Life sometimes throws circumstances at us that we never expected. A day filled with fun and frolic turned into a family’s worst nightmare after their daughter was involved in a freak accident.
7-year-old Sarah Faulkner was enjoying a nice swim at a swimming hole in Waverly. A teenager took a dive from a 30-foot rock and landed right on Sarah’s back as she was swimming in Hurricane Creek at Loretta Lynn’s campground.
The 7-year-old child is now hospitalized at Vanderbilt in Nashville. She has been paralyzed from the lower chest down.
She said the girl landed on her back which caused her entire body to freeze as she hit her head at the bottom of the creek, her father Tre Faulkner recounted. “And she said, ‘Daddy, my whole body froze, and I couldn’t move my arms, then my arm started working again, and I swam to the top and started screaming.’”
Sarah had to get 19 staples in her skull but that was the least of the family’s worries. The injury has caused her to be paralyzed which has the entire family immensely worried.
“I said, ‘Sir, man to man, just tell me the truth. Will she ever walk again?’ He said, ‘No, I do not believe so, but there is something out there more powerful than me,’” her father recalled her conversation with the doctor.
“I believe God can and will heal my daughter, I need a miracle. My wife needs a miracle. My children need a miracle. You need a miracle. Our country needs a miracle to show that God is real and God is alive,” Faulkner said.
The family is quite religious and are leaning on their faith in this time of hardship for them as their daughter struggles to recover from this freak accident.
Sarah has three siblings, who along with her mom and dad are all praying for their sister’s quick and full recovery.
After the family posted about the incident online and made a GoFundMe page to help with Sarah’s medical expenses, they expressed gratitude for the number of people praying for Sarah. They share that even atheists have promised to pray for the little girl’s delivery.
“And I personally have never in my life ever seen so much prayer over one incident flowing and flowing. Not just prayer, but people saying, ‘Lord make her walk again’ and saying ‘She will walk again,” Faulkner recounted.
The identity of the teenager who landed on Sarah is unknown as she apparently ran away during the confusion but the family does not bear her any ill will.
“And I asked her what she thought we should do with this girl, And she said we should forgive. And so we literally prayed for the girl. We can’t imagine the kind of pain she is going through right now. And what we want to do as a family is we want to be used by God to express the same type of love that Jesus did when he hung on the cross for the world,” Tre Faulkner said.
The family immensely believes in the power of prayer and is sure Sarah will walk again. Her father already has the proof he needs to make a case for why he believes his daughter will fully recover.
“Because the first day she went into the hospital she had no rectal tone, which means there’s no muscle tone in there. That’s what happens to paraplegics. The very next day, she had rectal tone. Last night, she moved her toes, not her toes but moved her feet like this, just barely moving them. So we’re believing that God is in the process of healing this girl for his glory, his honor,” he said.
They have titled the GoFundMe page as “Sarah WILL walk again” to show just how much they believe that Sarah will one day walk again.