Brian was the only casualty taken to Georgetown Hospital because Sgt. Jill Hyson, who rode with him from the Pentagon, had worked there, and it was the only hospital she know how to get to. (Most other victims had been taken to Arlington Memorial Hospital.) Georgetown had cleared all non-life threatening patients from the hospital in order to respond to Pentagon casualties. Brian was the sole casualty there and received the entire staff’s attention.
Brian has said that when people ask, “Where were you God?” it’s only because they are not looking hard enough.
Lord, I praise you for being in complete control.
“Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.” (Isaiah 40:28)
May 9
FACING THE FIRE
In December 2001, Brian was discharged from the hospital. At home, Mel was his caregiver.
After his physical therapy sessions at the hospital, Brian took a nap before Mel helped him work on getting better range of motion in his arms by bending and straightening them.
The two-hour after-dinner routine included Mel helping him shower, putting lotions and creams on his fragile grafted skin, dressing him, and massaging scars to help break up and loosen scar tissue.
For thirteen months, Brian also wore tight compression garments on his hands and arms twenty-three hours a day to help reduce scarring and bumps as the skin healed, and to keep scars already there as flat as possible. He also wore a headband for his forehead.
“While I was carrying the burden of physical pain, Mel carried the burden of the emotional,” said Brian. “I think the greatest strain was on her, and I don’t say that because my job was easy.”
On March 12, 2002, Brian returned to work at the Pentagon part-time. “Stepping back into the place that could have that should have been my murder scene was important to me,” said Brian. “I stepped back a winner. I was a walking miracle, a testimony to what God did for me that day. We were winning; the terrorists weren’t.”
Brian and Mel have shared their story and their faith through The Oprah Winfrey Show, ABC’s Nightline, CBN, CNN and FOX News Channel. They also authored Refined by Fire and created Face the Fire Ministries in 2003, through which they personally bring hope and encouragement to burn survivors and critically wounded military and their families nationwide (www.facethefire.org).
“It’s exactly as 2 Corinthians tells us, to comfort others with the comfort we have received,” said Brian. “It’s very gratifying to be able to come alongside somebody and encourage them. We discuss the strength that carried us through this process, which was certainly our faith in Jesus Christ. As brutal as that experience was, the Lord had a better plan for us than what we knew, so here we are.”
Lord, use whatever trials I face in order to reflect your goodness and grace.
“I will bring [them] into the fire; I will refine them like silver and test them like gold. 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 our God.’” (Zechariah 13:9)
May 10
THE ATTACK
March 15, 2004. What started out as a day full of meaning and purpose, discovering how to meet the needs of a community in northern Iraq, turned into a surreal nightmare, the scars of which Carrie McDonnall will bear for the rest of her life.
Carrie and her husband of two years, David, were humanitarian aid workers doing an assessment at an Internally Displaced Peoples (IDP) camp on that spring day. With them for the day were visiting veteran aid workers Larry and Jean Elliot and Karen Watson, one of the first missionaries into Iraq.
The visit at the camp went well, but as the afternoon wore on, the team grew anxious about arriving at their destination for the evening (a protected Kurdish zone) before nightfall. Driving in Iraq in the dark was not safe, especially for Caucasians.
Hoping to save time, they chose the most direct route, which was to go straight through the city of Mosul instead of around it. It was a calculated risk, since Mosul was home to a disproportionate number of insurgents and angry Islamic extremists.
It was still light as they approached town, but Carrie’s heart raced at the scene ahead of them: traffic. Once downtown, the traffic became gridlock, and the truck with five white Americans became a sitting duck.
And then Carrie felt something sting the top of her ear. Clutching it, she blacked out, coming to again only when she heard David’s booming voice: “Everybody get down!” But sitting in the backseat between the two other women, there was nowhere to hide. The deafening staccato of automatic rifles filled the air.
Everything happened so fast it was impossible to make sense of it all. One thing Carrie knew: they were under attack, and they were defenseless.
Lord, help me turn to you instead of to my own resources when I am under attack.
“O LORD my God, I take refuge in you; save and deliver me from all who pursue me.” (Psalm 7:1)
May 11
NO WAY OUT
“It was like a nightmare, everything was in slow motion,” Carrie said. “All I could hear was gunfire, and all I could smell was gunpowder and blood.” Six men with AK-47s and at least one Uzi submachine gun surrounded the vehicle, their weapons were raised, and they fired at will. “I felt pain everywhere,” Carrie recalls. “Bullets and shrapnel were ricocheting off the walls and floor of the truck. There was no way out.”
Carrie couldn’t move. She couldn’t think. She could barely pray that God would stop the bullets, and once she did, she blacked out again, only to awaken later to an eerie silence. All the bustling people on the streets had disappeared; even the traffic had disintegrated. All that was left was the remains of the truck and the shattered humanity within it.
Carrie’s limbs wouldn’t move. Her left hand was missing fingers; bones were exposed. She couldn’t breathe through her nose but couldn’t figure out why.
Jean Elliot, slumped against Carrie, was dead. Moments later, Karen also breathed her last. Larry, in the front seat, was gone as well. Carrie started hollering for help in Arabic, but she could barely breathe and her voice was faint. Still, at the sound of Carrie’s strained call, David sat upright in the driver’s seat and sprang into action, moving
