Nine years after a near-fatal ATV accident left her daughter fighting for her life, Jamie Lynn Spears is opening up about the moment she believes changed everything.
In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE published Wednesday, the Sweet Magnolias actress, 35, and her daughter Maddie, now 18, revisited the 2017 accident on the family's property in Fluker, Louisiana, where an 8-year-old Maddie's ATV flipped into a pond. Spears recalled racing into the water with her husband and father-in-law, only to find Maddie trapped beneath the vehicle. When she was finally pulled free, she wasn't breathing.
A firefighter detected a pulse, and Maddie was airlifted to a hospital, where she remained in a coma for two days. With her condition not improving, Spears asked for a priest to come to her bedside and administer last rites. As the prayer was read, Spears says, she physically sat up in all her restraints and tubes - a moment that stunned even the priest performing the rite.
Maddie made a full recovery in the years that followed. Now 18, she's signed on to play softball and study health sciences in college. Spears has said the experience strengthened her family's faith, crediting the outcome to answered prayer rather than chance.
The family has marked the date every year since as what Spears calls their "miracle anniversary" - a tradition rooted, she says, in gratitude for an outcome she knows many families never get to share.
Read People's Interview: Jamie Lynn Spears and Daughter Maddie, 18, Open Up in First Joint Interview
