The man I visited had been burned in a farm accident. He had a large amount of third-degree burns, mostly around his shoulders. Shoulders are a three-dimensional joint, where you’re going up, down, left, right, and then twisting. So I knew he was headed for agonizing pain in physical therapy.
He was wiped out. It was hard to speak with him because he was heavily sedated. I knew the mental anguish he was going through being so heavily medicated. I told him, “You’ve got the professional character and the heart for hard work. The mission you’ve got ahead of you is extremely difficult. The staff is asking you to do painful things, such as wearing certain types of garments or enduring certain types of physical therapy. But it’s a mission you must accomplish. The staff is not doing things to you or telling you to do things for the sake of curiosity. These people are doing them because they’ve seen and experienced enough with burns to know how to help you live a good quality of life.”
After that I spent the rest of my time talking with his parents. I was able to discuss with them what was ahead, what they should expect, and how they could help their son. Talking with them felt good. I started to think about how this would be a wonderful way to share Christ. I mentioned to Mel that it would be wonderful if we could talk with burn survivors more often.
Most people don’t think about burn survivors. We think about cancer or other diseases that may be incurable. The body will heal from a burn, so we don’t think about it as being as bad as or worse than surviving cancer. But being burned is a ghastly experience to endure. And only those who have gone through the fire can truly understand the impact of the experience.
In July 2002 a young man placed a pipe bomb in his father’s car in Washington, DC. But the brother became the casualty. He went to his dad’s car in a parking garage and turned on the ignition. The car blew up, burning the young man on his buttocks and both of his legs. Mel and I were watching the news that night and saw the report. They showed a picture of the man lying on the ground. The fire was out, but they were showing his charred legs to the whole world. Then they did a newscast from the Washington Hospital Center. When the reporter announced, “He’s in surgery now,” Mel and I looked at each other. We had the exact visual image of what this man was experiencing.
Dale, the nurse practitioner in step-down care, called me three weeks later and asked if I would come to the hospital to visit that young man. He was out of intensive care and in step-down care.
I quickly agreed and decided to go to the Pentagon souvenir shop beforehand to buy a coin with the Army logo on the front. I wanted to have something in hand to give him.
It takes a special will to pull through burns. It’s the most excruciating mentally and physically challenging injury. It exacts an enormous toll on the survivor, his or her self-perception, and on the family—not to mention the disfigurement factor and the way the rest of the world views the survivor.
We talked a little bit about the types of things he was experiencing, what he was going through, the hallucinations, the different pain levels. I also spoke with his family for more than an hour answering questions about what to expect, what to do, what’s normal.
Before I left I handed him a coin as a memento of the visit and told him, “I know you’re not in the military, but you’ve got a tough assignment in front of you right now just like any other soldier gets. That assignment may stink, but you have to get it done. So like a good soldier, get done in here what you have to get done. Listen to what the doctors tell you to do and do it.”
In so many words I told him something that Mel told me a lot: You’re a soldier. Here’s your mission. Get on about it and don’t snivel. You don’t want to spend the rest of your life being a victim. You have to get past the victim and into the survivor mode.
It was that visit that became the impetus for a serious conversation about starting a ministry.
I went home and told Mel about my experience with that family. “We ought to think about doing this as something more than just a chance opportunity,” I told her. “What if we started a ministry specifically to burn survivors and their families? They need someone sympathetic to walk through the experience with them, to tell them what to expect, to encourage them, and to let them know they can make it. Then we can share our story. We can tell them, ‘This is what God can do for you because this is what he did for us.’”
We became excited about the possibilities. Our first step was to get a coin design that would represent the ministry so we could give one to each survivor. The coin would represent the coins I received from the Army generals who visited me in the hospital.
Everything seemed to take off from there. Wherever we spoke, we tried to locate a burn unit to visit. Our first visits were to burn units in Lubbock, Texas; Rochester, New York; and Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Mel
The ministry has been a blessing, and we’ve been thrilled to see what God has done through it since its official start in January 2003. We have a real team aspect in our ministry. In organizing and visiting hospitals, Brian has the patient perspective, and I relate to the family members. Even though I watched what he was going through, I didn’t physically feel it.
While the ministry has been wonderful, if we had our choice, we would choose the life we had before 9/11. I would never want to face the fire. I think God gave me a gift of ignorance early on so I would be unable to truly understand how critically injured Brian was and how absolutely close to death he was. Had I known those details I don’t think I could have kept functioning and been his advocate the way I was.
God knows what he’s doing when he hides the future from us. It’s a blessing that he doesn’t reveal to us any future horrors we may face, because I don’t think anybody could handle it. I know I couldn’t have said, “Oh yeah, boy, next week my husband’s going to get hit by a 757. But hey, that’s okay because we’re going to start this great ministry!” No way.
Brian and Mel
Our idea was to visit burn centers and present a care basket to the survivors and their families, filled with items that would have been helpful for us to have while we were in the hospital: devotional books, a Bible, antibacterial wipes to minimize the bacteria (you’re constantly washing your hands in a burn unit), and a handmade quilt from Mel as a reminder of our comfort and concern.
We also wanted to be able to offer financial assistance to burn survivors and their families because burns are financially devastating too. Many of these people will never be able to return to work. The more we discussed the possibilities, the more excited we became.
We would name the ministry Face the Fire Ministries, Inc.
Face the Fire Ministries, Inc. has blossomed into speaking opportunities, writing this book, and being able to share our story on a much broader scale than we ever thought we would. That’s obviously God’s doing; the ministry’s success has nothing to do with us. He’s just opening doors.
Now that we have started this ministry together and have had the opportunity to visit other burn survivors, we are convinced we’ve gone through this experience so we can share God’s sovereignty, faithfulness, graciousness, and mercy with others who are going through a horrific experience.
We were scheduled to speak at a church in North Carolina on Easter Sunday 2003. The day before the church service, we went down to the Jaycee Burn Unit at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and made arrangements with the staff to visit some of the patients. The charge nurse told us, “We have a gentleman here who, I think, would benefit from your encouragement.” We expected to be there thirty minutes, maybe an hour. We spent almost two hours with the man, mainly listening to him. He had lost his right leg from an electrical burn, had been hospitalized for two months, and was still healing from the burns. He was concerned about so many things, including what he was going to do for a living, and that brought back a lot of memories for us. Then we had the opportunity to talk about our faith in God. We must have piqued his interest because he asked a hospital cle
rgy to visit him after we left.
We believe God really calls us to take the painful experiences of our lives and trust him with them. Then he asks us to take those experiences and help others who are going through the same thing, who need encouragement, and who need to hear about the God of grace.
When we walk into a hospital room, one of the things we try not to acknowledge at first is our burn story. We don’t walk in and say, “You know, we’re glad to be here. Aren’t you privileged to see me? I survived being in the Pentagon.” We go in, talk to them, let that meeting be about them, listen to their concerns. And then in the process of hearing so much of the commonality, we’re able to describe how we went through the same thing: the pain, nightmares, hallucinations, physical therapy, pain medication, loss of independence, and on and on. Without question, in the course of that conversation they’re able to determine our experience stemmed from 9/11. That’s when the validity hits them. Here is a couple who have been through this horrible experience together. But we don’t start off telling them we’re 9/11 survivors.
By the same token, that 9/11 identification is a fast foot in the door with burn units. There’s the distinction of surviving the attack on the Pentagon. People welcome us with open arms because they want to know what happened that day in the Pentagon. They want to be part of 9/11. So while we’ll tell the staff, we don’t talk about that with the burn survivors.
It’s been a blessing for us to go to the burn centers. While going out and speaking has been wonderful, the true reward for us is when we go to a burn center and sit and hug family members and talk to the kids or the adults. We share the miracle that God performed in our lives and give them the example of how life can go on and be a quality experience. That’s the best part of all—those are the times when we feel that everything we’ve gone through has been worth it.
Twenty
Where Was God?
* * *
Journal 10/27/01
The medical folks from the Pentagon who triaged him visited. It was awesome. Each person told his or her role in caring for him. Brian told every one of them that he appreciated everything they did for him and they were his angels. Because of their actions, he is a walking miracle. . . . Everyone in the room was crying. . . . What amazing people you assembled, Lord, for such a time as this. Thank you for so totally being in control!
* * *
Brian
Soon after I returned to work, there was a briefing about 9/11 and the damage it had done to the building. One gentleman who was doing a lot of the renovation work said the building would have fared better had the plane entered straight down Corridor 4 because the corridor had more pylons that supported it. I stood up after him and said, “Let me tell you. I’m glad it didn’t come in straight down the corridor because I wouldn’t be standing here today.”
Brian and Mel
On September 11, 2001, more than three thousand people were brutally murdered. Thousands more were injured. Lives were unalterably changed. Families were ripped apart. And the entire world watched it happen.
When people see that kind of evil so blatantly expressed, many, even Christians, tend to ask, “Where was God?”
As survivors of that day, we can answer that question. We saw God that day—and every day after that.
Brian
Where was God? He was working to make sure the least amount of people were killed at the Pentagon. On any given day the Pentagon has thirty-thousand or more people working or visiting there, with an estimated twenty-six hundred people in or near the area of impact. The plane was aimed at the only part of the Pentagon that had been fully renovated as part of an eleven-year project to refurbish the sixty-two-year-old building and protect it against attack. There was one wedge of the building that had been newly renovated so there were few people in that area: the E-Ring between Corridors 4 and 5—my ring. There were entire departments that had not moved in yet, so it was the least-occupied wedge of the building.
Mel
I remember the day I helped Brian unpack his boxes in his new office. He was busy working, and I was bored because he was sifting through documents I couldn’t help with. So I sat at his desk and made fun of the Kevlar coating on the windows because it was this yellow-green, weird-looking covering. I don’t make fun of that coating anymore! It obviously saved many lives. It kept the glass from shattering and from becoming projectiles.
Brian
God prompted Pentagon officials several months previous to 9/11 to have a mass casualty exercise to prepare for the event of a major emergency. The scenario they created: a plane hitting the building.
The plane scenario they envisioned was a smaller plane taking off from Reagan National Airport, which is just down the Potomac River from the Pentagon, and experiencing mechanical failure, then crashing in the inner courtyard. Because of that casualty exercise, emergency medical equipment was quickly available and trained medical staff were ready to go to work. So when I arrived at the Redskins snack bar for triage care, I had immediate medical attention, including an IV and morphine shot. That urgent attention saved my life.
Mel
On September 11, when the World Trade Center was hit, I did something odd, something I would normally never do—I turned off the television. I’m a news junkie, so turning off the television makes no sense to me. I also never called Brian to tell him the news—something else I always did. Had I contacted Brian, those moments talking to me would have put him directly in the path of the plane. That was God speaking to me, telling me not to call—to get back to schoolwork with Matt. I’m thankful I actually listened!
God even prepared us for this event months before. Matt had always attended public school. But in March 2001, because of some school situations we decided to homeschool him for a while. Thank God we did. We could not have managed to keep Matt in public school during the months Brian was in the hospital. This was yet another “God thing.”
Brian
I had to use the restroom precisely at the moment that would save my life. If I had remained at my desk, I would have died. There were so many other miracles that show God’s hand at work: I survived the blast, being only fifteen to twenty yards from the point of impact. An eighty-ton plane with ten thousand gallons of jet fuel smashed into the building that close to me, causing a fire that had a temperature close to two thousand degrees, and I survived—and was conscious through the entire thing!
I had to be conscious in order to escape because no one was able to rescue me in that corridor. If I’d been unconscious, not only would I have died, but within thirty minutes that part of the building would have collapsed on me. My remains might never have been found.
In the midst of the explosion there was building material flying everywhere—splintered two-by-fours, aluminum framing, sheet rock, concrete, and glass. Yet I received no puncture wounds, and I still have my eyesight and my hearing (although that’s diminished).
Many of the sprinklers were damaged because of the crash and lost water pressure because the pipes were not encased to maintain pressure. Many of the water pipes that carry the sprinkler system water in that wedge were damaged. Most of the building damage was done by flooding. Even though many of the sprinkler heads could function, there wasn’t enough water pressure behind them to give a good spray. When the E-Ring collapsed, there were even more water pressure breaks at all five floors. Yet I fell under one that was still working. Somehow it wasn’t damaged in the blast. The water pressure was sufficient to soak me and extinguish the flames.
Many people tell me I’m lucky to be alive. Mel and I don’t consider it luck that I collapsed under a functioning sprinkler system. I think that’s where the Lord wanted me to be. You don’t survive a 757 flying through the windows and the resulting blast, the fuel, the smoke, the concussion, and the fire.
And most important, I was conscious throughout this whole ordeal. People have told me they thought I must have an incredible pain threshold. And I have replied, “No, I don’t thi
nk that’s it. I think the Lord has an incredible grace threshold,” because had I been unconscious, I could say, “Yeah, I got run over by a 757 and woke up three months later in a hospital.”
But then there would be no miraculous story to tell. There would be no Christian witness to tell. There would be no family experience to tell. There would be Mel’s experience that she could tell because she was conscious through everything.
When I stand up in front of a group of people, show a photograph of the damaged Pentagon, point to where I was in relation to the point of impact, and say I remember it—that’s an experience to tell.
Many people find it amazing that I walked out of that danger zone. But that was because God was protecting me. While I was saved from burning to death, it was not by virtue of anyone rescuing me. There was only the Lord and me in that corridor.
God placed Roy Wallace and Bill McKinnon in that area to find me. They were the first of many people who offered immense amounts of comfort. God puts people we know, who are familiar to us, to be in the right place at the right time to give us comfort and courage.
There was also Natalie, who stopped to pray with me at the triage site and again outside in the parking lot while I was waiting for an ambulance.
And how is it possible that in a large parking lot, with thousands of people rushing out of the building, trying to get to safety, John Collison just “happened” to help this unknown burn victim—who turned out to be a friend? I needed John to be there with me and to go to the hospital with me. I needed a friendly face—someone I could trust to pass on my ring to Mel and to honor my memory if I were to die. God knew exactly the man and the moment to choose. That was the hand of God putting John right there.
Refined by Fire Page 21