Do you believe in miracles?
Most people say they do—until belief is no longer theoretical, until it is tested in hospital hallways, under fluorescent lights, with the sound of machines breathing for someone you love. Faith is easy when it costs nothing. It becomes something else entirely when it is the only thing you have left.
For the Long family of Alabama, belief was no longer a concept. It became survival. Hope was no longer an abstract idea. It was something they watched, day by day, rise from a hospital bed where doctors once prepared them for goodbye.
Six months ago, Collin Long was a 21-year-old college student with his life unfolding exactly as it should. He was young, hardworking, and looking ahead—thinking about classes, the future, and all the ordinary plans that feel limitless at that age. On a normal workday at the Auburn University Golf Club, everything changed in a single, violent instant.
Collin fell from a gator tractor.
The impact was catastrophic.
In seconds, an ordinary day turned into a medical emergency that would redefine his family’s lives. Collin suffered a severe traumatic brain injury, one so devastating that even seasoned medical professionals struggled to remain hopeful. His condition deteriorated rapidly. Time became the enemy. Decisions had to be made in moments, not hours.
Emergency crews made the call to airlift him to the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital, where trauma specialists were standing by. But behind the urgency, behind the controlled movements and clinical focus, there was a truth no one wanted to speak aloud: the odds were against him.
Those early hours exist in a place beyond language. Collin was critically injured, unresponsive, and suspended between life and death by a margin so thin it felt cruel. Every breath was uncertain. Every minute felt borrowed.
During the helicopter flight, a nurse watched his vital signs with quiet dread. Later, she would tell Collin’s mother, Amy Long, that she believed he had less than a one percent chance of surviving. She fully expected his heart to stop before they reached the hospital.
Imagine hearing that about your child.
Amy, a principal at South Smith’s Station Elementary School, found herself standing in the place no parent ever imagines occupying. There were no guarantees. No comforting statistics. No promises. Only a choice: surrender to despair or cling to faith with everything she had.
She prayed—not with confidence, but with desperation. She placed her son’s life in God’s hands because there was nowhere else to put it. Control was gone. All that remained was trust.
Collin survived the initial trauma.
But survival was only the beginning.
What followed was not a straight path upward, but a long, exhausting journey marked by uncertainty, setbacks, and relentless effort. Days turned into weeks. Weeks stretched into months. Hospitals and rehabilitation centers in Jacksonville, Auburn, and Birmingham became temporary homes. Each move signaled progress, but also a new challenge.
Collin had to relearn what most of us never think about.
How to move.
How to speak.
How to exist inside a body that no longer responded the way it once had.
There were moments when progress was so slow it felt invisible. Moments when hope wavered. Nights when Amy lay awake wondering if the miracle she prayed for had already reached its limit—if survival was all they were ever going to get.
And then, quietly, something began to change.
Collin took steps.
Then more steps.
Then words returned—first halting, then clearer.
Then memories, awareness, pieces of the young man he used to be began finding their way back.
It did not happen all at once. Miracles rarely do.
They came gradually. Patiently. Almost humbly.
Today, six months after doctors once prepared his family for the worst, Collin Long is doing something few believed possible. He is alive, alert, engaged—and moving forward. He is taking online college courses through Southern Union, reentering the world of assignments and deadlines, reclaiming his future one class at a time.
“Collin is back to normal,” Amy says.
Then she adds a sentence that feels unreal: “With the exception of missing one third of his skull.”
Because of the severity of his injury, surgeons had to remove a significant portion of Collin’s skull to relieve pressure on his brain. A reconstructive surgery is planned for March. Until then, there are limitations. He cannot drive. He must be cautious. His recovery is not finished.
And yet—he is here.
He is learning.
He is laughing.
He is alive.
Amy does not describe her son’s recovery as luck. She does not credit statistics or chance. For her, this story exists beyond medicine alone. She believes, without hesitation, that divine intervention carried Collin through moments when survival should not have been possible.
That belief was brought full circle when Amy and Collin reconnected with Autumn Lindsey, the flight nurse who once feared he would not survive the helicopter ride. Emotion filled the conversation. Autumn invited them to attend the LifeSavers 45 Years in Alabama celebration on May 13.
The woman who once prepared for his death will now stand beside the young man who lived.
It feels cinematic. Almost unreal.
But it is real.
It is unfolding quietly in Alabama, written not by spectacle, but by persistence, faith, and a mother’s refusal to let go when everything suggested she should prepare to.
“God performed a miracle on Collin,” Amy says.
Not as a headline.
Not as exaggeration.
But as a truth carved into every day she has lived since the accident.
Collin Long’s story is not just about survival. It is about what happens when hope refuses to leave the room. It is about families who endure the unbearable, medical teams who give everything they have, and rare moments when life bends away from tragedy and toward grace.
In a world heavy with bad news, Collin’s comeback reminds us that miracles do not always arrive loudly. Sometimes they arrive slowly—step by step, class by class, heartbeat by heartbeat.
If you have a moment today, take it to celebrate Collin.
Congratulate him.
Share his story.
Because sometimes, the world needs good news.
And sometimes, that good news looks exactly like a young man who was given less than a one percent chance—walking forward anyway.