The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven: A Remarkable Account of Miracles, Angels, and Life Beyond This World (6 page)

Science presented us with relentless and devastating facts: a severed spinal cord tendon sheath, a broken pelvis, and traumatic brain injury. Furthermore, the injury to his spinal cord was at the C1-C2 cervical vertebrae level—so high that the spinal cord and brain constituted one massive injury field. That in itself is generally enough to cause death. In addition, there was still the possibility of further damage. In the first days following the accident, Alex’s doctors were particularly concerned that swelling in the brain might occur, and with it, increased pressure inside the skull. The surgeons connected a monitor to Alex’s brain to get a reading on his intracranial pressure. The doctors explained this to me, as did Alex, who later told me how it appeared from his vantage point and described the pain it had caused him.

There are scientific facts, and there is God’s sovereignty. Surrounded by prayer warriors, I was reminded of the truth that God is not controlled by what we know. I was determined to pour out my heart to God in hopes that the predictions of the medical community would be confounded. I would soon be joined by more people than I could ever have imagined.

ICU, a House of Prayer

I’ve never been in such a prayer-filled environment as during the time of Alex’s coma. With so many good people lifting up our son and interceding for other children in the ICU and needy people identified by our Web site, the hospital’s ICU became holy ground.

The group supporting Alex began to be a major presence at the hospital. Like the first light of dawn breaking over the horizon and bathing everything in light, people who had come to minister were everywhere.

Our section of the hospital began to look and feel more and more like church. Some people moved their small-group Bible studies from their living rooms to the ICU. Others came to visit and pray every day over a period of weeks. It was strange that my son’s tragedy could create such joyful fellowship, unity, and ministry. But God does work in mysterious ways.

Sometimes God revealed His plans through someone who had come to pray for Alex. One time while my friend Jay stood with me beside Alex’s bed, he gave me a nervous look and began, “I have something to share with you.”

“Sure.” I smiled. “What’s that?”

“Last night I was sitting at home thinking about Alex,” he said. “I began to pray for him, and God suddenly laid something on my heart. Kevin, I realized with absolute certainty that Alex would be fully healed.”

I looked into his face, not knowing what to say. Jay wasn’t the kind of person known for dramatic, supernatural proclamations—I’d never before heard anything like that from him.

I placed my hand on his shoulder and nodded in an effort to appear as if I embraced what he was saying. But he wasn’t finished. With emotion rising in his voice, he continued. “When I was younger, I received a phone call from the hospital one evening. The doctor said my father was ill, but he assured me it was nothing life threatening. I don’t know why, but deep down I just didn’t believe him. Somehow I knew my father was going to die. Don’t ask me how or why—I just knew. I could take you to that house and show you exactly where I was standing when it happened. Soon after I hung up the phone, my father died. I felt grief but was not surprised at all. I
knew
it was going to happen. Do you understand?”

“Wow,” I said, still at a loss for what to say.

“From that time to this,” he continued, “nothing like that has happened to me again. That is, until last night, when it suddenly came to me that Alex is going to be fully healed.”

I thought a lot about what Jay had said. It was similar to what Dave, who had been on the helicopter with Alex, had told Beth. Then there was Beth herself, who had blurted out a kind of prognosis prophecy about Alex, including that his story would bless people across the nation. There had been any number of statements or stories from people that had been out of the ordinary during this short period. They all had in common a consistent message of hope and healing for Alex.

I wanted to believe. I wanted it all to be true, but I was a long way from receiving it.

A few days later, Jay rejoined us at the hospital and took me aside again. I was eager to hear what he might say this time. But Jay seemed much less comfortable than he had been on the last occasion—almost pained.

“I don’t want to tell you this,” he said.

“But I hope you will,” I replied.

After an anguished silence, Jay took a deep breath and finally began.

“Kevin,” he said, “I know you’ve always believed that Alex was destined to be a pastor. I’m here to tell you that it’s going to be bigger than that. He’s going to be more like Billy Graham.”

Again, it struck me as odd for this particular friend to say such startling things. I’m sure he could see that my eyes were wide open. Like many people, I tend to place Billy Graham on a pedestal. There are Christians; then there is
Billy Graham
.

“But his impact will be different,” my friend continued. “Billy Graham’s ministry was to teach people how to have a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Alex is going to emerge from his coma, and his ministry will be to show people
what God is like
. But just like Dr. Graham, your son will have an impact across the world.”

I stared at him with several half-formed words passing over my lips but didn’t make a sound.
Showing people the world over what God is like? That’s what Alex is going to do?
It’s not that I was opposed to the idea, but the incongruity of it all made it impossible for me to put my thoughts into words.

My friend came to the rescue. “I told you I didn’t want to tell you. It makes me as uncomfortable as you seem to be. It sounds a little crazy, Kevin, I know, and you probably think I’m nuts. But I
know
it. I know in my heart it’s true, just like I know the sun is shining today—the same way I knew I was supposed to be faithful and give you this message even though I didn’t want to.”

These heady days continued with repeated confirmations about Alex’s coming ministry. But there he was, still in a coma, still breathing only because a machine was pushing air into his lungs, his life hanging in the balance from day to day. It would be months before we saw all the groundwork God had already laid for the fulfillment of His purposes.

The praying continued. Alex’s Army continued to wage battle, and new recruits joined the front line every day.

Alex Online

From the beginning, we wanted to get the word out so that people could pray for Alex. But how could we keep people updated so they would know specifically how to pray? Naturally, the Internet was the way to go. The hospital provided a link on its own Web site to CaringBridge, a nonprofit organization that provides free Web sites to connect family and friends during serious health situations. But for Alex, we wanted a place on the Web that was more personal and that would be designed to bring glory and honor to God.

John Sullivan, a family friend, knew exactly what to do. John is a Web designer, and he took it upon himself to build a site called PrayforAlex.com. He registered the domain, got pictures from us, and put together a beautiful Web site that allowed people to stay up-to-the-minute on Alex’s ongoing story, leave messages for us, and encourage their friends to pray for Alex.

When the site first went live, we had a section called Alex Updates, where we frequently provided new information. John was able to show us how thousands of people were beginning their day by logging on to our site, getting the news on Alex, and praying accordingly. The section for prayer requests was only about Alex’s needs in the beginning, but before long it became a clearinghouse for the needs of others, too. People would post requests, and “Alex’s Army” would take up their causes as well. Then there was a feedback feature on the site, which allowed people to communicate with our family. I remembered back to the year before the accident, when Alex and I had started the “Daddy and Alex Prayer Journal.” We’d write down prayer requests for others and ourselves and circle the request when we felt God had answered a prayer. Now we had what amounted to an online version of that journal—for Alex.

PrayforAlex.com couldn’t have been a bigger success. It was accessed more than one million times during its first six months alone. Most of our family messages were read by one thousand visitors or more. We added a Global Prayer Group section that demonstrated, within just a few days, that our son had countless prayer partners all across the United States and, in a very short time, from around the world, including Australia, Hong Kong, Germany, South Africa, England, Iraq, Costa Rica, Canada, Afghanistan, and Honduras. The Alex’s Army prayer initiative had truly become an international movement. Many of these correspondents reported that their entire churches were praying for Alex.

We began to hear stories of people waking up at the same time each night for weeks or months, feeling a strong leading of the Holy Spirit to pray for Alex. It was not uncommon to hear of twenty or more individuals, spread across the globe, all praying for Alex at the same time. Hearing these reports filled our hearts with the fresh wind of encouragement, revealing that God was up to something magnificent. Knowing that God was moving in the hearts of people everywhere made our hopes soar.

The site had begun simply as a useful tool. What it became was a worldwide forum for God’s work, ministering to us as well as to people we’re likely never to know. It reminded us again that God’s work is not limited, isolated, or performed in some kind of spiritual vacuum. Everything He does is interconnected, so that when He blesses one person there is a ripple effect of blessings at large. The sad or tragic things, too, become raw material for the demonstration of His power.

Beth Malarkey, Alex’s mom

Indeed, all things really do work together for our good when we know God.

We dared to face the reality that something as devastating as the automobile accident and Alex’s horrific injuries could actually become an amazing blessing in the hands of the Lord. This didn’t mean we were happy about what had happened to our boy or that we would want it to happen to anyone else. But we knew that, as Corrie ten Boom used to say, “There is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still.” I was learning to trust more deeply in God than I ever had . . . to accept the bitter and sweet of His plan . . . to open myself to the prayers and insights of fellow believers . . . to accept that something beautiful was happening beyond my powers of control or comprehension.

What about Alex? Was he really as unresponsive as he looked? Was he aware of God’s presence? What was he learning . . . experiencing . . . ?

The sense of God’s presence was becoming more palpable than I had ever known. Miracles were happening to Alex—though we did not yet know it. What we did know was the miracle of Christian fellowship and through it the sense that God was at work in ways that were both mysterious and real.

But I wouldn’t want you to think that Beth and I are miraculous people. After all, this book is a work of nonfiction. In the first few months following the accident, as we were being lifted up into God’s presence, we were also feeling frayed at the edges, becoming tense, frustrated, despairing, and, sadly, even nasty to each other. I don’t want to write these facts off as normal for people under the kind of stress we were under, but I do want to be honest. Often we were far from behaving in the way Christ envisions for His people—that is the truth, no matter how else I would wish it to be.

Thank God, there is another truth: God continued to be faithful to us in the midst of our messes.

It is one thing to read the Scriptures and affirm their truth. But until you are in the trenches of trial, until you are faced with life circumstances that test your faith, until you are pressed to the absolute limit of your physical and emotional capacity, until you face the unrelenting stress of ongoing trauma, you never really know how you’ll respond to what you may have embraced so easily during a comfortable Bible study.

Pastor Gary Brown, the Malarkeys’ pastor at the time of the accident

Our Marriage Takes a Battering

My relationship with Beth was stretched to the breaking point. We are told in Scripture to keep our eyes on Jesus, even in the midst of a raging storm. When Beth and I failed to do that, when we gave ourselves over to the flesh, the intensity of our lives made even the smallest issues loom larger than a mountain. I would lose my temper in a discussion about child care, for instance, or over what we were going to do for dinner. It sounds foolish, I know, but at times we were each so caught up with our own pain, fears, and physical exhaustion that we gave full vent to our baser selves. Beth and I have to be honest and admit that our relationship suffered great trauma, not only during Alex’s first weeks in the hospital, but also for years after the accident.

I knew all the Bible verses written especially for me, such as “Husbands, . . . love your wives, just as Christ loved the church.” And Beth knew all the Bible verses written especially for her, like “Wives, . . . submit to your husbands as to the Lord.” We knew what the Bible said. Trying to live these words out in the center of the storm, with nerves exposed and raw, we fell into sin—not sin that involved other people; we simply weren’t walking in love. We grew distant and irritable with each other.

We were troubled by how little time we were able to devote to our other three children—they needed us too. How could we ever create a “normal” home environment for them? It seemed such an irony to have worked so hard to have a nice family home on a lovely property but to so seldom be there as a family.

We were spending an inordinate amount of time at the hospital, devoting the bulk of our energy to Alex. Our middle children were four and two, unique stages that require special attention. Then, of course, there was Ryan, who had joined us just two days before the accident. New babies aren’t exactly low maintenance. The first weeks are critical in forming the child’s cognitive skills, personality, and normal development in bonding with the parents, especially the mother. We didn’t want Ryan to be neglected in any way.

It just felt like too much to carry. Beth and I, needless to say, had some long talks with our Creator:
Lord, You know this is far more than we can handle, on any number of fronts. We need You as we never have before. We’ve prayed without ceasing for Alex, as have countless other people. But we must lay before You so many other requests as well. We have three other children who covet our attention. We have bills we cannot pay. We have our marriage, and the two of us each need personal strength and daily energy to keep going. We can only ask for Your wisdom, Lord, and claim Your promise that You will never desert us.

Pastor Gary Brown, the Malarkeys’ pastor at the time of the accident

Our House Takes a Battering

Our tag-team parenting lifestyle continued into the cold weeks of winter. One of us would “jump into the ring” with the three children at home, while the other would stand watch at the hospital. Then we’d switch places.

One evening, I was home with the kids. Little by little, icy rain descended over the entire area of Bellefontaine, but we were warm inside.
Let the ice fall
, I thought. Then, with a flicker, the lights went out and the house was enveloped in darkness. We had lost all electricity. Packing a bag quickly before the worst of the ice storm hit, I had to find somewhere for the kids and me to spend the night, which, other than driving in a developing ice storm, didn’t prove to be too difficult. Once we’d settled into our temporary digs at Beth’s sister’s home and I’d put the kids down for the night, I realized we weren’t too much the worse for wear.

The next morning, I returned to our house to see how things were. Was the power back on? The house isn’t visible from the road, and no sooner had I pulled into the two-hundred-foot-long driveway than I had to stop the car. A tree had fallen across the front of the driveway, preventing me from driving farther.
No problem
, I thought.
I’ll walk
.

I jumped over the downed tree and carefully made my way up the slippery driveway, looking from side to side at the destruction the ice storm had brought. Trees were down everywhere, enveloped in thick sheets of ice. With one across the road, how many would be down on the rest of the property? I dialed my father to tell him what I was finding. “Hey, Dad, you won’t believe this. There are trees down all over my property. This is unbelievable. Well, at least one didn’t fall on our—” Timing is everything. Just as I said that, I rounded the bend to see that a huge tree had fallen directly across the center of our roof.

“Uh, Dad, looks like I’ll have to call you back.”

I stared with incredulity, taking in the scene. If the tree falling on our house had been the only thing we had to deal with, it might have seemed more significant in my mind. Given that Alex’s life was hanging in the balance, it just didn’t register as that big of a deal. Sure, I had mixed emotions, but when your child is only barely clinging to life, everything else falls into perspective.

I called Pastor Brown. I knew he would come after getting the word out to others. And he brought a chainsaw and hard hats! We put the hard hats on and entered the house. There was still no power, and even though it was mid-afternoon, all was dark inside. Without knowing what kind of structural damage there was, we moved along carefully.

It could have been better; it could have been worse. The roof would have to be replaced, but it had kept the tree from breaking through to the floor of the house. And of course, there was plenty of damage to our possessions. Many repairs would be necessary—just what we needed. I thought of our beleaguered family and sighed: when it rains, it pours.

Beth, the three younger children, and I slept in the basement of Beth’s sister’s home for a week. We were very grateful that Kris was willing to take us in. By now, we were accustomed to sleeping in all kinds of places. For baby Ryan, this was simply the norm; he had spent only one night under his family’s own roof. We were all becoming a little tougher in the boot camp that our life had become.

Ten men cut up and removed all the fallen trees and the bits of trunk and branches that had come down on our property. And once again, an army of earthly angels seemed to descend upon us in the middle of our trial. It was another lesson in learning to trust the goodness and providence of God.

Dr. William Malarkey, Kevin’s father

The repair work would be undertaken in fits and starts for more than two years. Half the roof needed to be pulled out and rebuilt. The deck, interior walls, and ceiling all needed to be replaced as well. I hired a man from our church to oversee the project. He and his crew went to work. Over time, it became clear that the roofing crew, about fifteen people in all, were using their vacation time and taking days off from their jobs to work on someone else’s problems in the dead of winter. These people were true servants and somehow managed to convey the perspective that
I
was serving
them
by allowing them to come and fix my house. They worked as if they hadn’t enjoyed such an amazing privilege in a long time.

It’s ingrained in us to earn our own way, to pay back any little favor, and never to be on the debt side of the ledger. Not long after I “hired” the foreman, I pulled him aside and assured him that I would be paying all the workers. Just as I was emphasizing my point, one of the men overheard our conversation.

“Don’t you get it, Kevin? This is the best-paying job I’ve ever had.”

“Owe nothing to anyone—except for your obligation to love one another” (Romans 13:8). The chill and damage of winter’s worst ice storm was no match for the warmth we found in those beautiful examples of Christ’s love.

Our Bank Account Takes a Battering

We had already been in a tight spot financially before any of this happened. Now it was nearly impossible to avoid thinking of our lack of money.

On the very morning of the accident, I had sat in church and reflected on the financial challenges our family must confront, since Ryan’s birth had not been covered by our health-care plan. Now we had Alex’s situation, and I didn’t know where the money was going to come from to cover his astronomical hospital expenses—this, of course, during a time when it was virtually impossible for me to give my energy, time, and focus to my counseling practice. I felt pulled in so many directions, and I know Beth did too.

One afternoon, as I sat in Alex’s room pondering all of this, a hospital representative came in.

“Mr. Malarkey, may I talk with you?” she asked.

“Of course. May I ask what about?”

“Yes. Well, we need to discuss the payment of your account.”

I stiffened but maintained my composure. This was strangely reminiscent of the time I was given the bill for my wedding reception while the event was still in progress. I walked into the hallway with the woman and said, “Now, what seems to be the problem?”