Read Outside Of Your Interest, Expertise, Or Occupation!
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Who: PGA golfer, Jay (and Reye, his wife) McLuen
What: Two Near-Death Experiences
When: October 2017 / May 2020
What: ““When you’ve performed CPR on your wife,” he says, “10-footers for par don’t seem as important.”
TWO NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES
In Jay McLuen’s journey to the PGA Tour, both he and his wife, Reye, have been clinically dead.
On Oct. 7, 2017, Jay was watching TV with his two young children. Another trip to Q school was days away when his heart stopped. Jay went into cardiac arrest. Fortunately Reye was home, and she called 911. The paramedics revived him. On the way to the hospital, his heart stopped again. It would take seven tries with the defibrillator to revive him, but he survived and ended up needing a pacemaker. “I’ve yet to be in an event where I’m not the leading pacemaker,” Jays jokes.
After a recovery of about six months, he slowly resumed his dream of playing on the PGA Tour. But then tragedy struck again. Jay was out on his brush hog in May 2020 when he ran over some barbed wire, and it wrapped around the machine’s blades. After notifying Reye and putting the tractor up on hydraulic jacks, they climbed under the machine to cut the barbed wire away. Then one of the jacks gave way, leaving Jay and Reye pinned underneath.
Jay screamed for his 7-year-old daughter, Miller, to get the neighbor. The neighbor used his tractor to lift the brush hog off of them. Jay was not injured, but Reye was purple. She had stopped breathing. The neighbor was trained in CPR, and with Jay’s help, they revived her. An ambulance transferred her to the hospital. Reye had a collapsed lung, and there were moments when the medical staff wasn’t sure she would make it.
In September 2020, during a practice round for the Sanderson Farms Monday qualifier, Jay walked off the course, frustrated with his game. The range session that followed didn’t produce better results. Expectations for the next day were low, and then golf happened. Jay shot a 66 that ended with a spot in the Sanderson Farms Championship. He made the cut and finished 63rd, but with no status he continues to chase Mondays.
For Jay, 41, and Reye, life seems normal again, and everything they have been through has tempered Jay’s outlook. “When you’ve performed CPR on your wife,” he says, “10-footers for par don’t seem as important.”
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Key Biblical Thoughts:
- perspective / outlook
- death
- evangelism
- marriage / family
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Other Information & Links:
RhetoricAndHomiletics.Org 