EDITOR’S NOTE: This article updates a story originally written in 2018, depicting the aftermath of a miracle in the life of one Missouri Baptist family.
KANSAS CITY – Doctors spoke the word “miracle” after 10-year-old Xavier Cunningham fell face-first onto a meat skewer and survived. But in the aftermath of the miracle, the boy’s family have found grace upon grace and a passion for ministry.
‘It’s a miracle he’s even alive’
On Saturday, Sept. 8, 2018, Xavier and two of his friends asked if they could play in a treehouse in a neighbor’s backyard. Earlier that day, the boys found a meat skewer in a field behind the neighbor’s house. So, before climbing into the tree house, one of them stuck the meat skewer into the ground, pointed upward.
Then, as soon as they reached the top of the tree house, they realized that they’d aroused a large nest of yellow jackets, which were now following them. They needed help. So, quickly, Xavier opened the treehouse door and made his way down the ladder. But, as he climbed down, a yellow jacket stung his hand, causing him to fall 8-10 feet onto the meat skewer.
His fall drove the meat skewer six inches into his head, from the nasal cavity near his left nostril to the back of his skull. But, as medical scans would later show, the meat skewer passed through his head without causing any serious damage. It barely missed two major arteries and a bundle of vital nerves, as well as the upper portion of his brain, his brain stem and his spinal cord. It grazed one of his jugular veins, but the wound clotted and didn’t bleed out.
“The doctor said that this is really the only possible way you could be impaled by something … and it not be fatal,” Xavier’s father, Shannon Miller, told The Pathway. “We were looking at those scans, and the doctor said, ‘It’s a miracle he’s even alive now.’”
Miller, who was at that time a member at The Church at Pleasant Ridge, said that the meat skewer would have caused drastic – perhaps fatal – injuries if it had moved even a few millimeters in any direction. If Xavier had fallen from a higher point or if he had touched the meat skewer or tried to pull it out, he may not have survived.
Yet he did survive, though his accident would in coming days transform the passions and calling of his family.
From miracle to ministry
As his son was recovering in the hospital, Miller met a family whose little boy had been mauled by a dog. The boy’s face was covered in skin grafts, and few visitors came to the hospital to see him.
“Every day we were there, I noticed day after day they were alone,” Miller said. “Something inside me just broke to watch that family suffer so tremendously – and they didn’t have a home church, they didn’t have a pastor to come check on them.”
Shannon Miller
Even after leaving the hospital, Miller was haunted by the thought of this family suffering alone. “That continued to resonate deep inside, that there were people suffering who had no one to care for them.”
By contrast, after Xavier’s accident, Miller’s family received love and prayer not only from his own church – but from churches throughout the state and national Southern Baptist conventions. “People underestimate the value of the SBC and Missouri Baptist Convention and our local, regional associations. You need to link arms with other people in times like this, for the support that they provide. … We’ve always been meant to be a family, and that’s what I love about being part of the MBC and SBC.”
So Miller began to speak with his pastor, Malachi O’Brien of The Church at Pleasant Ridge. O’Brien mentored him, helping him discern how God was moving in his life. He asked him to lead Bible studies and to preach, and he also gave him other ministry opportunities.
Miller enrolled in seminary classes with Liberty University, and he eventually became the care pastor at The Church at Pleasant Ridge. In this role, he made hospital visits and comforted people within the congregation who were suffering or grieving a loss. In time, Miller became an associate pastor at the church.
But God continued to move in his heart. “There came a point,” he said, “where God was laying on my heart to do more, to give more and to serve in a deeper way. So that’s when he called me then to be a senior pastor.”
So, because of his son’s accident and miraculous survival, Miller now serves as pastor of Rock Falls Baptist Church in Ray County, while also working bivocationally at a Christian school in Lee’s Summit.
As for Xavier: “He’s 16 now,” Miller said. “So, he has a part time job, and he’s learning how to drive. He’s a tight end on the football team, and he’s a giant guy, about 6 feet, 3 inches – 6 feet, 4 inches if he’s in cowboy boots.
“You know, he’s your typical, all-American country boy, just living the life” – a life he wouldn’t be living apart from the miraculous grace of God. ν