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It’s a typical Monday evening in
Washington D.C. Cold rain is coming down in curtains and traffic is
hellacious. Brian and Mel Birdwell order a pizza for dinner, sit down in
their quiet home, and enjoy one of life’s simplest pleasures; eating
together. They cherish ordinary things. If Mel wakes up before Brian does,
she reaches across the bed, touches his shoulder, and thanks God that her
husband is still with her.
They spend their days seeking ways
to assist burn survivors and prizing what they took for granted prior to
September 11, 2001. On that fateful day, Brian was standing in the hallway
outside of his office at the Pentagon when American Airlines flight 77
crashed into the building. He was twenty yards from the point of impact.
Searing flames scorched more than 60
percent of his body as he struggled to make his way down three flights of
stairs. Colleagues who found him did not recognize their disfigured comrade
even as he called out to them in a feeble attempt to identify himself.
Brian recalls with haunting accuracy every detail of his torturous ordeal.
He remembers burning from the inside
out, thinking he would die, and preparing to meet God. He remembers the
looks of horror on his friends’ faces when they saw him. He remembers
endless days in an Intensive Care Unit, where he endured acid baths, skin
grafting, and even the removal of infected tissue by maggots.
Despite the mind-scrambling drugs
prescribed to suppress his memory, Brian was and is keenly aware of what
happened to him. In a paradoxical way, he is thankful for that – he
witnessed indisputable miracles in the midst of his suffering. “By being
conscious, I have a great story of God’s sovereignty,” he says. “When you
look a the photographs, you understand what a miracle it is that I’m alive.”
In the months that followed, his
wife Mel was barraged by the storms of pain as well. She carries a image in
her mind of the first time she saw Brian after the explosion. “I’ll never
forget how white he was – three times as white as normal people,” she says.
“His head was hugely swollen. It was as big as his shoulders. There were
tubes and monitors everywhere. They only let me stay for a couple of
seconds.”
Mel’s biggest battle was not against
infirmity, but against calloused bureaucrats – some insisted Brain would be
dead within a day or two and demanded his doctors not resuscitate him;
others pressured her retire him prematurely from his military service.
She never yielded to their demands.
Instead, Mel stood by Brian’s bedside, rubbed his feet – the only part of
his body she could touch – and read to him from the Bible.
“I will
bring (them)...through the fire,
Refine them as silver is refined,
And test them as gold is tested.
They will call on My name,
And I will answer them;
I will say, ‘They are My people,’
And they will say, ‘The LORD is my God’”
Zechariah 13:9
“I was thankful he was alive,” she
says. “I could touch him. There were people missing in the madness of
9/11. At least I had Brian there with me.”
Although it seemed at times that
death would have been preferable to life, the Birdwells clung tenaciously to
their trust in God, and today they contend that “the absolutely worst
tragedy is our best blessing.” “We still have the rest of our lives. There
are the things to be celebrated – our son, his wedding...
Rather than focus on the malevolence
inflicted upon him by terrorists, Brian contemplates Christ’s crucifixion
and realizes that there is a more horrible suffering than that which he
endured. “What was done to Christ was done out of sheer brutality. If I’d
died, I would have joined God. At Jesus’ death, He was separated from
God. My suffering has given me a passion for Jesus Christ and awesome love
He had for us. Christ had the ability to destroy His enemies and He
didn’t. It takes a God to do that, not a man.”
Six months after he was released
from the hospital, Brian learned of a young man who had been burned by a
pipe bomb. He remembered what his pastor had said when visiting him: “God
does not waste our pain.” He visited the man and his family in the
hospital, and that was the genesis of Face the Fire Ministries, Inc., the
Birdwells’ outreach to burn victims and wounded servicemen and women.
Brian and Mel go to burn centers and
offer prayers, wisdom and hugs to others who have been inducted into the
fraternity of suffering. Brian says it’s difficult sometimes to look in the
mirror, but his disfigured body gives an authenticity to his story, and his
scars bear testimony that God was with him, even has he walked through fire.
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