If you know me or follow my blog, perhaps it’s time for some transparent self-disclosure. There are a few things you should know about me. First, despite having been a cheerleader and athlete, I’m a klutz. Every day starts with things falling out of my hands, and many days end with broken toes. Second, I’m a magnet for weird. Let me give you some examples.

When I was 5, we moved from D.C. to Ohio, where my mom, my sister and I bunked with an elderly man named Bombi and his grandson. Bombi doubled as a department store Santa Claus and a hearse driver. I still believed in Santa Claus – that is, till I found his suit when I went exploring in the attic before boarding the school bus one morning. Seeing Bombi’s suit and handbell, I thought, “Apparently anybody can be Santa, which means I can be Santa, so I can collect milk money from the other kids on the bus so my mom can afford a house of her own.” Unimpressed with my scheme, the bus driver grabbed me by my Santa collar and returned me to my mother, who made my penance a day riding around in the hearse collecting bodies with Bombi. And my grandmother wondered why I had strange dreams.

I remember being a young editor at an Ohio newspaper in the days of letter press and composing rooms. I would typically dress for success in a suit or dress and a slight heel. That’s what I was wearing the day I rolled down the stairs on my way to the composing room and landed, legs sprawled into the air, in the middle of the foyer, where customers were ordering classified ads. Here was mine: Help Wanted.

And then there was the day of our Realtor caravan when we were selling our old house. It was the day after Labor Day, and we had been out of town. While we were away, our fridge died, leaving the whole house smelling of death. And the death remained in my garage because garbage collection was suspended till later in the week. So I focused on eliminating the smell of death; my dog, freaked out by the crowd, focused on eliminating all over the floor. So focused was I on elimination that I failed to put away the lingerie I left drying over the garden tub. Yes, now men in two states knew what I wore under my clothes.

Weirdness surrounds me even when I try to be helpful. I once offered to take care of a new pastor’s pet sugar glider when he and his wife went away to attend high school camp. They told me sugar gliders were a type of a flying squirrel. When we immediately found it curled up on the bottom of the cage, we assumed it was dead and buried it. Only afterward did we discover sugar gliders are not squirrels. They’re POSSUMS. And what do possums do when they’re frightened? THEY PLAY DEAD. With this revelation, we did what any good pet caretaker would do: We dug it up, only to find it had, in fact, already been dead. I didn’t know how I felt about that. In fact, I still don’t.

Not long after that, on the day before 6-6-06, a man who believed he was Satan threatened one person and assaulted another, and then deliberately T-boned my car with his rented Jaguar while police were already on their way. I watched, stunned, as he responded to questions while in a fetal position inside the trunk of his car. This is my life, my friends. You don’t need to be jealous. And you also don’t need to be concerned if you see me sit down near you in church, only to get up immediately clutching a blood-soaked tissue onto my forearm.

‘For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. – Jeremiah 29:11

I cling to that promise through all the weirdness and the injuries that seem to define my life – seem to, because they don’t. I am a child of the King of Kings, and that’s a distinction I’ll gladly share.