We Could Let Micah Go

On July 27, 2009, the day after Micah choked on the pea and lost consciousness, Micah was still on life support. While the ventilator was helping him breath, he had lost all brain activity, having gone about 1.5 hours without any oxygen. That morning, our family met with the team of doctors at the hospital, who informed us that there was no hope for recovery for our little boy. While our extended family members seemed to be in agreement that we should take Micah off the ventilator and let Micah go, I was having a difficult time making that decision.

Part of me wanted to give it more time, to see if, by some miracle, Micah’s brain activity would improve. What if we committed a week to praying for Micah, to see if the Lord would respond to our continued urgent pleas for a miracle? Aside from God’s ability to work miracles, my “earthly” mentality was to give my son every opportunity to “fight” for life. Besides, as strong believers of the pro-life movement, didn’t it make sense to support every effort, maybe even extreme measures, to keep Micah alive, regardless of the quality of life?

In the course of that morning, Pastor Kenny encouraged us from 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verses 6-8, which reads,
“Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. For we live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.”

Pastor Kenny encouraged us that, because Micah was already “away from the body” in the sense that his mind was already gone, we should let him go so that he could be “home with the Lord.” I realized that if we really believe that Jesus has redeemed us from the grave, and if we really believe that Heaven is our real home, we want Micah to “go home.” Paul tells us that we would prefer to be “at home” in our eternal home rather than “at home” on earth. Given that Micah’s mind was already gone, it seemed to us that it would be counterproductive to keep Micah’s shell of a body here even though we was already, and would always would be, “away” from us cognitively. It was good and right of us to let Micah go into his eternal home.

I am so grateful for the words of encouragement spoken to us that morning through Pastor Kenny from the book of 2 Corinthians. God spoke through that passage that morning to give me assurance that it was good for us to let Micah go from our earthly, temporary home here in Minneapolis so that he could go to his eternal home in heaven. And what a home that must be!