"YOU JUST CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP" 2025 #4

 Last year, every Saturday I featured  a post called "Wisdom for 2024" This year, every Saturday, I will post a series of unusual personal experiences from the past under the title "You Just Can't Make This Stuff Up." Sometimes, names or locations will be changed or disguised to protect the guilty! Besides, I am retired! What can they do, fire me?

"LAZARUS" AND MY SECOND-CHANCE AT LIFE

Sometime around 1990, while I was pastor of the Cathedral of the Assumption, I was driving down Liberty Street to my house on Eastern Parkway. At a busy intersection, near St. Boniface Church, I noticed ahead of time that the light had just turned green as I approached the intersection. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a car speeding up as he attempted to "make it through the light." I realized, right away, that he was going to hit my driver's door head-on any second. I tried to brace myself for the impact! He hit my car door right beside the steering wheel! What felt like slow-motion, he turned my car completely upside down and spun it around a few times in the very center of the intersection. 

When the spinning stopped, I realized that I was hanging upside down in my seatbelt. Broken glass was everywhere. I seemed to be OK, but I was afraid to try to unbuckle my seatbelt for fear of falling into the broken glass that surrounded me. Hearing police and fire-truck sirens, I decided to hang upside down and wait  for the help to arrive.  When they got to the wreck site, they could not open the passenger side door beside me because it had been crushed in the over-turn. They broke the back glass out and one of the firemen climbed in, and seeing that I was not injured, cut my seatbelt and helped me exit through the back window. 

Standing on one of the street corners, I noticed that the book I was reading had come out of the car and its pages were blowing in the wind, right in front of me, in the middle of the intersection. It was like the book was waving at me for my attention! The book was entitled "Lazarus" by Morris West. I could not believe my eyes. Lazarus was the man that Jesus raised from the dead in the Scriptures! I asked one of the firemen to retrieve it for me as a souvenir! 

My car was completely "totaled," so after the police had completed their paperwork, I took a taxi to my house where Elaine Winebrenner and Julie Zoeller (Cathedral staff members) had been waiting for me to go to lunch. Puzzled when I got out of the taxi, they asked why I hadn't come in my car. Nonchalantly, I said "I'm sorry that I'm late, but I was just almost killed! My car is totaled. I had to take a taxi! Where do you want to go for lunch and which one of you can drive?" Again, I found that denial is a powerful pain reliever!