“There’s no way I should be alive,” says Jason Whittaker.

Singing carols at Christmas led to a miraculous survival for this former small-time criminal

Monday evening, the fourth of July, 2011, while finishing his last limestone load of the day, Jason Whittaker had no time to escape the crushing force of his prime mover.

The experienced truckie might have regretted a snap decision to chase after his 30-tonne road train in an unloading shed, except for the many miracles that occurred that day.

After he leapt from the truck to close the tailgates, it started rolling towards the automatic shed doors, but as he ran for the cab the prime mover suddenly side-swiped him against the shed’s one-metre high concrete wall.

“Thankfully, I didn’t fall down, or I would have been killed,” Jason recalls.

As the two trailers followed, he began to be slowly spun and crushed on the spot until the right rear-most tire stopped on his left leg, keeping him pinned as he faced the wall.

As the pain set in, he realised the bone beneath his knee jutted out in a “sickening kick”, and there was no-one within earshot of his cries for help.

After an hour had passed, fluids had built up in his chest cavity and restricted his breathing to 30% of normal. Thinking that death was not far away, he wrote a message to his family in the dust on the wall.

“I wrote, ‘Trust in the Lord, I’m sorry, and I love you,’” Jason recalls. “I felt at peace with dying, and I just prayed, ‘God, I’m in absolute agony, can you call me home now? Otherwise, let someone in the control room notice the door has been activated.’”

Within five minutes, a control room worker named Albie arrived in a loader.

Four days after the accident, Albie told Jason that a feeling he had never felt before came over him, which prompted him to return to the control room where he saw the shed doors were still open.

“As a Christian, I firmly believe this was God prompting Albie,” Jason says.

It took two attempts for Albie to reverse the truck off Jason’s crushed pelvis. Minutes later, he was taken by helicopter to Royal Perth Hospital, where he miraculously avoided a leg amputation.

Jason admits that the searing pain and strenuous rehabilitation that followed was an extreme test of character.

“For the first five weeks I was bed-ridden. Nurses had to wash a large haematoma on my back and care for me as I could not move. Rolling to my left side gave me pain on a level of 20 out of 10.

“But when I’m not in a good mood and feeling the pain, I close the curtains around my bed and I pray, or I listen to Christian songs. For me, worship is about my daily relationship with God.”

Jason admits he questioned why God did not send someone to rescue him straight away, but now he realises that one hour delay brought co-workers and fellow patients to express interest in the God who saved him.

“My boss’ wife has told me that a few co-workers are asking, ‘Who is Jason’s God?’ They know there’s no way I should be alive.

“As I look back, I really believe the Lord knows intimately what is going to happen with us. He wouldn’t have let my accident happen if it wouldn’t show how great and loving He is.”

To get to this point of thankfulness, Jason has been on a dramatic journey.

He confesses he was once involved in a drug syndicate, for which he would harm people if they did not pay on time.

“I was working for a company that ran an operation not unlike a bikie gang. Knowing I had a criminal history, this business soon had me collecting debts. But after I met my wife, I called it quits.”

Then it was his wife’s request that their children sing carols before Christmas in 2007 that lead Jason and his family to visit a church in a nearby caravan park. Through this introduction, he began attending an Alpha course, which examines the evidence about Jesus Christ and why He died and rose again.

“When the course ended, the caravan park owner and I gave our lives to the Lord Jesus Christ and we were baptised in the park’s swimming pool.”

Jason said a simple prayer to God, confessing all his wrong-doings and surrendered control of his life to the Lord Jesus Christ, believing that He died on the cross to take the everlasting punishment he deserved. Jason understood this forgiveness and new life was a free gift.

“Sometimes, the Devil, God’s enemy, tries to tell me I’m not forgiven,” Jason adds, “but I just remind him that because I trust in Jesus’ Christ’s sacrifice for my sin, I have been forgiven once and for all.

“In my new life in Jesus, I try to help people and talk to people, to do the opposite to what I used to do. Everyone at my workplace knows that I am a Christian, I don’t hide my faith.”

The accident caused nerve damage to his left hand and right foot, and a titanium plate is holding the front of his pelvis together, but Jason thanks God that function in his nerves has nearly all returned, he is already mobile with a walking stick and will be able to return to his trucking job next year.