Love is powerful. It perseveres through even the most difficult of circumstances. As God’s Word points out in 1 Corinthians 13:8, “love never fails.” One couple, who has gone through a devastating experience, exemplifies this unfailing love.
In 2005, Philip O’Driscoll, an Australian helicopter pilot, suffered horrific burns in a crash. Phil, who had just landed his dream job as a pilot for a Canadian mining company, was on his way to pick up three men when something terrible happened, the video states.
The helicopter’s engine failed just prior to picking up one of the men. At the time, Philip had two options to land the helicopter. The first one would have killed the man waiting to board the aircraft. Philip chose, instead, the second option that sent the aircraft down the side of the mountain, ending in a fiery explosion, according to 60 Minutes Australia.
Philip’s bold action saved that man’s life!
Badly burned, Phil was rushed to the hospital.
Kate, the love of Phil’s life, who was three months pregnant with their daughter, Hannah, immediately hopped on a plane to Canada. Phil was so badly burned that Kate admits he was barely recognizable.
“I wouldn’t have known that it was Phillip,” she said. Apart from, you could just see his chest and this, this was the part of his chest where I always used to lay my head. But any of the rest of him, I, it could’ve been anybody.”
Time since the accident has been long and arduous. The clip mentions that in the years since the accident, Philip had undergone nearly 40 operations. But it’s been the love from Kate and Hannah that has kept Phil going.
The clip shows Kate, who is a trained nurse, changing Phil’s bandages.
“It’s changed the whole dynamics of our relationship,” she said. “We were used to not spending too much together because Philip would always be away working for long periods to having to spend 24 hours a day together.”
Kate adds, with a laugh, that she still finds time to give him a hug when she’s “not trying to kill him.”
“For her to have to sit every day and try to find that line between carer and lover-type thing, you know, she’s had to be my mother basically,” Philip said.
The video also shows Philip, Kate and Hannah enjoying a day at the beach together.
Philip adds that some days are tougher than others and admits that smiling can be a chore at times, but with his daughter around that’s never the case.
“It’s hard to find the strength to smile some days,” Philip said. “But when I look at my daughter, it’s not hard to smile.”
Ephesians 4:2 “With all gentle and quiet behavior, taking whatever comes, putting up with one another in love;”