SOUTH BEND, Ind. (CNN) – Diana McKeown’s story of faith begins and ends with prayer.
Palm Sunday is a significant day for most Catholics but McKeown said her faith is even stronger after surviving a plane crashing into her home.
“I was born and raised Catholic,” McKeown says.
This Palm Sunday, she says she feels closer to God than ever before. This stems from the events of last Sunday, March 17, when a plane came barreling out of the sky and nose-dived into both her house and her neighbor’s house and her neighbors.
“I felt like God had me in the palm of his hand,” she says.
Just before the plane crashed McKeown was on her knees in her living room praying, like she does normally right around three o’clock each day. When the phone rang, she got up and moved to the other side of the room to answer the phone and what happened next, she says, was nothing short of a miracle.
“And we were actually talking about her church. The next thing I knew there was a huge explosion. All the other flooring had gone to the basement, it had everything else up. My chair that small area were really all that was left,” McKeown says.
She says if it wasn’t for her pausing from prayer to take that phone call from a friend she had’t talked to in over a year, she would have likely died.
“There was kind of this small area that was left where my chair was sitting. The roof was gone from the house, as well as the walls. The fireman came in and they had their masks on and the oxygen and tanks on and everything,” McKeown says.
Firemen were able to put her on a stretcher, take her to the hospital, where she was treated in the trauma center for most of the week.
“I think God is giving me tremendous strength. I have seen what he’s done and I felt what he’s done in my heart.”
