Walking It Out
March 27, 2008 by Laura | Trackback URI
This story is simply heartbreaking - and it’s also what the Christian faith is all about.
[A] van carrying five students and five employees from Taylor University, a small evangelical Christian college in Upland, Ind., was struck head-on by a tractor trailer whose driver had fallen asleep on I-69 between Indianapolis and Fort Wayne.
Five people were killed instantly. One young woman was barely breathing when she was airlifted to a hospital with several broken bones and serious head trauma. The badly injured woman was identified as Laura Van Ryn, the dead woman as Whitney Cerak.
It wasn’t until five weeks later that the families learned the identifications were wrong.
The Van Ryn family rallied around the injured woman, keeping a bedside vigil and updating a blog with her progress as she began to recover from very serious injuries, including a brain injury. Doctors told them “Laura” wouldn’t be the same person. She was heavily bandaged, and experienced swelling because of her injuries. There were details that were wrong, but nothing that couldn’t be explained away. After five weeks, they learned that their daughter had died when Whitney had recovered enough to identify herself.
As people of faith, didn’t they ever ask, “How can God allow this to happen?”
“Not so much,” Don Van Ryn replied. “Over the years, God has shown himself to us, and we kind of know his character. We know that bad things happen to good people. We believe that God is sovereign, and he takes an active part in our lives, and even in sorrow there is joy.”
I had forgotten all about that.
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