Imagine for a moment losing your daughter in an automobile accident. You go through grieving for your child for about a month, only later to learn that she survived. That’s was one family’s experience. The other family is told that their child is the only one who survived a terrible crash and that she is in a coma. The parents spend about a month believing that their loved one will pull through, only to find out that once the child wakes up, she is not their daughter at all. And that there real daughter died in the accident. It is a case of mistaken identity. This is the premise for a new book, Mistaken Identity, written by Don and Susie Van Ryn, and Newell, Colleen, and Whitney Cerak, with Mark Tabb.
Mistaken Identity is a true, gut-wrenching story about five people from Taylor University who lost their lives on April 26, 2006, and the lone survivor of the crash (Whitney Cerak) whose identity was mixed up with one of the other female victims (Laura Van Ryn). The story reveals two family’s attempts to cope with the loss of their child, the revelation that two of the crash victims identities were mixed up, and the love and support that both families felt from their families, friends, and complete strangers – some who reached around the world.
One of the most amazing aspects of the book was that the families were not bitter about the mix up by the authorities. Especially in an age of law suits, it seems extraordinary that the families were able to forgive both the truck driver who caused the accident, and the authorities who were responsible for the identification mix up. The parents expressed an intense desire to move on and follow God’s will in their lives. The authors effectively detail the family’s emotional journey. I found the book hard to put down.
A couple of interesting points in the book for me was that I knew Pastor Tom Foster from the Samaritan House in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. The Van Ryns noted that they were able to stay at the Samaritan House while they were not visiting in the hospital with Whitney Cerak (who at that time,the Van Ryns believed to be their daughter, Laura Van Ryn). The Van Ryns had traveled a long way from their home in Michigan. Pathway Community Church is also mentioned in the book. Volunteers from the church brought meals to the Van Ryns and friends who were staying at the hospital. A lady named “Julie” from Pathway brought over forty pizzas and bottled water to the people there.
I attended Taylor with several of the leaders from Pathway, and I have worked there on several occasions to help maintain their facility. It was neat to read about the people and churches I know. But, it was even more incredible to see the Church in motion doing what it does best: reaching out and being the hands and feet of God, ministering to the needs of a hurting world. That was the real story to me.