Four years ago, a freak accident left the family of then-14-year-old Taylor Hale making funeral arrangements for the high-school cheerleader. But thanks to the healing power of God and the faith of her family and friends, Hale is preparing to graduate high school, alive and fully healed.
“I’m always thankful to all the doctors and nurses and therapists who helped me get better,” said the teen at a May 12 press conference, “but God did most of the saving.”
While horsing around with her friends in the fall of 2011, the high school cheerleader fell hard on the concrete, resulting in a massive brain injury.
Rushed to the hospital and placed in a medically induced coma, the doctors hoped that her body would start to heal itself. Instead, the opposite happened, her brain beginning to hemorrhage, with part of her brain sinking into her spinal canal.
“The following day, [doctors] said, ‘We’re sorry—there’s nothing more we can do for her,” Hale’s mother, Stacy Henningsen, told NBC News. “You should probably say goodbye.”
The family began to make arrangements for their daughter’s seemingly inevitable death, but the faith of a family friend helped to change everything.
While visiting her hospital room in this dark hour, Jeff Stickel felt the Holy Spirit impressing upon him the need to lay hands on the injured teen. After asking and receiving permission to do so, he prayed over Hale, asking for a miraculous healing.
Shortly thereafter, with no obvious signs of recovery, doctors removed the Iowa teen from life support. But what natural law said should have been Hale’s end instead portended her new beginning.
Once the life support was turned off, Hale began trying to take breaths on her own. Seeing this, the medical staff reconnected life support, and watched as, slowly but surely, the high school freshman’s condition began to improve.
Soon she was responsive, sitting up, talking and walking around. And 3 1/2 years later, 17-year-old Hale is now preparing to graduate from high school on schedule.
“It was the hand of God at work,” Hale’s father told local news station KREM 2. “That’s the only thing that can explain it.”
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