In fourth grade my younger brother and I were alone in the house. We heard noise and movement and had a strong sense that there was some presence in the house. We also knew that it was supernatural or demonic. Initially that was terrifying. We climbed onto the couch and prayed aloud—and spoke to the spiritual realm and told the darkness to go away in the name of Jesus. We did that for about ten minutes and then all was well.
Once, as a twenty year old, while walking down a lonely Chicago alleyway late at night, I spotted a guy walking toward me. He was thuggish and rough-looking. I imagined him pulling out a knife as we passed and slamming it into a my stomach and gutting me on the street and then me dying alone, my clasped hands unable to stop the bleeding and keeping my innards from spilling all over the sidewalk. That imagination happened in a split second, like some sort of warning, things were frozen with this slow motion intensity, so I walked wide around him and went safely on.
Several years ago my daughter Selah and I were driving home from Speak Up in our minivan. We were in the right-most lane of four lanes, going fast on I-77, when a driver to my left abruptly changed lanes. Somehow he didn’t see us and slammed into the back half of the minivan, which caused it to flip 180 degrees-we were going backwards at high speed, crossed three lanes of oncoming traffic, and slammed into the median. All the vehicles were coming straight at us, but they managed to slow or swerve or skid off the to the side. I jumped out of the van, opened my daughter’s door, pulled her out of the car seat, and then ran across four lanes to safety on the side of the road, where I saw the other driver, who I recognized as a kid I’d taught high school to ten years before, he was badly shaken, but unharmed like us, and all was well.
About a decade ago I was driving home from my in-laws house with Lana, Isaac, and two-year-old Isabel. We were cruising slowly through the neighborhood, when lights from a patrol car flashed behind us. The cop took my license and said we had a tail light out. No problem, I thought. But it was a problem. Six months before I’d gotten a ticket in North Carolina and had been late in paying it. When I had initially been late, the NC DMV sent a letter to the SC DMV telling them to suspend my license. Well, fortunately I paid the ticket before my license needed to be suspended but SC never got the message. I was arrested for driving with a suspended license. While my wife and kids cried, I was handcuffed, pushed into a patrol car, and taken to jail for the night. Initially that was scary, but once I got to my cell and met the other guys—one black, one Mexican—they told me that they too were innocent, and since I was innocent too, I was sure all would be well, which it was. The bed was too small, blanket too thin, and food cold, but I met with a judge the next morning and was home before noon.