If I Die, Will You Write Something About Me?

Seven years ago today, my best friend, Caroline Hartrampf, took her last breaths and stepped into eternity.  I never thought I would experience the death of my best friend so early in life, but when I look back on our times together, I'm not so sure Caroline was as unprepared for the end of her life as I was.  It's strange because Caroline was not suffering from an illness or a disease.  She didn't even have the slightest trace of a cold or allergy problem when she left this earth.  But still, somehow, Caroline seemed to know her time was limited, and she lived the limited time with an unparalleled passion for her Heavenly Father.

Caroline once asked me, "If I die, will you write something about me?"  I always thought that was a weird question coming from a perfectly healthy eighteen-year-old, but now, I see the greater purpose in it.  Caroline's story is not just Caroline's story.  Her request for me to write about her has been so much more than me simply putting words down onto paper because the words I have written are not really about her, and they're not really about me.  They're about God.  They show how mighty and perfectly orchestrated His plans are.  Let me explain.

Earlier in the year of Caroline's death, I had considered moving home from the University of Alabama.  My older brother was struggling through some life choices, and I wanted to be there for my family.  Caroline begged me not to leave her.  Her parents were going through a divorce, and she felt that similar desire to return home and be there for her family, but she felt like God had a bigger plan for her than simply returning home.  Caroline felt that way about me too.  She didn't want me to run away from the place where God had placed me, looking for some other purpose than the one He had right before me.  It only took one serious conversation with Caroline for me to agree with her.  I knew she was right.  God had me where He wanted me so I stayed at UA.  In my mind, that meant Caroline and I would have three and a half more years in Tuscaloosa, AL to glorify God and do His kingdom work together.  I was ecstatic.

Naturally, Caroline and I, being the best friends that we were, decided to sign up for all of the same classes.  At that point in time, I was pursuing dentistry.  I wanted to be like my retired granddad and my aunt.  I'm not really sure what Caroline wanted to be.  She wasn't really sure either.  Well, I take that back.  Caroline wanted be married more than anything.  But in the waiting process, she didn't so much care what classes she took or what major she settled on.  Caroline knew that she had a bigger purpose than that.  She was sold out to God.  She cared about one thing and one thing alone: glorifying God with her whole life in each and every moment.

I remember sitting by Caroline during a sermon one time.  The sermon discussed the present.  The speaker talked about how we so desperately yearn for the future when God has given us the present to live out His love, to be His hands and feet and to do His kingdom work.  He went on to tell a story about a lady in a restaurant.  A waitress.  This waitress was absolutely miserable.  She seemed to hate her job and everything about it, including the people who sat at her table.  Well, this speaker decided that this waitress was just as important in the Kingdom of God as he was.  She wasn't just a waitress with a bad attitude.  She was a woman who was broken, just like the rest of us.  So the speaker waited in a long line every single day of his vacation to sit at this woman's table so that he could shine a little light in her life.  By the end of the speaker's vacation, the woman's spirits had lifted, and she was a new woman entirely.  Had the speaker been too focused on his future, he would have missed the opportunity in each day of his vacation to see that woman for something more than a waitress with a bad attitude.  Sadly then, that woman would have never been able to separate her identity from what it was as a waitress with a bad attitude.

In closing, the speaker asked us to pray for an opportunity to live out our faith in the present.  He encouraged us to not get caught up in what our futures would hold because in all honesty none of us our guaranteed that future.  We only have that present moment.  We only have the present day.  Sure, it's important to work towards future goals, but when those future goals consume all that we are and cause us to miss the moment that we're in, that's when we have a problem.  That's when we miss the doors that are open right in front of us.  I prayed that I would not miss that opportunity, and in that moment, a face came to my mind.  It was clearer than any face I've ever seen.  There was no denying to whom that face belonged.

When the prayer was over, I turned to Caroline, and I said, "We have to make the Smoothie Lady smile."  Caroline looked at me.  As a great big smile crept across her face, she said, "I was thinking the same thing."  You may be wondering who this Smoothie Lady was, so let me fill you in.  At UA, there is a place called the Ferguson Center (UA students refer to it as "the Ferg") where you can eat at a variety of restaurants and socialize with your friends.  It's like a college version of a mall food court.  Well, at the Ferg, there was a Smoothie King, and there was a lady, the Smoothie Lady, who worked at Smoothie King.  The Smoothie Lady was the saddest, gloomiest, most depressing looking lady I have ever seen in my entire life.  I used to order smoothies just to tell her that I hoped she had a good day, and her response time and time again was a simple nod with the same sad, gloomy, depressing expression that she'd worn every other day.

Caroline and I knew that we were up for a challenge.  I mean, how do you make someone smile when you're nice to them every single day, and they don't respond at all?  There's not bitterness or hatred there.  There's apathy, and that's something so much harder to overcome than the worst bitterness or hatred.

If you must know, Caroline and I were a duo of weirdos so our plan to make the Smoothie Lady smile came a little more quickly than we had intended.  We were eating lunch, and it hit us.  We'd sing and dance for her.  In the middle of the campus food court, two girls who knew nothing about singing or dancing planned to sing and dance for the purpose of a smile.  The funny thing was Caroline and I never doubted our ideas once we'd come up with them.  We simply knew what we were supposed to do, and no matter how weird or uncomfortable it seemed, we were confident that God had a purpose for us that far surpassed that momentary awkwardness.  So we carried out our plans.  We lived in the moment.

Already laughing, we walked up to the Smoothie Lady.  We asked for her name, which just so happened to be Natasha, and we asked her what her favorite song was.  Natasha didn't know what song was her favorite, but we had her attention right there.  The sad, gloomy, depressing expression faded away the moment we stepped past the surface level attempt to brighten her day and actually tried to get to know her.  She wasn't just the Smoothie Lady.  She had a name.  She was Natasha.  Her life wasn't about serving us smoothies.  It had a purpose just like ours.  The moment we saw that, we burst into song.  Caroline and I sang Chris Brown's "With You," complete with our own made up hand motions.  The entire Ferg watched as we made fools of ourselves, but we didn't care.  We didn't care because Natasha didn't smile.  She laughed.  And I'm not talking a simple sympathetic chuckle.  I'm talking a full body laugh.

From that day on, Natasha remembered us.  Every time we walked into the Ferg, she smiled.  Caroline and I were never so excited about another single moment of our friendship.  We knew with all of our hearts that God had a plan for us in that present moment, and it went beyond making a lady smile or laugh.  We were sharing God's love with someone who could've been a perfect stranger our whole lives.  The gospel was our heart's cry, and we didn't need a fancy degree or a life planned out on paper to share that story.  We shared it as we were - two imperfect friends with no idea what the future was going to bring.

I think it was about a week before Caroline's death when we decided to give Natasha the copy of The Purpose Driven Life that I'd just finished reading.  That was the last time either of us ever saw Natasha, and that was one of the last few times I ever saw Caroline.  You see, Caroline's story is the greatest story of friendship that I know.  It's not because she was perfect.  It's not because her life was void of mistakes.  It's not even because she had it all together.  Caroline's story is the greatest story of friendship that I know because Caroline lived out the gospel with every breath of her life while she still had the opportunity to do so.  She knew she wasn't strong enough or good enough on her own, and she was okay with that.  She let God shine through her in such a way that people are still touched by her life seven years after her death.  You see, living in the present moment for Caroline was not just the present moment.  It was her whole future, too.  

Caroline was more than a best friend to me; she was my sister-in-Christ.  A real sister, too.  One with whom I could be vulnerable and honest.  One who loved me despite my failures and mistakes.  One who taught me to love God more than anything that this world has to offer.  One who taught me that the present is the greatest moment that we have because it may be all that we have.  Caroline's friendship forever changed me.  It made me see God in a whole new way.  It made me see people in a whole new way.  I am forever grateful that God allowed for our paths to cross in the short time that they did.