I was in elementary school when I hit bottom for the first time. No child wants to sit down with his or her parents and sibling and hear, “Your dad and I won’t be married anymore.” They would explain it in the simplest terms to allow my young brain to grasp the concept of divorce.
The description was basic. Dad would move out; we’d still see him, but he would live with Uncle Stan. We would stay with mom.
In that one instance, in those eight words, I had become a statistic. I became of the 50% of children in America who experience the divorce of their parents. The year was 2001 and my parents were one of 940,000 divorces that year.
I love both of my parents very much, but their divorce made my childhood more challenging than I could have imagined. Going to the homes of my two best friends was pure torture, my own personal hell on Earth. Their parents were madly in love with all the things of cliché families: dinners with every chair filled, dads who kissed them goodnight and told them that he loved them.
I was lucky if I got a goodnight call from my dad where he told me he loved me.
I lashed out against my mom. We fought often and they weren’t just screaming matches. At age 11, I could easily overpower my mom and I wasn’t afraid to. This led to many nights spent in my room sitting on my bed staring at the wall. One time I had to pack all of the items in my room, from books to knick-knacks, in black trash bags. The punishment fit the act of rebellion and I had to earn the items back bag by bag by bag.
It was during this time, after my parent’s divorce, I felt my heart break for the first time.
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Simon Kelly, the CEO of Story Worldwide in North America and Asia, wrote in an article for Adweek, “Stories define us. Since early cave dwellers left their graffiti in Lascaux, listening to and telling stories have moved people. Stories are powerful: They give meaning and context to what would otherwise be a collection of easily forgettable facts. Stories invoke the imagination so that listeners begin to own them almost as much as the teller.”
I AM SECOND is all about storytelling.
Their website states, “I AM SECOND is a movement meant to inspire people of all kinds to live for God and for others. Actors. Athletes. Musicians. Business leaders. Drug addicts. Your next-door neighbor. People like you. These are stories that give hope to lonely and the hurting, help from destructive lifestyles, and inspiration to the unfulfilled. You’ll discover people who’ve tried to go it alone and have failed. Find the hope, peace, and fulfillment they found. Be Second.”
The I AM SECOND videos are about different struggles: abortion, death, divorce, fatherlessness, success, self-esteem, purpose in life, relationships, forgiveness, work, etc.
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“My dream, like all little girls, was to have a lasting marriage. For my whole life. A person that considered me his princess. That would protect me. That would open doors for me. That when it was raining out he would hold an umbrella over me, simple things like that.”
Myrka Dellanos is the first person to share her story with I AM SECOND’s Spanish branch YO SOY SEGUNDO. She is a world-renowned journalist and television personality, but she struggled to find “true love.” She was married and divorced twice before she married for what she hoped to be the final time. But due to domestic violence that marriage was also ripped at the seams. From the ramifications of her final divorce she found love in an unexpected place.
“You put on a wedding dress and get in front of the mirror and laugh with all your friends about when you are going to get married. You never think I’m going to get married and I’m going to get divorced. We don’t play divorce. That is not part of the game, not part of the fun.”
Myrka was introduced to a doctor, seven years her senior, by a friend. She thought he would be a great partner and married him after only knowing each other for eight months. She got pregnant and had their daughter, but not long after her birth the problems began. The marriage lasted seven more years before they divorced.
Her second marriage wasn’t much better. It was two years later and she was married for the second time. It took a year for her husband to be confused about their relationship. He told her that he didn’t know what was happening to him, that it was difficult for him to be with one person for his whole life. She didn’t know what to do.
Around Thanksgiving that year, he told her that he needed time to think. She gave him two days continuing on with her plans for the upcoming holiday hoping he would return as the family would be there and she’d be cooking. Her husband didn’t return for 10 months. They got divorced through the mail and they never saw each other again.
Many years had passed between her second and third marriages. Her third husband was a close friend who changed to be the person that she said she wanted as a husband.
“In August of that year, I got married and he got arrested for domestic violence.”
She dealt with her husband’s violence all the while turning to God, calling for his help. Throughout her suffering she began to understand God better.
“I believe that the second most important decision of your life, after accepting Jesus as your savior, is definitely who you choose as your partner in marriage.”
With each marriage and divorce, the world around her was exposed to her story. She was Myrka the famous actress and her husbands wanted the person she was on television. She hated that her private life was in the spotlight. She felt judged. She was married and divorced three times and the public knew about each and every one of them.
“God uses these weaknesses and paths in our history to tell a story so that maybe some other person who comes later won’t fall for the same mistake. And I hope that my story helps in that way. That my story touches someone. That it touches their heart. Everything God wants for us is beautiful, positive, and good. I know that He saved me. I have been saved from my mistakes.”
Myrka discovered that God is real; God helps us and He is permanent in our lives. If we don’t feel Him it is because we are absorbed in some other place.
“I give thanks to God every day because He has been patient. And here the next chapters of my life are being written. And I am content with this. I am happy. I am at peace.”
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I had been a college student for all of two weeks when I met him for the first time. My eyes were barely open as I headed to the class we shared.
“Is this seat taken?” he asked.
“No, go ahead.” I replied.
He pulled the chair out and sat down next to me. I remember thinking he was kind of cute, in a humble sort of way, but what stuck with me was how tall he was. It was tempting to ask him how the weather was up there. As he sat next to me, he had to lower the chair so his legs would fit under the table. Later I learned he was 6’6”, almost an entire foot taller than my average frame.
As class began our professor asked who would be missing class that upcoming Friday for an outdoorsy experience specifically for freshman. The hand of the student to my left, the young man named Randy, went up.
“It’s fun,” I said to him. “I just got back.”
“Oh, that’s cool.”
The conversation was over as quickly as it began, but a lasting impression had been made. We didn’t talk again for weeks, until I mentioned that I liked the Detroit Tigers shirt he was wearing. But some form of connection had been made.
When Randy and I talked about those first few interactions in the early days of our relationship, we realized that Randy had formed a crush on me earlier than I had with him. I had done what no college freshman should do, I crushed on the first boy that paid any attention to me. He was the boy I spent my freshman camping experience and the first week of classes becoming friends with. It was a boy that wasn’t Randy.
I didn’t know it at the time of those first few conversations, but I had met the young man I would date for two and a half years. He’d be the boy I wanted to mend my already damaged heart.
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I was blessed to find a great group of friends within the first few days of my time in college. One of those friends was a young woman I was a friend of previously because we went to the same high school youth group and shared many mutual friends. Her and I had spent many weeks living together in hotel rooms in foreign countries and chose not to live together in college. Our housing applications both said we would like to have our roommates selected for us. Our university did a wonderful job placing her and I with three girls (two of her roommates and one of mine) who completed our friend group. We were an awesome group of five.
Randy wasn’t as blessed as I was. His roommate situation wasn’t like mine. He didn’t connect with anyone he met during new student orientation. He spent time with his roommates, but it was almost as if it were out of obligation. He spoke to very few people outside of the classroom and only when it was absolutely necessary. It wasn’t until our junior year, two years after we started dating and three roommates later, that Randy finally found a group of friends like mine. Up until that point I was his only friend.
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“I used to cry myself to sleep every night and just beg God for one good friend. I was convinced I didn’t have any. I would look at other people who had friends and I was just so jealous. I began to hate myself. Because I hated myself so much I was always awkward. These negative thoughts I had about me, I thought everyone had about me. I though they looked at me and were saying, ‘Look at him, he’s so uncool.’”
Doug Bender is the co-author of I AM SECOND’s two books, a written version of the online stories and a 365-day devotional, and is a small group coach for I AM SECOND.
It was Doug’s twelfth birthday party that made him realize he was a loner. His parents ordered pizza, had balloons, everything that was necessary for a party, but nobody showed up. He asked himself, “What’s wrong?” and “Why isn’t anybody showing up?” It was his twelfth birthday and he felt unloved. He decided that he was never going to have a party ever again.
Doug’s family moved and after starting a new school a boy named Daniel approached him. He was persistent in his desire to be friends with Doug. Daniel’s desire to be his friend felt weird.
“I looked up to him as a hero. He was the cool person and he was trying to be friends with me. It was confusing; I just didn’t believe it. He saw that I was someone worth being a friend with. He invited me in and we became friends.”
Four years after his birthday party catastrophe, his mother insisted that he have a party for his sixteenth birthday. Doug would ask Daniel and a couple other friends to his party, but waited until the last minute to tell them. He acted like it wasn’t a big deal, but it was a huge deal. As the time of the party approached, Doug was in limbo, he didn’t know what was going to happen. Daniel and about 30 other people, some that he didn’t even know, came to his party creating a memory more positive than that of his twelfth birthday.
“When they came, I realized I had friends. I realized that small prayer when I was a kid was something that God had heard. I prayed, ‘God, I just want that one good friend. That one person that cares about me. That one person that hears me when I talk. That one person that knows my awkwardness and still likes me. That’s all I want. I want one person that likes me.’ That day I realized God was that person. That God was my friend.”
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I didn’t know the end of our relationship would be approaching, but I knew something just didn’t seem right between the two of us. There were moments when he and I would be together sitting on the couch but not really interacting with one another. It was as if we were just going through the motions of our relationship, putting on an act for our friends and families. He was spending more time with his friends, not that I thought it was a bad thing – he needed some male friends in his life. But, once the opportunity presented itself during our time together to go and “hang out” with his friends, he would jump up to leave. Sometimes only giving me a hug as he departed.
Because I loved Randy I was willing to ignore those moments when he was sprinting out the door and away from me. Deep down my desire was to be loved by him for the rest of my life.
We were in the wedding of one of my best friends – I was a bridesmaid and he was a groomsman. My friend even planned for us to walk down the aisle together. I called it our “trial run” for when it was our turn to get married.
As I stood beside my friend and watched her exchange vows I kept glancing to Randy on the other side of the aisle. I couldn’t wait to share our own vows with each other and our friends and family. After the ceremony I told Randy of my excitement to be in the place of Sarah and Perry. His response floored me. “I was thinking of Sarah and Perry.” That was not the answer I was expecting nor is it an answer a girl wants to hear when talking about getting married to her long-term boyfriend.
Things spiraled from there. We worked in the same department on campus that summer. It was our first summer we were actually going to be able to spend lots of time together. During the previous summers we were two hours apart. The opportunity of spending nights watching movies, hanging out and even cooking meals for the two of us excited me. But those things that I had built up in my head weren’t happening. We would leave work together and part for the evening once we reached the dorms. I would spend the nights reading and would never hear from him. I had no idea how he was spending his nights.
One day in the middle of July I left work early to take care of some bills. As I walked back to my dorm I saw him playing disc golf with another girl. I had seen him with her before, but he was always with another friend during those times. This was the first time I had seen them alone together. They didn’t see me. That was the catalyst I needed to confront him about our relationship.
Before I could talk to him about what was going on, I called my mom and cried. A lot. We talked through what I might want to say to him. Then I did one of the most difficult things a girl in love could do. I went to his dorm and straightforwardly asked him if he liked another girl. He told me no. That led into the conversation about what was going on between us. He knew things were different just as I did, but he didn’t know what to do about it. I asked him multiple times if he wanted to break up with me. He said no. I said okay. But we sat and talked more and more trying to get to the root of the rut we found ourselves in. I was still madly in love with him so I wasn’t going to break up with him. If he didn’t want to be with me I wasn’t going to give him the easy way out by doing it myself. It would be his job to tell me that we were no longer going to be in a relationship.
We cried together, an hour and a half after the start of our conversation, as he said, “I want to know what life would be like without you.” He hugged me and kissed me on the forehead for the last time and I walked out the door.
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I was still invested in our relationship – breaking up was not even a possibility for me. I wanted to make it work. I wanted to try. I didn’t want to give up on us. As I left his dorm to head home I was feeling a variety of emotions, but mostly I was frustrated. I was desperately seeking a reason to be mad at him – looking for something that could make me hate him. But I couldn’t find a thing. He had told me to text him when I got home and that I needed to stop crying so I could drive safely. He just shattered my heart, but he was being so sweet.
On the drive, I called my mom and didn’t stop talking to her until I was 10 minutes away from my house. I needed someone to keep me grounded as my emotions played out in the confines of what could be a deadly machine. She let me talk about anything I could think of. She asked me how I was feeling and then distracted me when I started to get choked up. The goal was to get home without crashing my car.
I texted Randy when I got home and we talked shortly about how difficult the adjustment was, but after that moment we never really talked again. I asked my mom to put all the pictures I had of Randy and I in my room away. I left school without taking the stuffed bunny he had given me two years previous and had slept with every night. I didn’t want any reminders of him. But as I walked into my room that night to go to sleep, I just sat on my bed and cried. I fell into a fitful sleep that night. In one moment, I lost not only the man I thought I was going to marry, but my best friend too. He knew more about me than any other person in my life.
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Calling my friends about the break up wasn’t fun. Randy and I still hadn’t taken our relationship status off Facebook, so this was a warning of a change coming in my life. A few of them knew Randy and I had been having problems, but others didn’t really know the situation. Those who knew weren’t surprised by my admission of the end of my relationship. One of my friends, however, had a reaction I won’t ever forget.
After I told her I wanted to tell her something before it became official on Facebook and that people would most likely talk about it, she took in a breath. It sounded like an excited gasp. But what I was about to tell her was not worthy of an excited gasp. It was the exact opposite.
Later, she would tell me that she really wanted to say, “You’re engaged!” but held her tongue.
As we kept talking and I told her about what was going on in my life, she said, “Megan have you had a chance to be vulnerable? You are always so strong. Please tell me that you’ve cried over this.”
I told her that I had cried for almost 24 hours straight after it first happened. She told me that was a good thing. As much as I hate crying, I knew that if I didn’t I would never move on. Just like writing about my experience. Once it’s all written down, the burden is lifted from my shoulders.
Throughout my return to singlehood, my friends have stood by me. They’ve put up with my moods as I deal with friends getting engaged and getting new boyfriends. They let me sleep on their couches and use their houses as personal escapes from the sadness that overcame me. They made me laugh. They reminded me of the good things that can happen in life. They reminded me it was okay to be single.
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“Do you want to make it official?”
“Yeah,” I said shyly, nodding slightly, through a stream of tears.
After a month of incessant questioning from the people around me – the girls on my floor in the dorm, the people who were in my classes and were just my acquaintances, his roommates and my closest friends – about Randy and I dating, the “define the relationship” conversation finally happened under the pressure of the others’ desire to see our relationship status on Facebook.
The conversations he initiated were to the point; this was no exception. That’s the way he operated. I spoke with fluff and filled. Each word he spoke served a specific purpose.
Until this point, it seemed like we were a couple. We talked until the late hours of the night with conversations starting at 2 a.m. after one of us left the dorm of the other. We did date like things – I surprised him with Michigan State basketball tickets for his birthday. We spent time with each other’s friends: sharing meals, playing cards, and watching movies. We spent hours Skyping each other when we were apart for Thanksgiving Break.
By the time he asked me to make it official I was a crying mess. We had just watched a story on ESPN’s SportsCenter about Jake Olson, a boy who was diagnosed with cancerous tumors in his eyes. Doctors removed one of his eyes shortly after his diagnosis, but with the help of chemotherapy he was able to keep the other. The cancer came back eight times in 12 years – he beat it each time. On it’s ninth return he, along with his family, learned that treatment would not work.
“It’s just sad that I’ll never be able to see them again. Like we fought so hard and yet cancer wins. But then it’s like I’m going to experience something that no one else can experience,” Jake said in the interview.
His dream for the last thing that he would ever see was to attend a University of Southern California’s football game. Pete Carroll, head coach of the USC Trojans at that time, wanted to make sure that Jake saw everything; he was on the field for games, in the locker room, and standing with the players before they took on their opponents. Jake even spent the night before his surgery at the team’s practice.
Kris O’Dowd, the center, said, “Right when I met this kid I really felt a connection with him.” O’Dowd even said that he was Jake’s brother to see him in his hospital room. As Jake broke down just before surgery O’Dowd was there with him. He kissed Jake on the head and told him, “You’re the strongest kid I’ve ever known. Keep being who you are and everything will work out.”
SportsCenter had dedicated the last seven minutes of the episode to tell this young man’s story. Right as the credits for the show started rolling, Randy turned to me and asked the question I was hoping I would hear sooner rather than later.
“Megan, do you want to be my girlfriend?”
“Yeah,” I said nodding my head and continuing to cry. But these were happy tears, tears that hadn’t stemmed from the video I had just watched.
Because of the time, 1:58 a.m., he hugged me close, told me goodnight and we parted ways.
As I went back into my room and just before I climbed into bed, I checked my Facebook page. Randy had already updated his Facebook status, not his relationship status, just his status.
It read, “Just did something that I’m extremely proud of and to top it off I saw a shooting star or a meteor, it was one of the two. Mental Note: Make sure to remember Dec. 2, 2009 at 1:58 a.m.”
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Matt Barkley was the quarterback for the USC Trojans. He performed on the national stage of college athletics. Then on top of that, he was placed in the spotlight, given the task of leading a team who was dealing with a coaching change and sanctions from the National College Athletic Association (NCAA) while curbing the temptation to head into the National Football League (NFL). His faith never wavered as the expectations of the quarterback position at USC – among other expectations – rested on his shoulders.
“It’s awesome because kids have come up to me and texted me that they do notice something different about me whether its how I’m always smiling, always happy.
The NCAA handed down penalties of a two-year bowl ban, 30 scholarship losses and a limit of 75 total scholarships. Then head coach Pete Carroll took a job in the NFL coaching the Seattle Seahawks.
Jake Olson, provided strength to the team during this time. “Jake just reminded me that life is fragile. Realizing how blessed we are and we still get to play football. I get to see what’s going on and Jake’s never going to be able to do that and it really puts things in perspective,” said Matt in an interview with ESPN about Jake.
Matt was often asked why he hadn’t freaked out during the changes, why he hadn’t left or transferred.
“But as much as football defines me by this world, it doesn’t define who I am as a person. I think God gives talents differently to different people and He’ll use those talents in different ways. It’s 11 guys doing everything right to make a play work. I know I’m not in control. God is working a huge plan right here. If you stay true to yourself and work hard then it’s going to pay off.”
USC has the most international students of any university in the world. There are people from every walk of life, race, and religion. Matt describes being a Christian at USC as being special because there aren’t many of them.
“I absolutely think that God has placed me where I am and made me the person who I am to be in the position where I am. I have only recently discovered the power of the [quarterback] position and how the USC quarterbacks of the past and how they’ve grown up and the influence they’ve had on people.” Those past USC quarterbacks include NFL quarterbacks Mark Sanchez, Matt Leinart, and Carson Palmer.
“I think leaving my mark at USC not only as a football player but as a man of God who brought USC through troubled times and relied on God and trusted in Him to make things happen, I think will be better than any game we could ever win.”
While Matt was turning to God for courage, Jake was also trying to give the team that same feeling while giving them a reason for playing since they were no longer competing for a bowl game. “I wanted them to show the world that, ‘Hey, this isn’t going to stop us,’” said Jake.
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Two weeks after becoming official, we were separated for Christmas Break. Being home for the holidays meant spending time with all my family members and their significant others. My significant other was two hours away. I didn’t realize I would struggle with being apart at the time.
But we found a way to cope with the distance. We talked on Facebook. We had the occasional Skype date. We also had a secret countdown on Facebook that confused all our friends. After each Facebook update we included the hours that we were left until we’d see each other again in parenthesis. It was our way of letting the other know we were thinking of each other though we were apart.
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At my college, groups raise money to go on Spring Break mission trips. The annual fundraiser for the group going to Puerto Rico is “Crush for Your Crush.” Send a bottle or can of soda to the person you like or love in a romantic or completely platonic manner on Valentine’s Day. When you receive one, you’ve been “crushed.”
I was “crushed” twice. I saved the bottles and notes that accompanied them. They were displayed on my bookshelf after each one was empty. I even wrote the years on the bottom so I wouldn’t forget as my relationship with my boyfriend progressed.
Crushed also means to squeeze or pound into small fragments or particles.
My most difficult summer was as I transitioned from college junior to college senior, from in a relationship to being single again, from someone whose plans after graduation were based on the plans of another to someone who could go on any adventure she desired and from being whole to being crushed.
The Crush bottles I saved now reside in the back of my closet in a Randy box along with the other mementos of our relationship.
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Distance was something that I struggled with when it came to relationships. After their divorce, my dad had this uncanny ability to move in and out of my life. He’d attend a soccer game one Saturday and then miss the next three only to repeat the cycle the next month.
My dad also had a habit of trading in the old for the new. His relationships with women didn’t last long. He dated several women from the divorce until his second marriage. He would live with these women. Most of them had kids. The last one he married (he’d later divorce her). They picked up all their things and moved to Ludington. That was the deepest scar in my relationship with my dad. I never wanted distance to separate me from the person I love.
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Randy lived two hours away from my home. We knew the first summer was going to be difficult. He didn’t have Internet at home and he didn’t have a cell phone. The only way we could communicate was through letters.
Before the letters started my mom noticed the change in my personality at home. I wouldn’t say that I was deeply depressed, but I was just off. I didn’t eat as much. I didn’t go out. I wasn’t actively looking for a summer job. I wanted to be back at school with my boyfriend.
I wrote the first letter. It was long and beautiful. I wrote in cursive like I always do. I don’t like printing – it takes up too much of my time. I am always writing quickly and cursive is the easiest way to do it.
When my first letter from Randy arrived I was brought to tears. When I opened the envelope and pulled out the letter I noticed that he had written in cursive. He never wrote in cursive – he always printed. The first line was, “I wrote in cursive so that I could be romantic and all that stuff for you.”
The next letter I wrote to him, I wrote in print.
We had a letter sending routine. I would receive a letter and then write him back and then three days later he would receive my letter. Then he would write his letter and three days after he sent it, I would receive it. It was a process that worked well for us until I went on vacation for a week with my family.
Those letters were our lifelines that summer; we didn’t know when we were going to see each other next. I was scared about not getting a letter during that time with my family, but he was one step ahead. In the letter that I got just before I left, there were two other letters that I was to read at certain times on certain days while I was on vacation. When I wrote my response, I included two letters for him to read while I was away.
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During the aftermath of the end of my relationship with Randy, I didn’t struggle with my faith. It was solidly reinforced. I rebounded so quickly from the break up that people began to really question if I was okay. Two days after the initial moment of heartbreak, I knew that I was supposed to be pursuing graduate school. I knew that was where God was leading me.
As I thought about the things that I would be doing after graduation they all revolved around Randy. He didn’t know what he wanted to do and I knew I could write wherever I wanted. But near the start of our junior year I found a graduate school program that was offered at only one school in the nation and I started really considering going there. The more Randy and I talked about the future, though, the more willing I became to give up the possibility of attending graduate school. Being with a man became more important than earning a Masters degree. After the breakup, I realized it might have been God’s way of telling me to chase my dreams and pursue more education.
It was during my senior year in high school that I became someone I was proud of. I stopped caring about what the people around me thought because I was simply being myself. I wore sweatpants and hooded sweatshirts to school everyday, much to the dismay of my mother. I wrote about my experience on a mission trip to Zambia through my church for the school newspaper of which I was editor. I spent my days at school, playing sports and going to youth group. Things were different because I only say my true friend once a week at youth group.
I was given that blank slate again for my senior year in college. I took on the editor position of the university’s student publication. I started working out regularly with a close friend. I would help another friend begin a group on campus. My days would be spent going to classes, working on homework, and filling the gaps with extracurricular activities.
I laughed at the irony of God.
Literally. I turned to my mother and told her, “I think God wanted me to be single during my senior years.”
The period of transition I have found myself in was just like that of when I was high school. I knew that no matter what was ahead of me, I was going to have God by my side and guiding me along this new path.
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“That moment when you’re 15 to 20 yards away from a jet coming through the building at 530 miles per hour with over 3,000 gallons of jet fuel – you live to tell about it not because the United States Army made me the toughest guy in that building, but because the toughest man to ever walk the Earth 2,000 years ago who sits at the right hand of the Father had something else in mind.”
Brian Birdwell served for over 20 years in the United States military. Then he began serving at the Pentagon. He was one of a few survivors of the plane crash that occurred on September 11, 2001. He would be burned over 60% of his body and have to endure 39 reconstructive surgeries since.
Brian had left his office to go to the bathroom. It was a walk down a hallway he was familiar with, but in the seven steps he took back to his office, he was set ablaze and tossed around like a ragdoll as a plane crashed into the Pentagon. His eyes would swell shut. His access badge was melted, but attached to the front of his shirt. His arms are skinned alive. His pants were gone.
“I did what we in the military are trained to never do – I’d surrender and I came to the realization that I was no longer struggling to survive, but I’d stepped over that line from the desire and that zest for living we are all created with to the acceptance of my death and recognizing this was how the Lord was going to call me home.”
But the final feeling of death never came. He staggered out of the smoke and fire around him. He recognized four men in the hallway. They didn’t recognize him. They went to pick him up, but with the first exertion Brian doesn’t go with their hands. They instead pull skin from his arms. It’s the first insight into the pain thresholds that are ahead of him as a critical burn survivor. He screams to have the men leave him so he can die, but they don’t. They shake hands with one another, grasping each other’s hands or wrists with his body weight resting on their arms.
The triage process requires that the most injured, most critical are taken care of first. Brian is treated first. He understands that means his injuries are severe. His airway, breathing and circulation were stabilized and then he should have been evacuated to specialized care. After the crash into the Pentagon, Vice President Cheney turned to Secretary of Transportation Secretary Mineta and said, “Shut down all air space in the United States.” That included Medevac helicopters. The ER doctors at the Georgetown University hospital would not only stabilize Brian, but also begin the very ghastly things that have to be done to someone that’s been so seriously and critically burned.
“Mel [Brian’s wife] will eventually arrive at Georgetown, knowing that she was there was critical to me and that more than anything else she was living up the wedding vows she had taken 14 years earlier. I’m proud of her. Then I asked for the hospital Chaplin to just say that final prayer that says, ‘Okay, Lord, you’re in charge here. You guide Dr. Williams’ hand, the team here at the Georgetown emergency room and if I survive I will salute that flag and go out with that mission. But if you’ve brought me here and your decision is to call me into eternity silently and quietly under the care and compassion of my fellow Americans, I will salute that flag too.”
Brian’s son would come and visit him. Brian was wrapped like a mummy with a feeding tube, tracheotomy, and other connections to medical devices. He was dying. He needed to say goodbye to his son.
“And in 20 plus years of military service the hardest thing I’ve ever been asked to do is say goodbye to my son. I remember watching Matt [his son] come in and he just mouths and speaks to me saying, ‘I love you Dad.’ And I mouth back to him, how much I loved him. And because of the opportunity I had to say goodbye to my son, in that moment I was having my “it is finished” moment. And as hard as that was to physically and emotionally say goodbye to my son, I think about how difficult it must have been for God the Father to say goodbye to the Son for three days having known the perfection of heaven.”
Brian received a Purple Heart for stepping out of the men’s restroom while many of the men and women of the United States military earn their Purple Hearts by stepping out of the United States into foreign danger zones.
“Christ earned his Purple Heart stepping out of the perfection of heaven and that’s exactly why the term I AM SECOND and He is first is appropriate.”