Love, prayer and faith saved my life after a speeding car hit me. I was in a coma with severe brain damage. The doctors told my parents to pull the plug on me because there was no hope. My mama refused to listen to the doctors. God told her I’d make it. I was 7 ½ years old.
My family, which included cousins from Texas, aunts, my mom, friends and I wrapped up spring break in Biloxi, Mississippi, on March 15, 1992. We’d stayed with my great-aunt who lived there.
Burgers were cooked on the grill as we played outside. Matt and Curtis, my cousins, had their bikes with them. Curtis challenged me to a race and Matt allowed me to borrow his bike. At the same time, a 20-year-old man drove his girlfriend’s red sports car at 55 mph and hit me. From what I’ve been told, because I do not remember any of this because of the brain injury, my little body flew 14 feet in the air and my head shattered the windshield.
Mama was inside talking on the phone with her mom. She heard voices screaming, “Call 9-1-1.” She went outside and saw a child wearing a red T-shirt lying on the curb. “Oh, God,” she cried. “Please tell me my baby’s not dead.”
A medical flight crew life-flighted me from Biloxi Regional Hospital to the University of South Alabama’s level 1 trauma unit. On the drive from Biloxi to Mobile, Mama heard God say, “All is well.” She said with faith to my dad, “Robert, Skyla’s going to be ok. She’s going to make it. All is well. All is well. All is well.” She kept repeating it like a mantra.
Ironic that our last name’s Luckey and the doctors thought my parents weren’t lucky. Their daughter’s brain was compared to J-E-L-L-O. Severely swollen. Mush.
“We’re sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Luckey, but if she makes it she’ll be a vegetable for the rest of her life,” the doctors said. Mama refused to believe this. There they were with love, prayer and faith for their baby girl in a coma hooked up to all that medical equipment. Tubes were running through my nose and a tube was placed into the back of my head to drain fluid. A blue body cast covered my body. Multiple pins were placed in my left leg which was severely broken. Cuts all over my face and body from the broken windshield. Bruises. I don’t know how many surgeries I endured as I remained in a coma.
Love, prayer and faith didn’t stop at my parents. People from Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas were praying for me. Locals in the Mobile area stopped by the hospital and prayed over me. As the days went by and it didn’t look like any improvements were happening to my brain, some of my family member’s faith started to wane. What if the doctors were right?
Mama kept her faith and kept saying, “All is well.” She wasn’t going to give up on me and doubt God’s message. Prayers, healing energy and love kept pouring in from all over. And on the sixth day of the coma, I awoke.
There must be power in a name, so it would seem for seven-year-old Skyla Luckey who the medical staff called a miracle child.
See what love did? It worked a miracle. It doesn’t have to be so many people from Florida to Texas praying for a miracle to occur. One person’s love and kindness can work a miracle in the biggest way for another human being. We can also work miracles for ourselves when we acknowledge the light that lives in us. We work miracles for ourselves when we know that this too shall pass. The situation you’re in won’t last. This undesirable situation is a time to grow, a time to have faith, a time to continue to love yourself and others, and a time to claim, “All is well.”
As every part of me recuperated in a body cast while in a hospital bed, I remember not wishing any ill will on the man that hit me. I could have. I could have been angry at him and mad about everything. But I wasn’t. Even though my brain would feel overwhelmed as it healed and was learning to process emotions and having to relearn the days of the week, basic math, etc., I didn’t let any of that get me down. My attitude was, “This isn’t forever. I don’t know my recovery timeline but there will come a day when I can go back to school, play outside and see my friends again.” And I would visualize it.
Mama kept my brain busy with books, coloring books and toys. She played checkers with me a lot, and she’d stand at the end of the bed and we’d play catch.
One day after Mama and I finished a game of checkers, Jesus and my great-grandmother, GiGi, who had passed away six months before I was hit by a car stopped by to visit. They didn’t say anything to me but I sure did to them. They were standing side by side at the doorway. Just smiling at me. I told them all about my day. I explained to them why I was in a body cast. I felt so excited seeing them. There was so much love in that room.
Six months later, I went back to school. I learned how to walk again and I was one of the smartest kids in my class even with brain damage.
If you want to see the rainbow at the end of your tunnel, lovingly accept what’s happened to you and remind yourself that nothing lasts forever. You will move on. You will move forward. You will heal from what it is that is trying to keep you down. Visualize it. And know that “All is well.”
Namaste.
-Skyla Luckey
