One woman discovers the power of prayer through the tragedy of a car crash.

By: Camryn Whaley with Laura Mains

Laura Mains is a firm believer in the power of prayer. When you hear her story, it’s clear why. Almost seventeen years ago, Laura Mains woke up to a woman in a white lab coat asking her questions.

“Who is the president of the United States?” she asked. “Do you know what country, state, and city you are in?” Laura quickly answered these questions, thinking they seemed almost foolishly easy. But she was completely unprepared for the question and answer that came next.

“What is today’s date?”

“It is May 9th, 2004,” Laura replied confidently.

The neurologist’s concerned look as she jotted down notes told Laura that her answer was wrong.

“It’s June 15th of 2004,” she corrected.

The news that came next would change Laura’s life in ways she couldn’t imagine. The neurologist went on to tell her that she had been seriously injured in a severe car accident, and that she had been in a coma for the past five weeks. Most people would panic upon learning this news. However, despite having no memory of the previous five weeks or how she got there, Laura recalls being strangely unalarmed. This is how it happened.

A seventeen year old Laura Mains was just about to finish high school in Charlotte, North Carolina. Tumultuous times within her family meant that if she wanted to be able to graduate from the same high school, she had to move in with her aunt’s family. She explains that this became an opportunity for the devil to infiltrate her life and interfere with the Lord’s plans for her.

“Negative feelings began to fester and eat away at my soul little by little,” Laura said. “Jealously, envy, bitterness, loneliness, and depression crept in as unwanted guests.”

Trying to cope with these feelings, she began skipping school and spending time with the wrong crowd, headed straight down a path of destruction. Little did Laura know that the Lord was about to stage a huge intervention in her life. The last thing that she remembers from May 8th, 2004 is arriving at her part-time shift at a local fast food restaurant.

“I cannot recall working, leaving, driving with my friend, or the accident,” Laura said.

After her shift, a friend of Laura’s picked her up in her car. The driver and Laura were distracted, talking and having fun when they rolled right through an intersection with a stop sign. It was at that exact moment when a drunk driver plowed full speed into the passenger side of their car, the side that Laura was on.

The wreck was severe—the car that Laura and her friend were driving was destroyed. A witness to the accident rushed over from the car behind them, looking for signs that any passengers had survived. The witness, Mr. Shaw, saw that the two drivers were injured but stable.

However, he was also met with a grim sight—Laura’s body hanging half in and half out of the vehicle wreckage. He ignored her fixed and dilated pupils and immediately checked her for a pulse but found none.

By that time, neighbors who had heard the accident and passengers from other cars were rushing over and trying to help as well. Seeing Laura’s body entangled in the car, they told Mr. Shaw that they should leave her and attend to the other injured passengers instead because she was clearly dead.

Mr. Shaw, however, being a man of faith and a firm believer in the power of prayer, refused to leave her side. He was moved by the Spirit to pray for her, to ask God to keep her alive if it was His will. After a few moments of intense prayer, Laura took a gasping, shallow breath, her lungs filling back up with life.

“I owe my life to that prayer and the Lord’s healing,” Laura said.

In the midst of the chaos, paramedics arrived to take her to the hospital, which would become her temporary home for nearly two months.

Laura faced a gruesome diagnosis at the hospital—she had a fractured C1 vertebrae, a fractured pelvic bone, a lacerated spleen, and several other injuries. Damage to the C1 and C2 vertebrae are considered the worst possible spinal injuries, because this is where the brainstem extends. Her chances of survival were very low, and doctors explained to her mother that even if she did survive, she would likely suffer side effects such as paralysis, amnesia, persistent vegetative state, or could even remain in a coma for a much longer period of time.

Upon hearing this news, Laura’s family spread the word of her accident and condition, and soon began an amazing wave of prayer that reached halfway across the world.

Her mother, who worked with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association at the time, asked for prayers and quickly received them, from family, friends, and even strangers. Soon there was an army of prayer warriors praying tirelessly for her quick recovery and salvation.

Even as far away as South America, Laura had prayers being sent up for her. Days after the accident, her uncle’s sister who lives in Argentina went to church as always. While sitting in a pew, eyes closed and hands clasped in prayer, she heard a man’s voice close by tell her, “Pray for Laura.” Her eyes flew open and she looked around to see who had spoken, but there were only women and children around her. She then understood that it was none other than the voice of the Lord Almighty who had instructed her to pray for Laura, someone she had never even met before. The next day, Laura’s uncle shared the news of her accident with his sister, and she knew why the Lord called her to prayer.

Countless people prayed for Laura’s recovery, but perhaps no one prayed harder than Laura’s own mother. Over the next five weeks in the hospital, her mother refused to leave her side. She nearly constantly prayed for, sang hymns to, and simply talked to her.

“Spiritually, I could hear everything,” Laura said.

For more than a month, Laura’s mother spent hours each day by her daughter’s bedside, looking at all the machinery and tubing and wires keeping her alive.

She would often sit and pray to the Lord at a brook in front of the hospital, wondering why this tragedy had happened to her child. One day as she prayed by that brook, the Holy Spirit spoke to her. He told her not to worry, that Laura would be 100% healed. Knowing the seriousness of her daughter’s condition, she could hardly believe it. The Holy Spirit then led her to toss a pebble into the brook, which she did. “See how the stone creates many ripples?” The Lord said to her. “Laura is that stone. She will affect many peoples’ lives through this accident.”

Laura’s mother took these words to heart and let them be a source of hope for her in the following days. She continued to pray over Laura, reading her daily Psalms and praying for Laura to receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Miraculously, just days later Laura’s eyes fluttered open and she had regained consciousness. Two challenging weeks after she woke up, she began communicating with others again, and in another two weeks she was finally discharged from the hospital.

Laura’s recovery process was long and grueling, taking about two and a half years in total. She had to undergo both physical and speech therapy, which can be incredibly challenging physically, mentally, and emotionally. The consequences of her brain injury meant problems with cognition like forgetting certain words and being unable to connect thoughts. Laura recalls asking someone to “shut that thing over there,” having forgotten the word “door.” She also spent nearly two months in a wheelchair because of muscle atrophy during the weeks while she was unconscious.

“At first, it was very, very difficult,” Laura said.

A high school senior about to graduate at the time of her accident, Laura watched as her friends and peers went off to college and work as she had to relearn basic things like walking and speaking. She often found herself comparing herself with others and becoming disheartened to see them do things that she quite literally could not. Frustrated and discouraged, she frequently wanted to give up on the difficult process toward full recovery.

Her mother had to remind her constantly to do her physical therapy exercises to keep the recovery process moving forward. One day, as Laura did the exercises alone in her room, she stopped and thought to herself, “I don’t know if I can do this.”

But she heard the voice of the Lord pushing back, firmly telling her, “No child of mine gives up.” When she heard this, Laura knew she had to keep moving forward, not looking back or staying stagnant. She worked incredibly hard to get back on her feet, literally and figuratively, with the support of her family, community, and the Lord.

For several years after the accident and her recovery, Laura made incredible strides in her life despite her setbacks. She started attending college and got a job, eager to experience these parts of life. But despite this incredible progress made possible through God’s will, something deep down in Laura had resisted surrendering everything to the Lord. Laura’s family had always had a background in faith, but as many do, she took on different priorities in college and left that part of her life behind.

In 2009, Laura was a transfer student at Appalachian State University. After spring semester Laura was able to find a summer internship in Charlotte where her family lived at the time. Living at home with her family, she had the opportunity to see her mother living a life truly motivated by Christ, serving others and being a vessel for God’s glory.

“She didn’t have to say much, spiritually, but when I looked at her as the example and what she was doing and the life she was living, I said wow, I want to live for Christ like that,” Laura said.

During that summer of 2009, the two of them would often read scripture together, taking time to discuss the true meanings of the verses and reflect on them. One day, as her mother read passages to her from Romans, the Holy Spirit moved Laura to accept Jesus into her heart.

“It’s amazing how the Lord works, you know, changing your life around in something so unexpectedly,” Laura said.

After that summer and after her return to Boone, Laura began to take small steps to grow in and strengthen her faith each day. She read passages from her Bible daily and got connected with her local church community, knowing instinctively how essential these things were to her spiritual growth.

“You want to learn more about Christ,” she said. “It’s about that whole other outlook and saying, oh, it’s not all about me, actually.”

On campus in 2011, Laura met recruiters from Summer Shine Ministries, a ministry whose mission is to travel between KOA campgrounds to spread the word of God and to provide various acts of service around the campsites. For her mission, Laura was sent to Connecticut for several months. Over the course of these months as she guided people to the Lord, Laura discovered the power that her testimony held and how important it was for her to share it with people. Sharing her testimony has been a major way that Laura has grown in her faith and had her life transformed by the Lord. She encourages everyone in the faith to open up and share their own testimonies, no matter what their story is.

“Every testimony is special,” Laura said.

Laura Mains is living proof that prayer works. Against all odds, she survived because the Lord had plans for her life and purpose. Just as the Lord told her mother all of those years ago, Laura and her story have touched and changed the lives of many people. The Lord can turn even the deepest suffering into the most powerful joys, if only we open our hearts and minds to Him.

Romans 8:28
“And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”