Ed Joza s life changed forever when he was in a head-on collision that could have cost him his life. In this episode of The John Henry Weston Show with Ed Joza, Ed shares the story of God's intervention in his life and how it changed his life forever.
00:06:53.160Found myself as the car came to a stop, the airbag deflated in front of me and I could see again.
00:06:59.400And oddly enough, I was just a few hundred meters, a few hundred yards from my house.
00:07:08.700And I knew that I was spun around and I was facing it.
00:07:12.980I knew that I wouldn't be gone back to that place for a while.
00:07:15.500But the impact that had occurred because of a woman that was under the influence of marijuana hit the last car in line with her foot on the gas,
00:07:30.36055 miles an hour, and drove that last car over the yellow line right into us head on.
00:10:32.060I mean, this is a story of absolute miracles, miracle after miracle.
00:10:35.900And these were miracles that didn't start that day.
00:10:38.220A lot of these miracles, man, they came into my life decades before the Lord placed these miracles decades before my life because I was going to need them on that day.
00:10:48.120You know, I didn't put that together at the time, but now I look at it and I see how I was a man that thought that God was out there somewhere.
00:10:55.280Right. And that he didn't really interfere or work in our lives.
00:10:58.600And now I can tell you that he works in our lives every moment of every day, never stops, always intervening, always working, always guiding.
00:11:43.680I was the only person I can assure you on site and in the hospital that knew I was going to be OK because the doctors were pretty sure scratching their heads when we finally, you know, the life flighted me to, again, another miracle.
00:11:59.300I lived in Pennsylvania most of my life and I came here for my first airline job.
00:12:06.360The Indy 500, you know, it's like one of the biggest races in the world and that they've seen wrecks like mine.
00:12:13.000They have a team that's dedicated for that here and maybe nowhere else in the world would I have had that care, that team that literally they were all working on me at the same time.
00:12:41.020That's just not a coincidence because there are no coincidences.
00:12:45.700The coincidence is just something that a nonbeliever says when God's working in your life.
00:12:51.000Right. So when I got to the hospital after they freed me, you know, they cut that car apart as much as they could and they still couldn't get me out.
00:13:00.080They ended up playing tug of war with me, sedated me, played tug of war, put me in the helicopter and flew me down to Indy.
00:13:07.320They they sent me through the machines.
00:13:12.100Right. You know, the CAT scans, the MRIs to really see what was wrong.
00:13:16.140I had self-diagnosed that I knew that I had a broken hip and I knew that I had a broken arm just because I could see that.
00:13:23.260Right. And but we we weren't sure what was wrong.
00:13:27.020And so when they sent me through, they realized that my spleen was ruptured.
00:13:31.340It took about five hours, five and a half hours from the moment of impact to my first surgery.
00:13:38.200And when they went in and they worked on that spleen, we would later come to find out that it was it was the highest level damage you can have.
00:13:46.840It was basically disintegrated in an injury like that has a lifespan of about 20 minutes before you before you bleed out and you die is five and a half hours.
00:13:59.960And doctors, they still have there is no scientific medical understanding of how I could have lived with my spleen in the way that it was.
00:14:28.060The femur was driven through the rear socket.
00:14:30.660Eight ribs were broken, 10 vertebrae, six herniated discs.
00:14:35.080I had the muscles between my ribs were herniated out.
00:14:37.980Again, that's an injury that doesn't have a name.
00:14:40.760They only see those injuries on cadavers.
00:14:42.840There hasn't been a person recorded that has lived through it.
00:14:46.280It took them months to figure out how to try to fix it because doctors, surgeons have just never seen the injury, the blunt force trauma that causes the muscles to herniate out from between your ribs has been life ending in everybody else today.
00:16:45.660Was the pain in the suffocation, it started when I was in that car.
00:16:50.340It was so awful that I kind of lived from that moment for the first week and a half, two weeks, second by second and telling myself, I can make it one more second.
00:17:58.560But once the breathing tube was out, I would scream for people not to touch me because that additional stimulus of their touch on my skin was more than I could take.
00:18:11.040I mean, I lived as a man that I wanted to just run away.
00:18:14.900I just remember thinking I just wanted to run away.
00:18:17.300But there was no escape and the pain didn't end.
00:18:34.500One, your wife and your kids, their reaction, what were they going through at the time?
00:18:40.000And also, what are the injuries that you still sustain to this day?
00:18:46.040What what are what what are you like today?
00:18:48.120OK, so, you know, at the time, my kids, the the at the moment of the wreck, you know, the paramedics, they wanted to take my kids to the local doctor to the local hospital.
00:18:59.440But we knew that we knew that I was being flight life flighted down to Indianapolis to the city, which is about an hour drive from us.
00:19:06.400So my wife had to actually sign papers to not take the kids, that the that the EMTs would not take the kids and that she would take them to the hospital that I was going to and check them into that ER.
00:19:20.040And we ended up having friends come, neighbors and drove Amy down once they life flighted me.
00:19:26.520And so the kids went and got checked out.
00:19:28.520And their injuries were, like I said, were relatively minor, a couple of broken bones and some damage to my daughter's ear.
00:19:37.080And they've eventually gotten over it.
00:19:38.600Their injuries are probably more psychological than anything, you know, just they don't like to drive on that country road that we were on.
00:20:52.400And so it's changed everybody in that way.
00:20:55.540The injuries that I still have now, the damage to the back was not fixable.
00:21:01.940So those herniated discs, they, they herniated up into the bone above it and below it.
00:21:09.620And so that's not surgically repairable.
00:21:13.660At least it is in small numbers, but because I have six in a row, they can't do the fusion that they would do.
00:21:20.720It would leave, it would leave my back immobile.
00:21:24.060And the hip, the hip was shattered into, you know, like a million pieces.
00:21:28.880Is it like, I don't know how they put it back together, but there's a lot of worry that if they did any fusion at all, that extra pressure on my, my damaged hip would actually cause that hip to break again.
00:21:40.340So, so the back is, is a lot, the rib injury, they were never really able to fix.
00:21:47.360And so what they did was they, my, my rib muscles would fall into my internal body, right?
00:21:55.420You could actually stick your hand in my side and make it disappear, right?
00:21:59.520And then my lung would come out and my lung would come out if I was laying on the other side.
00:22:03.520So what they did is they, they, they put a mesh in and tried to sew the muscles to that mesh, but they had to leave it flexible because I have to be able to move.
00:22:12.520So, so my, my left side of my body has no stability because you get, you gain a lot of stability through your intercostal muscles.
00:22:22.000And then that causes a lot of pain in my back because of those, because of not having the stability.
00:22:27.760And then there was a lot of damage to the vertebrae up in my neck.
00:22:31.100And so I have a pretty tremendous amount of pain, but the residual pain is, is mostly nerve damage, which is what ended up grounding me from the FAA.
00:24:21.980And, and so I look at it as a great, great blessing.
00:24:26.540And as St. Padre Pio would say, you know, suffering is a great gift for those who choose to use it wisely.
00:24:31.800And I've been given a tremendous gift.
00:24:34.820So most people, when they end up, you know, doing a good deed, taking the kids to an event that they're supposed to go to, and they get blindsided, and their whole life has changed.
00:24:50.140You lose your career, you've got, you know, you're a pilot, that's great, and it's all gone.
00:24:57.300Most people say, God, what are you doing?
00:25:00.720Rather, especially those who are not given to the faith in the robust way you are now.
00:25:06.020How did God intervene in this to, to use it to his glory, rather than to a rebellious attitude, rejecting God for the horror that he's allowed?
00:25:18.780Yeah, you know, that's, that's really an interesting question.
00:25:22.620The doctors all told me that I would get addicted to the drugs and not to worry about it.
00:25:27.600They had some, they had other drugs to get me off.
00:25:29.760They told me that I would suffer depression and not to worry about it.
00:25:32.740They would send me to doctors to deal with that.
00:25:34.220They told me I'd never walk again, and they told me all these things that were going to be horrible that would happen.
00:25:44.540I was in the ICU for seven days, right?
00:25:46.620And, and in the ICU, they, they, they watch you, they care for you every moment, right?
00:25:53.560You can't, you can't blink an eye without a doctor or a nurse knowing what's going on and helping you, right?
00:25:58.460And then when I made it out of the ICU, seven days, seven operations out of the ICU into a step-down unit, it was almost as if I was abandoned.
00:26:07.920It was like the doctors and nurses all went away.
00:26:10.580And my family, you know, they were so exhausted.
00:26:13.700The family and friends that were coming every day.
00:26:15.840Remember, it's an hour drive for them each way.
00:26:17.880And, and then they, we all know, anybody that spent time as a caregiver in a hospital knows how draining that is, right?
00:26:26.200And, you know, my wife, she had been doing it for seven days and taking care of three young kids at home.
00:27:00.000And, and this is a little bit long explanation for it.
00:27:04.040But, but after this experience, after what I'm going to tell you, I learned that there is nothing, nothing on this earth as bad as what I experienced because I experienced the loss of God.
00:27:18.600And see, after coming back from that, nothing that I went through could, could even remotely compare.
00:30:41.320And so when I say that, I was 46 year old man and I never realized that God held my soul.
00:30:48.420And see, in this knowledge that I had, I was, it was also inferred to me that what I knew and what I understand and what I'm going to tell you about these other worldly experiences, that they don't just apply to me, but they were, they apply to all of us.
00:31:04.860And so when I tell you that God held my soul in his hand, he holds all of our soul from before our conception until after our death, he places our soul in our body and he never lets go.
00:31:16.020And it's interesting the way he holds it.
00:31:18.360He holds it as if we, like we would hold a softball, right?
00:31:22.460And he holds our soul so that from the back and from the side, his hand protects it.
00:31:28.240See, evil can't enter our soul from where we can't see.
00:31:32.640If evil is going to enter into our soul, it enters through the front.
00:33:28.920I knew that what he would tell me was truth.
00:33:30.840And again, this is just knowledge that was infused to me.
00:33:34.420And I did not feel love nor hatred from him.
00:33:39.520If I felt anything, it was indifference.
00:33:41.340But I know he spoke truth and I knew that I needed to ask some questions.
00:33:47.900And so, you know, I had always had heard that hell was the absence of God.
00:33:53.200And see, before I used to think about that, and I would actually think, you know, that's not that bad because God's not with me right now, right?
00:34:05.800He's out there somewhere, but he's not with me right now.
00:38:01.720We are holding a traditional Latin math steps away from the main Congress center because we learned at first there was no traditional Latin mass, not on the schedule.
00:38:11.120And we thought, oh, no, what we can do.
00:38:13.340One of our donors said, can you fix that?
00:38:15.460We found Victory Field right across steps away from where the Congress is being held to hold the Latin mass.
00:38:54.520We hope you join us and sign up for this free event, free lunches because of a generous donor.
00:39:03.420As he said, I'm actually going to be at the Eucharistic Congress, and I'm going to walk away from my booth so that I can enjoy this traditional Latin mass and these three great speakers that will offer insights into why it is that so many Catholics no longer believe in the real presence.
00:39:28.600As we know, in our Catholic culture, in our Catholic teaching, there's a phrase, lexorandi, lexorgedendi, as we pray, so we believe.
00:39:37.140And through the traditional Latin mass, it inspires such depth of prayer.
00:39:44.280People believe, and so we're trying to inspire that belief in the real presence because without which, we do not have life within us.
00:39:50.880Thus, what we're doing will actually be throwing fuel on the fire of revival, a belief in the real presence of the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ, our Lord, in the Holy Eucharist.
00:40:03.480Father, I'm thrilled for the opportunity to remind you what you can be doing to renew your own personal devotion to the Eucharist and also how to get others to remind them to deepen their faith in worshiping our Lord in the Eucharist.
00:40:20.140So based on my own experience, it's just going to be a great opportunity to remind people of what the church teaches us, that our lives are supposed to revolve around the Holy Eucharist.
00:40:31.660I'm going to walk right across the street to Victory Field and join you for this beautiful traditional Latin mass on July 19th and hear from these three fantastic speakers.
00:40:48.140And maybe you can catch the other traditional Latin mass the day before with Archbishop Coeur d'Alene, and now that's a little further away.
00:40:59.860That's just under two miles at Holy Rosary Catholic Church, smaller parish.
00:41:06.740It can seat about 400, so you better get a seat early there.
00:44:08.040And at that moment, it was as if I passed through that red viscous, that blood-like liquid.
00:44:15.660I passed through it, and I found myself on this gentle knoll, this lush green grass, a green like I've never seen, a green, an unearthly green, but most beautiful.
00:44:30.040And I was staring up into a blue sky that was a blue like nothing I've ever seen.
00:44:38.380And it was so beautiful and so peaceful.
00:47:13.640But because of my choices that I made, that couldn't be.
00:47:17.760See, but I didn't know prayer existed because God was not with me.
00:47:21.240So, that happened maybe 10 o'clock at night, my first night in the step down.
00:47:34.900The next morning, I don't know, around 10 o'clock, my wife comes in, and I tell her, I said, hey, I was supposed to get pain medicine at 8 this morning.
00:47:50.480And we called, and the nurses said they would bring pain medicine, and they weren't in, man.
00:47:57.380You know, I told you earlier that I didn't think the pain medicine was doing anything.
00:48:01.200But I was a couple hours late, and I was noticing that what I thought was, you know, an 11 on the scale of 1 to 10, that's where I was living for over a week.
00:48:13.900I mean, I was moving up higher and higher.
00:48:16.440That pain was ratcheting up by the minute.
00:48:19.480So much so that my wife's presence in the room was more than I could bear.
00:48:25.900Now, I didn't tell her that because she was so worried, right?
00:48:28.840I mean, you don't want to, you don't want to share that with her.
00:48:31.420So I told her I was just really tired.
00:48:33.160I told her it would be a good day to go spend time with our kids.
00:48:37.160But in reality, I just needed her out of the room because I was, I was in agony.
00:48:42.600And I asked her if she would stop by the nursing station and have them bring medicine.
00:48:47.040And she said she would, but nobody ever came.
00:50:06.680I, I don't remember everything that we talked about, but he told me that he was a traveling nurse and that he goes from hospital, hospital.
00:50:18.220He's in a different hospital every night and that he would, he wouldn't be back to this hospital until I was home.
00:50:24.760Now, I didn't think of it at the time, but the doctor's prognosis was that I would spend several months in that hospital.
00:50:33.820And then I would spend an additional several months in a step-down unit hospital or a rehab hospital.
00:50:41.400So how he knew I was going to be home in 18 days because I was home in 18 days, which is another miracle, but, but how he thought that he wouldn't be there until I was there.
00:50:53.380And I, he spent so much time talking to me that the guy that literally is wrapped in casts from head to toe tells him, oh, you have, you have so much to do.
00:51:05.980And he tells me, I have nothing else to do right now.
00:51:10.840Now I can tell you, anybody that spent time in a hospital knows that there's not a nurse in a hospital that has 45 minutes to sit down with a patient, especially in a step-down unit just off of the ICU.
00:51:58.560And it's something that we have the opportunity to do with each other.
00:52:02.500We can all act like an angel for each other.
00:52:07.620And so he finally left and he left me with just a great peace.
00:52:15.960And now I'm in, I'm in really a tremendous amount of pain now.
00:52:20.200And I think to myself, I don't think I'm going to be able to go to sleep, but if I could close my eyes for a little bit, maybe I would just drift off and maybe some of that time would pass.
00:52:31.440And so I close my eyes and I drift out as if I'm leaning over an edge and I'm looking over this ledge, this great cliff.
00:52:44.780And it goes on from horizon to horizon, as far as I can see.
00:52:48.580And in front of me is just this dark abyss of nothingness.
00:57:26.300And see, I would later understand that this is where the spiritual battle, this is the first time in my life that I can identify the spiritual battle.
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00:58:32.540I open my eyes and a voice says, just out of my thought, brain damage.
00:58:40.760See, now here's the thing about that is, with this horrendous wreck that I was in, all this damage to all the parts of my body, my organs, my spine, my neck, everything.
00:58:53.600The amazing thing about it is, is I did not have brain damage.
00:59:25.260And so now I know I need to call the nurse.
00:59:27.980I need to let them know that I have brain damage.
00:59:30.200I'm going to tell them about the vision that I had yesterday that I was afraid to tell, right?
00:59:34.100And I'm reaching down to push this button, the call button, in an audible voice, in this very small room, in the chair sitting right next to me, speaks.
01:04:50.040And that's when I gained such disdain for the enemy to the point to have since that day, I've never called him by his name because it, I looked at it.
01:05:00.900I was just, I was just a regular man, right?
01:08:22.080And then I thought, oh my goodness, if we had just a faith, the size of a mustard seed, the tiniest little faith, multiplied against this infinite power, we indeed could make mountains move.
01:08:40.740And then I saw, I understood the Christmas star.
01:08:45.220I realized that that's what I was looking at.
01:08:47.620See, as a kid, I used to always think, how did, how did the wise men find a place where Jesus was?
01:08:52.960I would look outside up at the stars and I'd see a million stars above my house.
01:08:57.240And I'd always think, how did they know?
01:08:59.880See, but the wise men, they saw what I saw.
01:09:04.720What I looked at, it indeed, the beautiful paintings that we see at Christmastime with that beautiful Christmas star, that's what I was looking at.
01:09:11.820It would be, just over the next hill, over the next mountain, the wise men would follow it until it came and it rested over a place.