Responsibility and Character

I wanted to make this article about using your common sense... about making good choices, but the stories of the people involved here are so much richer fodder for subject material.  Yes, drunk driving is an issue that cannot be covered enough.  Yes, we have to keep pushing the message to not drink and drive.  Yes, yes, yes... but there is a story here that has so much to loose in the cliche' this the message has become that I have redirected my focus for this article to the people involved in this story.

Jacqui Saburio has been featured in Oprah's daytime talk show and is often featured in such venues because of her incredible story of survival.  She is a native born Venezuelan and moved to Texas in 1999 to go to school majoring in engineering.  She was a beautiful 20 year old woman full of promise and hope for the future.  One Saturday morning all that changed or so it would seem.  Reggie Steffie, a high school football star had a game on Friday night.  Here too, was a young adult full of promise and hope and looking forward with great plans for life.  He was at a party that night and had a great time with team mates and friends till the wee morning hours when he decided it was time to go.

Complete strangers whose lives were to become irreversibly entangled through the tragedy of a car accident involving alcohol in which both lives would be forever changed.  Not only theirs but those of their entire families.  After a head on collision in which two of her friends were instantly killed, Jacqui was pinned in a burning car long enough to have had her hair, skin, fingers, and entire face melted off.  Reggie was physically uninjured, but his football career was over.  He would spend the next 7 years in prison and have to pay a fine of $20,000.00.  This was the least of his concerns.  When he learned the extent of Jacqui's injuries, he would lose his appetite, his ability to sleep, and his self worth.

Jacqui has had to endure 50 surgeries at last count and still counting to restore as much as possible of her face and mobility in her gnarled fingerless hands and arms.  That is the tragedy of one fateful decision by a teenage drunk driver.  Now for the rest of the story.  Jacqui misses her body,  her beautiful body and all that entails.  She is so very scarred that when she goes out into public, she is stared at as if she is some kind of monster.  In fact, when she first saw her altered face, she considered it the face of a monster.  Under the advice of a cousin, she determined to allow herself 5 minutes per day to cry and mourn her loss.  She recognizes that she has to move on.  As Oprah asked, "Are you glad you survived?"  Without hesitation, Jacquelin's response is an emphatic "Yes!  I want to live and experience everything I can.  I don't want to miss out on anything."  But the most telling moment of Jacqui's character was when she met Reggie's mother for the first time.  Consoling the woman who was choking up in telling her of her prayers for Jacquelin, Jacquelin offered her gnarled stump of a hand to this woman who had birthed the man who did this damage to her.  Jacqui understands in all the loss, to hold grievance against Reggie and his family is not gain to her, but would be further loss for herself.  She is perhaps a more beautiful person in the revelation of such character.

Reggie is no monster.  His guilt is something he will be saddled with for the rest of his life.  His regret is in no way mollified by the 7 years he is spending behind bars or by the $20,000.00 dollars he has to pay in fines.  He carries a picture of Jacqui in his mind and it will haunt him until the day he dies.  I ask you, "Could you live with that?"  Could you live in the knowledge that a beautiful young woman has been transformed into the image of horror by your stupid decision?  If you were Jacqui, could you summon the moral fiber to console the one who made you the picture of horror so that you face a mirror and have no other description of the image you see there but monster?  Could you find the strength to resolve to make the best of what you have left?  Some would consider this a fate worse than death.   I happen to disagree.  I believe each one of us has a greater purpose than self concern.  I believe Jacqui and Reggie can use their testimonies to encourage others.  I believe that these testimonies should be used to give glory to God.  In Jacqui, by finding the strength to go on in a spirit of joy.  In Reggie, testifying of incredible forgiveness available through the suffering of another.

These are two extreme examples of choices and consequences.  But every decision in life has consequences, some great and some so small as to be thought irrelevant.  Everybody would fare much better if we took the responsibility for our decisions much more seriously.