From “Diamond Jim” to a Broken Man — and Back Again: A Journey Beyond Wealth, Pain, and Death

“All the things I thought were just some crazy old legend… it’s real. It’s a dimension that exists. Something far beyond anything I could have ever imagined was happening to me.”

Those are the words Jim Woodford uses to describe the moment everything he believed — and everything he built his life upon — came crashing down.

For most of his life, Jim was known as “Diamond Jim.” He was ambitious, sharp, and driven. A self-made businessman, he prided himself on solving problems and building wealth. Providing a life of luxury for his family was his mission. If something broke, he fixed it. If there was a challenge, he conquered it. To Jim, success was love in action.

“I thought that was my way of showing her how much I loved her,” he later reflected. “By providing everything I could.”

But while Jim chased success, his wife Lorraine was praying for something entirely different.

Lorraine was a woman of faith. She watched as money and materialism slowly consumed her husband. Over time, Jim pulled further away — not just emotionally, but spiritually. Late at night, even he would wake and wonder quietly, Is this all there is? Yet he never voiced that question to God.

Instead, Lorraine did.

“God, please change his heart,” she prayed. “Bring him to know Jesus Christ. Deal with this materialistic way.”

Years passed. The wealth increased. The distance grew.

Then at age 61, Jim received a diagnosis that would shatter the illusion of control: Guillain-Barré syndrome — a rare, incurable autoimmune disorder. The disease brought relentless, electric pain that surged through his body like a live wire. It also caused progressive paralysis, robbing him of mobility and independence.

For five long years, Jim endured unremitting agony. He relied heavily on prescription medication just to survive each day. The pain hardened him. The once-confident businessman became angry, bitter, and exhausted.

“Never once,” he later admitted, “did I reach inside or look up to the sky and say, ‘God, if You exist, help me out here.’ Not me. Not Diamond Jim.”

His pride remained intact — until it couldn’t anymore.

In April 2014, Lorraine prayed a desperate prayer.

“God, I’ve been praying and I haven’t seen change. Maybe You have to break him to remake him.”

She would later say, “Be careful what you pray for.”

Later that month, after taking more than four times his prescribed medication dosage, Jim drove out to inspect a field he was planning to sell. Sitting alone in his truck, he suddenly felt a growing, burning sensation in his legs. Then his chest tightened.

“It was as though the cab of the truck was filling with water,” he recalled. “I couldn’t breathe.”

As he struggled for air, something shifted. From deep inside — from a place he didn’t even know existed — a cry erupted.

“God, forgive me. Forgive me.”

When Jim didn’t return home, Lorraine called the police. He was found unresponsive in his truck and rushed to the hospital. Doctors worked frantically, but the prognosis was grim.

The head physician delivered devastating news: severe brain damage, no brain activity, total organ failure. Jim was on full life support. There was no medical hope of recovery.

Lorraine was crushed.

“I was apologizing for praying what I prayed,” she said. “I didn’t know it would come to this.”

But while doctors saw no brain function, Jim says he was experiencing something far beyond the hospital room.

He describes entering a realm more vivid than anything on earth. To his right, he saw breathtaking meadows filled with flowers and life. To his left, the landscape turned dark — scorched earth dropping into a terrifying abyss. There, he saw what he described as a hideous creature, filled with hatred not only for him, but for all mankind.

Fear overwhelmed him.

But then he turned toward the light.

Raising both hands, he cried out again, “God, help me!”

Jim says three angels approached and escorted him through heaven. And then, he saw Him.

“I realized I was looking at none other than Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

He describes Jesus’ eyes as powerful — piercing yet full of knowing. And then came a question that cut deeper than any pain he had ever experienced.

“James… what did you do with the life My Master gave you?”

Jim had no answer.

Standing before the One he had ignored for decades, stripped of wealth, status, and pride, he could offer nothing. But as he looked into Jesus’ eyes, something unexpected happened.

“He smiled at me,” Jim said. “He knew me.”

What Jim expected was judgment. What he encountered was love — intense, overwhelming, undeserved love and forgiveness.

“In that moment, I was His forever,” he said. “Whatever was about to become of me, I was His. I loved Him. And He loved me.”

Jim wanted to stay. But according to his testimony, Jesus had other plans.

“Go back,” he was told. “And tell your brothers and sisters of the wonders we have shown you.”

Suddenly, Jim was jolted back into his body — in a cold hospital room, on a gurney, screaming at the top of his lungs. Nurses were startled. Lorraine was summoned.

She expected to hear her husband was gone.

Instead, she found him awake.

Overwhelmed, Jim looked at her and said, “Lorraine… I saw Jesus. And Jesus has horses.”

The doctors were stunned. The man who had no brain activity was conscious and speaking. Over time, his organs began functioning again. Though he still carries some markers of Guillain-Barré syndrome, Jim reports being completely free from the chronic pain that once consumed him.

But perhaps the greater miracle wasn’t physical.

The arrogant businessman who never prayed became a man devoted to Christ. The provider who equated money with love became gentle, humble, and spiritually focused. Lorraine realized that God had answered her prayer — not by destroying Jim, but by transforming him.

He had been broken. And he had been remade.

Today, Jim shares his story wherever he can. Not as “Diamond Jim,” but as a man who says he glimpsed eternity and encountered grace.

His message is simple:

“You have to open the door of your heart and let Him in.”

For Jim, the door that pride once sealed shut has now been opened.

His wealth couldn’t save him.

His strength couldn’t heal him.

His pride couldn’t sustain him.

But grace did.

Whether one views his experience as spiritual revelation, near-death phenomenon, or something else entirely, Jim’s life undeniably changed. A man once driven by material success now measures life by eternal purpose.

And perhaps the question he says Jesus asked him is one worth asking ourselves:

What are we doing with the life we’ve been given?

Because in the end, titles fade. Wealth disappears. Control slips through our fingers.

But the state of our hearts — that is what lasts.

And sometimes, it takes being broken to discover what truly makes us whole.