More than eight months after suffering third-degree burns on more than 20% of his body in an accident on his ranch in Texas, former University of Texas Longhorn and NFL wide receiver Jordan Shipley said he desperately called on the Lord for help during the life-threatening ordeal and experienced a “miracle.” The 40-year-old Shipley, considered one of the greatest wide receivers in Texas Longhorns history, recently said during the Toolbox Christian outreach ministry event at the Austin Country Club that he sees life differently since the January accident while cleaering land on his ranch near Burnet and believes God spared him.
“I saw people I know praying who don’t ever pray,” he was quoted as saying by the Houston Chronicle. “The fact that I’m here is a miracle.” Hours before the Jan. 6 accident, Shipley said, his then-5-year-old son, Swayde, asked him on the way to school, “When are you going to go to Heaven?
And who’s going to take care of me if something happens?” Shipley said he chuckled at the questions that morning because he wasn’t sure how to answer. But those questions came back to Shipley's mind when he was trapped in the cab of a bulldozer during the fire that injured him. “The door wouldn’t open,” Shipley said. “It was stuck. I was scared. I was praying and screaming.
I was yelling ‘Please let me out, Lord’ at the top of my lungs.” Shipley said he eventually freed the jammed door and escaped the cab. But the ordeal wasn’t over. He walked for 45 minutes before finding a colleague, who drove him to a local hospital. He was then airlifted to Austin.