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 at 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 an 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 Brian would be dead within a day or two and demanded his doctors not resuscitate him; others pressured her to 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." They have never blamed God for that awful day. "Evil men made an evil decision," says Brian with sincere conviction. "God gave us free will. Some follow evil, some good. We still have the rest of our lives. There are the things to be celebrated—our son, his wedding . . . That may be simplistic, but God is not the source of evil."

    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 that 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 the 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 as he walked through fire.

—Tonya Stoneman

To purchase the Birdwells' book Refined by Fire, please visit our bookstore.