Amy Caracofe's Memorial Service

There is an ancient story that I have heard of. It is a story so old that it predates written language, and for the first few thousand years was told from father to son and mother to daughter and traveling teacher to towns. It is older than America, older than Europe, and the most ancient civilizations archaeologists know of. It is a story of beginnings, and a story of a longing that is shared across all peoples of the earth.

At one point in this story of beginnings, a Creator, who after taking what was formless and void and breathing life into it so that stars and moons and plants and animals bloom into life, moves then to make human beings, and he forms them from the dust of the ground and breathes life into them as he had with all that he had created before.

He places these human beings in a beautiful Garden in the midst of this creation for them to take care of, gives them the gift of naming the animals he has created, calls them into trusting relationship with one another, and at the end of each day, they walk together, Creator to created, in the Garden in the cool of the evening. The story is at this point is one of completion and utter satisfaction; the man and woman who he calls Adam and Eve are at peace with themselves, they have a trusting relationship with one another, they are at peace with the rest of God’s creation, and they enjoy wholeness in relationship with their Creator. We are told that the man and woman were naked, and they had no shame. This not only points to their physical reality, but all the way to the core of who they were. They had nothing to hide to from their Creator or one another. And it is in this healthy relationship that their Creator gave them one thing, ONE THING! that they were not to do.

We may be familiar with this story, where these persons, after being tempted by a crafty serpent to make the unthinkable, selfish decision to break that boundary, then find that something has shattered within them. Before they even see their Creator again, they become ashamed of their nakedness before one another and place coverings over themselves, they become afraid and try to hide from their Creator, and are ultimately cast out from this place of perfection and wholeness to a life of labor and hardship because of the decision that they have made. If you have a chance to read this story, you can find as it progresses beyond the Garden, that relationships degenerate into deep selfishness, mistrust and hatred between people groups, it is a story of a loss of innocence.

This is the basic backbone of the story of beginnings, but the intent of my telling the story is to suggest that it tells us a couple simple things about all of us. First, we are all created beings, and it explains why every one of us in this room experience a longing for wholeness in relationship.

And because we are created beings, we are called to recognize that the Creator knows better than we do what is good for us and what destroys us. And so, when Adam and Eve enjoyed this lifegiving relationship with their Creator, recognizing both the boundary He had set around what was good and the beauty of the life inside that boundary He had provided for them, they were complete beings. It is when Adam and Eve made the selfish decision to break the boundary God had provided for them and deny that He knew what was best for them that something fundamentally broke.

This story of beginnings has depth and meaning for us because we know we live in a world where something is fundamentally broken. It is a world where persons selfishly do what feels good and right to them rather than asking what is best for all of what surrounds us. And it is in this world that a huge majority of books written, music sung, and movies made relate to this story of beginnings by being about this longing for relationship; a hungering to feel complete. This hunger crosses cultural, ethnic, racial, and geographical barriers; it is a global desire for wholeness.

How does this relate to Amy Lin Caracofe’s life? On the most fundamental level, Amy was no different than anyone else in this room or in the world. She was created by God and deeply loved by God, and she was created to live in such a way that she brought a smile to God’s face in her daily life. But, like the rest of us, Amy struggled with knowing the difference between the life that God created her to long for and the desire to shape for herself what life should be about.

And like the rest of us, Amy didn’t walk in this life alone. One of the great lies of our society today is the belief that we are individuals who can live and act and shop and drive around completely free from the influence of others. It is a terribly naïve belief.

Every single one of us in this room is influenced by a variety of things, all telling us their own story of what they think life is all about. The music we listen to; the movies we watch; the advertisers peddling their products to us; the state we live in; the region, like the mountains or plains or the valleys we live in; whether we live in the North or the South; whether we live in the city, suburbs, or country; what high school we go to; what neighborhood we live in; who we hang out with at school, whether its rednecks or preps or jocks or emo kids or scenesters orpeople that don’t fit in any group; the people we interact with on Facebook, Myspace, Instant Messenger, or text message; our extended family and friends, our parents, and even our enemies.

All of these groups influence our lives, and here’s the kicker; they’re going to do it whether they are aware they are shaping our lives or not. Some of these groups shape our lives by ignoring us or treating us like dirt. Those groups are the ones that destroy our sense of self-worth and knowledge that we are loved and cared for. Some of these groups play off of the hungering we have for relationship and manipulate our emotions to get us to give them what they want. These are the groups who use us for their benefit and dump us in the ditch when we’re of no more use to them. Some of these groups shape our lives by simply doing what they want, leaving a legacy of selfishness.

Other groups display a deep caring for us, and restore in us the reality that we are deeply loved as God’s creation. Others live selflessly for the good of others, leaving a legacy of truth and beauty in their wake. Every life lived and thought that takes place in our brain and action that is carried out, like a stone dropped in a pond, has a ripple effect out into the rest of the world, and none of us has any idea where each ripple finally stops.

This is the world that you and me and Amy have lived in. And each of us in this place today has no idea how deeply we shaped Amy to live in the way she lived and make decisions in the way she did.

What makes the picture even more complex is the reality that we as human beings are imperfect, broken people who make mistakes along the way that have an impact on our lives and the lives of those around us. And as much as we’d like to blame God or question God or say that this catastrophe was God’s plan for Amy’s life to be ripped out of this world so violently, we need to tell the truth about this event.

Amy’s life came to an end on Thursday morning because of a couple of poor choices that any of us in this room can make and have made. Amy was driving over 70 miles an hour on a twisty county road when the lip of her tire probably fell off the shoulder, and in trying to come back onto the road, Amy overcorrected and sent her car careening the other direction so abruptly that she hit the tree on the left side of the road all the way over on the passenger side of the car.

And as much as Carrie Underwood would like us to believe in the first half of her famous song that Jesus will take over the steering wheel in the middle of an accident, 99.9% of the time God will not do so. Amy’s life came to an end on Thursday because of her mistakes. Knowing that I might come off as self-righteous in saying this, I want to re-emphasize that the mistakes Amy made are mistakes any of us could make.

I have struggled, and continue to struggle, with the desire to feel the rush of driving faster than I should. I have struggled, and continue to struggle, with driving on certain roads so often that I let down my guard and don’t pay the best of attention. I have run off the road and overcorrected before regaining control multiple times. And most of us in this room have done the same! This is neither the time nor the place for any of us to give a moral lesson on the hazards of speeding on a twisty road.

But it’s true that our decisions have consequences, and Amy’s did. In a way that has sent shock waves of grief through this entire community. But for us to suggest that this is God’s plan or that God did this either

a) makes God out to be a monster who directs cars into trees and

b) doesn’t take into account the human reality of this accident.

Let’s not blame God for a human mistake.

So where does that leave us? It leaves us in shock, in sadness, feeling a variety of emotions, needing to support one another and Angie and Doug and their family in this great loss. But it also gives us the opportunity to step back from our lives and take account of who we are, to remind ourselves that we aren’t immortal, and, I’d suggest most importantly, to consider the impact our lives are having on the lives of others.

I believe with all my heart that the story of beginnings is true, that each of us is born with a spark of God in us, a hungering for whole relationship with the one who has made us. And as I’ve had a chance to think back over the last few days on my interactions with Amy, I can say without a doubt that she was somehow in touch with that spark within her. I’m not God, so I couldn’t see through all the exterior layers of what Amy wanted me to see to look right into her heart, but several instances popped out to me.

I’ve been told that Amy went down to a Vacation Bible School when she was 14, and at some point she was moved enough to make a commitment to follow Jesus. She may not have known what she was getting into, or what this commitment fully meant, but Amy tapped into that longing in her heart that day and said yes.

Amy would also, from time to time over the last couple of years, come to our youth group that met in a home of a family from our church. I noticed that Amy played a certain role in our group when she came; she was the popular one, and she tried to often seemed disinterested in what we were talking about together. However, I’ve found through experience in working with teenagers that you have to look beyond their body language that is often negative and instead look at their eyes. One’s eyes often display one’s true emotions, and I remember that Amy’s eyes would light up with interest at certain places in conversations we had as a youth group.

Two years ago, Amy came to Baltimore on a trip to a youth event called Acquire the Fire; her friend Jamie came along with us. Over the course of our trip from Fort Defiance to Baltimore, I noticed a small change in Amy. With our group, Amy didn’t seem as focused on being the person she felt she had to be at school. We had a great time up there together, but what I remember most distinctly now is the couple of times that I remember sitting beside her during when I saw tears well up and glisten in her eyes during the singing.

I mention these things because I’ve been around long enough to know that even though evangelists or some Christians trump up conversions to following Jesus as “I have SEEN the light” experiences and everything changed completely and immediately for all time, much more often persons experience God’s love in a much more incremental way. It comes from a series of events; something a parent says, the way they’re treated in a crisis situation, whether they have a relationship with someone where they can be truly and deeply honest about their joys AND their struggles and doubts. What I’m saying is that the environment surrounding a person makes it much more or less likely that they’ll be able to put a finger on the longings inside them and say, “God has put this longing inside me, and I intend to pursue it.”

I grew up in a relatively healthy home situation; my parents provided well for my physical needs, but the entire time from sixth grade through college was a crisis experience for me. In middle school, I was extremely short, wore glasses, didn’t have fashionable clothing, kids called me a nerd, pushed me around in the hallways, and generally treated me like a piece of dirt unless they wanted to cheat off me on tests. Each time I was pushed around or called a name or ignored, it only fed the desire within me to BE somebody that others LIKED and WANTED TO BE WITH. In the summer between 10th and 11th grade, I shot up in height and generally started to be noticed a little more as I had modest success in the sports I played. And as persons noticed me more, that desire that had burned within me to BE ACCEPTED poured out of me with a vengeance. I wanted SO BADLY to be ACCEPTED that I was willing to do almost anything. But as much as I became someone entirely different at Fort, I still had to deal with the reality that everyone remembered me as the short little nerdy choirboy named Nathan.

College presented an entirely new opportunity for me to completely remake who I was to perfectly fit what others might like, and as soon as I got there, I hopped to that task. I was a class officer, played rugby, abused alcohol, was well-liked, and became SOMEBODY in the eyes of others. I did what I wanted. I should’ve been happy with that life, if that’s all there is. All along the way, though, on the outer circle of my friends I knew young men and women who seemed more at peace with themselves, who through the character of their lives as well as their words were showing me how empty and false I had become. I didn’t know who I was, and my actions were hurting me and hurting those around me. As I look back on my life now, I can safely say that for six years, the ripple effect off my life was more destructive to others than it was healing.

I had a nagging sense of pain I carried within me in those years, and from time to time it would come to the surface when a song or a movie would catch me with my guard down and open up a crack in the armor of who I had become. I would feel the wall break down inside of me between who I was and who God had created me to be long enough for tears to well up in my eyes and a silent cry come out of my heart. I couldn’t put words to it; now I can. But it was that same look and tears that I saw in Amy’s eyes in Baltimore, and that same silent cry I would see in her eyes at youth group.

And that is why I mentioned the power each of us in this room holds to shape the lives of one another. I ask you to think, right now and after you leave this place, how did you shape the life of Amy? And how are you shaping the lives of others around you? Did you help Amy to live into the purpose God placed in her heart at birth? Did you help her feed that spark inside of her, be the person she was created to be, or did you stifle it and cause her to try to be someone she wasn’t?

None of us has the luxury now to step back from our relationship with Amy, take account of our influence, and continue in relationship with her. Still, my desire here today is not to hammer each one of us with guilt over what we could’ve should’ve would’ve done in Amy’s life, but that each one of us would recognize the great influence we all have on those around us by the substance of our life. Lives hang in the balance in this room, and depend on whether you and I long to return to the beginning and walk with our Creator in the cool of the day, listening to his dreams for our life and to be in relationship with one another in such a way that we don’t have to be afraid or hide from others.

The second half of Carrie Underwood’s song is an incredibly simple and beautiful commitment the mother makes after her car stops spinning on the ice;

She bowed her head to pray, She said I'm sorry for the way I've been living my life. I know I've got to change, so from now on tonight. Jesus take the wheel, take it from my hands. Cause I can't do this on my own. I'm letting go, so give me one more chance to save me from this road I'm on.