No matter how careful we are in life, there’s a good chance we’ll end up having to deal with some close calls. When these moments injure us, they make us all too aware of the simple actions we can take for granted.
After all, when it’s suddenly more difficult to walk than ever, it becomes a lot easier to appreciate it.
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But when a close call actually threatens our very lives, we can sometimes see everything around us in a totally different light.
And as the full video makes startlingly clear, one young woman had the kind of life-changing experience that usually inspires these thoughts.
26-year-old Heather Friesen is a professional beach volleyball player and her passion brought her to the relevant program at the University of Hawaii.
Back in 2016, she took the opportunity to explore the Aloha state’s beautiful scenery and found herself at the Ka’au Crater Trail on Oahu island near Honolulu.
This hiking trip led her to a rocky cliff overlooking a massive 50 foot waterfall.
As the video starts, we can hear an impressed Friesen say “whoa” as she takes a tentative step towards the edge.
Unfortunately, this rock featured a trickle of water that she didn’t see and ended up slipping on.
We can faintly hear her concerned friends shout in the background, but the screaming Friesen quickly falls out of their reach.
As The Mirror reported , she would later say that time seemed to slow down as she was falling.
In reality, it only took about five seconds from her fateful slip before she plunges into the water below.
After she submerged, we can hear her panic and struggle underwater. She appeared to briefly surface underneath her backpack before falling back under.
Fortunately, she was soon rescued by an unidentified man before being airlifted to a hospital. She would later say that the moment when she was safely on the helicopter was the most peaceful moment of her life.
Once she reached the hospital, doctors would learn she had 10 broken ribs, a collapsed lung, and a fractured shoulder blade.
That goes a long way to explain what made this the worst day of her life, but she also considers it the best day of her life as well.
As she put it in an Instagram post , “Because I was shown God’s love in incredible ways that forever transformed me. He saved me from death and has renewed my mind to see a world where God is my number one, and absolutely nothing comes before Him.”
Even while being airlifted, she felt emboldened by what she had just experienced and believed she would play volleyball again.
She has indeed continued to passionately follow the path the sport takes her on and thinking back on the day that almost took that away from her makes it seem all the more precious.
And if the full video doesn’t already make it clear how close of a call she had that day, she was eventually told that others had fallen from the same spot and died.
h/t: The Mirror
