Echo Valor Podcast with David Burnell

In early April 2026, a U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle was shot down over southwestern Iran. Both crew members ejected into hostile territory. The pilot was recovered first, but the injured weapons systems officer remained behind, evading capture while American military and intelligence personnel worked to locate him and bring him home.

In this episode of Echo Valor with David Burnell, David follows the two rescue operations and explores the preparation behind them. From Air Force survival, evasion, resistance, and escape training to the demanding education of pararescuemen and the coordination of rescue aircrews, these extraordinary hours rested on years of disciplined work.

Drawing on public reporting and official briefings, the episode examines the wounded officer’s determination to survive, the CIA’s reported deception campaign, the aircraft protecting and supporting the recovery forces, and the rescuers who adapted when transport aircraft became unusable during extraction.

As an Air Force veteran, instructor, and rescue professional, David reflects on the connection between individual resilience and collective responsibility. A survivor’s determination preserves the opportunity for rescue. The skill and commitment of others turn that opportunity into a return home.

This is a story of courage under pressure, trust built through preparation, and the many people whose contributions make a rescue possible.

Listen, share this episode with someone who values service and perseverance, and subscribe to Echo Valor with David Burnell for more stories of courage, resilience, preparedness, and faith. Stay connected at EchoValor.com.

Revised Second Edition

Improvised Weapons: Using Everyday Objects for Emergency Self-Defense is a practical guide to awareness, adaptability, and personal safety when situations change faster than expected.

Drawing from decades of military service, self-defense instruction, personal protection, rescue work, and real-world training, David Burnell explains how ordinary environments already contain tools that can help you create distance, establish barriers, protect others, and get to safety. The emphasis is not on aggression or complicated techniques. It is on recognizing what is available, understanding what the situation requires, and making simple decisions that still work under stress.

Throughout the audiobook, Burnell examines the defensive value of everyday items such as flashlights, backpacks, umbrellas, water bottles, furniture, doors, vehicles, keys, and other common objects. More importantly, he shows how awareness, positioning, movement, escape routes, and environmental barriers can matter far more than the object in your hand.

Listeners will learn how stress affects perception and decision-making, how to recognize danger earlier, how to create space without unnecessarily escalating a confrontation, how to protect family members and others, and how to train with simple, realistic drills designed around movement and judgment rather than choreography.

This is not a manual for manufacturing weapons or looking for a fight. It is a civilian preparedness book built around a different goal: avoid danger when you can, leave when you can, create distance when you can, put something between yourself and the threat when you can, and use force only when no safer option remains.

The object is not the skill. The skill is recognition.

Prepare early. Stay aware. Protect what matters. Get home safely.

During a 2012 humanitarian mission among the Karen people of Burma, I met an elderly beggar whose body had been bent by age, poverty, and war. He owned almost nothing, yet through his quiet dignity and a simple, unexpected gift, he taught me something I had not fully understood: grace is not only something we give. It is also something we must be humble enough to receive.

The Beggar is a deeply personal Christian reflection on poverty, dignity, mercy, judgment, and our shared dependence upon Jesus Christ. Through the story of one man and the lessons that continued to unfold long after I left Burma, this book asks us to reconsider what it means to possess something, to serve another person, and to recognize the gifts of God in our own lives.

This post contains the complete audiobook of The Beggar: What One Man in Burma Taught Me About the Grace of Jesus Christ, written by David Burnell.

On January 15, 2019, terrorists from al-Shabaab attacked the DusitD2 hotel and office complex in Nairobi, Kenya. As civilians ran from the gunfire, one off-duty British SAS soldier made a different decision.

Christian Craighead went in.

Wearing jeans, body armor, and carrying the skills built over decades of military service, Craighead joined Kenyan security forces inside an active terrorist attack, helped locate and evacuate trapped civilians, and continued operating through a crisis that stretched deep into the night.

But this episode of The David Burnell Podcast is about more than one extraordinary day in Nairobi.

It is about what came before it.

Craighead’s path included the Parachute Regiment, the Pathfinder Platoon, combat deployments, Special Air Service selection—and failure. He did not pass SAS selection on his first attempt. Or his second. He went back a third time and succeeded.

That part of the story matters.

Because courage rarely begins when the world finally notices it. It is built years earlier through repetition, discipline, failure, correction, endurance, and the decision to keep going when quitting would be easier.

In this episode, David Burnell examines the Nairobi attack through the larger principles behind Craighead’s actions: training, selection, initiative, responsibility, courage, leadership, and valor.

What allows one person to function while others freeze?

What does elite training actually build?

What is the difference between recklessness and trained courage?

And what responsibility comes with becoming capable enough to help when other people cannot help themselves?

Christian Craighead’s story is not ultimately about the famous photograph, the nickname “Obi-Wan Nairobi,” or even the gallantry medal that followed.

It is about preparation meeting the moment.

Because none of us knows when our moment will come.

Most of us will never walk into a terrorist attack. But every one of us will eventually face a moment when someone needs us to be stronger, calmer, better prepared, or more courageous than we were yesterday.

The question is whether we are preparing now.

The David Burnell Podcast

Stories of courage, service, resilience, leadership, and the lessons learned when ordinary life suddenly demands something extraordinary.

What happens to the mind and body after we witness something terrible—and what can we do before acute stress begins controlling our lives?

In this episode of The David Burnell Podcast, David sits down with longtime friend Jeffrey Denning for a deeply personal and practical conversation about crisis response, trauma, acute stress, and the cumulative emotional weight carried by first responders, veterans, rescuers, families, and ordinary people exposed to extraordinary events.

Jeffrey brings an unusual combination of experience to the conversation. A retired Salt Lake City police officer, former federal air marshal, military veteran and officer, author, crisis-response professional, and trained mental health counselor, he has spent years working both in environments where traumatic events occur and with the people left carrying their effects afterward.

Drawing from recent critical incidents, decades of law-enforcement and military experience, and his work conducting critical-incident stress interventions, Jeffrey explains why trauma does not always come from a single catastrophic moment. Sometimes it accumulates quietly—one call, one loss, one disturbing image, one deployment, one recovery, and one difficult day at a time.

David and Jeffrey explore primary, secondary, and tertiary trauma and discuss a growing challenge of the modern world: people no longer have to be physically present at a violent event to be affected by it. Graphic videos, breaking news, social-media algorithms, repeated viewing, political anger, and endless online speculation can keep the nervous system engaged long after the immediate danger has passed.

The conversation moves beyond identifying the problem to what people can actually do.

They discuss the importance of sleep, nutrition, hydration, physical activity, meaningful human connection, prayer and mindfulness, managing intrusive thought patterns, stepping away from destructive coping mechanisms, practicing gratitude, finding productive purpose, and resisting the natural tendency to isolate.

For first responders, veterans, and others who have spent a lifetime putting difficult experiences into mental compartments, Jeffrey offers another important warning: retirement does not necessarily erase what happened. Years of suppressed memories can surface when the noise finally stops. Early intervention, honest conversation, meaningful activity, service, and professional help can make an enormous difference.

One of the most powerful ideas from the episode is simple:

“Healing hurts, and helping heals.”

David and Jeffrey also talk about lowering the temperature in a divided culture. Anger may be a normal response to frightening events, but constantly feeding anger through social media does not bring peace. David shares a principle learned through years of tactical training and crisis work: calm breeds calm.

The episode ultimately becomes a conversation about something even more fundamental than trauma management: human connection.

A phone call matters.

A text matters.

Sitting beside someone matters.

Telling a friend, “I love you, brother. How are you?” matters.

Jeffrey shares powerful stories of people whose lives changed because someone reached out at exactly the right moment. They are reminders that there are people all around us carrying what he calls “emotional amputations”—wounds that may not be visible but are every bit as real.

You do not have to be a counselor, police officer, veteran, or crisis specialist to help.

You can check on somebody.

You can listen.

You can serve.

You can refuse to add more anger to an already angry world.

And sometimes the most important crisis response begins with simply reminding another human being that they are not alone.

Featuring Jeffrey Denning and David Burnell

Learn more about Jeffrey Denning’s crisis-response work at crisisresponse.help.

The David Burnell Podcast explores resilience, leadership, service, preparedness, faith, trauma, and the lessons learned from a lifetime of military service, rescue work, humanitarian missions, training, and real-world experience.

Twenty-five years ago today, on September 11, 2001, the United States was changed forever.

In this special anniversary episode of The David Burnell Podcast, I reflect on where I was that day, what the attacks meant to me personally, and why the lessons of September 11 still matter a quarter century later.

This episode is not only about the destruction of the World Trade Center, the attack on the Pentagon, or the loss of Flight 93. It is about the men and women who stood tall when everything around them was falling apart.

I share the true stories of people like Rick Rescorla, who helped evacuate thousands from the South Tower before going back inside to search for others; Welles Crowther, the young man remembered as “the man in the red bandana,” who repeatedly led strangers to safety; and the passengers and crew of Flight 93, who understood what was happening and made the decision to fight back.

These were not people seeking recognition. They were ordinary people placed in extraordinary circumstances who chose duty, courage, sacrifice, and service to others.

September 11 showed us humanity at its worst, but it also revealed humanity at its very best.

As we mark the 25th anniversary of that terrible morning, this episode remembers those we lost, honors those who ran toward danger, and reminds us that courage is often found in a simple decision: when another human being needs help, you do not walk away.

We remember the fallen.

We honor those who stood tall.

And we carry forward the enduring hope that even in humanity’s darkest moments, the human spirit can rise from the wreckage, reach for someone else, and choose courage over fear.

What does it really mean to leave no one behind?

For most of my life, those words belonged to military service, Search and Rescue, public-safety diving, and emergency response. You count the people who went in. You count them again when they come out. If one person is missing, the mission is not finished.

But over the years, I learned that people can become lost without physically disappearing.

A veteran can come home while part of him remains somewhere else. A grieving person can continue functioning while carrying a wound nobody sees. A family member can become distant while sitting in the same room. Someone can walk away from faith, hide pain behind competence, or quietly begin believing that nobody would notice if they disappeared.

In this episode of The David Burnell Podcast, I share what rescue work taught me about searching for the one, carrying what belongs in our arms, accepting help when our own strength is no longer enough, and recognizing when courage means holding on—and when it means letting go.

I return to the recovery at Fremont Lake, where I found myself descending with a man I was determined to bring home until another diver placed a hand on my tank and added the lift I could not generate alone. I also revisit Sheridan Lake, where I learned that determination can become dangerous when pride refuses to recognize a limit.

Those experiences eventually taught me something much larger than rescue.

No one comes home alone.

We can search. We can carry. We can listen. We can remember. We can protect. We can lighten another person’s burden.

But every human rescuer eventually reaches the end of his reach.

Jesus Christ does not.

This episode is about the one who is missing, the wounded person who still appears strong, the family member who has wandered, the person everyone else has forgotten, and the rescuer who eventually discovers that he needs rescue too.

It is also the story behind the Echo Valor song “Bring Them Home,” which grew from the same message.

The mission is not to become the Savior.

The mission is to notice the one, faithfully do what is ours to do, and trust Jesus Christ with what lies beyond human hands.

Leave no one behind. Bring them home.

Full Written Article

I’ve carried a phrase with me through most of my adult life: leave no one behind. If you have served in the military, worked in Search and Rescue, public safety, emergency medicine, law enforcement, firefighting, or any profession built around going toward people in trouble, those words probably mean something to you before I even explain them. They are about accountability. They are about brotherhood. They are about duty. You count the people who went in, and you count them again when they come out. If somebody is missing, the mission changes. You don’t look around at everybody who made it back and say, “Well, that’s most of us.” One person missing is enough to keep searching.

For a long time, that was how I understood leave no one behind. Then life taught me that people can go missing without ever physically disappearing. Eventually, my faith taught me something even harder. There are people I can search for, carry, protect, and stand beside. But there are places where every human rescuer reaches the end of his reach. Jesus Christ does not. Welcome to The David Burnell Podcast. I’m David Burnell, and today I want to talk about what the words leave no one behind mean to me now, after military service, Search and Rescue, dive rescue, humanitarian missions, family, grief, faith, mistakes, repentance, and enough years to discover that some of the things I thought I understood when I was younger were only partially true. Leave no one behind sounds simple. It isn’t. Sometimes it means accepting another man’s hand when you’re the one going down. And sometimes it means admitting that the person you are desperately trying to save belongs to Jesus Christ before that person ever belonged to you.

Let me take you back to Fremont Lake. The water was cold, clear, and deep. An aircraft lay underwater with two men still inside. The aircraft rested at roughly 120 feet, and we worked to raise it in stages using lift bags. At that depth, nothing should happen quickly. You make a change and watch what happens. You adjust. You conserve air. You control your breathing. You stay aware of the wreckage, the cables, your equipment, the other divers, the weather, the depth, and the direction you are moving. Above us, the conditions were getting worse. The wind was increasing. Sleet was coming and going. Our working platform was beginning to drift, and we were moving toward much deeper water. As we lifted the aircraft, the wreckage began to shift enough that I could see one of the men inside starting to come loose. I immediately became concerned that if he came completely free at the wrong moment and slipped away from the aircraft, we could lose him into water far deeper than where we were working.

I signaled another diver that I intended to remove him. He told me no. He had more experience than I did, and I respected that, so I stopped. Then I watched the body shift again. Sometimes you make decisions based on a checklist. Other times, the variables come together, and something becomes very clear. I believed that if we didn’t take him then, we could lose him. So I went to him. He was entangled in cables and debris. I worked him free carefully, moved behind him, wrapped my arms around him, and pulled him away from the wreckage. The second he came free, the problem changed completely. His full weight came onto me, and instead of going up, we began going down. I added buoyancy. Nothing happened. I added more and kicked hard. Nothing. We kept descending. If you have never been in an environment like that, something happens mentally when a situation moves from difficult to dangerous. The world gets very small. Unnecessary thoughts disappear, and you begin dealing only in facts.

The first fact was that I had a man in my arms who could do absolutely nothing to help me. The second was that the lift I could generate was not enough. The third was that there was a lot more water beneath us than I had any interest in visiting. I knew exactly how I could solve the immediate problem. I could let him go. If I opened my arms and released him, the buoyancy I had already added would begin taking me upward. From a survival standpoint, everything would become much easier. But I also knew what might happen to him. If he dropped over that shelf and disappeared into deeper water, we might never recover him. I had never met this man. I didn’t know his history. I didn’t know what kind of work he had done. I didn’t know his beliefs, his mistakes, what made him laugh, or anything about his family. But I knew one thing. I knew why we were in that water. We had come to bring him home.

So I held on and kept kicking. That decision can sound heroic if you tell the story the wrong way. I don’t see it that way, because what happened next is just as important. My strength wasn’t enough. Period. I had training. I had equipment. I had air. I had experience. I had determination. I was not quitting. None of that changed the physics. We were going down. Then I felt a hand on the back of my tank. The diver who had been working with me had come back. He saw what was happening. I didn’t have to explain it, and he didn’t need me to admit that I was struggling. He could see where we were headed. He grabbed the back of my tank near the valve, added buoyancy to his own system, and gave us lift that I didn’t have. For a few moments, nothing seemed to change. Then the descent stopped. And then we began to rise.

I have thought about that picture many times since. Three people were moving toward the surface. One man could do absolutely nothing for himself. One man held him but couldn’t generate enough lift on his own. The third man came down, took hold, and provided what was missing. I still had the man in my arms. I still had responsibility. I still had to manage my equipment and help control the ascent. The other diver didn’t replace me. He didn’t tell me I was weak. He didn’t remove the responsibility. He added what I lacked. Together, we changed direction. Eventually, we reached the surface. The team took the man from me, and only then did I let go. Afterward, I sat there with a blanket around me while the operation continued. Eventually, the aircraft was recovered. Both men were recovered. The divers came home. From an operational standpoint, the mission was complete. Then something happened that changed the entire mission in my mind. A woman walked toward me. She put her arms around me and thanked me.

I didn’t know who she was. I simply told her we were glad we could help. After a moment, she walked away. Someone standing nearby told me who she was. She was the wife of the man I had been carrying. Suddenly the language changed. Until that moment, I had been thinking like a rescuer. Body. Aircraft. Depth. Lift. Weather. Risk. Recovery. Mission. Now he was a husband. Someone knew the sound of his voice. Someone knew the way he walked into a room. Somebody had shared meals with him, holidays with him, arguments with him, ordinary mornings with him. Somebody expected him to come home. He belonged somewhere. That changed something in me, because statistics never tell you that. A casualty number doesn’t tell you who was waiting. A missing-person report doesn’t tell you what the silence feels like inside that person’s home. A name on a roster doesn’t tell you who knows that name by heart. Every person belongs somewhere.

That is one reason the doctrine of the one means so much more to me today than it did when I first read the parable of the lost sheep. Jesus Christ describes a shepherd with one hundred sheep. One is missing. Ninety-nine are accounted for, and the shepherd goes after the one. For years I thought the emphasis was simply that the one was important. And it is. But rescue work made me notice something that has to happen before the search ever begins. Somebody has to count. The shepherd had to recognize that one was missing. That may sound obvious, but it isn’t, because people disappear around us all the time without physically leaving. A man can sit in the same house with his family and be a thousand miles away inside himself. A veteran can return from deployment, and everybody can celebrate that he came home while part of him is still living somewhere else. A woman can continue going to work after a death, and everyone assumes she is doing better because she is functioning. A young person can sit in church every Sunday and feel completely alone. A friend can slowly stop calling. A brother can get quieter. A marriage can begin separating long before anybody changes addresses. Somebody can stop believing he has a place in the Church while his name remains safely on a membership record. No radio call announces any of that. No pager goes off. No command post is established. There is no search map.

Sometimes all you get is a change. A quieter voice. An empty chair. A person who used to stay after the meeting but now leaves immediately. A dependable man beginning to make small mistakes. A friend who says he’s fine a little too quickly. Or maybe just a name that keeps coming back into your mind. Search and Rescue taught me that unexplained absence deserves attention. That does not mean panic. It doesn’t mean violating somebody’s privacy or turning people into projects. It simply means noticing. And I think we have become dangerously good at not noticing one another. We can know what somebody posted online without knowing how they’re actually doing. We can sit beside someone every week without knowing what they’re carrying. We can say we support veterans and never sit down with one long enough to hear something difficult. We can say we care about the grieving and then disappear when the funeral is over. We can talk about ministering and still fail to know the person we have supposedly been ministering to.

We can count people without remembering them. There is a difference. Doctrine and Covenants 18 says, “Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God.” I have returned to that statement many times because the Lord does not qualify it. He doesn’t say the worth of successful souls is great, or faithful souls, useful souls, easy souls, people who agree with you, or people who never made a mess of their lives. He simply says souls are worth a great deal. That worth existed before you noticed them. The rescuer does not make the missing person valuable by deciding to search. The search begins because the person already matters. That also changes how we think about people who made poor decisions. Search and Rescue will cure you of the idea that everyone who gets in trouble arrived there through circumstances completely outside their control.

Sometimes people do foolish things. They underestimate the weather. They overestimate their abilities. They ignore warnings. They go somewhere unprepared. They make decisions that create problems for themselves and sometimes for everybody who has to respond afterward. But when the call comes, the immediate question is not whether they passed a moral examination before we deploy. The question is whether we can help. There may be accountability later. There may be consequences. Lessons may need to be learned. Poor judgment does not erase human worth. Spiritually, that matters because most of us love the image of Jesus Christ going after the lost sheep when we imagine that we are the sheep. The doctrine becomes much more demanding when the lost person is somebody who frustrates us. Somebody who rejected our advice. Somebody who left the Church. Somebody who continues making the same mistake. Somebody who wounded us. Somebody we don’t understand anymore. That is when we discover whether we believe a person has inherent worth, or whether we believed it only when loving that person was convenient.

But there is another side to this. Leave no one behind does not mean destroying yourself trying to save everyone. That is not courage. It is not necessarily faith. Depending on the circumstances, it can become pride. I learned that beneath the ice at Sheridan Lake. Two young twin brothers had gone through the ice in a vehicle. One was pulled out alive. The other disappeared beneath the ice. By the time our team became involved, considerable time had passed, but the operation was still being treated as a rescue. We had limited dive personnel available. One diver entered and came back in serious distress. Another went in, came back out, and made it clear that the conditions were no good. Then I went anyway. I can give you all the honorable reasons I had. I was an instructor. I was a leader. A young man was still beneath the ice. Somebody had to go. All of those things were true. But something else was true. I did not want to be the man who stopped. That is harder to admit. I had built part of my identity around being capable when circumstances became difficult. Keep working. Solve the problem. Don’t quit. If somebody else couldn’t do it, maybe I could.

Those qualities had served me well. Under the ice, they became dangerous. Visibility was essentially zero. I couldn’t read my gauges. I was beneath a solid ceiling of ice, and my regulator began to free-flow in the cold. Two other divers had already told me almost everything I should have needed to know about the conditions. I still wanted to continue. Then I received an unmistakable spiritual impression. Get out. I resisted it. The impression came again. Get out. Internally, I argued with God. There was a man down there. I was the instructor. This was my responsibility. Good rescuers don’t abandon people. Eventually the warning became so strong that I knew I needed to obey it. So I came out. The young man’s body was later recovered by another diver. He had died. For years, part of me continued asking the same questions. Could I have stayed longer? Could I have done more? Was there another attempt I should have made? Would a tougher man have continued?

It took me years to understand that the test beneath that ice was not whether I was willing to endure. God already knew that. The test was whether I would surrender the very strength I trusted when He told me it had reached its proper limit. That is much harder. Weakness is relatively easy to surrender because we already know it is weakness. Strength is different. Persistence had served me. Discipline had served me. Courage had served me. Determination had served me. But no strength is safe if I refuse to place it beneath the will of God. There is also a subtle kind of pride in believing everyone else deserves to come home while the rescuer himself is expendable. I had a wife. I had children. They had a legitimate claim on my return. I mattered too. That was not always easy for me to accept, and I know there are people listening who need to hear the same thing.

Maybe you’re a father or mother. Maybe you’re a caregiver, a veteran, a first responder, a Church leader, or simply the person everybody calls when something goes wrong. Perhaps you have become so accustomed to carrying other people that you have quietly decided you don’t count in the accounting. You do. You are not required to destroy yourself to prove that you care. You are not required to neglect your family because somebody else has a need. You are not required to become the sole emotional support system for another adult. And you are not required to keep entering situations God has told you to leave. Sometimes courage means going in. Sometimes courage means coming out. Then there are moments like Fremont Lake when the responsibility remains, but your individual strength is not enough. That requires another kind of humility. At Fremont, the right decision was not to release the man. But neither was the answer for me to somehow become stronger through sheer determination. The answer was another hand on my tank. That may be one of the most important lessons of my life. No one comes home alone.

We love the image of the lone rescuer. The guy who goes through the door. The diver who goes down. The medic who reaches the casualty. The searcher who finds the missing person. But those stories are almost always incomplete. Someone gathered the information. Someone maintained the radio. Someone drove. Someone prepared the equipment. Someone watched the weather. Someone tended the line. Someone stayed with the family. Someone stood ready to go after the rescuer if the rescuer got into trouble. And somebody waited at home. The person visible in the photograph is rarely the whole mission. Life is the same way. I have been carried by people. Corrected by people. Forgiven by people. Protected by people. Prayed for by people. Encouraged by people. I accomplished things that would never have happened without people whose names will never be attached to the visible story. And people at home carried costs I did not fully understand at the time. That is another part of leave no one behind.

The families of those who serve are not standing outside the mission. They carry part of it. When you leave, somebody waits. When schedules change, somebody adjusts. When you come home carrying something difficult, somebody may end up living beside it. Military and rescue cultures are very good at compartmentalizing. Sometimes you have to be. In the middle of a mission, there are things you cannot fully process because somebody still needs you functional. But compartmentalization is supposed to be temporary. The problem begins when you come home and leave all the compartments locked. A man can walk through the front door and still not really come home.

That is one reason invisible wounds matter so much to me. Visible wounds give people permission to be injured. Nobody tells a man with a broken leg to stop being dramatic. Nobody looks at a severe burn and tells someone that more discipline will make it heal. Invisible wounds are different. A man can carry grief, moral injury, regret, fear, anger, trauma, loneliness, or shame and still go to work every day. He still pays the bills. He still makes jokes. He still serves other people. He still answers, “I’m good.” Functioning becomes camouflage. And the more competent somebody is, the easier it becomes to believe that competence means he is untouched. It doesn’t. One thing I have had to learn is that endurance and healing are not the same. You can become extremely good at carrying a wound. That does not mean the wound has healed.

Sometimes leaving no one behind means noticing the man who is still standing. Don’t wait for the collapse. Don’t assume that because somebody remains useful, he doesn’t need anything. And if you are that person, receiving help does not erase your strength. Sometimes, refusing help puts everyone at greater risk. At Fremont, if I had decided I would rather drown than admit another diver’s lift was necessary, that would not have been courage. It would have been stupidity. Yet emotionally, we do versions of that all the time. We pray for strength and then reject the people God sends with it. We ask Heavenly Father to help us and then decide the answer cannot possibly look like counseling, medicine, a trusted friend, a spouse telling us that we are not doing as well as we think, or somebody simply saying, “I can see you’re going down. Let me help.” Sometimes God gives us strength directly. Sometimes He puts another hand on the tank. Don’t reject the answer because it arrived in a form that requires humility. No one else can live your life for you. Nobody can repent for you. Nobody can make every difficult decision for you. Nobody can permanently carry responsibilities that legitimately belong to you. At Fremont, I kept kicking. The other diver added what I lacked. That is very different from surrendering responsibility. Healthy help strengthens agency. It doesn’t replace it.

And that leads into another difficult part of leave no one behind. You cannot force another person home. That may be hardest for parents, spouses, missionaries, Church leaders, and anyone who deeply loves someone choosing a road you would never choose for them. Physical rescue sometimes gives you authority to act decisively. An unconscious person does not have to agree that you should pull him from a burning vehicle. Spiritual rescue is different. You cannot force testimony into somebody. You cannot impose repentance. You cannot make another adult believe what you believe. You cannot compel somebody to make covenants. Sometimes fear causes us to forget that. We start calling control love. We send another scripture. We give another lecture. We reopen the same argument. We keep pushing because the outcome matters so much to us. Eventually, the person may stop hearing anything except pressure. Jesus Christ does not work that way. He invites. He teaches. He warns. He corrects. He ministers. He waits. He allows agency even when the choice brings sorrow. That should humble us.

In the Book of Mormon, the resurrected Savior instructed His disciples to continue ministering to people who were not where the disciples hoped they would be spiritually. He told them not to cast those people out, but to minister to them and pray for them because they did not know whether those people might someday return, repent, and come to Him. I love that principle. You don’t know what may happen later. The person standing in front of you is not a finished story. The son who is angry today may not always be angry. The daughter who wants nothing to do with Church right now is not beyond Christ. The friend who has questions you cannot answer is not beyond Christ. The man who made a terrible mess of his life is not beyond Christ. But neither you nor I are the Savior. That distinction matters.

We can love without controlling. We can testify without turning truth into a weapon. We can keep a relationship open without pretending disagreement does not exist. We can pray when nothing else should be said. And where abuse, violence, manipulation, or destructive behavior requires boundaries, we can establish those boundaries without hatred. Leaving no one behind does not mean giving everybody unlimited access to your life. Love and boundaries can exist together. Hope and distance can exist together. Prayer and restraint can exist together. Sometimes continuing to minister means speaking. Sometimes it means listening. Sometimes it means apologizing. Sometimes it means leaving the door open emotionally while giving another person enough room to choose whether he walks through it.

Eventually, you have to trust Christ with what you cannot control. That may be one of the hardest lessons of all for people like me. I spent much of my life in environments where action mattered. If something broke, fix it. If the plan failed, make another plan. If the first search area didn’t produce anything, search somewhere else. If equipment wasn’t working, troubleshoot it. If the first attempt failed, try again. That way of thinking can accomplish very difficult things. But eventually you encounter situations where another attempt does not produce the outcome you want. I learned that in Haiti. Following the 2010 earthquake, I was there as chief of security for a medical task force. In the middle of that much larger mission, I was asked about a three-year-old boy who had been kidnapped before the earthquake. A prospective adoptive family had been trying to bring him home legally through the adoption process. Then he disappeared. Then the earthquake struck, and what was already difficult became enormously more complicated. I prayed about whether I should become involved. The impression I received was not, “You will find him.” It was essentially, “Do your best.” So we did. Bravo went with me. We followed names, relationships, possible locations, financial information, and people connected to what had happened. We discovered enough to know there were serious issues surrounding the disappearance. But we didn’t find him. I left Haiti without that little boy. And I still don’t know what happened to him.

I don’t like unresolved stories. Most of us don’t. We want effort to lead to success. We want faithfulness to produce the ending we prayed for. We want the child found, the marriage restored, the cancer healed, the son to return, the addict to recover, and the missing person to walk out of the woods alive. Mortality does not always give us those endings. I have become increasingly unwilling with age to invent spiritual explanations for suffering I don’t understand. I don’t know why some people are found, and others are not. I don’t know why some families receive miracles, and other families receive funerals. I don’t know why one prayer appears to be answered immediately while another remains unresolved for decades. I don’t know what happened to that little boy. But I know this. Our inability to find him did not make him any less worthy of being sought. And my inability to finish his story does not mean Jesus Christ lost track of him when I did. That matters to me because all of us have unfinished stories.

People we could not save. Relationships we could not repair. Apologies that did not restore what we hoped they would restore. Questions that never received satisfying answers. Graves we cannot open. People who died before everything was resolved. If I believe everything depends on me producing the right outcome, those stories can destroy me. Faithfulness and outcome are not the same thing. I am responsible for the portion placed in my hands. I am responsible for doing it honestly and doing it well. I am responsible for acting when the Spirit tells me to act and stopping when He tells me to stop. I am responsible for asking for help when I need it, apologizing for what belongs to me, making restitution where I can, loving without controlling, protecting without becoming possessive, and remembering people after everyone else has moved on. Then there is a boundary. Beyond that boundary is not indifference. It is trust.

That is where Jesus Christ becomes more than an analogy for rescue. Every rescue system I ever trusted had limits. Every one. Air runs out. Ropes have lengths. Weather changes. Bodies become exhausted. Divers can only go so deep and remain for so long. Searchers can only cover so much territory. Physicians can only do what medicine allows. Counselors have limits. Families have limits. Friends have limits. Church leaders have limits. Every human hand eventually reaches an edge. Jesus Christ is not simply a stronger version of a human rescuer. He is the Son of God. I can carry someone out of the water. I cannot remove sin. I can stand beside somebody while he grieves. I cannot resurrect the person he lost. I can teach somebody about repentance. I cannot repent for him. I can forgive. I cannot perform the Atonement. I can point toward home. I cannot build the road back to the Father. Jesus Christ did what none of us can do.

Alma taught that Christ would take upon Himself pains, sicknesses, infirmities, temptation, and death so that He would know how to succor His people according to their infirmities. That word has come to mean something important to me. To succor someone is more than feeling sympathy from a distance. It means coming to the aid of someone in distress. Christ did not remain somewhere outside mortality and shout instructions to us about how to get out. He entered it. Pain. Temptation. Rejection. Grief. Betrayal. Physical suffering. Death. Through His Atonement, His Crucifixion, and His Resurrection, He accomplished what no amount of human courage could. He made the final road home possible.

I have stood close enough to death that the Resurrection is not an abstract doctrine to me. Death leaves physical evidence behind. An empty chair. A folded flag. A backpack pulled from wreckage. A family standing beside a grave. A photograph that becomes more valuable because no new photograph will ever be taken in mortality. Human rescuers can recover a body. We can return someone to a family. We can give certainty. We can honor the dead. We can remember the name. We cannot put life back into the body. Jesus Christ crossed that boundary. He rose. That changes everything. It does not make grief unreal. Jesus wept. It does not mean consequences disappear. It does not mean every relationship gets repaired in mortality. It does not mean faith protects us from pain. It means death does not have the final word. Sin does not have to have the final word. The worst chapter of your life does not have to become the title of your entire life. And that includes you.

That may be the final part of leave no one behind that I had to learn. For years, I heard the promise on the outside. Don’t abandon the other guy. Go after him. Carry him. Protect him. Remember him. All of that is still true. But eventually, the accounting has to include you. I spent many years being useful. I liked being useful. I liked being dependable. I liked knowing that when something became difficult, I could move toward it. There is nothing wrong with strength. But strength can become identity, and identity can become pride. Then one day you discover that you have been willing to extend mercy to everyone except yourself. You believe everyone else can receive help, but you shouldn’t need it. Everyone else can be forgiven, but you should have known better. Everyone else can have limits, but you are supposed to keep going. Everybody else deserves to come home. Somehow, you became expendable. That is not the gospel.

I need Jesus Christ too. Not as an idea. Not merely as somebody I tell another person about. I need Him. I have sinned. I have made mistakes. I have pushed when I should have listened. I have been impatient. I have been stubborn. I have been strong when strength was required and stubborn when humility would have served better. I have had good intentions and still caused hurt. There are things in my life I cannot go back and do differently. Age gives you perspective. It does not give you access to yesterday. Repentance gives you a direction today. The road home begins by telling the truth about where you actually are. You don’t navigate out of the wilderness by lying about your position. You don’t come to Christ by pretending you are already almost perfect. Repentance is not convincing God to love you again. It is turning toward the One who already made return possible. Sometimes that means apologizing. Sometimes it means restitution. Sometimes it means professional help. Sometimes it means changing behavior you have defended for too long. Sometimes it means accepting consequences. Sometimes it means learning that an explanation for why you became the way you became is not the same thing as permission to remain that way. Grace does not eliminate responsibility. Grace gives you enough hope to face responsibility honestly. Maybe somebody listening to this believes he has gone too far. Maybe you believe your worst decision finally put you outside the search area. Maybe you believe Christ can save other people. Just not you. I don’t believe that.

You may have consequences. You may have damage to repair. You may have trust that takes years to rebuild. Some things may never return to what they once were. But endless self-punishment has no cleansing power. Jesus Christ does. One of the great acts of humility may be admitting that His judgment of your possibility matters more than your own condemnation. So where does leave no one behind finally come to rest for me? Not in the idea that I should become the man who saves everyone. I can’t. It comes to rest in discipleship. Notice the one. Go when God tells you to go. Stay when love requires you to stay. Come out when the Spirit tells you your part is finished. Carry what honestly belongs in your arms. Accept another person’s lift when your strength is not enough. Remember the people who have become easy to overlook. Don’t confuse somebody’s worst condition with the whole person. Don’t turn service into a story about your own courage. Don’t confuse responsibility with control. Respect agency. Protect appropriate boundaries. Stay near the grieving when there is nothing left to fix. Apologize when you caused harm. Receive help when you need it. And when you finally reach the edge of everything a human being can do, trust Jesus Christ. That is not quitting. It is recognizing who the Savior is.

I think again about Fremont Lake. The man in my arms. The deeper water beneath us. The hand on my tank. The wife who came to me afterward. Those two moments contain almost everything I have spent years trying to understand. The hand taught me that the rescuer may become the one who needs rescue. The wife taught me why the person matters. He belonged somewhere. We all do. Every name belongs somewhere. Every soul is known. Every wound is seen. Every person you think the world forgot is still known to God. The veteran sitting alone with memories nobody else understands. The widow everyone stopped calling because enough time has supposedly passed. The son or daughter who wandered. The person who wants to come back but doesn’t know how to begin. The person hiding pain behind competence. The person who believes what he did cannot be forgiven. The person whose story ended before you understood it. Everyone. I cannot call every name. Neither can you.

But maybe today there is one. One person within your actual reach. Maybe there is one phone call. One conversation. One apology. One empty chair you finally decide to notice. One veteran you sit beside instead of telling him what he should feel. One grieving friend you remember months after everyone else has moved on. One family member you stop trying to fix long enough to actually hear. One person whose name keeps coming back to mind. You don’t have to save the world. You are not the Savior. But don’t use the size of what you cannot do as an excuse to ignore what may actually be yours to do. Go after the one. Carry the wounded. Don’t forget the missing. And if you are the one going down, let somebody grab the tank. No one comes home alone. Because at the deepest level, none of us is standing safely on the shore giving directions to everyone else still in the water. We all need Christ. So do what is yours to do. Search. Carry. Listen. Protect. Repent. Forgive. Remember. Add lift. Receive lift. Then trust the One whose reach does not end where yours does.

When the final accounting is made, my voice will not call every name. It will be His. I trust Jesus Christ with every soul, every wound, every road, every grave, every unanswered prayer, every unfinished story, and every honest step toward Him that I was never close enough to see. Human beings can help one another toward home. Jesus Christ made homecoming possible. Leave no one behind. Bring them home. And when your own strength fails, let Him bring you home too. I’m David Burnell, and this is The David Burnell Podcast. Thank you for listening. Until next time, take care of the people within your reach. Pay attention to the one. And never become so busy doing the mission that you forget who the mission was meant to serve.

In this episode, I want to talk about something that has become deeply personal to me. This past month, my little sister passed away at only fifty-nine after a vicious battle with cancer. Losing someone you love brings a kind of grief that cannot be fixed by working harder, staying busy, or simply willing yourself through it. Family and friends are left carrying an absence that cannot be filled and memories that suddenly become more precious than ever.

For those of us who are accustomed to solving problems, protecting others, or taking action when something goes wrong, grief teaches a difficult lesson: some things cannot be fixed. We must carry them, feel them, and eventually place them in hands stronger than our own. My hope in sharing this story is that anyone grieving someone they love might find a measure of peace in knowing that healing does not require forgetting, and moving forward does not mean leaving them behind. We carry their love with us; we honor the life they lived, and through faith in Jesus Christ, I believe separation is not the end.

Sometimes the strongest thing we can do is stop trying to control what cannot be changed, allow ourselves to grieve, and trust God with the person we love and with the broken pieces left behind.

Thy will be done.

Thy Will Be Done - This is the last chapter from my Book “Built By Fire”

There comes a point when understanding is no longer enough. You can examine the past, recognize patterns, trace consequences, and begin to see how one season of life led into another. You can identify the decisions that changed you, the people who shaped you, the mistakes you would correct if given another opportunity, and the moments you would never change at all. Reflection can bring clarity, but it cannot resolve everything. Some losses cannot be reversed. Some wounds do not disappear. Some relationships cannot be restored by regret alone. Some people cannot be brought home no matter how badly you want another outcome.

Eventually, the deeper question is no longer simply what happened or why. It becomes what you are willing to release.

For most of my life, I believed that if I prepared enough, worked hard enough, remained disciplined, and accepted responsibility, I could find a way through almost anything. That belief had not come from theory. It had been tested repeatedly. In military service, Search and Rescue, dive recovery, tactical training, protective work, business, and humanitarian missions, preparation and decisive action mattered. When someone was missing beneath the ice, there was no benefit in standing on shore discussing uncertainty forever. When a team entered a dangerous environment, someone had to assess the threat, decide, and move. When frightened soldiers were surrounded by an angry crowd in Haiti, someone had to keep fear from turning into gunfire. When doctors and nurses were focused on the suffering in front of them, someone had to watch what was happening around them. In those environments, action mattered. Discipline mattered. Effort mattered. Sometimes they saved lives.

The problem came when I began to believe that the same tools could solve everything.

Service had taught me to carry responsibility until the problem was solved. If something was wrong, I worked harder. If a plan failed, I developed another one. If an obstacle appeared, I tried to overcome it. If I was hurt, I pushed through it. If something was unfinished, I returned to it. That mindset helped me survive difficult circumstances and be useful to others, but it also created an illusion that took me years to recognize. Not everything can be fixed by doing more.

There are people you cannot save. There are injuries determination cannot erase. There are decisions made by others that you cannot control. Some relationships require more than one person’s effort to repair. Some moments with your children and family can't be recovered simply because you finally understand how important they were. There are missions that end without the answer you prayed for.

I could not bring back those we lost. I could not find the kidnapped boy in Haiti. I could not undo every absence or reclaim every moment when the mission had received more of me than the people waiting at home. I could not command the nerves in my injured foot to restore themselves simply because I wanted them to. I could not repair everything through force of will. Yet for years, part of me kept trying.

That was one of the most difficult things for me to recognize about myself. When something hurt, I often responded by moving. Another mission. Another business. Another project. Another responsibility. Another opportunity to be useful. Activity created purpose, and purpose helped quiet things I did not yet know how to face.

Action is not wrong when it is needed. There is nothing wrong with hard work, discipline, persistence, or service. They are among the qualities I value most. But more action is not always healing. More responsibility is not always recovery. More effort does not necessarily repair what lies beneath the surface. Sometimes action keeps you from being still long enough to recognize what needs healing.

That lesson came slowly.

Service had given me extraordinary blessings. I had stood beside remarkable men and women. I had watched rescuers risk themselves for strangers, soldiers depend completely upon one another, medical professionals work beyond exhaustion, humanitarian workers enter devastated communities, and ordinary people respond with extraordinary courage when the moment required it. I have been given opportunities to help save lives, recover the fallen, protect people in dangerous places, train warriors, build businesses, and contribute to missions larger than myself. I remain grateful for those opportunities.

The cost does not cancel the blessing, but the blessing does not require me to pretend there was no cost.

Military service, rescue work, disaster response, humanitarian operations, and protection assignments can place unusual demands upon those who answer those calls. They can ask for time, physical safety, emotional reserves, family separation, and exposure to things the human mind was never designed to treat as ordinary. Sometimes the cost appears immediately in blood, injury, or loss. More often it accumulates quietly.

That does not mean the service was wrong. It means we are human.

The people who serve are not machines built to absorb unlimited pressure. Courage does not make someone immune to grief. Training does not make a person immune to trauma. Faith does not prevent every wound. Strength does not mean you can carry indefinitely what was never intended to remain entirely on your shoulders.

I had to learn the difference between responsibility and ownership. Responsibility means doing everything faithfully within your ability. Ownership is the belief that everything depends upon you. For much of my life, I did not recognize how easily one could become the other. Responsibility had served me well. Ownership was slowly exhausting me.

I began to understand that what I had always thought of as control had limits. Control is useful when you are planning a mission, securing a scene, evaluating a threat, managing a team, or deciding whether to enter dangerous water. It becomes something very different when applied to grief, regret, relationships, and the past. You cannot command those things into submission. You cannot outwork them. You cannot intimidate them. You cannot outrun them. Eventually, you have to stop.

For me, that stopping point became deeply connected to my relationship with my Father in Heaven and Jesus Christ.

Faith had always been part of my life. I had prayed before missions, sought direction during difficult decisions, and experienced moments of protection and spiritual prompting that I could not reasonably dismiss as coincidence. I believed in God. I believed in Jesus Christ. I believed God had guided and preserved me many times. But there is a difference between believing in God and trusting Him with the things you cannot fix.

It is easy to speak of faith after the outcome you wanted. It is easy to thank God when the missing woman is found alive, when the warning beneath the ice brings you safely back to the surface, when the bullet passes through without destroying your ability to walk, or when the aircraft lands and you return home. Faith becomes harder when the ending is different.

What does faith look like when the person dies despite everything you did correctly? What does it mean when the child remains missing? What does it mean when a marriage ends, the body remains damaged, the memory remains vivid, or the prayer does not produce the outcome you hoped for? Those questions forced my faith beyond the expectation that belief would protect me from every painful ending.

I began to understand that faith was not a guarantee that God would remove the fire. Sometimes faith was discovering that He was present inside it.

That realization changed the meaning of four words I had heard and spoken throughout my life: Thy will be done.

For someone accustomed to taking action, those words can sound dangerously close to resignation. They are not. “Thy will be done” does not mean giving up. It does not mean refusing responsibility, abandoning preparation, or standing still when action is required. It does not mean accepting injustice, refusing to protect someone, or waiting for God to perform work He has given us the ability to do ourselves.

It means accepting the boundary between my responsibility and His.

I prepare. I act. I protect. I serve. I accept accountability for my choices. I give the moment everything honestly required of me. Then, when I reach the place where effort can go no farther, I trust Him with what remains.

That was one of the hardest forms of surrender I ever learned.

I had spent years training myself to resist surrender. In dangerous environments, surrender can get people killed. You keep going. You fight through fatigue. You solve the next problem. You refuse to quit. But spiritual surrender is something entirely different. It is not surrender to the enemy. It is surrender to God.

It is recognizing that He sees what I cannot see, understands what I cannot understand, and holds a perspective beyond the narrow window through which I experience my own life. For me, that became the beginning of healing. Not forgetting. Not denying. Healing.

I could acknowledge a mistake without allowing shame to become my permanent identity. I could grieve someone I could not save without assuming that grief was proof I had failed. I could acknowledge that service had sometimes taken me away from my family more than I now wished it had, without pretending the past could simply be rewritten. I could accept physical injury without concluding that my usefulness had ended. I could finally separate what had happened from what I was still capable of becoming.

That is where redemption became more than a religious word to me.

Through Jesus Christ, I came to understand that redemption does not require the past to disappear. It changes what the past is allowed to do with the future.

There are things in my life I would change if I could. There are decisions I would make differently, moments when I would listen longer, remain home, speak more carefully, or recognize sooner what someone close to me was carrying. Good intentions do not erase consequences. Service does not make every decision righteous simply because the purpose behind it was honorable. Grace does not require us to pretend otherwise. Grace allows us to tell the truth and still move forward.

That distinction mattered deeply to me because I had spent years believing strength meant pushing through whatever stood in my way. The answer to weakness was effort. The answer to pain was endurance. The answer to uncertainty was preparation. Those qualities are valuable, but none of them is redemption.

You cannot redeem yourself through sheer effort. You cannot heal every wound by becoming tougher. You cannot make yourself worthy of peace by accomplishing enough good to outweigh everything you regret.

At some point, the rescuer must accept rescue.

That may have been one of the most difficult truths of my entire life.

I knew how to enter the water for someone else. I knew how to stand between danger and another person. I knew how to carry a broken body, move toward a threat, guard a medical team, build a plan, organize people, train warriors, and keep functioning when the environment became chaotic. I was much less comfortable admitting that I needed help carrying what had accumulated inside me.

Christ asked me to let Him into the places where effort had failed, not because effort was meaningless, but because it had reached its proper limit. His invitation was not to become weaker. It was to stop confusing self-reliance with strength.

The Savior already understood the weight I was carrying. He knew the sorrow, the regret, the fear, the injuries, the things I could not repair, and the names and faces that remained in my memory. He knew them before I had words to explain them. I did not have to convince Him that I had tried hard enough. I didn't have to prove I was strong enough. I simply had to trust Him.

That trust changed my understanding of service, too.

For much of my life, service meant going. It meant responding to the pager, deploying, entering the water, stepping into the wreckage, moving toward the threat, or accepting the difficult assignment. I still believe deeply in that kind of service. Men and women will always be called to go.

But I no longer believe that the most difficult assignment is automatically the most righteous one or that sacrifice must always be measured by pain. Wisdom sometimes means going. Sometimes it means staying. Sometimes it means acting immediately. Sometimes it means listening. Sometimes the person who needs you most is thousands of miles away. Sometimes he is sitting across the table from you.

That understanding did not end my service. It made it more deliberate. Today I continue serving through teaching, writing, podcasts, mentoring, and other forms of communication that allow me to pass along lessons learned through military service, Search and Rescue, tactical training, protection work, humanitarian missions, business, faith, failure, and recovery. I still want people to be safer, better prepared, more aware, and better able to help those placed in their care. I also want those carrying unseen wounds to understand that injury, age, loss, or failure does not end usefulness, and that service close to home is not somehow less meaningful than service performed in distant or dangerous places.

But this final chapter is not really about me. It is about all of you who go.

It is about the soldier who leaves a family behind because the orders came, the police officer walking toward a call without knowing what waits behind the door, the firefighter climbing the stairs while everyone else is coming down, the rescuer clipping into the rope, the diver descending beneath black water, the medic kneeling beside someone whose life is slipping away, the humanitarian worker entering a devastated community, the protector watching the crowd while everyone else is focused on the principal, the spouse who remains at home carrying responsibilities no one sees, the family member answering the late-night phone call, and the countless people who serve quietly without uniforms, medals, headlines, or recognition.

I know something of what service can give you. It can give purpose, brotherhood, perspective, faith, and the knowledge that your life was used in the service of someone besides yourself. Those are profound gifts.

I also know what service can sometimes ask from you. It can take time you never recover. It can change the way you sleep. It can alter your body. It can place images in your mind that do not leave when the mission ends. It can teach you to function so effectively in crisis that ordinary stillness begins to feel foreign. It can create a habit of carrying everything yourself because other people have spent years depending upon you to do exactly that.

If you recognize yourself in those words, understand that the qualities that helped you survive the fire may not be the same qualities that help you heal from it.

There is a time to push, and there is a time to stop pushing. There is a time to take control of the situation, and there is a time to release what was never yours to control. There is a time to carry another person, and a time to allow yourself to be carried.

Healing does not dishonor the mission. Rest does not erase courage. Accepting help does not cancel strength.

Acknowledging the cost does not mean you regret the service. Surrendering something to God does not mean you quit.

For me, healing began when I stopped believing that another mission, another accomplishment, another business, another physical challenge, or another act of endurance could finally solve what effort alone had never been able to reach. I had to stop trying to rescue myself.

That did not happen in one dramatic moment. It happened slowly, through faith, reflection, repentance, forgiveness, humility, and a willingness to accept that some things would remain unanswered in this life. The fire had already taught me how to endure. Christ began teaching me how to release. That was the greater lesson.

The scars remain. Some are physical. Others are unseen. There are people I still miss. Some are physical. Moments from decades ago can return with astonishing clarity. Healing did not erase any of that. It changed my relationship with it.

The past no longer has to demand another mission in payment. Regret no longer has to become punishment. Pain no longer has to prove itself through more pain.

We can honor those we lost by living well. We can honor those we served beside by remaining connected. We can honor our families by becoming more present. We can honor the opportunities God gave us by using what we learned with greater wisdom. And we can honor the Savior by finally accepting the redemption we claim to believe He offers.

That is where I stand now. Not finished. Not perfected. Not untouched by the road behind me. But redeemed enough to know that the fire does not get the final word.

Service was one of the great privileges of my life, and the cost was real. So were the blessings. The wounds were real, and so is healing. The failures were real, and so is redemption.

For all who go when others need help, for those who stand watch, protect, rescue, heal, carry, and sacrifice, I hope you never lose the willingness to serve. But I also hope you learn sooner than I did that you were never meant to carry everything alone.

Prepare well. Serve faithfully. Love deeply. Accept responsibility for what is yours and release what is not. When effort has reached its limit, when there is no additional mission that can repair the loss, and no amount of strength can change what has already happened, trust the One who can reach where you cannot.

For most of my life, I believed the answer was to keep moving. Now I understand that sometimes the most important act of courage is to stop long enough to place what remains into the hands of God.

The fire built much of the man I became. Grace taught me what to do with what survived. After a lifetime of trying to carry the mission myself, I finally understand the freedom contained in four simple words.

Thy will be done.

Certain dates in history echo through the generations. Dates that become far more than moments on a calendar. They become symbols. They become reminders. They become markers that separate what was from what might have been. June 6, 1944, is one of those dates. It is remembered simply as D-Day, but behind those six characters lies one of the most extraordinary demonstrations of courage, sacrifice, and determination the world has ever witnessed.

As I reflect on this anniversary, I often find myself thinking less about the military operation itself and more about the men who carried it out. They were young—many barely out of high school. Some had never traveled far from home. They were farmers from Iowa, fishermen from New England, factory workers from Detroit, students from small towns scattered across America, Canada, Britain, and beyond. Most had never experienced combat. Yet on the morning of June 6, they climbed into landing craft and aircraft, knowing many would not survive the day.

The world they inherited was engulfed in war. For years, Nazi Germany had spread tyranny across Europe. Entire nations had fallen under occupation. Millions lived without freedom. Families had been torn apart. Innocent people suffered under oppression, persecution, and violence. The leaders of the Allied nations understood that to liberate Europe, someone would have to cross the English Channel and challenge one of the most heavily defended coastlines in history. Someone would have to confront the machine guns, artillery, mines, and fortified bunkers that stretched across the beaches of Normandy. Someone would have to stand between tyranny and freedom.

Before dawn, thousands of Allied paratroopers descended from the skies over France. Many landed far from their intended drop zones. Some found themselves alone, separated from their units and surrounded by enemy forces. In the darkness and confusion, they pressed forward anyway. They seized bridges, disrupted communications, and created chaos behind German lines. Their mission was critical to the invasion's success, and many paid for it with their lives. Yet despite the confusion and danger, they carried on because they understood that what they were doing mattered.

As the first light of dawn broke over the Normandy coast, thousands of landing craft approached the beaches. Utah. Omaha. Gold. Juno. Sword. Those names would soon become etched into history forever. Packed tightly into those boats were young men carrying rifles, ammunition, fear, and hope. They knew what awaited them. They had seen reconnaissance photographs. They had listened to briefings. They knew the beaches were covered by machine guns and artillery. They knew many of their friends would die. Yet they kept moving toward the shore.

I often wonder what went through their minds during those final moments before the ramps dropped. Perhaps they thought of their families back home. Perhaps they thought about a mother praying for them, a father who taught them to be strong, a sweetheart waiting for their return, or a future they hoped to build when the war was over. Perhaps they prayed. Perhaps they were too overwhelmed by fear to think clearly at all. Whatever they felt, they stepped forward when the moment came.

The fighting at Omaha Beach became one of the most brutal battles of the entire invasion. As the ramps lowered, many soldiers were met immediately with devastating enemy fire. Carefully planned formations dissolved into chaos. Officers were killed. Units became separated. Men found themselves pinned down on open beaches with nowhere to hide. The invasion itself seemed in danger of failing. Yet in those moments, something remarkable happened. Ordinary men stepped forward and became leaders. Small groups formed under intense fire. Soldiers crawled across the sand, climbed steep bluffs, attacked machine gun nests, and opened pathways for those behind them. D-Day succeeded not because everything went according to plan. It came because countless individuals refused to surrender.

That lesson has stayed with me throughout my own life. Whether in military service, search-and-rescue operations, humanitarian missions, business, or simply facing the challenges of everyday life, success rarely comes when conditions are perfect. More often than not, success comes because people refuse to quit. It comes because ordinary individuals continue moving forward despite fear, uncertainty, and hardship. The men of D-Day demonstrated that truth in its purest form.

By the end of June 6, more than 156,000 Allied troops had landed in Normandy. Thousands were dead, wounded, or missing. The cost was staggering. Yet a foothold had been established. The defenses had been breached. The liberation of Europe had begun. From those beaches would come the liberation of France, the eventual collapse of Nazi Germany, and the restoration of freedom to millions of people who had lived under oppression.

When I think about D-Day, I do not first think about generals or grand strategy. I think about individuals. I think about the medic running toward gunfire to help a wounded stranger. I think about the engineer clearing obstacles under enemy fire so others could advance. I think about the paratrooper fighting alone behind enemy lines. I think about the sailor navigating a landing craft through chaos and smoke. I think about the chaplain kneeling beside the dying. History remembers famous names, but freedom is most often secured by ordinary people performing extraordinary acts of courage.

Today, many of those veterans are gone. The Greatest Generation is passing from this world. Soon, no living witnesses will remain to tell these stories firsthand. That reality places a responsibility on all of us. We must remember what happened. We must teach future generations why it mattered. We must preserve the stories of those who sacrificed so much, because freedom itself depends on remembering the cost.

The men who stormed the beaches of Normandy did not fight because war was glorious. They fought because they understood that freedom was worth defending. They believed principles mattered more than comfort and safety. They believed future generations deserved the opportunity to live free from tyranny. They understood that some causes are worth risking everything for.

As Americans, we often find ourselves divided by politics, policies, and opinions. Yet D-Day reminds us of something deeper. Before any political label, before any ideology, we benefit from sacrifices we did not personally make. We enjoy freedoms secured by people we have never met. We walk through doors opened by those who gave everything they had. Remembering that truth brings humility and perspective.

Today, I encourage you to take a moment and reflect. Look at an American flag. Read the story of a D-Day veteran. Visit a memorial if you have the opportunity. Teach a child about the events of June 6, 1944. Say a prayer for those who never came home. Because beneath the quiet fields and beaches of Normandy lie thousands of young men who crossed an ocean to defend freedom for people they would never meet.

Their voices may be silent now, but their legacy still speaks. It speaks through every generation that lives in freedom. It speaks through every citizen who values liberty. It speaks through every act of courage, service, and sacrifice that follows in their footsteps.

The message they carried onto those beaches remains as true today as it was on that morning more than eight decades ago: freedom is never free. It must be defended. It must be protected. And it is always worth the sacrifice.

This is David Burnell. Today we remember the courage. We remember the cost. And we remember the men who stormed the beaches on the longest day. May we always be worthy of their sacrifice.

Before It Happens introduces the Defense for Women series on the David Burnell Podcast. In this foundational episode, David explains why personal safety begins long before a physical attack, how predators think, why awareness matters, and the core principles guiding the entire series. Learn why violence is not a fight, why prevention is the ultimate goal, and how recognizing danger early can help you stay safe before it happens.

Full Episode:

Welcome to the David Burnell Podcast and the Defense for Women series.

Before we talk about awareness, predators, intuition, boundaries, personal safety, and self-defense, I want you to understand who I am, why I’m creating this series, and where these lessons come from.

For more than forty years, I’ve worked in professions where understanding danger wasn’t optional—it was essential. My background includes service in the United States Air Force, where I worked in communications, intelligence support, combat communications, and close air support, as well as missions supporting Special Operations. Following my military service, I spent decades working in security consulting, protective services, executive protection, search-and-rescue operations, dive rescue and recovery, disaster response, humanitarian missions, violence prevention, and self-defense training.

Over the years, I’ve trained military personnel, law enforcement officers, rescue professionals, security teams, protective service specialists, and civilians. I’ve worked in disaster zones following earthquakes and tsunamis. I’ve deployed on humanitarian missions in places like Haiti, Japan, and Burma. I’ve participated in rescue and recovery operations where lives depended on preparation, awareness, and decision-making under pressure. I’ve taught awareness, preparedness, personal protection, and violence prevention to thousands of people, and I’ve spent much of my adult life studying how emergencies unfold, how people respond under stress, how criminals select victims, and how ordinary people can dramatically improve their chances of staying safe.

What I learned through all of those experiences surprised me.

The most important survival lessons rarely come from fighting. They come from avoidance. They come from awareness. They come from recognizing danger before danger recognizes you.

Throughout my career, I’ve watched people spend enormous amounts of time learning how to react to violence while spending very little time learning how to avoid it. Yet when you study real-world incidents, you discover something interesting. The people who consistently stay safe are often not the strongest. They are not the fastest. They are not necessarily the most skilled fighters.

They recognize danger early. They notice what others miss. They trust their instincts. They understand boundaries. They understand risk. And they act before a situation becomes a crisis.

That’s why I created Defense for Women.

I believe every woman deserves practical, realistic information about personal safety. Not fear. Not paranoia. Not sensational stories designed to scare people. Practical knowledge that can help you recognize danger sooner, make better decisions under pressure, and avoid becoming a victim in the first place.

The title of this episode—and in many ways the title of this entire series—is Before It Happens.

That phrase represents a fundamental shift in how we think about self-defense. Most people think self-defense begins when someone grabs you. Most people think self-defense begins when an attack starts. Most people think self-defense begins when violence becomes unavoidable.

I disagree.

Real self-defense begins long before that.

It begins with awareness. It begins with preparation. It begins with understanding how violence actually unfolds. And it begins with recognizing danger while you still have options.

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned throughout my life is that violence rarely happens the way people imagine it. Most people picture violence as a fight. They imagine two people facing each other, exchanging words, escalating into a confrontation, and eventually becoming physical.

Real violence is usually very different.

Real violence is often sudden. It is often unfair. It is often unexpected. And it is usually designed to overwhelm a victim before they have time to respond. The person who initiates violence often has the advantage because they choose the time, the place, the method, and the target.

That is why one of the core principles you’ll hear throughout this series is simple:

Violence is not a fight—it’s an event.

When you begin looking at violence as an event instead of a fight, everything changes. You stop focusing exclusively on what happens during an attack and start paying attention to everything that happens before it. You begin paying attention to awareness. You begin paying attention to behavior. You begin paying attention to patterns, warning signs, environmental cues, and the countless small details that most people overlook.

That is where prevention lives.

That is where safety lives.

And that is where this series begins.

Throughout the episodes ahead, we’ll discuss how predators think, how they select victims, how they test boundaries, and how they identify opportunities. We’ll explore situational awareness, intuition, personal safety, confidence, decision-making under stress, and practical principles to help you avoid becoming a target in the first place.

Most importantly, you’ll learn that personal safety is not about living in fear. It’s about living with awareness. It’s about understanding reality without becoming consumed by it. It’s about developing habits and mindsets that create options before a crisis occurs.

Because one of the principles you’ll hear throughout this series is simple:

You win early, or you lose late.

Every second of awareness creates options. Every option creates opportunities. Every opportunity increases safety.

The earlier you recognize a problem, the more choices you have.

The later you recognize a problem, the fewer choices remain.

That is why awareness matters.

That is why preparation matters.

And that is why this series exists.

Thank you for joining me for this introduction to Defense for Women on the David Burnell Podcast.

I sincerely appreciate you investing your time in yourself, your safety, and your future. My hope is that the lessons in this series will help you develop greater awareness, greater confidence, and a better understanding of how to recognize danger before it becomes a crisis.

In the episodes ahead, we’ll continue exploring practical strategies, proven principles, and real-world lessons designed to help you recognize danger earlier, avoid becoming a target, and stay safe before violence ever begins.

If you found this episode valuable, I encourage you to follow and subscribe to the David Burnell Podcast so you don’t miss future episodes in the Defense for Women series. Every episode builds upon the last, creating a complete framework for awareness, prevention, decision-making, and personal safety.

I’d also ask you to share this podcast with the women you care about—your daughters, wives, mothers, sisters, friends, coworkers, and anyone else who could benefit from this information. One lesson learned today may help someone avoid becoming a victim tomorrow.

You can also find additional episodes, articles, resources, and updates at davidburnell.substack.com.

Thank you again for listening and for being part of this community.

Remember these principles:

Violence is not a fight—it’s an event.

You win early, or you lose late.

Bad guys want it easy.

If it feels off, it is off.

And breaking contact is victory.

Remember, awareness creates options. Options create safety. And the best victory is often the danger you never have to face.

Until next time, stay aware, stay prepared, and stay safe.