Paralyzing Accident Gives Man New Life

“I grew up playing sports. If there was a bat or a ball, or any competition involved, I was all in, like I wanted to win,” says Brian Ziegler. “When got into high school I had the opportunity to be on the varsity team as a freshman and got the opportunity to start in my very first game, had 15 points. So I can almost pinpoint back to that being kind of the time that I identified myself most with ‘Hey, I'm an athlete. I’m a basketball player first.’”

As a high school basketball star Brian had his share of admirers.  But his biggest fan was Brian. “I think most of it was ego, he says. “I wanted to see my name in print.  I liked the attention, to see my name on the back of my letterman's jacket.”

Brian was a top college recruit and all but guaranteed a full ride to a Division I college. “I had all of these awesome opportunities to go and these college coaches were coming and recruiting me and calling me every day, opportunity to go all over the country,” he says. However, aside from basketball, Brian spent more time partying than studying.  The result was low grades and even worse college test scores. It cost him a scholarship, but he hadn’t given up yet.   

“I only had three options,” he says. “I could sit out for a year.  I could go and redshirt, or else I could go to a junior college.”    He opted to go to a junior college to play ball and get his grades up, but he couldn’t let go of the partying.  In fact, it got worse.

“One or two beers turned into six beers, then it turned into twelve beers and then it turned into hard alcohol, and then it turned into drugs, and it just became this really, never-ending kind of spiral of going downhill.”

Brian’s parents, who were Christians and had raised Brian in church, didn’t know the extent of his problems. “He did drink a little bit in college,” says his father, Bill Ziegler. “I didn't think it was excessive at the time. If (my wife) Vicky and I would have realized he was on that road, we would’ve done something about it.”

After his second season at Edison state, Brian got a call-- the head coach at the University of Akron still wanted him to play ball for them. “For me that was like heaven.  That was it.  Man, I had reached my pinnacle.  I was so excited and life couldn't get any better for me.”

But once again, poor grades and low test scores torpedoed Brian’s hopes. “My life kind of came down to a crashing halt--like this was not fitting into my plan!” he says. “My plan was to play professional, to graduate from Akron, to go overseas, to marry a beautiful woman, and then to go down South. This wasn't in my plan.”

The alcohol and drug abuse got even more intense. That summer, he and a friend were driving home in a heavy rain after a night of partying, when the car slid out of control. “We hit this guardrail, and I was ejected out of the side passenger window about 50 feet and landed right on my neck and snapped it.”
Brian was taken to a nearby hospital, where a doctor broke the news. “And he said, ‘Well, you have a broken neck, you're paralyzed from the neck down, and you're probably never going to walk again.’"

“This was devastating,” Bill Ziegler says. “It just was one of those situations that you just couldn't believe that it was happening, and that's when the praying and the faith, became very intense with Vicky and I.”
 
Brian recalls, “At that moment, every dream, every ambition, every goal that I had for my life just went out the window. Now you're telling me, doctor, that this is my plan, I’m going to be paralyzed in a wheelchair?”  

From his hospital bed, Brian called out to God. “I said, ‘God, I need you and if you can help me out, I just need a small miracle.’ I never asked to walk. I never asked to be out of the chair, I just said, ‘Can you give me some small miracle, something to get me through the day?’”

Brian’s progress in rehab over the coming weeks defied the odds, and after three months, he was able to take small steps. But it wasn’t the miracle Brian had hoped for.  “I was hoping maybe a light bulb would go off or something inside of me would say, ‘Wow, listen, you're in that 10%. You're up walking. You're actually taking some steps and moving around,’” Brian says. “But I didn't look at it that way. In my mind, I had nothing. I had no basketball, I had hardly any movement, didn't have a job, wasn't sure if I'd ever get married, wasn't sure if I was ever going to have any kids. I thought to myself, ‘I might as well just keep partying the way that I did before.’”

One night at Brian’s apartment, a friend overdosed, and almost died. “At that point it was like God almost hit me in the face and He told me, ‘What are you doing?’ How can you live your life this way?’

“’There's got to be more than this,’ I thought to myself, ‘I can't keep living this way.’” Later, Brian went to church for the first time in years. “I'm thinking back to my time with my parents when they took me to church,’” he says. “I listened to the band and I felt something inside of me starting to stir. Then this young pastor walks on stage, and I remember him giving this message. It was like, man, it was like he was talking right to me. I felt this power. I saw this light coming off of him and he was talking about accountability, about forgiveness, about discipleship, about Jesus, and I was hooked. I couldn't get my eyes off him.”

Brian started going to a men’s bible study and reading the Bible. “The people became real.  This Jesus guy, he wasn't just in a book: he was real.  And all the places became real as well, and the words--I can't explain it--the words were jumping off the Bible. After reading through the Scripture and talking it over with some people that really just love me, who are really vital individuals in my life, I made that decision that Jesus is going to be my Lord.”

He was baptized shortly after and, with more physical therapy and lots of prayer, Brian regained 90 percent of his mobility. He even climbed Machu Picchu in Peru. Today, Brian is happily married and loves telling his story about the new loves in his life.

“I started to fall more and more in love with Jesus each and every day,” he says. “I went from my old lifestyle where I had a love affair with myself, to this new lifestyle where my love affair was all about Jesus.  I couldn't get enough of him. I continued to want to soak up his Word, be around people who loved him, be around people who cared about me and had my best interests at heart.”

“God absolutely worked a miracle in his life,” his father says. “He continues to minister to people, and he won't stop. It wasn't me or Vicky. It was him and Jesus that, you know, came together and it's his life's mission. He's a special person.”

Brian adds, “It never really dawned on me that God could do that kind of healing in my life. What I love about being on mission with God is that he never ceases to amaze me in any aspect of my life.”