That began our relationship. By that time he was stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, and took leave to visit me every six weeks. And we still kept in contact by letter and phone. We had huge phone bills!
While I was attracted to Brian physically, what really attracted me was his stability. He had a strong belief in God and was a strong Christian. He didn’t party or drink, and he really didn’t know how much of that I did! He was the influence I needed to wake up and realize my lifestyle wasn’t God’s will for my life. At one point after talking about God with him, I thought, I’m tearing myself down! I’m wasting my life, and I could be using it differently.
So I stopped drinking and partying. I started going to church again and began to renew my relationship with the Lord. No one had ever had such a strong immediate influence on me. Brian’s stability and faith drew me to him. He constantly encouraged me to renew my relationship with the Lord.
Brian
By December 1986 I knew I was in love and wanted to spend the rest of my life with Mel. We discussed it and prayed about it. We both felt God’s blessing. I understood the gravity of that decision—especially since my parents had experienced divorce. So at Christmas I proposed. We set the date for May 1987. I was twenty-five, and Mel was twenty.
Mel transferred to a college where she could be closer to her home in Davis to plan the wedding. While I knew her home life had been rough, she never told me the extent of how awful it was. One night she called me in tears.
I told her, “You get your stuff and move out. Go to your memmie’s. We’re not going to deal with this anymore.”
Mel
That phone call made a huge difference in my trust with Brian. I already knew I loved him, and I had spent a lot of time praying about our relationship and sought wisdom from Memmie and my mom. But with this phone call, I realized another important aspect to my relationship with Brian: I didn’t have to worry about being hurt by Brian the way I’d seen modeled in my parents’ relationship. Brian was sincere and rock solid.
We were married May 16, 1987, in Davis, Oklahoma, at the First Baptist Church. While it wasn’t a military wedding, there were a lot of military people there. At one point, while standing at the altar, I looked over my shoulder and spotted two rows full of people in Army uniforms. A fear ran through me as I thought, What am I doing? It was so intimidating.
Even though my brother-in-law was in the Army, I really had no clue what to expect from marrying a soldier. I knew my sister would talk about Rod going to the field. He would be gone for two or three weeks. Then he would come home, and they’d have their normal life again. So I thought Army life would be Brian leaving for a couple weeks at a time, then coming home, and everything would be normal again. I didn’t realize Brian would work twelve- and sixteen- and twenty-hour days.
Brian’s stepfather, Pat, was an ordained minister, so he performed the wedding. I’ll never forget one of the prophetic things he said during the ceremony. He said, “May God guide you in the bad that may darken your days and the good that lights your ways.” We’ve certainly seen a lot of both.
Because Brian was stationed in Kansas, I transferred to Kansas State University. Being on such a large campus made me nervous because I was from such a small town and went to college in a small town. The worst part, however, was that two weeks after we were married, Brian was shipped to Wyoming for two weeks of training with a National Guard unit to act as their advisor. I was left alone.
Our marriage had the added stress of Brian’s military lifestyle and my trying to finish school. Our biggest struggle was trying to find a church home. Finding a church to become connected with is difficult in the military because of the constant moving around. We were connected with the people at the church on base at Fort Riley because Brian worked with them. But it was also uncomfortable to worship when Brian felt he was at work rather than at church. So it was difficult to get connected with others who were there to experience community in a group of believers.
We went through a period where we didn’t experience a lot of growth in our spiritual lives. We moved around a lot both in the States and in Germany. I was able to connect with some Christian women. But by the time we moved to Germany in the early 1990s, I had given birth to Matt. I loved being a mother, but life was also extremely hard with a new baby. Brian was gone all the time, and my mom discovered that her breast cancer had returned. It was a miserable time in my life.
Mom had been in remission, so we’d thought everything was good. She was with me when Matt was born at Fort Riley in 1989, although the cancer had metastasized into her bones and she was having trouble walking. Two years later, after we’d moved to Germany, on June 12, 1991, Mom died. I was tired of losing people I loved. I was tired of feeling alone. To make matters worse, Brian was on duty constantly, and I didn’t lean on God the way I should have. I didn’t have much comfort during that time.
Soon after my mom died, the Army relocated us to Bamberg, Germany. God knew I needed help in the area of my faith, and he led me to Karen Mann, a wonderfully mature Christian woman. Our husbands were in the same unit, and she and I met at a wives’ coffee. We connected immediately and became best friends. She taught me so much about everyday faith and helped me discover how to rely on God for strength.
Her teaching was important because in 1995 I would need to relearn how to lean on God for strength. That year became a spiritual turning point in my life.
Brian
Mel’s Uncle Gary died in 1994. That was difficult for Mel. Her Uncle Gary had always held a soft spot in her heart because he had allowed her to mourn her brother’s death and had comforted her.
Then Memmie began to have multiple strokes and became completely incapacitated. She died in 1995.
In the midst of dealing with Memmie, I was stationed at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where I worked full-time and attended graduate school at the University of Missouri–Kansas City. Basically Mel was a single parent; I was gone at least four nights a week between work and school. At that point I was assigned a job as a project officer in a combat developments division that I hated. It was a job with very little payoff. I was a major waiting for a pivotal school selection that would guarantee my career longevity in the military. I had been passed up for it earlier and was worried that if I didn’t get picked for the Command and General Staff college, I would retire as a major with no opportunity for promotion or greater responsibility.
That year was stressful for us. Yet that was the year we made a conscious decision to become serious about our walk with God. We were Christians, but we had never gotten “down to business” with God. Between family challenges and work dilemmas too many situations were being thrown at us in which we felt helpless—so we said this was it. By 1996 we decided to stop playing “Christian” and actually start being Christians.
Mel
We became involved in a church off base. I found a Bible study and began attending. I also started to keep a prayer journal. That kept me committed to praying for Brian and all the struggles he was going through. It was difficult to watch my husband struggle professionally—and feel helpless. I knew he felt the weight of being the main provider for his family, how daunting that was. Plus he had the additional pressure of school and a job he hated.
So I focused on my prayer journal; I wrote everything in it. I became serious about my prayer life. While praying separately and together didn’t save us from the struggles, it comforted us. And it was a testimony as we watched God answer those prayers. Brian was transferred to Fort Lewis, Washington, and later in 1997 was finally selected for Command and General Staff college on his fourth and final consideration.
That year helped prepare me for the turning point in our marriage. We’d survived Brian’s career stresses with the possibility of not being picked for the Command and General Staff college. We’d survived him being deployed to Desert Storm. All those circumstances brought us closer to each other. But in November 1998 Brian called me from his office on Fort Lewis a
nd said, “I have to tell you something.” What terrible words!
He was being deployed to El Salvador to work humanitarian relief after Hurricane Mitch. He was leaving in three days and would be gone for up to six months. I was devastated and cried the entire three days. I was upset that he wouldn’t be home with me and our son every day. Deployments are common, but for some reason I can’t explain, this deployment was tougher than the others.
While Brian was gone, I started doing daily devotionals and setting aside quiet times. I spent time writing in my prayer journal and focused on growing closer to God and to knowing more about him and the Bible. I learned just how much of a plumb line, a guide, the Bible is. And I craved it.
Brian returned from El Salvador in February 1999 and was transferred back to Fort Leavenworth to attend Command and General Staff college. Then in July 2000 he was assigned to the Pentagon, and we moved to Virginia. Five months later, in December of 2000, Brian was promoted to lieutenant colonel.
By this point we prayed about finding a church home as quickly as possible, and again the Lord answered our prayers. One day I was in the car running errands and listening to a local Christian radio station. The deejay announced that the singing group Phillips, Craig & Dean was giving a concert at Immanuel Bible Church that night. I love to listen to that group’s music, so I decided right then we were going to attend the concert.
An interesting thing happened that evening. During the concert Philips, Craig, & Dean sang a song called “Freedom’s Never Free,” which talks about people laying their lives on the line for their country. While they were singing they were also showing video clips of the military. It was powerful.
While they were singing that song, Matt, who was eleven, started to sob uncontrollably. He asked me, “What if something like that happened to Dad?” I was surprised he was so worried, and I tried to reassure him. “That’s not going to happen to your dad,” I said. But I wondered, He’s never thought this before. Why is he so concerned? It was almost as if he knew something.
After the concert we ran into some friends of ours we had known from Fort Leavenworth. They informed us they attended the church and invited us to come with them. We did the following week. It was a wonderful worship experience. And we knew immediately that God had answered our prayer for a church home. I’d never been in a church where the believers so love one another. It was a place where we could grow spiritually, where we could be connected to other Christians who were serious about God and living in a powerful relationship with him and others.
* * *
As we looked back over our lives while we sat for hours in the ICU, both Brian and I realized how God used the previous pain in our lives to prepare us for 9/11 and the difficult days to follow.
I remember clearly on the evening of September 11, sitting in the hallway at the hospital, praying. In my soul I felt the Lord speak. He laid out my life in front of me, and I saw all the pieces fit together, like pieces in a puzzle. He showed me how he had used the pieces of my life to prepare me to deal with this crisis.
In 2 Corinthians 5:5 the apostle Paul writes, “Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge.”
God reminded me of when my little brother, Tony, was injured and died, and I was shuffled from family to family while my parents stayed with him at the hospital. Recalling those days of my childhood helped me understand how Matt felt being away from us.
He showed me how he’d given me a godly grandmother, my memmie. (I am determined to prove that somehow “Memmie” translates from Hebrew into “godly granny.”) All my life she fervently prayed for me, loved me unconditionally, and discipled me. She was so dedicated to teaching her grandchildren about the love of Jesus Christ. God used her life of devotion to her family as an example to me.
God had also prepared me for dealing with grief and death through my mom’s death. How greatly I missed her and longed for her to be there with us during those days. Brian said to me once soon after 9/11, “I wish your mom were here.” All I could get out was a faint, “Me too” through the tears.
Then I thought back to my difficult childhood, filled with abuse and pain. I felt God say again, I used those things to toughen you up so you could deal with things like this. God’s words brought such relief and blessing and comfort to me, to be reminded that God loved me so much that he would make sure my every need was taken care of in the darkest moments of my life. That brought me strength as I realized, Okay, we can go through this.
Throughout my life I have struggled with my personality. I’ve always wanted to be a quiet, sweet, submissive, agreeable person. And I’m just the opposite. I’m loud. I can be irreverent and say what I’m thinking before I edit my thoughts. But I’m also extremely loyal, a strong advocate.
However, through the dark days in the hospital as I took care of Brian and was his only advocate, I came to accept my personality with all its good and frustrating sides! I realized God made me this way for a reason. I had to be tough and durable—otherwise we would not have survived.
I became thankful that God made me assertive for that purpose. Brian and I recognized that no matter how tough things became, we were going to stay committed to each other and to God. There would be no divorce, there would be no giving up.
While God certainly didn’t cause any of the pain to happen, he took that brokenness and those experiences from our past and used them to prepare us for what we were going through now. God took every experience and pain we’d had prior to that and reminded us that there is strength in trusting God and in using our past to comfort and help those around us.
Eleven
Tough Questions
* * *
Journal 9/28/01
Today was the first time I saw his left arm where the unburned skin ended and the exposed muscle began. I think this is the first time I’ve been angry at the evil people who did this to him. What kind of evil could have done this to my precious husband?
* * *
Mel
A week or so after Brian became coherent, he began asking questions. He asked if he still had a military career and if anyone had mentioned medical retirement. I had to tell him about the first night and the issues with Walter Reed. I was so glad I was able to assure him he was still a soldier.
He lay quietly for a few minutes as tears filled his eyes. Finally he looked at me and mouthed, “Thank you.” That made up for the stress of that first night. We agreed we’d fight medical retirement with everything we could muster.
He also asked questions about his medical care. He was concerned that the correct amount of medication be given to him. He was unable to communicate clearly and was afraid the hospital staff would forget to do something important for his care. I tried to answer all his questions as best I could and told him that I was being truthful with him. I assured him over and over that we were in this for the long haul and we would get through it together. That seemed to bring him comfort.
I would look at my once strong, handsome husband, now reduced to a bundle of bandages and unable to do anything for himself, and I would become angry. Angry at the circumstance. Angry over the impact a killer’s sin would have on my innocent husband, son, and me. Angry that I was forced to watch as other innocent family members and victims had to receive dire news day after day.
I read an article in the Washington Post on December 2, 2001, that summed it up:
[Victims] lost pieces of their skin, patches of their hair, parts of their ears, and entire fingers. They lost the use of their lungs. They lost days—many, many days—when instead of eating dinner with friends or raking leaves in the yard, they lay in bed, attached to blinking monitors.
That became our world. And it was so fragile. Between the infections, debridements, and surgeries there were many chances for him to die, even after we had so much hope. I felt as though we couldn’t get past the all-clear mark.
I thought about Antoinette Sherman’s needless death and the to
rture her family would endure for the rest of their lives.
I thought about the other patients who had to have parts of their bodies amputated.
Unfair didn’t even begin to describe their circumstances. September 11 was a huge reminder that life isn’t fair.
One day I went to the Post Exchange, a retail store on a military base or post, to buy a new pair of tennis shoes. While I was in the store, I felt this rising anger in me as I watched all these couples going about their lives as if everything was normal, as if nothing evil had happened. I wanted to yell at them, “Don’t you know what happened on 9/11? How dare you have normal lives when the love of my life is fighting for his in a hospital bed!” While I knew it was completely irrational, I couldn’t help how I was feeling. I was fueled by so little sleep and so much stress and anxiety.
It didn’t help when I retrieved some mail from home and saw a letter from Tri-Care, the Department of Defense’s HMO. The letter was addressed to Brian. It stated that Tri-Care believed a third party may be responsible for his injuries. I couldn’t believe it. I thought angrily, No kidding! But I don’t think Osama bin Laden has Blue Cross.
I was so angry, and I needed an outlet—and this insurance form was it! I read the form Tri-Care wanted me to fill out and return. They wanted a description of injuries. Asked, “How did the injury occur?” I wrote scathingly, Soldier sitting at desk. Terrorist hijacked plane. Terrorist smashed plane into building. Husband critically injured. I just underlined it all and mailed it to them. Soon afterward I got a call from one of their customer service representatives, who said, “Ah, ma’am, we’re really sorry. You didn’t have to fill that out.” You think? You looked at the initial form and read: “At the Pentagon on September 11.” Chances are fairly good that my husband was part of that attack.
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