Seattle Seahawks linebacker Derick Hall made his mark on NFL history when he came up with a tone-setting strip sack in the Super Bowl against the New England Patriots this February.There’s a low percent chance that any football player will get a moment like that in his career. But Hall had to beat much greater odds. Hall had a 1% chance of survival when he was born four months premature at just 23 weeks gestation, born without a heartbeat and suffering from a brain bleed.”I wasn’t born… breathing,” he told Fox News Digital. “I was born dead.CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COMFor his mother, Stacy Gooden-Crandle, those first days of her son’s life were filled with uncertainty and fear.”Emotional, a lot of uncertainty, scared,” she said of her emotions in the days that followed her son’s premature birth. “But… those weren’t the feelings that I was feeling during Derrick’s birth. I just trusted that God would work everything out.”That belief became the center of how the family made sense of everything that followed.”It is probably the most important thing that we share,” Gooden-Crandle said of their religion.”We are people of faith and have been for most of my lifetime. I joined church when I was 16 years old, and I’ve just grown up as a woman of faith. I’ve raised my children in the church and instilled faith in them and just allowed them to flourish in their faith in their walk with Christ.”For Hall, growing up inside that environment gave meaning to struggles he didn’t yet understand.”It was huge. It was amazing because I never really understood why me or why my family had to go through what I was going through,” Hall said said.”My pastor always told me, you weren’t dying for this, you are blessed to be in this position and God has something greater for you, and I think that helped me be at ease with the situation and the things that me and my family were enduring during the time.”I always speak to my faith because obviously I’m a miracle child, and I don’t say I’m doing good, I say I’m blessed, I can’t complain, I’m above ground and I’m blessed… You can’t tell me that a child with a one percent chance to live and not supposed to be walking, not supposed to be talking, not even supposed to be alive, ends up being a Super Bowl champion one day without the Lord being in their lives.”Even after surviving infancy, the challenges didn’t disappear, and his childhood looked very different from other kids.FROM MR IRRELEVANT TO GENERATIONAL WEALTH, BROCK PURDY WANTS TO USE HIS LIFESTYLE FOR GOOD”My hardest time period was from about the age of four or five to about the age of 12 or 13,” Hall said. “I could go out and play, but it was only for about five minutes at a time and I would have to go sit down for an hour just to allow my body and my lungs to catch back up, and to this day my lungs are still underdeveloped, they always will be, they’ll always be three years behind.”Those limits extended into
Seahawks Super Bowl hero Derick Hall opens up about how ‘God’ saved him from near-certain death
