Posted on May 21, 2026

Filmmaker Paralyzed for Life at 15. Then God Answered His Prayer (with Garrett Batty)

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Garrett Batty has spent his career turning faith-based stories into cinema, but the story that shaped him most started in a hospital bed when he was 15. A routine scoliosis surgery had dropped bone chips into his spinal cord and left him paralyzed. The doctors began training him for life in a wheelchair. Lying alone, Garrett whispered a question to his Father in Heaven and asked if a wheelchair was really the plan. Then he felt his paralyzed foot move. Forty days later, he walked out of the hospital.

In this episode of Why We Believe, Garrett shares the open heart surgery he survived at six, the prayer that began his deepest faith in Christ, and why he chose faith-based filmmaking over a more lucrative path. He talks about a mission president in New York who taught him the spirit of the law, the Russian father who returned a missionary's snow cap years after the real Saratov kidnapping took place, the South African film crew who asked for 120 copies of the Book of Mormon by the final week of production, and how the Help Them See Foundation now connects mission-driven donors to faith-based stories. His witness is that Christ is in relentless pursuit of His children, leaving fingerprints in every life He has touched.

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