Matthew's Story

If we're all being honest, it's hard to imagine going through your everyday life and being stopped in your tracks by an accident that changes the rest of your life. On an early fall evening in 2022, Matthew Sharp, along with three of his co-workers were on their way home from a funeral service in East Texas. They had just provided full military honors to a veteran who had passed, and as they were traveling, the van they were driving was involved in a horrific accident.

Each Warrior in the accident was impacted in different ways...with one ending up losing their life, two having non-life threatening injuries, and leaving Matthew fighting for his life in an ICU unit in Tyler, Texas.

In the flurry of days that followed, we at Every Warrior had the honor of coming alongside these Warriors and families in different ways. With Matthew's situation so dire, the unknown demanded a unique response.

With the help of two of his friends and co-workers, people from across the country came together to donate toward his recovery and any needs associated with that. The week before Thanksgiving 2022, we were able to give Matthew's mom a check for $6,000.

Today, Matthew continues to progress in his recovery. Healing has been a journey and one that has (and will continue to have) ripple effects on many people's lives. There are many aspects of his story that need to be shared, but I want to focus here on the fact that two of his friends, in the most helpless of situations, took it upon themselves to do something.

So often, we stay paralyzed in these situations because we are overwhelmed with worry, fear, and a sense of not having a clue what to do. These two friends, in their early 20s, facing the possibility that their friend might never wake up, faced that head-on. They saw problems, they found help, they looked for solutions, and they pressed forward. They knew that his family from Florida needed to be at Matthew's bedside. They knew that there would be expenses outside of his medical care. They even knew that there were things that they didn't know! They didn't let obstacles stand in the way. And subsequently, they made a difference.