The Miracle of Maddie, and Fr. Beard’s Last Act

In some fashion, every one of us has been impacted by the Massachusetts mother who murdered her three children—and by countless nihilistic women who rationalized, defended, or simply ignored the deaths. In the aftermath, popped the widespread public veneration of lifetime abortion missionary Gloria Steinem, who died at 92 earlier this month.

Perhaps in the fumes of our scarred emotions, it is a good time to remember the Perennial Victor and to draw our hearts toward a bright Alleluia of light: a child named Maddie Watson, who was supposed to die—twice—but would not.

There was a time when everyone in Hollywood wanted Maddie-the-nuisance dead—when she was tiny and warm within her teenage mother’s womb. But the little one would not go.

She was DOA again, eight years later beneath the surface of a pond, but this little one would not die.

This story is also about a dauntless mother who fought: actress Jamie Lynn Spears of Sweet Magnolias, the younger sister of Britney Spears. It is about the sacredness of prayer—the silent murmurings of two men aboard a helicopter who refused to give up on a child they thought was likely dead.

It is about the anointed hand of a priest named Fr. Mark Beard, who found himself stunned by the power of what God could do with his hand—when a miracle exploded into a hospital room, one so inexplicable that, to this day, no doctor has been able to adequately explain what happened.

But mostly, this is the story of Maddie and her mom, Jamie Lynn, and the might of what God still does in this world today, even as He seems to be vanishing.

It is a story I believe you might never forget.

In the winter months of 2007-2008, Jamie Lynn Spears knew no one in Hollywood who didn’t want her to end the life of her child conceived with her then-boyfriend Casey Aldridge. After all, she was 16 and the star of Nickelodeon’s smash hit Zoey 101, which had just wrapped its fourth season. The message from Los Angeles was unanimous: abortion would allow Jamie Lynn to save face, protect her reputation, preserve her career—and leave no trace of Maddie.

“Everything was out in front of me, movies, more television shows,” Jamie Lynn shared with me recently in a coffee shop at St. Helena’s Catholic Church in Amite, Louisiana. “It was a big time then, an age of Miley [Cyrus], myself, and some others; we were kind of the young up-and-coming Hollywood group. Big things were planned.”

Jamie Lynn was traveling the same road her older sister, Britney Spears, had traveled. Britney was then regarded by millions as an American icon, one of the most recognizable young women in the world. Jamie Lynn appeared to be following closely behind, her own meteoric rise underway.

Her future, at least as Hollywood envisioned it, was limitless—if she just ended the life of her child.

Hollywood urged her to simply make the right choice.

So she did.

Maddie was born in a little town in the Deep South on June 19, 2008. The teenage mother had loved her baby from the start; so she left Hollywood, forever.

“I was convicted, and I wanted my baby,” she said. “Anchors on every news channel began calling me every name in the book, saying that my life was over, and on and on.

“But I knew my soul would never sit well if I didn’t have Maddie, so I fought. I didn’t care what anyone said, or whatever a big future in Hollywood looked like.”

Jamie Lynn began mothering Maddie in Mississippi, where, for a while, a dozen or so paparazzi waited on most days to photograph the fallen child star and her little girl. But the frenzy eventually faded. One by one, the photographers packed up and headed west, where the work was more plentiful and the money better. The scandal of Jamie Lynn was old news.

But music had always been Jamie Lynn’s first love. She began writing and recording in Nashville, and success came quickly. Her EP The Journey and its single, “How Could I Want More,” revealed a surprisingly mature voice—warm, traditional, and unmistakably country.

Then life really took off. Jamie Lynn met the man who would become her husband.

His name was Jamie Watson. He lived near her hometown of Kentwood, Louisiana. He was a practicing Catholic and a local businessman who had an easy sense of humor and an unassuming manner. There was something else about him that immediately caught Jamie Lynn’s attention: he had no idea who she was.

And from the beginning, he adored Maddie, and that really won Jamie Lynn’s heart.

They married in 2014, and the family settled into a quieter, more ordinary life. Jamie began coaching Maddie in basketball and tried to attend as many of her softball games as he could. By then, Maddie was only 8, but she had already shown herself to be a gifted and scrappy athlete—the kind of kid who loved and excelled at every sport she tried.

Although she was raised in a Protestant home, Jamie Lynn began to attend Sunday Mass with her husband at St. Helena’s. Her mother, Lynne, raved about the new pastor in town, Fr. Mark Beard, whose magnetism, bombastic preaching style, and prophetic voice had pulled Lynne into the Catholic Faith a few years prior.

“I didn’t know much about Catholicism, but I loved its structure from the beginning,” Jamie Lynn said.

And I loved what the Faith was giving my daughter at Holy Ghost [the Catholic school she attended then].

And when I heard Fr. Mark preach, I was like, “Okay, this is our Church.” I still wasn’t Catholic, but I wanted to hear him from the pulpit every Sunday.

Fr. Mark was intimidating. But I wanted to be around him because I knew he was convicted of everything he said. His love for God was raw…I felt in a way that he knew I wanted to receive the Eucharist, and didn’t like that I couldn’t. He seemed to know my little struggle, even though I never said anything to him. He was patient with me; he was just waiting for me to eventually come to him.

For a little while, life was wonderfully ordinary.

Then everything changed.

After Mass on February 5, 2017—Super Bowl Sunday—Jamie, Jamie Lynn, and Maddie drove to Jamie’s parents’ home in Hammond, Louisiana, for lunch. Before heading home, Maddie asked if she could take the family’s miniature ATV for a few laps around the family pond.

On the second lap, the gathering watched the ATV slide off an embankment at the far end of the pond. Both the ATV and girl disappeared beneath the surface. The pond became still.

Everyone except Jamie’s mother raced roughly 60 yards toward the pond. Wisely—providentially—she stayed behind to call 911 and await first responders.

“As I ran toward her, it was like I was watching a movie of my life,” Jamie Lynn told me. “Nothing was real—but it was real. I’m running toward Maddie, and I keep thinking that she’s just going to pop up.”

When they reached the embankment, Jamie, his father, and Jamie Lynn realized to their horror that Maddie was trapped beneath the ATV.

Jamie Lynn plunged into the water and felt for her daughter. Her hand found one of Maddie’s arms. She pulled with everything she had, but Maddie did not move. She kept hold of her daughter’s hand and pulled on her arm for more than five minutes. Maddie never budged.

It is believed she was submerged for approximately eight to 10 minutes, possibly much longer. In the chaos of those moments, no one recalls precisely how long she had been beneath the surface—or how long she had been without oxygen.

When Jamie and his father realized they could not move the ATV themselves, his father raced back toward the house for a larger ATV. They hoped they could attach a chain and pull the machine from the pond.

“I kept pulling,” Jamie Lynn said. “I wanted Maddie to know that her mom was with her and trying to save her. I didn’t care if her arm broke; I wanted to save my daughter.”

But another part of her mind was already confronting the unthinkable.

“There’s no way someone is able to remain beneath the water for this long,” she said. “Every second that passed was another second Maddie was under. So yes, a part of me thought, ‘I know she can’t be alive anymore…it’s been too long.’”

When the men finally managed to pull the ATV toward the bank, they discovered why Jamie Lynn had been unable to free her daughter: Maddie had become entangled in the ATV’s netting.

They lifted her onto the ground.

She was blue from the lack of oxygen. Her abdomen was enormously swollen. Mucus and froth covered her mouth and nose. She was unresponsive.

Within seconds of Maddie’s emergence from the water, the Acadian Ambulance Service arrived. An EMT named John began sustained, forceful chest compressions. He and another EMT worked to save Maddie for several minutes but found no sign of life.

They rushed her into the ambulance and began racing toward a waiting medical helicopter.

Behind them, two firefighters helped carry Jamie Lynn from the pond to the driveway. There, she heard her mother-in-law speaking to her mother, Lynne Spears, on the telephone.

“Lynne, Maddie’s no longer with us.”

For four or five minutes, Jamie Lynn believed her daughter was dead.

“I lived those minutes thinking like I’ve lost my daughter. There is no worse pain; I didn’t want to live.”

Then everything changed. A firefighter came toward her.

“They just got a pulse.”

First responders rarely accompany patients aboard medical helicopters. But John understood the gravity of Maddie’s condition. She needed an advanced airway immediately, and he knew he could not leave her.

He climbed aboard and went to work.

As the helicopter lifted Maddie toward University Medical Center New Orleans, John intubated Maddie and continued fighting to keep her alive. Amid his frantic work, he prayed. He repeatedly begged God to save the seemingly lifeless little girl.

The pilot, meanwhile, had a daughter about Maddie’s age.

As he guided the helicopter south toward New Orleans, he, too, began praying. He asked God to spare the life of the little girl directly behind him.

Neither man knew of the other’s prayers.

In the noise and urgency of their duties, these men—one tending to Maddie’s failing body, the other guiding the helicopter through the sky—silently asked God for the same thing: a miracle.

Neither knew the girl’s identity.

“The minute Jamie and I got into the waiting room in New Orleans, we dropped to our knees and began to pray to God to save our daughter,” Jamie Lynn told me. “And I kept saying one thing over and over: ‘I just want Fr. Mark here. I just want Fr. Mark to pray over her.’”

“I wasn’t Catholic, so I didn’t know anything about Last Rites. But I knew the power of a priest’s prayer.”

When Fr. Mark learned of the accident—and of Jamie Lynn’s repeated request for him to come—he raced in his car from Amite to New Orleans. For several hours, he waited impatiently outside the intensive care unit until hospital staff finally allowed him inside.

Maddie had shown no signs of life for hours. A mechanical ventilator was breathing for her.

Father Beard calmly approached her bedside to administer the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. His thumb was dipped in chrism oil when he reached toward Maddie’s forehead.

Then something happened that has become a well-traveled story down south.

The instant the oil touched her forehead, Maddie’s body jolted forward. And she sat completely upright in the bed.

For extended moments, the 8-year-old girl—covered in tubes and surrounded by the machinery keeping her alive—remained sitting upright. Audible gasps covered the room. Even the priest was shocked.

“The moment he touched her little 8-year-old body, with all those tubes covering her face and body, she just came alive,” Jamie Lynn recalled. “It’s almost like you dreamed it up from another world…even Fr. Mark took a step back, like he was completely caught off guard by what had happened.”

Father Beard quickly composed himself and continued the anointing. ICU nurses gently helped Maddie back down onto the bed.

Soon afterward, she slipped into a coma that lasted two days. She was then transferred to Children’s Hospital New Orleans, where, a few days later, doctors removed her from the ventilator.

Her parents feared the worst. But Maddie kept breathing.

After a few more days, she began to emerge from the coma. At first, her words were indistinct. She would murmur things her parents could not understand. Then, one day, her speech became clear.

“So, Mom,” she asked, “when do I get my baby?”

Jamie Lynn was flabbergasted.

Maddie had heard her mother’s pleas during those awful days, when she lay beside her in her hospital bed.

Jamie Lynn had been making a bargain with God.

“My husband and Maddie had been wanting another baby,” she explained. “They were always like, ‘We want a daughter and a sibling so bad.’ They were always saying, ‘When are we going to have that second baby?’”

So, while Maddie lay in a coma, Jamie Lynn made a promise to God, and Maddie.

“I told her, ‘Baby, I’ll give you your baby. I’ll do whatever for you.’ So I made my bargain with God. I just asked Him to please give me my baby back.”

When Maddie was finally discharged from the hospital, there was no sign of neurological damage. Follow-up examinations continued to produce the same astonishing result: Maddie was perfectly healthy.

The girl who had disappeared beneath the surface of the Louisiana pond—who had remained submerged for what may have been 10 minutes or more, trapped beneath an overturned ATV—was alive, a 4.0 student, star high school athlete, fervent Catholic, and carried a light most everyone in Louisiana noted but could not explain.

The child who didn’t die in the womb had come back to live once again.

Maddie is now a college freshman at the University of Southern Mississippi, which recruited her heavily for her softball talent. She will play outfield for the Golden Eagles in the fall season.

And the baby she was promised?

Ivey was born on April 11, 2018, less than a year after Maddie left the hospital—just days after Jamie Lynn entered the Catholic Church, received into it by the priest she believes God used to save her daughter.

But now Fr. Mark is gone.

The priest whose homilies would later spread around the world during the Covid pandemic was killed in a single-car accident on August 2, 2023.

The Watson family joined countless others in mourning the loss of the tireless, holy priest who had changed their lives—and the lives of hundreds of others—forever.

“God worked through him,” Jamie Lynn told me.

Fr. Beard was the instrument that saved Maddie’s life, so I feel a deep connection to him. I wouldn’t have become Catholic without him, or become the person I am without him. We wouldn’t have had Ivey. He changed everything. Fr. Mark gave us a miracle; he found the time to pray over Maddie. And that’s why she’s here.

How do you repay that?

Maddie is doing her part. She is a fervent Catholic, who regularly receives the Eucharist and seeks the anointed hand of priests in the Sacrament of Reconciliation because, of course, she knows of its sacred and mysterious weight.

Even still, she struggles with the death of the man who has become her hero—and even, in a way, her savior.

She cannot quite reconcile what happened to Fr. Mark.

“Why is there nothing wrong with me?” she asked. “I get to come out of the coma free of everything, I am perfectly healthy—and Fr. Mark dies.”

Here Maddie begins to cry. So her mother cries beside her, stroking her hair. “It’s so hard,” Maddie said. “He saved me, and now he’s not here.”

She paused.

Then came the thought that perhaps, even now, Fr. Mark’s work on her behalf was not finished.

“In a way, I know that no matter how bad things get, that I am here for a reason. And maybe from Heaven, Fr. Mark will help me see what that reason is.”