Divine Interventions - Not a Coincidence

Lee Miller shares his harrowing experience of surviving a heart attack at the age of 35 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially mistaking his symptoms for panic attacks, Lee recounts how divine interventions and a series of "coincidences" led him to receive timely medical care. He emphasizes the importance of recognizing God's presence in everyday life, from small blessings to life-saving moments. Lee's story is a testament to faith, resilience, and the belief that coincidences are often God's way of showing up in our lives.

Transcript

TOPIC: Divine Interventions: Not a Coincidence
GUEST: Lee Miller
Season 4, Episode 2

Lee Miller (00:00):

Ric, you can't like pray a heart attack away, right? Like you can't, you know, deep breathe a heart attack away. So obviously…

Ric Shields (00:09):

It's not, wait, wait. On Facebook it says, you can. You’ve got to hold your breath, push, you know, breathe deep and then think it away. Or breathe it away. Or really you can't. Hmm. Abraham Lincoln says it's very difficult to verify the things as being truthful that you read on the internet.

(00:35):

Thank you for joining us on this podcast. I'm Ric Shields, your host and the director of the DoorWays® Ministry Network. Today I'm talking with Lee Miller, a friend of mine who came pretty close to meeting Jesus because of a heart attack not that long ago. What? At age 33. Thank you, Lee, for joining me today.

Lee Miller (00:53):

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Ric Shields (00:55):

Tell me what you're doing these days in terms of work or ministry. What are you up to?

Lee Miller (00:59):

Yeah, so just last year, well, I guess it's 2025. So, at the very end of 2023, uh, I just took a new job to be a clinical, uh, supervisor at a mental health agency here in Tulsa. And, I went from being a therapist to being like a manager of therapists and kind of helping new people that are in the field, get the experience. And just,

Ric Shields (01:29):

So, you told me at one point that you had your own set of, you were a therapist and

Lee Miller (01:34):

Yeah.

Ric Shields (01:34):

You were seeing like how many patients?

Lee Miller (01:37):

Yeah, so I worked at I guess an orphanage is not a good term anymore, but I worked at a place where kids who are in state custody live while they're, you know, getting reconnected with their families or getting connected with a foster or adoptive family. And so, I went from having 10 guys on my caseload to being a manager of staff who helps 1600 people.

Ric Shields (02:08):

We're going to switch gears here, Lee, you found yourself staring death straight in the face in the fall of 2020.

Lee Miller (02:15):

Yeah.

Ric Shields (02:15):

That was a pretty rough time for a lot of people with Covid that was ravaging the US, ravaging the whole world. Nobody wanted to go to a hospital during that time, but you ended up going for something other than Covid.

Lee Miller (02:30):

Yeah.

Ric Shields (02:30):

So, I spoke with your wife Nicole last week about her journey with Hodgkin's lymphoma 21 years ago when, by the way, she was 21 years old. I'm not certain how good you are at math, but that should put her somewhere near 42 years old right now, I think. And that's not something she mentioned last week when we spoke, but she did mention that as scary as her situation was, yours was even worse. She said that you almost died. So, what was going on?

Lee Miller (02:58):

Yeah, COVID, you know, March of 2020 happened, and I can remember, you know, the place I was working at, they had a, a little track, a walking track around the campus. Uh, it's like 160 acre campus. And so the, the track is about a mile and a quarter, something like that. And so, in March, covid is happening, you know, we have to wear masks all the time. I'm still working because, like, I'm an essential worker because, you know, there's these kids living at this place and they got to have people take care of them. I just needed to get out, you know? And so I got on this walking track and immediately, you know, I'm a thinker, I'm a preparer kind of person. And so, I'm thinking, you know, well what if this person gets sick? What if this person gets sick? What if this person dies?

(03:52):

What if this person dies? Right? And so very, uh, quickly into this, uh, walk, I have what I think is some kind of panic attack and, uh, a lot of tightness in my chest can't really breathe. So, I take a seat on this, uh, bench, kind of work through it, I pray. I, you know, just kind of sit there, do some deep breathing. As a therapist, we learn lots of, you know, techniques to calm ourselves down.

(04:24):

So, I'm doing everything I know and, um, it goes away and I'm like, okay, I'm good. So, I'm going to go back to work. So then for the next six months, I have what I'm calling these panic attacks, these anxiety attacks things, and it's a tightness in my chest and I'm having difficulty breathing. But if I pray, if I listen to some worship music, if I do these things, like the tightness goes away, I can start to breathe again. And so, I move on, with my life because Ric, you can't like pray a heart attack away, right? Like you can't, you know, deep breathe a heart attack away. So obviously it's not

Ric Shields (05:11):

Wait, wait, on Facebook it says you can. Yeah. You got to hold your breath, push, you know, and then breathe deep and then, yeah. Yeah. And think it away. Or breathe it away. Yeah. Really you can't. Hmm. So yeah, Abraham Lincoln says it's very difficult to verify the things as being truthful that you read on the internet.

Lee Miller (05:32):

Yeah, I know that it's 100%.

Ric Shields (05:33):

So, is there a history of heart disease in your family or anything?

Lee Miller (05:37):

Yeah. Yeah. My grandfather, um, was a frequent flyer at Mobile Infirmary. And uh, as far as I understand, a stent never leaves your heart, right. Once they put one in. And he probably had like 40, 50 stents in his heart when he passed away. And I know he had at least three, like either triple or quadruple bypass surgery, you know, like in my lifetime.

(06:09):

Uh, the Tuesday after Labor Day, uh, September 8th, 2020, uh, I go on one of these walking things again at work, and I have the worst quote unquote panic attack I have had. And I start to get dizzy, you know, all the tightness, difficulty breathing, all this stuff. So, I <laugh> in my thinking, sit under a tree and do all my stuff. It goes away. And, and so I get up and I finish my walk the mile walk or whatever, and I go to my boss at the time and I say, “Hey, I know you've had a heart attack. What did that feel like because I think I just had one.”

(06:55):

And so, she tells me all of it, and I'm like, check, check, check, check. And so, she's like, “I think you need to go to the hospital.” And so, I was like, okay, cool. I'll leave work.

(07:07):

So I go, uh, I don't go to the hospital or the urgent care. I come home and I have lunch with my family, and then I go to urgent care and they, you know, hook me up. I tell them, you know, I think I'm having an anxiety attack, but I'm afraid it's a heart attack. And so, I'm, don't know what to do. And so, they hooked me up to these things and he comes in and is like, “here's the readout. I can't tell you when you've had a heart attack, but you have had one. And so, you've got two options.

(07:42):

You can either follow up with your primary care doctor or you can go to like the ER right now.” And I said, you know what? I think following up with my primary care doctor is a great idea because I've been dealing with this for six months. So, let's do that. And then he proceeds to tell me story after story about people who decided to go to their primary care doctor, and it didn't really work out. And so, I say, okay, well let me go to the ER <laugh>. And when I say that, he goes, all right, let me call ahead and I'll get you set up and we'll make this happen. Okay, cool.

(08:21):

And, they let me drive home. Uh, they're like, “Hey, they're probably going to hold you, you know, overnight. So just be aware when you go.”

Ric Shields (08:31):

Go home and get some clean underwear.

Lee Miller (08:33):

That's what I, I did.  “Honey. Honey, by the way, honey.” That's what I did, Ric. That's what I did. I thought, Hey, I'm going to need to change your clothes for tomorrow because I'll just wake up and probably just go to work, right? So let me go home, get my essentials. I'm going to need an iPad to entertain me through the night. So I get my stuff, drive myself home, drive myself to the er, and it's covid, right? So like, restrictions on who you bring in and all that kind of stuff...

Ric Shields (08:59):

Oh yeah.

Lee Miller (09:00):

...is in play. And so I go to the ER, I tell them, “Hey, I think I'm having a heart attack. Maybe it's a panic attack, but probably, I don't know.” So the triage, I go in there, they hook me up and they're like, your heart's fine. It's probably anxiety. Cool.

(09:19):

 they send me out to the lobby, bring me back to give me my I.V. I don't do well with needles, Ric. I've fainted many times in my life. I get super lightheaded talking about medical procedures.

Ric Shields (09:32):

Okay. Be careful then.

Lee Miller (09:33):

Really makes me, well, I'm better now, but at the time, okay, it was.

Ric Shields (09:38):

I don't want you to pass out while we're talking.

Lee Miller (09:40):

And so, they, they start to gimme the I.V. and I say, “Hey, look, you're probably going to want to lay me down because, you know, I faint and stuff with needles. And I, I get dizzy.” And the nurse basically looks at me and just is like, well, suck it up buttercup. You know, this is…

Ric Shields (09:56):

You're a big boy.

Lee Miller (09:57):

Yeah. And so, uh, I get my I.V., I can't stand up and walk. So they give me kind of what I call a great value wheelchair. You know, I don't know if you've ever seen them Ric, but

Ric Shields (10:09):

It's uh, yeah, they're wonderful.

Lee Miller (10:11):

Yeah. They're just like, it is barely an actual wheelchair, you know?

Ric Shields (10:15):

It's something on wheels. Yeah,

Lee Miller (10:17):

Yeah. And so they push me as far away from the triage as possible and sit me way in the corner

Ric Shields (10:26):

Because the last thing we want to do is let you get Covid. We'd rather you go ahead and have a heart attack unattended.

Lee Miller (10:31):

Exactly. And so I'm sitting there and I, yeah, it all starts to happen. Like the chest pains, the difficulty breathing, I'm getting dizzy. And I do, I don't know if you've ever like been in a rolling chair and let's like use your feet to pull you forward, you know?

Ric Shields (10:48):

Oh yeah.

Lee Miller (10:48):

And so I do that the 30 feet, 40 feet, to get to the triage door because something, quote unquote, is telling me like, “You need help. You are dying. Like very clearly. You need help. You're dying.” And so I'm, I'm scooching my chair up to the triage. I'm violating every HIPPA law that I know because I just,

Ric Shields (11:13):

By the way, next time, turn around and go backwards. It's a lot easier than pulling yourself forward.

Lee Miller (11:18):

I just roll in to this thing and I say, “Hey, I need some help.” Right? And so the, um, the, the doctor comes out eventually, you know, maybe five, 10 minutes. My wife says, because I called her at some point, we were on the phone for like 40 minutes. I don't actually know how long we were on there, but the entire time I'm having some kind of, you know, heart attack event.

Ric Shields (11:42):

So, yeah.

Lee Miller (11:42):

And she comes, the doctor comes out and she's like, “Hey, I'm going to give you some Ativan into the I.V. And that's when we made the medical discovery that Ativan nothing for heart attacks. And, um, I'm still making a scene in the lobby. And, uh, eventually this nurse comes out from the back, comes up, grabs my wheelchair, doesn't say a word to me, pushes me in the back, gets me into a bed, hooks me up, you know, to the monitor.

(12:15):

She steps into the hallway, immediately yells, “I need everyone in here right now.” Comes back and says, “Mr. Miller, you're having a heart attack.” And um, is kind of…

Ric Shields (12:28):

I'm 33 years old.

Lee Miller (12:29):

Yeah, well I was older. Thirty-five, but yeah,

Ric Shields (12:31):

Thirty-five. Oh, I thought you were Jesus’ age when he died. 

Lee Miller (12:34):

No, No.

Ric Shields (12:34):

Sorry.

Lee Miller (12:35):

Yeah. It was a blur after that because about 30 people come into this like room and like my clothes are suddenly gone. Oh. Like one person's having me sign stuff. One person's, you know, giving me medicine one, I mean, it's like everybody's doing everything at the same time.

(12:56):

I went in for, um, you know, an emergency heart cath, and they put in two stents. Well, they put in three stents technically because one of the blockages was so big and long, they had to put two stents back to back.

Ric Shields (13:13):

Wow.

Lee Miller (13:13):

To make it long enough. Yeah. So, they found two 100% blockages. One, they were able to fix that day. And then a 90% and then a think an 85% or 75% blockage. And,

Ric Shields (13:27):

And you really had no idea that anything, obviously a few months ago you were walking on the track, you're feeling kind of like I'm having an anxiety attack. I've got those. I've had those. I mean, sometimes I wonder if I've had a heart attack. I don't think I have. Yeah. And all of a sudden, boom, here you are, you're getting stents.

Lee Miller (13:43):

Yeah. And so,

Ric Shields (13:44):

So how many stents did you have you ended up getting altogether?

Lee Miller (13:47):

Altogether is four. But I also had a, uh, what they call a mid-cab, a minimally invasive direct coronary artery bypass. And so the traditional way to have a bypass surgery is they'll crack you down the middle. Crack you open. Yeah. Right. Pull you open. Well, coincidentally Ric, uh, there was a surgeon at the hospital, the only one in Oklahoma at the time, who could go in between your ribs and

Ric Shields (14:17):

Right. Fix

Lee Miller (14:19):

Though, um, fix your heart. And so, um, that's

Ric Shields (14:24):

So much less invasive. Recovery is so much better, let alone the time

Lee Miller (14:28):

Recovery is so much better. Oh yeah. So if I had done the traditional, my recovery would've been at least 12 weeks because I did the other one.

(14:35):

It was six weeks, about three, four months after my heart attack or my bypass surgery. Uh, we get a letter in the mail saying that he's not going to be here any longer. And I later asked my cardiologist how long he was at the hospital and he was here for about two years. Just that little window where I, where I needed him. So

Ric Shields (15:00):

What's your health like today?

Lee Miller (15:02):

It's good. I mean, my doctor is, every time I've went in has told me I'm, I'm too fat and I need to lose weight. But it's, it's better. I've made, you know, the, the old saying like, you make a lot of 1% changes starts to add up. Right? Right. And so, we now have like one or two meals a week where there's no meat involved. We change our cooking a lot. Just trying to, you know, not

Ric Shields (15:31):

Cholesterol, high triglycerides, everything's good.

Lee Miller (15:34):

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's greatly improved.

Ric Shields (15:36):

So, the divine interventions in all of this, well obviously there's a doctor there who can do this minimally invasive type of heart

Lee Miller (15:44):

Cath. Yeah.

Ric Shields (15:46):

And, and great that he's there. But part of the I what I hear you saying is that part of the divine intervention is that you're pushed away into the back of the, of the ER area, but Jesus starts speaking to you and saying, you're in trouble. You better get some help.

Lee Miller (16:02):

Yeah. And I guess the, the thing that I come back to is how many times does this coincidence have to happen before we decide it's providence? Right? Like I had a heart attack in the freaking ER. How many people get to do that? You know, like if there is one place on the planet that you probably want to have a heart attack, it's at the hospital, you know,

Ric Shields (16:32):

Um, get to have a heart attack in the ER. That's a kind of interesting choice of words. But yeah, <laugh>, I understand what you saying. You know what I'm saying? Like Yeah.

Lee Miller (16:39):

The the doctor just happened to be there,

Ric Shields (16:42):

Right. You could just have easily been dismissed completely and been on your way home, driving yourself home.

Lee Miller (16:50):

Yeah.

Ric Shields (16:51):

When you would've had this heart attack and if the heart attack hadn't killed you, the accident you would've had, could have. And others besides,

Lee Miller (16:59):

For me it's God's intervention is just those small little coincidences where I think he showed up. Right. It was that doctor who didn't say, okay, yeah, you can go follow up with your primary care. Right. It was the doctor that told me all these stories essentially scared me into going to the er.

(17:23):

It was my boss who had had a heart attack like five, 10 years earlier who got placed in that position because I had a different boss when I got hired at that place. You know, many people thought, "I should have been the, in that chair, not her." And so, like God put her there so that when I had that event, I would go and say, "Hey, tell me what that was like."

(17:48):

And I'm sure there's others that I just haven't thought of where God made it happen because he was in charge the whole time. While I was surprised, my wife was surprised, my family, my friends. Like he wasn't like he was in charge of it the whole time. You know, decades putting things into place so that when that event happened, I was going to get taken care of

Ric Shields (18:16):

In the right place at the right time.

Lee Miller (18:17):

Yeah.

Ric Shields (18:18):

Coincidentally.

Lee Miller (18:19):

Yeah. Yeah,

Ric Shields (18:19):

Yeah. Do you have any special words of encouragement you'd like to share with listeners, especially as it relates to, to your story? What do you think?

Lee Miller (18:29):

I'm a firm believer that coincidences are in fact not coincidences and that they are 100% God's intervention and him showing up. It can be a long string of them that builds up to something. And it can be, man, I am so tired today. I would really love a car, you know, a parking spot at the front. Boom. It's there. Coincidence or is it God?

(18:56):

I guess if there's a message, if there's something you know from all this, it's God's in charge. Even when you think, when we think he's not like I am convinced he, he wants to be involved in every single detail of our life. And he is involved in every single detail of our life from the type of parking spots that we get to checks that come in the mail to having a heart attack in the ER. He's never let me down.

Ric Shields (19:30):

He never will.

Lee Miller (19:32):

I mean, he showed up so many times in my life and I've, I have two thumbs because of God showing up. One was infected when I was a little kid and they were talking about cutting it off. But I got two thumbs today because I had a mom who prayed.

(19:53):

So that's my message. If you feel like he's not there, if you feel like he doesn't care, I know he does. And if you look around, you'll start to see where he does show up because it's not just when you're having a heart attack at the hospital, but it's also when you want that parking spot and you need it.

Ric Shields (20:16):

I looked up the word coincidence. One dictionary defined it like this, "a sequence of events that although accidental seems to have been planned or arranged."

(20:26):

The God who created the universe and set the earth spending on its axis, giving us daytime and nighttime with a 23-and-a-half-degree tilt to give us seasons, who set the earth 93 million miles away from the sun to give us optimum temperatures that are not too hot and not too cold. The God who designed clouds to bring fresh water from the sky and plants to produce the oxygen we inhale while processing carbon dioxide that we exhale.

(20:56):

According to Psalm 121:3, 4, and 5, that same God watches over you. I'm not sure that he's so concerned over where we park, but I have every confidence that he cares for you. And like Lee Miller, so many of the things that others consider coincidence, I believe, are actually divine interventions orchestrated by the Lord who loves us more than we can possibly imagine.

(21:27):

I've been encouraged today and hope you have too. Let me know by dropping me a note at info at doorways dot cc. I'm always happy to hear from you.

(21:37):

Here's my prayer for you in the days ahead. May you rest in the knowledge of his love and care. Grace and peace to you.