Authors: Kevin Malarkey; Alex Malarkey
“Are you sure you’re my dad?”
“Yes, Alex, it’s me.”
“Because my daddy was killed in a car accident,” he said. “You look like him, but my daddy’s in Heaven.”
“Alex, I was in a car accident with you,” I explained, puzzled by his statement. “I was thrown out of the car, but I did not die.”
“I’m sorry about the accident, Daddy.”
“Me too, Alex, but it will be okay, buddy. God will get us through this.”
“Daddy, the accident was my fault.”
“No, Alex. I pulled in front of a car . . .”
“But I saw the car and didn’t tell you. I asked a question and made you turn around. You didn’t see the car.”
“Alex, I’m the one who has wanted to say I’m sorry. I’ve been waiting to ask your forgiveness for three months. I almost got you killed!”
“Really, Daddy? I thought it was my fault. The devil told me I was to blame.”
My heart was unbearably full as I heard these words. Had he been carrying these recollections all this time? Had he been laboring under a delusion of guilt these many weeks?
“No, Alex. I’m the one who caused the accident. Don’t believe a word of what the devil says. You did not cause this accident. I did. Alex, will you please forgive me?”
“Yes, Daddy. I love you.”
“Thank you, Alex. I love you more than anything.”
As Alex’s powers of speech grew, we began to sense that something far more than a mere coma had taken place over the course of the last few months. Alex began to relate to us details of an extended visit to Heaven. So many supernatural things had already happened that miracles were no longer surprising to us. We were thankful and grateful for every divine intervention, but Alex had begun talking about things far beyond anything we had yet experienced.
As a licensed clinical counselor, I knew exactly what the doctors would say about all this. They would attribute it to dreaming and a child’s imagination, perhaps even hallucinations due to brain trauma. We all know that many people wake up after near-death experiences and have compelling stories to tell. Frankly, early on I didn’t know what to make of what Alex was telling us either. The more pragmatic, “educated” part of me thought,
Maybe he
does
have brain damage; maybe he
is
imagining things
.
But we were three months into a supernatural adventure. We had never been more attuned to the work of the Lord or more conscious of spiritual warfare. Never had we depended so heavily on a God who intervenes in life. My trained skepticism had been tempered by the miracles I had witnessed. If Alex said he’d seen the devil, I was ready to listen with an open mind. Who knew what his experiences had been during this amazing ride? Ours had certainly been unbelievable enough. I realized the problem wasn’t Alex; the problem was me and my inability to believe what I said I believed.
In bits and pieces, Alex’s cohesive story of Heaven and angels began to emerge. I listened to these things with wonder. The picture came together slowly but fully and always consistently. “Alex,” I asked, “what did it feel like to move back into your body after being out of it for a while? That must have felt very strange.”
He only squinted his eyes and formed the word “Ouch!”
I never asked leading questions. For example, I didn’t say, “Was Heaven white, like in the pictures?” Or “Did the angels have wings?” Every piece of information was something that Alex volunteered.
Over time, Alex shared more and more information. Since I don’t have a charismatic background, all of this is new territory to me. I don’t have a theological box to put it in. It is a reality that has invaded our lives.
Crisis
The nurses were in and out in a more sporadic way than we might have expected, but things were working out. For the first couple of days after Alex came home, Beth and I felt comfortable caring for him during those times when we were by ourselves.
Then, on that third day, Alex seemed to be having a rough go of it. We just couldn’t make him comfortable. As the afternoon wore on, he began struggling for breath. The nurse helped to clear his airway, which made things better for a short time. Then he began struggling again. Next his body temperature plunged to a dangerous ninety-one; his heart rate hovered in the mid-sixties. A mucous buildup had developed in his throat, obstructing the trachea. This problem had to be dealt with immediately, but before we were able to clear the obstruction, Alex grew drowsy, unresponsive, and increasingly pale.
We couldn’t handle this crisis, even with the nurse close at hand, and time was fast slipping away. Our only option was to call 911. From the start, I had had my secret doubts about the wisdom of our providing all of Alex’s care at home. As we waited for help to arrive, I couldn’t help but think,
Maybe this is confirmation Alex’s situation is too complicated and dangerous to handle at home
.
The ambulance arrived, though not in a particularly speedy manner. Thank goodness the professionals were there. The paramedics quickly trooped through the house to Alex’s room, but stopped upon entering. Looking around at all the medical equipment, the head paramedic asked, “What do you want us to do?” Clearly, they didn’t know what to do with someone on a ventilator.
“What do you mean, ‘What do I want you to do?’ I called in and told the dispatcher my son is on a vent and can’t breathe, his temperature is dangerously low, and he’s lethargic. If I knew you would ask me that question when you arrived, I wouldn’t have called 911.”
It was a tense moment, and everything—the life of my son—was on the line. The paramedics had no real answers other than to take Alex to the hospital, so they began wheeling him out. The visiting nurse and I accompanied the ambulance to the facility, while Beth stayed home with the little ones.
At the small local hospital, the doctors and other medical personnel tried their best, but it was soon obvious that they, too, lacked the expertise to handle Alex’s situation. It seemed that we knew more about our son’s condition than these folks did. Suddenly we were the experts—we took the lead, and the doctors and nurses watched us carefully. I took on Alex’s care myself, since I knew best how to do it.
To begin with, he was borderline hypothermic and needed to be warmed immediately. We covered him with blankets to increase his body temperature. I fed him through the G-tube in his stomach, monitored the ventilator, and did all the little things we had learned to help keep my son stable. None of this is intended to reflect poorly on the local hospital. We were a bit surprised by how little help they were prepared to give, but we found out that this is common in smaller hospitals. Alex’s situation was such an acute and specialized one that it required the care that only a larger facility could provide. It wasn’t until evening that we got permission to transfer Alex to Children’s Hospital.
A Total Failure?
At the local hospital I watched Alex’s vital signs like a hawk, anxiety coursing through me. I prayed constantly for mercy and help throughout that evening, which I thought would never end. Harrowing—there’s no other word to describe the feeling of watching your son attempt to breathe, knowing there’s nothing you can do but wait.
The ambulance to take Alex to Children’s arrived. What a relief it was to finally get Alex the help he so desperately needed, but on another level, it felt like total failure. For weeks we had set our eyes on the big day when Alex would come home “for good.” We’d built it up, mounted banners, fixed up the house with ramps and equipment, and managed to hold everything together for a grand total of three days. Now we had bounced right back to the place we had convinced ourselves we’d left forever.
On five more occasions during the next year, we would move back and forth between home and the respiratory unit at Children’s. The stability we had sought eluded us. No matter how many times we told ourselves we were fortunate to have our son alive, we still succumbed to feelings of discouragement and, at times, even despair.
Physical exhaustion battered our hope. Many times we were too exhausted even to pray. Thank God for the prayers of the saints! They sustained us when putting one foot in front of the other was all we could do. There were many times Beth and I were little more than walking bundles of frayed nerves. Because of this, it was all the more surprising to see how many people were continuing to look at us as sources of spiritual inspiration—models of living faith. There was no shortage of talk that set us up as heroes or martyrs, profiles in courage. Why didn’t other people seem to notice how stressed, moody, and unpleasant we could be? I could only hope these people figured out the real truth.
Please hear me when I say that our ability to hang in there had nothing to do with our strength, our faith, or any positive attribute of our own. As a matter of fact, these circumstances only humbled us. They showed us not our strengths, but our vast weaknesses; not our faith, but our faithlessness. Courage? We had never needed it more. We lived in fear of what the future might hold for Alex.
This wasn’t about our strength; it was about God’s. He was the only reason we had come this far without giving in to utter despair. We’ve heard about many crises that have destroyed marriages and families. I’m told that when a child dies, the parents very often end up getting a divorce. We struggled with the bad times, and we were forced into absolute dependence upon God, the only refuge we had, because we knew we weren’t strong enough in ourselves to weather such a storm.
Every time we were tempted to give up or to give in, every time we were at the last tiny strand of the end of our rope, God would send human angels of comfort, or He would do something miraculous in Alex’s life. The Lord constantly reminded us of His presence, unlimited power, and gracious love, while the situation itself reminded us of our limitations and weaknesses. On top of all this, the ever-responsive human angels of comfort were often the very people who professed great inspiration through our story! We were the ones who needed to be applauding them. They were the healing hands of God in our lives over and over. How could we possibly have made it through each day without them?
Most couples have the luxury of working out the kinks of their relationship in privacy, but we were living our lives in the waiting room of Children’s Hospital and in the midst of a home that had become Grand Central. I might snap at Beth or some medical helper, or she might be exasperated with me, and then we’d feel doubly guilty—not only had we been rough on each other, but we’d aired our frustrations in public. We had presented a poor testimony of God’s goodness. Many of these times our children were present as well. Quarreling in front of children is never a good thing, but they were right in front of us almost all the time.
It simply couldn’t be helped, given the constant stress level, unless we really became the perfected saints people thought we were. That wasn’t going to happen; we were ordinary people placed in an extraordinary situation, but blessed by a God who supplies our needs beyond all expectations. I only hope that in the final analysis, people saw much more of God than us in this situation. I know they had to see the anger I felt so often—never directed at the Lord, but sometimes at the doctors or at Beth. In the heat of the moment, I made statements to her that I would love to take back.
The Pressure Cooker
I’d love to forget more than a few instances when I snapped at others. One involved an argument with one of the doctors. I was deeply concerned because Alex was struggling to breathe, even on the vent. It was so frustrating to see that his lungs kept filling up with mucus, blocking the air he desperately needed. Couldn’t something be done to keep the stuff from flowing? The doctors were convinced that it was an anxiety problem. They wanted to administer an anti-anxiety medication to Alex.
They got the diagnosis right but the patient wrong. I was the one who needed the prescription, particularly after hearing their prognosis. I knew Alex’s problems were not emotionally based. I was furious, and the more the staff kept making that suggestion, the angrier I grew. What bothered me most was that Alex had been a model of courage and calmness all along. Yet here the doctors were claiming his state of mind was causing what were clearly physical problems.
With my emotional barometer surging, I stepped up to the doctor until we were in each other’s faces. I’m six-foot-two and weigh 220 pounds, and I’m sure I can be an imposing presence when I lose my cool. The doctor was as stubborn as I was, insisting that Alex needed to be on anxiety meds. It was a bad combination. I finally blew a gasket. “Perhaps I should knock you on your rear end and then start jumping up and down on your chest so you can understand how it feels not to be able to breathe!” I shouted. “But you won’t have to worry about breathing because I’ll get you an anti-anxiety medication! Giving my son anti-anxiety meds may help his anxiety, but it won’t help him breathe past the mucous clog covering part of his trachea!”
Believe me, it’s hard to relate this episode from my past. Part of me would rather you listen to those who painted us as spiritual giants. But of course, that would be far from honest. This is a nonfiction book, and it tells a very true story. I want you to know that there’s nothing at all special about me, and plenty inside me that God still needs to fix up. I’m very much a work in progress when it comes to being conformed to the image of Christ, the goal for all of us as believers. But as I work on this book, I always keep in mind Alex’s reluctance to tell his story. His fear is that people will admire the human beings in the narrative, including himself, rather than the only One who should truly impress them.