Prayer in Numbers Results in Ringing Victory Bell

“I looked in that car and when I saw the passenger seat where Robbie was I knew it was bad,” recalls Lisa Roberts. “And then the police came to me and they said, ‘Your husband is already gone.’”

Lisa Roberts and her daughter-in-law, Emily, were waiting for their husbands Robbie and Josh to meet them at their house when they got a phone call telling them their husbands had been in a car crash in a nearby highway intersection. Lisa remembers, “I had no clue how serious it was going to be. So, Emily and I stopped everything we were doing and we jumped in the car and left to go to the stoplight.”
    
An unlicensed driver with meth in his system had run a red-light, smashing into the passenger side of Josh’s car at near 70 mph. Josh sustained numerous injuries, but it was his dad, Robbie, who was crushed and trapped in the vehicle. EMT and fire units rushed to the scene. 

Firefighter Jeremy Holsapple worked alongside EMTs to free Robbie from the wreckage. “In my 25 years of going to car accidents, I have never, ever seen anyone who was that broken, have that level of injuries, and that many of them,” said Jeremy. “It looked like we was dealing with someone that probably was not going survive this accident.”
         
Veteran EMT Mike Harris assessed Robbie’s injuries while in the car. He recalls, “He didn't have a blood pressure. And I can tell by the way I was feeling around, I could feel all of his broken bones. I remember telling the fire crew, I said, ‘If we don't get something done right away, he's not going to make it.’”
        
They were soon able to free Robbie from the car and rush him to the hospital. Doctors gave Lisa a grim prognosis. Lisa remembers, “He said, ‘We don’t even know how bad this is. We are still trying to stabilize him.’ And I said, ‘Is he going to make it?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know.’”

Robbie desperately needed to be flown to a trauma hospital, but hospital staff couldn’t raise his blood pressure enough to move him - and the weather was too severe for the chopper to fly. Sarah Gilbert is a nurse who treated Robbie. She said, “That was our primary objective, to try to stabilize his vital signs so that we could get him to our trauma one center where he needed to go.”

Emily Burnett, a medical technician says, “We needed the rain to stop and we needed his blood pressure to hold so that he was stable enough to fly.”
        
Lisa remembers, “I started calling prayer warriors in my church and I said, ‘We need God to move. I need the helicopter here.’ And I promise you, in ten minutes the nurse came back in and she said, ‘The helicopter's on the way.’ I knew that was God! I said, ‘I love you, Robbie. Baby, you've got to fight.’ We laid hands on him and we prayed. I didn't know if that was going to be the last time that I was going to see my husband alive.”

Robbie survived the flight to I.U. Methodist hospital. Nearly every bone in Robbie’s body had been broken. He suffered an internal decapitation, a torn aorta, and a level five spleen injury. Still, Lisa and her prayer warriors continued to believe and pray for a miracle. She says, “I know prayer can change things. When you have people of God praying, it can change the heart of God. When a name is being mentioned many, many times, I believe that is going to get God's attention.”

During the first six days Robbie endured 50 hours of surgeries. Meanwhile, Lisa fought a spiritual battle against fear. She remembers, “The devil tried to put doubt in my mind, ‘He's not going to make it. He's not going to make it. They're going to walk out that door, he's not going to make it.’ But I would rebuke him in the name of Jesus. I would have to overcome fear. I remember that day I called my pastor and I said, ‘I need you to pray for me right now.’ He prayed and we prayed and a calmness and a peace came right back over me.” 

Robbie spent 40 days in the trauma unit, with little hope he would walk or function normally again. He was then transferred to a long-term care facility and eventually moved into rehab. “Then they'd come and say, ‘He pulled through again.’ And then I would have another surgery with him and they'd say, ‘He pulled through again.’ It was God through it all. He performed miracle after miracle,” recalls Lisa. 

Despite the challenges Robbie recovered beyond all expectations. After 104 days in three different hospitals Robbie rang the rehab facility’s victory bell and walked out – a miracle. He said, “I rung that bell with all my might. It was a great and glorious feeling.”  

Those who witnessed Robbie’s survival and recovery say it would have been impossible without a touch from a miracle working God.
EMT Mike Harris said, “Robbie’s a miracle man. He should not have made it. One of those injuries would have killed most people but he had multiple injuries, every one of them should have killed him.”  

“Without God’s touch there was no way he was going to survive the injuries he had,” said Jeremy Holsapple.
        
Robbie recalls, “I was as close to death as you can get without straight-lining. Coming from death to where I'm at, oh my, I have no complaints. All I have is praise to my God.”
        
“I think that God wants people to see that He is still in the miracle business and He is still on the throne,” said Lisa.

“God is not dead. He is not silent. He knows exactly what we need, when we need it, and exactly how we need it,” Robbie says. “What an awesome God we serve.”

(To reach out or follow Robert and his family, please find them at #RobertsStrong on Instagram.)