don Nordin.

Andrea says, “There’s just too much prayer going up him to not come out of this.”

Andrea clung to the word of god for hope. Church members gave her cards with bible verses about god’s power to heal and restore. She says, “I would read them to myself; I would read them to Clint. I would just, like when he wasn’t awake, I would just kind of whisper them to him in his ear, that would help ground me and bring me back to that’s—I have to hold on. That’s my answer. Or, you know, that’s what God’s Word says. So I have to believe it.  God’s Word is true. And that it never comes back void. Whatever His promise is.”

Andrea waited and prayed through days of progress and setbacks.  She remembers, “His internal cranial pressures would go up or his blood pressure would get really high. Or he would have a high fever, you know, things like that. And they were afraid maybe he’d start to have seizures, you know, things like that. Then, you know, it would constantly just kind of go up and down, you know, he was doing good and then, you know, things were getting bad.”

Finally, after two weeks in a coma they had a breakthrough. While surrounded by his family, Clint woke up. Andrea says, “He sat up and his eyes got big and he was like, you know, I know them, you know.”

Over the next several months Clint recovered mentally and physically beyond doctor’s expectations, though he says he had to relearn even the simplest of tasks. “I don’t know if everybody’s like this but you get brain damage and guess what, you might get to grow up again, having to relearn all kinds of things again. Like how to do just about everything.”

Clint and Andrea believe his recovery was miraculous, and an answer to prayer. Andrea says, “Trust in God with everything, you just have to be able to know that God will take care of you, whatever it is.”

Pastor Don Nordin says, “They were just steady, they prayed, they walked in faith and they received their miracle and the fact that Clint was able to overcome that kind of a diagnosis, to even be functional as a human being, is just absolutely miraculous. Let alone be able to continue his job.”

“Before he was kind of quiet, reserved, didn’t really talk much. And now he talks a lot,” Andrea says with a smile.

“He restored me,” says Clint. “I got back everything that I need. And more, I’ve got two girls, I got a happy wife. God has helped us to, not just move forward, but to prosper. If you just trust Him, He’ll provide you what you need and more.”