For actor Jesse Hutch, a near-death experience changed absolutely everything.
Hutch, who stars in the new film, “Homestead,” wasn’t always gracing the big and small screens. He told CBN News about a time early on in his life, long before his movie-making days, when he was a seasoned whitewater raft guide and found himself faced with a deadly encounter.
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“Through a series of events, [I] ended up underwater … and just couldn’t get out,” Hutch, who was 21 years old at the time of his near-drowning, said.
He was under the water for anywhere from 11 to 22 minutes with no oxygen. In the majority of similar situations, this would result in death, but, in Hutch’s case, a miracle unfolded.
“I still remember it quite vividly, and it’s a miracle that I’m actually alive, breathing, talking,” he said. “I can think, I can walk, I have a family — that I’m even an actor, that I can remember things. Because, in all reality, without oxygen anywhere from 11 to 22 minutes, I should be completely gone. Both my eardrums should be completely blown.”
While Hutch did experience some medical issues surrounding breathing and his ears — and had to have “a little bit of surgery” to remedy the impact — he is mostly fine decades after the accident.
Hutch described the ordeal of being under water with no escape as the “most peaceful and yet the scariest” time of his life. At first, he tried to stay calm, but he soon realized amid uncertainty that the situation was grim. He recalled going limp to try and conserve energy.
“Then you start to kind of go through the emotional aspect of it a little bit where you’re like, ‘OK, I logically know that … my body’s gonna want to breathe. How do I stop that?'” Hutch said. “And eventually you just come to the wall where you go, ‘I’m done. … I’m finished.’ And I remember coming to that point where then it became spiritual, where I was like, ‘OK, Lord. I’m finished. I can’t do anything on my own power. I can’t do anything in my own thought.'”
Once that moment hit, the actor recalled everything going dark as he could hear his own heartbeat getting slower and slower.
“And then I started convulsing and trying to breathe, and I was trying to hold it, and trying to hold it back,” he said. “So, now I kind of have the spiritual, the emotional, the physical, all happening at one time.”
Suddenly, he began to breathe in the water and lost consciousness — until he woke up in a vehicle and then found himself in a pressure chamber in the hospital. Remarkably, he survived and recovered quickly.
The entire experience rocked Hutch’s world and left him asking the Lord for answers and recognizing he needed to better listen to God’s voice in his life.
“That’s literally when God turned my life around through a series of events, and for the first time in my life, I was like, ‘Oh, I think I’m gonna attempt to be an actor,'” he recalled. “That was never on my heart, never in my mind, not even an interest.”
This newfound vision led Hutch on a path into the acting world, where he has found widespread success. In the process, his Christian faith has grown right alongside his career. His latest project, “Homestead,” is currently in theaters across America.
“A nuclear bomb is detonated in Los Angeles, and the nation devolves into unprecedented chaos,” a description reads. “Ex-Green Beret Jeff Eriksson and his family escape to The Homestead, an eccentric prepper’s fortress nestled in the mountains. As violent threats and apocalyptic conditions creep toward their borders, the residents of The Homestead are left to wonder: how long can a group of people resist both the dangers of human nature and the bloodshed at their doorstep?”
Hutch said the film deals with powerful and important themes surrounding life choices, when to use force, how to balance grace — and so much more.
“Then, ultimately, the movie leads to a TV series,” he said, noting that the journey continues on Angel via an episodic experience.
Find out more about the movie and show here.
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