The Rev. Frank Logue
Hidden Treasures Assembly of God
Kingsland, Georgia
November 8, 2003

A Unique Life to Celebrate
A Funeral Sermon for Natasha Elizabeth Dressel 

If my words today sound traditional—perhaps even like something you may have heard somewhere before—then I will have failed miserably. We gather in the midst of shock and grief at Natasha Elizabeth Dressel’s untimely death to celebrate her life and if I am to get this right, my words had better be a little funky—not exactly what you would expect. 

For just a moment, put Tasha out of your mind and see if you can conjure the image of a typical 12-year old girl—a girl right on the edge of being a teenager. A girl beginning to primp in front of the mirror and experiment with make-up before deciding which dress to wear to impress her girlfriends, if not boys. 

If you were able to get that image in your mind for a few seconds, you haven’t been picturing Tasha. Let’s just say, “Pink is not her gig.” As for dresses, forget about it. When classmates were asked to create cards for Tasha and RG this week, her friend Kendra drew a picture of an angel in pants and a shirt saying “I won’t wear a dress even in heaven.” I have no doubt that is true. 

Tasha was a special girl to be sure. A girl who loved tools—everything that could fix things. She could tear down a motorcycle and rebuild it faster than a guy. On the back porch at home her tool chest sits next to the Yamaha she was breaking down and fixing. In the house, her Flatspin BMX bike leans against a wall. In the corner of her room is her drum set for her band, The Leathel Breed, her nickname “Stevo” among the words lettered on the drumhead. Lyrics to songs she wrote are tacked to the wall behind the drums. Treasured possessions of a unique girl. 

OK, Tasha was a Tom Boy, but in calling her a Tom Boy you haven’t captured the special girl whose life we come to celebrate today. I remember watching Tasha practice Tae Kwan Do and the word to describe Tasha doing martial arts was grace. Grace. Smooth motions that made the forms look effortless. She looked nothing like a boy doing Tae Kwan Do, and certainly not like her brother RG’s more precise moves. 

You can’t say that Tasha never did the girl stuff. She was a cheerleader after all. Yet, sitting on a shelf in her room next to the two cheerleading trophies are her two football trophies. Tasha might have cheered football players on from the sidelines, but she moved off the sidelines and on to the field where she was a hard-hitting defensive linegirl, well…lineman. She could flatten a boy with a good lick and then take her helmet off and shake out her long hair just to make sure he knew a girl had knocked him on his backside. 

That was Tasha. A girl not content to cheer on from the sidelines, it was just like her to get out in the action, to be where something exhilarating was going on. Sure, she had her mellow, “Peace out” side, but she also liked to feel the wind biting her face while riding on the back of a motorcycle. 

She was a special girl and her death leaves a hole in the lives of not just her family, but in the lives of many friends, at her school and well beyond. Tasha’s death leaves a tear in the fabric of our lives that we don’t want to mend.  

I stand here having the nerve to summarize her life, but Tasha had just turned 12. Twelve years old. We should not be here at all. She should still be with us full of life, and not with us in spirit and in memories.  

Blame is an easy way to try to deal with loss, but we don’t blame anyone, certainly not the driver of the car that hit her. We pray for God’s peace for her, just as we pray for God’s peace and comfort for RG, T, Liz and John, Marian, Tim, Glenn, Charles and all of us in Tasha’s large circle of family and friends.   

We try to make sense out of what has happened, but it is still all too soon. The pain is still raw. Surely Tasha is not really dead. There must be some mistake. It can’t be true. And yet, we can’t deny the reality of her death. As Christians, we know that death is very real, and the grief and loss we feel in death is not unchristian. In fact, it is very Christian to feel loss at a death, as we know that Jesus grieved at the death of his friend Lazarus.  

The Prophet Isaiah had foretold that Jesus would be “a man of sorrows, acquainted with bitterest grief” (Isaiah 53:3). Yet the letter to the Hebrews tells us that Jesus came to free those who were held in slavery by the fear of death (Hebrews 2:15). The Good News of Jesus is Good News even on a morning like this one—especially on a morning like this one.  

Even as we gather in shock and grief over Tasha’s death, we know that death is not the final answer. Jesus overcame death and we can gather on a day like today and praise the God who formed Tasha, the God who loved her more deeply than any of us even knew how to for he knew her every thought, every moment of her life.  

We know that while God would never cause Tasha’s death, our loving God will nonetheless redeem the tragedy in amazing ways. Even in the midst of death, we find life springing up all the time and that is especially true with Tasha. She had spoken recently with her Mom about how she thought donating organs was cool, not knowing that in that casual statement were the seeds of new life for people dying with failing organs. Tasha saved five lives this week through donating her organs. And that is just the briefest beginnings of the ways God will redeem the tragedy of her death. 

Yet, Tasha does not live on through the organs she donated, she lives on in eternal life with the loving God who redeemed her in life and resurrected her in death. And heaven help them if anyone in the Kingdom of God was expecting a typical 12-year old girl.  

Even in the uncertainty that follows tragedy, we know some things for sure. We know with a certainty that Tasha is with her loving creator and that she is beyond pain and suffering we feel.  

The other two things we know are this: Tasha is not in pink and she is not wearing a dress. Not now. Not for eternity. We know this because God loves Tasha the way you love Tasha, not despite the fact that she had her own gig, but because of it.  

Amen.