Jamie Lynn Spears’ 17-year-old daughter, Maddie, received a new ATV for Christmas almost nine years after her near-fatal accident.
“Merry CHRISTMAS ✝️🤶🏻🎀🎄🎁,” Spears, 34, captioned a handful of holiday photos on Thursday, December 26.
In one of the snaps, a 4×4 cherry-red vehicle was parked in the garage and adorned with a red bow and card that read, “Maddie!”
Maddie and her 7-year-old sister, Ivey, later perched on the ATV on Christmas morning in a subsequent holiday photo.
Spears shares Maddie with ex Casey Aldridge and Ivey with her husband, Jamie Watson. Maddie primarily lives with her mom and stepfather in Louisiana.
Maddie was riding an ATV in February 2017 when the vehicle flipped over into a pond. She was knocked unconscious and was submerged underwater for several minutes. Maddie was ultimately airlifted to a local hospital for treatment.
“I did have an accident, though. I was in a coma and I came back to life, and I’m very blessed,” Maddie recalled in an August YouTube video. “I’ve just been very accident-prone. I swear my parents are amazing, and they did not do anything to me.”
After Maddie made a full recovery, Spears celebrates that day — which she affectionately calls a “miracle” anniversary — every year.
“I’ll never forget that, because it was the day my whole world stopped,” the Sweet Magnolias actress wrote via Instagram in February 2020. “It started like most Sundays, going to church, visiting family, to suddenly trying to save my daughter’s life, to them taking her away, to us believing we had lost her forever, and it literally felt like the world stood still around me.”
Spears continued, “I have never spoken fully in detail about that day, and the events that followed, but what I will share is that God blessed us with a true miracle. Maddie not only stayed here with us, but she made a full recovery. I know so many of you prayed so hard for us, so I will never let this day pass without thanking each of you for every single prayer you said for us.”
Maddie never publicly addressed her accident until her YouTube video, which she created as a way to chronicle her senior year of high school.
“I feel, like, when I’m older and I’m looking back or maybe even my kids are looking back, they can understand how I was when I was younger and how my senior year went,” the youth softball star added earlier this year. “The reason I started [this account] was because it was my senior year.”
As for Spears, she was proud of her daughter’s honesty in sharing her story.
“What was supposed to be a fun way to document her senior year on @youtube has now turned into a way for her to share the not so fun parts of life, too,” Spears wrote via Instagram at the time. “You can work so hard, and do everything right, yet still face adversity, no matter what path you’re on in life. You can’t control everything that happens to you, but you can decide how you react to what happens to you.”
Spears further praised Maddie’s continued resilience.
“I know being a resilient person is one of the best qualities a human can have, but it’s only earned by having no other choice but to be resilient. Gotta trust God’s plan,” the former child star wrote. “I’m so proud of this kid; she never lets anything or anyone sit her down, and sharing her journey through it all hopefully inspires others to never stop going hard for what they want out of life.”
Read the full article here