Two months ago, Emily was a healthy 24-year-old clocking out of her FedEx shift — Christmas candy in hand, headed home after a normal day.
Within hours, her life changed forever.
A rare and devastating condition, Transverse Myelitis, attacked her spinal cord without warning. Emily was left paralyzed from the neck down. She was placed on a ventilator. Unable to speak. Unable to move. Communicating only by blinking — spelling out words through tears.
“Please pray for me.”
“I’m scared.”
Doctors in San Antonio prepared her family for the unthinkable: quadriplegia. They were told Emily would likely never move again.
But then… something changed.
Her family began to notice small things. A slight movement in her feet. And then — when Emily reached out with her left hand — a deliberate squeeze.
Not a reflex.
A squeeze.
The kind that says, I’m still here.
Now, another answered prayer. Emily is being transferred to TIRR Memorial Hermann in Houston — one of the top rehabilitation hospitals in the world. The same doctors who once warned her family to brace for the worst are now working to build on those flickers of nerve activity.
Her family calls it small beginnings.
They call it a miracle.
From blinking letters in an ICU… to moving toes and squeezing hands.
If you believe in prayer, this is the moment to lean in again.
What would you say to a young woman who was told she’d never move — and is proving everyone wrong, one squeeze at a time?
