Authors: Kevin Malarkey; Alex Malarkey
Please, God, help our son.
I remembered praying with Alex as he received Jesus as his Savior a few years before. He was so young, yet so sincere. What an awesome privilege! Alex knew he wanted to go to Heaven someday, and he grasped that he could not go simply by “being a good boy.” Heaven could not be earned like other things. Alex knew he needed someone else to pay the price for his sin—the wrong things he would do in his life—so that he could accept the gift of going to Heaven and being with God.
I have to admit, I did wonder about the sincerity of his faith. What can a child understand about the depths of faith at this age? Surely kids only mindlessly repeat the words and ideas adults feed them, without really understanding the truth.
A few weeks after Alex prayed to invite Jesus into his life, I put his faith to the test.
“Alex, does Jesus live in your heart?”
“No, Daddy.”
My heart sank. There it was, I thought. His prayer had been meaningless . . . but then Alex continued, “Jesus died for my sins, but He doesn’t live in my heart—He wouldn’t fit. The Holy Spirit is in my heart now.”
So Alex did understand—Jesus had died for his sins and left the Holy Spirit as His Comforter and Counselor. I learned my lesson then and there: a young child is able to grasp the things God wants him to know.
Suddenly my consciousness was jerked back into the present. There was my precious son, lying in front of me. I took assurance from the fact that the Holy Spirit would be with Alex forever, but would God allow
me
to be with Alex again in this world?
What else was there to do but to cry out to God for mercy? We didn’t know it then, but even the best doctors are quick to admit they don’t understand these situations very well. I could do nothing but beg God for help.
Oh God, please forgive me for what I have done. Please let me apologize to Alex. Please protect him. Please comfort him. Please be his heavenly Father because his earthly father is completely helpless. I give You my son. I let go of him. He is Yours. Please help him from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet. I trust You, God. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Somehow in God’s mercy, my spirit was bathed in a new sense of calm at the end of that prayer. Had some kind of spiritual transfer occurred? My theology already settled the matter of God’s being in complete control of the situation. God had already wrapped His arms around Alex, but had something fundamentally changed in Heaven because of my prayer to completely release Alex to God . . . to let go of what I couldn’t hold on to anyway? Somehow, it seemed so.
Beth and I stayed and looked on our son in silence. How long, I don’t know. In the quietness, I slipped my arm around her, probably more for my comfort than for hers. The coma took Alex someplace we couldn’t reach him. I stared, wondering as my heart ached for my broken son.
Little buddy, are you lonely? Are you scared? Do you want me to hold you? How desperately I want to hold you.
I remembered how much Alex had loved church. We belonged to a casual-dress church. For the most part, people dressed comfortably, and kids wore school clothing. Not Alex. He decided he wanted to wear a suit to church. Even with Daddy in khakis and a dress shirt, even with a pastor who almost never wore a suit, Alex wanted to wear a suit. He has never been a go-along-with-the-crowd type. He never wore a suit anywhere else. He wanted to dress up for God.
And then I thought about another side of Alex—the one that spent as much time outdoors as possible. I remembered one day how deeply satisfied he looked as he walked barefoot in the back garden, crunching autumn leaves with his toes. “Daddy,” he asked, “don’t you just love the sound of the leaves under your feet?”
At some point during our first evening at the hospital, we were ushered into a room designated for parents whose kids were in the ICU. Our other three children had gone to stay with some of our friends, and we soon found ourselves alone in bed, staring at the ceiling in silence. What had just happened to our lives? What would tomorrow bring? Would Alex make it through the night? Where was he, really? The accident had traumatized his body. The coma had taken him far away. When would he come back?
Would
he come back?
Oh God, we need You now . . .
In a fit of exhaustion, we slept.
For the first week, Beth and I never even left the hospital; we weren’t interested in being anywhere else. At the same time, support came flowing in. The first group to assemble for help was made up of friends, family, and our church family, led by Pastor Brown. But soon the exponentially growing number of men and women around Alex and our family could only be described as an army.
Our children were with us virtually the entire time, but on those occasions when they weren’t, they were warmly loved and nurtured by friends or family. For instance, a few women took turns rocking, feeding, and changing our newborn whenever Beth couldn’t be with him. Someone organized the delivery of all our meals. Someone else organized the bringing of fresh clothes and the laundering of dirty clothes, as well as providing any personal items we needed. Errands were handled by someone else. So much food began appearing that there was a buffet line in the ICU waiting room at one point. It remained for days as people removed and replaced covered dishes as necessary. Get-well cards bearing notes, prayers, and Scripture verses flowed in until every square inch of Alex’s room was papered over with them. The doctors and nurses were dumbfounded and often commented that they had never seen such an outpouring of love.
A steady stream of godly men—elders, deacons, pastors, and lay leaders—along with many godly women arrived from every corner of the state. Common were the stories of people who “felt God tugging at their hearts to come.” One pastor drove two hours just to visit Alex. Since he arrived after visiting hours and wasn’t on the prearranged schedule, the hospital denied him admittance to Alex’s room. Undaunted, he drove home, only to turn around the next morning and drive back, spending most of the day praying over Alex. During those first few critical days, many local youth groups came as well, singing praise and worship songs in Alex’s room. At any given time, there were never fewer than five people in Alex’s room during visiting hours.
Within a short time, there were so many visitors that someone organized a visiting schedule to accommodate them all. Even more important, someone organized a night-watch prayer vigil in Alex’s room. Every two hours, someone was praying over Alex throughout the night—every night, for months. Many of these saints we never met. They were there serving God in obscurity, for His glory.
The ministry to Alex and our family engendered so much activity that the hospital had to organize itself, too, in order to handle all the traffic. Hospital staff printed up stacks of “Alex” passes with his name and room number. They told us that Alex typically had more visitors than the rest of the ICU patients combined, a situation the saints soon endeavored to remedy.
The prayer/visiting/blessing ministry that started with Alex soon fanned out to the other families in the ICU. In this God reserved a special blessing for Beth and me. We had been completely absorbed with Alex and his care—understandable, yes, but when we joined those who came to minister to Alex and went from room to room in the ICU to comfort others and to pray with them, God did something in our hearts. These firsthand encounters with other families experiencing deep trials were a poignant reminder in the midst of our own sorrow that there were many other people suffering just as much as we were. It helped us gain perspective, helped us to turn outward and see in a new light the blessings God was bestowing so abundantly on us.
If you were looking for good food and good Christian fellowship during that mid-November, there was no better place than Children’s Hospital and the ministry that grew up around Alex. We could never begin to appropriately thank the thousands who blessed us with their selfless giving. If there ever was a time when the church enveloped needy souls in arms of love, we experienced it.
Oh, and one more thing. That stack of unpaid bills overflowing my bill basket back home, which I had fretted so much about prior to the accident? It disappeared. I never got the chance to tape that God Will Provide sign on the side of it. A wonderful man whom I have always held in the highest regard made a quiet trip out to our empty house during that first week we were in the hospital. He took the entire basket and paid every bill to the last penny—an immense sum. But these things have a way of getting out.
Thank you, God, for Your beautiful saints.
Two by Two
On the third day following the accident, there was an unexpected development. A nurse approached me and asked, “Mr. Malarkey, may I have a word with you in private?”
“Sure.”
We walked into the hall, and she began to speak, hesitated, and began again. “Uh, Mr. Malarkey . . . I know you’ll understand—I’m sure you’ll agree—from now on, we need to limit Alex’s visitors to no more than two people in his room at a time.”
“I certainly do understand, but I hope this didn’t come about because our friends have abused our visiting privileges. If so, I would like to apologize for—”
“Oh, no, sir! That’s not it at all, I . . . I promise,” she replied in haste. “Not that the numbers haven’t been overwhelming. But everyone has been
very
respectful of the hospital rules.”
“Oh, that’s good to hear. But then why the rule change?”
“Well,” she hesitated, searching for words with a side-glance, “it’s not a change, really—it’s just, well, a guideline we should be following.”
I nodded, but my mind raced to understand. At that very moment, there were twenty people on the waiting list in the lobby ready to go in, five at a time, to pray for Alex—just like the previous seventy-two hours. I rarely take things at face value, and this wasn’t making sense to me. Why was this policy so important today, if not yesterday or the day before? Clearly there was something she didn’t want to tell me. Then the light went on.
“The doctors just figured out that Alex is going to live, didn’t they?”
The nurse nodded, a little sheepishly, and then leaned in, assuming a confidential tone. “I’ve worked on this unit for twelve years. I have
never
seen a child survive the kind of injury your child sustained—
never
.”
Seventy-two hours had been the time frame the medical staff had stressed. They’d been watching the clock. The unit workers had not expected Alex to cross over into this day with a beating heart.
My heart leaped for joy as I hurried back to the lobby, gathered everyone there, and issued the new rule and explained its reason. A cheer went up, and everyone praised God. The visitors list was reorganized for groups of two. Once there, they could pray for as long as they felt the need—then they had to give their place to someone else. To help accommodate the steady stream of people, we agreed there would be no conversation in the room other than with God. Alex would have two people praying beside his bed at all times.
As I sat by Alex one day that week, another memory surfaced. Just a few months before, Alex had actually caught air when riding on a local BMX course. He and I were at the top of the biggest hill on the course when I turned my head to see where Aaron had gone. In that instant, Alex launched down the giant hill. Although my emotions were doing a bungee jump as I watched him gain enormous speed, he actually stuck the landing! He had also learned how to do a flip one day on a friend’s trampoline. A few weeks later he was at the perfect location to execute the flip he had been practicing—the side of a swimming pool! He scared us to death, but again nailed the landing. Before the accident, Alex could be socially shy and sometimes clingy with his mommy and daddy; when it came to physical activities, however, he was fearless.
Now as I sat by my boy’s bedside, I couldn’t help but wonder, What would happen to him now? Would he ever have a chance to act with such fearlessness again?