Three weeks before his 18th birthday, in August 2021, Jaydon and two friends were tinkering on a car before taking it out for a test spin.
Two miles north of Sweetser, in rural Indiana, the rambunctious teens were speeding on a bumpy country road when the driver, Jaydon’s best friend, went over a bump and lost control of the vehicle.
They went careening off the road, struck a pole, before tumbling into a yard. The vehicle flipped some five times before finally coming to rest on the grass. The car was totaled.
Conscious but badly shaken, Jaydon was able to free himself from the passenger’s seat. He kicked out the window and, in a daze, fading in and out of consciousness, he managed to pull his cousin from the back seat.
Unable to free his best friend, trapped in the driver’s seat, Jaydon lay down on the embankment, in shock.
“I thought I was dead,” he later told The Epoch Times. He believes God somehow played a role in resurrecting him.
Luckily, some family members drove by and saw the wreck. They called the fire department and called Jaydon’s mom, Amber Lavengood, from Marion, who recollected going into “freakout mode.”
A trained nurse, Amber anticipated the worst, knowing blunt force trauma often occurs in such accidents. “I expected broken ribs, a ruptured spleen, a lacerated liver ... internal bleeding,” she said.
A woman of faith, Amber called family members asking for prayers. “Mom, please pray, not my baby,” she said. And with that she rushed to the scene.
Upon arriving, she saw her son laid out; the fire department had arrived and it took over an hour to cut his best friend from the car using the jaws of life. He had suffered a broken pelvis, while Jaydon’s cousin had a broken back.
Thankfully, all have survived.
Jaydon, still in shock, began rambling on and on to his mom, saying God had saved him.
Amber looked down at his right arm, which appeared deformed from the accident. His back and his neck hurt, he told her.
But he insisted that he was okay. “I’m okay, Jesus saved me,” he kept telling her.
The Christian in Amber went along with it, of course, but the nurse in her was dubious.
EMS brought Jaydon to the hospital, where staff conducted ECG and CAT scans. Lacerations across his chest attested to his wearing his seatbelt. His mom told The Epoch Times she believed there was “no way” her son would come away from this unharmed.
But that’s exactly what happened: The scans all came back negative—all were clear. Even his arm had only abrasions caused by broken glass. The doctors were as shocked as Amber was.
“It was unbelievable,” Amber said. “He was fine.”
Although his neck hurt pretty bad and he felt terribly weak, Jaydon was sent home from the hospital at around 10 p.m. that same day, he recalled. He and his friends made a full recovery. Amber called it “miraculous.”
He experienced mild headaches at home, but within two weeks, Jaydon was back in class.
The accident, which might easily have claimed Jaydon’s life, has changed his outlook on life. He had always believed in God, but he now thinks there’s more to faith than he did before.
To this day, he swears God saved him and he is “thankful.” Today, he lives life a little differently. “I pray a lot more,” he said. “Because you don’t know what will happen.”
And he looks forward to continuing in his career working on cars.
