TESTIMONY
Amber Nesbitt: A Christmas Miracle
By Amy Reid
The 700 Club
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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Amber as she was when I met her before her accident.
