Jamie Lynn Spears says God helped her mental illness struggles after daughter’s near-death experience

By Jeannie Ortega Law, Christian Post Reporter Friday, January 14, 2022

Actress Jamie Lynn Spears is crediting God for saving her daughter’s life on two occasions — and said her faith is what helped her mental illness.

During an interview on "Good Morning America” about her new memoir, Things I Should Have Said, the younger Spears, sister to pop star Britney Spears, credited God for saving the life of her firstborn daughter, Maddie Briann Aldridge.

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In the book, Spears shares in detail what she faced in 2007 after falling pregnant at age 16. Bombarded by intense media scrutiny, she said those closest to her wanted to make the issue disappear.

"I think that the easiest thing for them would have been 'let's just, let's just get this over with and you go back to being the perfect little sister because that's your role,'" the 30-year-old told "GMA."

"But I thank God that I stood up for myself and said exactly what I wanted,” she tearfully added.

The actress paused her lucrative career in Hollywood to raise her daughter. When the little girl was 8, God used a near-fatal accident to change Spears’ life forever. Maddie flipped an ATV and got trapped underwater for more than 6 minutes as Spears desperately tried to rescue her.

In critical condition, Maddie was airlifted to a hospital. Despite remaining unconscious for several days following the ATV accident, the young child miraculously recovered.

Following Maddie’s miraculous recovery in 2017, Spears took to Instagram with a snapshot of a Christian devotional and testified of God’s goodness.

"I'm not one to preach, and I'm no priest, but God's timing is no coincidence," she wrote. "I hate seeing, much less, reading someone's long post, but here I go: Music, and my career [has] always been a big passion in my life, as well as to create a future that my family could be proud of. I have been working on my music for almost a decade now, and I have had many great successes as an artist/writer, but I was always wondering, how long I would have to WAIT for my big break? Wow, did God put me in my place..."

"Now, more [than] ever, I realize how important it is to only put your time into things that matter, and I can't wait to get back to my music. Now, that my baby girl is better — I can't wait to make her proud. She is my everything. I want to thank you all for your patience, and prayers as we worked through this hard time," she added.

On another social media post a few weeks earlier, Spears celebrated the mercy of God.

"We were shown God's grace, and we still feel undeserving of His mercy. I'll never stop thanking each of you for your prayers, because we recognize the miracle it created. We are beyond blessed, and we will NEVER forget y'all, and God's unbelievable mercy," she wrote with the hashtag God is good.

Now, in her most recent public interview, the former Nickelodeon star said the experience brought her closer to God. It also forced her to re-examine her entire life, including her own mental health struggles.

Spears, now a mother of two, revealed that she suffers from severe anxiety, depression and OCD — but this was something she suppressed for years.

“It really was to the point where my panic texts were all-consuming where I'm counting, I’m touching the doorknob seven times,” Spears detailed.

However, the singer said her daughter's accident put things into perspective. 

“When your worst fear happens, you get a lot less afraid of everything else,” she explained. “I think that it made me reevaluate everything and who I was as a person and where I needed to be better.”