It was an early morning in March 2010. Mary Johnson heard gunshots. She frantically ran through the house searching for her husband Robert. Mary remembers praying, “Please let him live, please let him live, let him be all right.”
Mary found Robert on the bathroom floor. He had been shot six times by a man who broke into their home. Mary did the only thing she knew to do. “I grabbed a towel and pressed it against his chest. He was bleeding profusely,” she said.
Doctors at a nearby hospital couldn’t stop the bleeding so Robert was life flighted to Richland Memorial Hospital in Columbia, S.C. When Mary arrived, Robert was in surgery where doctors tried to repair the wounds to his chest, abdomen, liver, and lungs. A chaplain was sent to talk to Mary about Robert’s condition.
“He said, ‘The doctor wants me to let you know that he wasn’t going to make it.’ He said, ‘They can’t get a handle on the bleeding from the liver.’ I yelled, ‘God will get a handle on the bleeding, and I walked off,'” recalls Mary.
Moments later, the lead surgeon came out and told her the same thing. He allowed Mary to come into the operating room… to say goodbye. Mary had no intention of saying goodbye. “The doctor took me around to his head and said, ‘Kiss him,’ so I grabbed his head and kissed him. He was swollen beyond recognition. I said, ‘Lord, in the name of Jesus, let Bobby live.’”
When Mary left the operating room, she began calling family and church friends to pray. Mary will never forget what happened next. “About two hours or so later, the head surgeon came out smiling and he hugged me. At that time, I knew things had turned around. I said, ‘God did it, God did it.’ He kept smiling.”
While doctors had stopped the bleeding, they still didn’t expect Robert to live much longer than two weeks. If he did, as he’d lost so much blood, he would likely have permanent brain damage. Mary recalls, “One male nurse came back a week later and said, ‘Is he still here?’ I got upset. I’m like, ‘What do you mean is he still here? The Lord is bringing him through.’”
With Robert in a medically induced coma to minimize brain swelling, Mary prayed by her husband’s bedside every day. “I would go over his whole body and I said, ‘Lord, let everything work and be healed in his body.'”
Two weeks came and went. Robert was still alive and in a coma. Mary and a multitude of people were still praying. Week three would bring more bad news…. Robert’s heart developed a-fib; where chaotic heart signals cause a rapid, erratic heartbeat. In addition, blood clots had formed in Robert’s leg, and his lungs were collecting fluid. He was back in surgery again.
“They told my son and I that he could die on the table. That scared me. I said, ‘Lord, no, he is not going to die. You brought him this far, he is going to live. God, I trust you, I trust you,’” said Mary.
Again, Robert pulled through. But doctors still warned Mary that Robert’s prognosis was poor. Mary remembers her discouragement. “He was just so weak. They thought he was going to die. Things were going through my mind like, ‘Lord, why did this happen?’ I just started saying, ‘He didn’t deserve this. Is this working for our good?'”
As she began to pray, Mary says her discouragement lifted. “‘Lord, you say in everything to give thanks, so I just started praising him.’ I just thanked the Lord and I said, ‘No matter what it looks like, I will give You the honor, glory and praise.’”
After more than a month of surgeries doctors had fixed everything they could, but Robert wasn’t coming out of the coma. They asked Mary to try to rouse him. For days, she and her son Kenneth tried, with no success. … until one day…
“Kenneth was on one side, and I was on the other. I was calling him, ‘Bobby, Bobby, wake up.’ Kenneth said ‘Daddy’ and his eyes popped open. We grabbed hands and he pulled himself up close to us. Of course, the tears just flowed and flowed.”
Robert would spend many weeks in rehab, regaining his physical strength and ability to talk. “It was a slow process,” Mary remembers. “He would talk some. But then it just came back like natural. His mind was coming together more.”
As Robert regained his memory, he realized there were some things doctors couldn’t fix. Robert worked as a prison guard captain at Lee Correctional Facility. He and his team seized contraband: illegal drugs, guns, knives, and cellphones that were smuggled inside the prison. He had made some enemies and they wanted him dead. Ex-con, Sean Echols, had been sent to do the job. Even though Echols was convicted and sentenced to prison, Robert struggled with anger. “I was thinking, these guys hunted me down. They tried to kill me, and bitterness was starting to grow.”
Robert recalls, “One morning at 3 a.m. I heard this voice, like someone was speaking to me say, ‘Forgive.’ So, I decided, I had to forgive. I couldn’t let this root of bitterness grow up in me. It is a great freedom to forgive. Hatred and bitterness put you in great bondage.”
After three months in the hospital, Robert went home where he continued his recovery. While he still has pain and occasionally walks with a cane, he’s grateful for every day he has. “I take each day as precious. It’s precious time to me. God has given me time.”
Today, Robert is a pastor, author, and a public speaker, telling other victims of violent crime about the power of prayer and the loving God who saved his life.
He shares this word of encouragement, “Do not give up. When those doctors were ready to give up on me, my wife did not give up. She trusted God.”
Mary says she knows from experience, “God is there. Don’t ever doubt, no matter what happens. He wants people to have faith through this story. He wants people to believe in Him. He is calling them in, if they will come to God, He is the only hope that anyone could ever have.”
Robert is very grateful for the people who prayed for him. He knows that God had the final word in his life. “Prayer is powerful, so always pray. It is not over, until He says it is over.”
