Christina and Brian Stanton appeared in a CBN News story on 9/11 in 2019 after Christina wrote the book ‘Out of the Shadow of 9/11: An Inspiring Tale of Escape and Transformation.’ (Scroll down to watch the video.)
The couple had escaped from the 9/11 attack in New York and have now overcome the novel coronavirus pandemic as well.
Christina had taken viewers on a virtual tour of their apartment that was located near the World Trade Center’s south tower that the 9/11 attack completely destroyed. They were looking at the Twin Towers when the second hijacked airliner flew past them on its way to the south tower. “The shockwaves from the plane blasting into that building actually blew us back into our apartment,” she said.
When they were conscious again they fled with many thousands to Battery Park at the tip of Manhattan, the Twin Towers crashed down and buried them all in a thick, blinding, choking cloud of debris. “Everyone was caught up in the smoke and were, I’m sure, worried they were going to be asphyxiated,” Christina recalled.
She described the scene saying, “Everyone’s running around screeching and bumping into each other and catapulting over things. And I just remember looking at Brian and saying, ‘Are we going to die?’”
They suffered health problems because of the toxic dust for years and that helped bring them closer to God, Christina said, “Our whole lives are changed because of 9/11. It certainly deepened our relationship with Christ.”
Now both have battled the coronavirus after they tested positive, Christina had to be hospitalized twice. “It was definitely a battle. And you were very cognizant that you were in a battle for your life,” Christina said.
Christina almost died twice and had to be hospitalized twice, stating, “I didn’t have to be hooked up to a ventilator, and that was a big blessing. However, I did visit the hospital twice during this past month, because the virus became overwhelming and it was something I couldn’t manage at home.”
As she was getting ready to go home from one of those hospital stays, a doctor there gave her a frightening prognosis. “I said ‘Can you be honest and tell me what are my odds of surviving this?’ And he did actually say ’50/50,’ which was a shocking thing to hear. And some people have said, ‘Wow, that’s not a great bedside manner thing to say.’ But I disagree. I asked him an honest question and he gave me an honest answer.”
Christina said that she knew it would take more than just medical help to get better, she knew that only God could help her. So she began asking for prayer from all over. “When I found out I was COVID-positive, within the first couple of hours after that, I had sent out at least a hundred emails or more asking people to pray for me,” she said, recalling how she could actually sense those prayers buoying her up.
“I felt that through the entire process. And there were times when I couldn’t pray for myself,” she admitted. “When you have a temperature over a hundred degrees, it’s really hard to pray or even string a sentence together. And I knew there were people praying for me when I couldn’t pray for myself.”
Christina added, “So prayer is everything. And I invoked the name of Jesus Christ quite a bit during this past month. And there is power in that name and there is power in prayer.”
COVID-19 was causing so much pain in her body and her breathing was badly affected, that she could hardly speak for weeks, but she says that her humor remained intact and neither 9/11 nor COVID-19 could take their lives. “It’s another angle of Jesus being there when a near-death experience was on my front-doorstep yet again,” she concluded. “I tell people ‘New York keeps trying to kill me!’”
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