A true story of a Man who faces tragedies in his life head on and never gives up.
Every night after work as a landscaper, Jim “Bubba” Bay went for a walk. But on the night of November 15, 2009, while walking on Hammertown Road in Pine Plains, New York, Bubba fell 14 feet head-first into a gully, breaking 23 bones, including 11 ribs, 10 vertebrae, his skull and left scapula. After a day in intensive care, the doctors induced a coma. Bubba survived, and when he awoke from the coma, he began to tell his family and friends about his remarkable visions on the edge of death. After a life scarred by the deaths of two sons, Bubba emerged from his own near-death experience with his faith in God renewed and his eyes opened to everyday miracles.
Excerpt
When I reached the side of the road I was in so much pain, and so tired from the climb up out of that gully, that I closed my eyes and laid there for a time. I closed my eyes partly from pain, partly from exhaustion, partly due to blood and sweat and tears, but also because I didn’t want someone to find me dead on the side of the road with my lifeless eyes staring off into nothingness. With some relief, I thought the terrible pain wracking my body would finally cease when I died. It would be better if my eyes were closed. I had reached the road. There was nothing more I could do. I was not without fear, or doubt. I believed I would be joining my sons, Robert and James, in Heaven. But how could I know? Maybe death was not what I believed it to be. Maybe, despite everything I hoped, there was no Heaven. Maybe there would be no peace, no rest. My faith was not unshakeable. There had been enough tragedies and terrible struggles in my life to make me wonder. Though I believed in God, and in Heaven, I was not a practicing Christian; I rarely went to church; I didn’t know the Bible. I was not at all sure where I stood with God. And so though I accepted my fate, it was not without some dread. As I lay there in a pool of blood on the side of Hammertown Road, behind my closed eyelids it seemed to be getting lighter, as though I were a child and my mother had turned on the lights in my room to wake me up.
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I thought a car might be approaching, the glare from its headlights washing over me. And so I opened my eyes. But I didn’t see or hear any cars. Maybe I was hallucinating from loss of blood. Or maybe it was the moon peering out from behind clouds, or the stars in my ringing head, or maybe even someone shining a flashlight in my eyes. The light was coming from above me. I tried to lift my head but the pain was too great. But I was able to roll my body to the right a little and turn my head slightly to look up. All the while the light was growing brighter, shining down on me like a spotlight. The light seemed to be spreading out across the fields and hills like a sunrise. The light became so intense it was blinding, a brilliant white, but there was also a softness to the light; it felt comforting, as though the light were somehow holding me in its arms. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. And then, from the midst of the brilliance, a human figure walked toward me. A wind began swirling around me, moving over me and rus- tling through the trees. My pain subsided. My breathing became much easier. As my eyes adjusted I could better see the figure in the light: grand- fatherly, bearded, wearing what seemed to be a robe, a weathered but kindly face. Then the light around the figure began to sparkle in a variety colors, a kaleidoscope of twinkling stars, a frame around the white light at the cen- ter where the figure stood. And there, standing behind and to one side of the figure, I saw my two sons who had passed away, Robert and James. They no longer looked sickly. I remembered then that one of the things I had yelled down in the hole was, “Please God, help me!” Though I had fallen into a gully and landed on my head, though I had lost a great amount of blood, though it was possible I was delirious and in shock, I knew, without a doubt in my mind, to the depths of my very soul, that the figure standing before me was God.
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