Crash And Burn: Experiencing Jesus Head-On

Crash and Burn

…experiencing Jesus Head on!

Glad to be here…get out of the city where there is bad traffic! I love it out here!

I get sick of bad, big city drivers, especially Christian drivers…

If you are a bad Christian driver I have some friendly advice for you…

Don’t put Christian bumper stickers on your car! There’s nothing like being cut off or flipped off by somebody who has got an “I love Jesus” bumper sticker!

o “Buddha Rules”

o “How’s my driving call 1-800-I’m An Atheist”…then you could just ram people…I’m an atheist and I just don’t care!

I have got to admit that I’m a bad Christian driver. I have gotten into 9 accidents behind the wheel since I got my license. To be honest with you I don’t think it’s not my fault. It’s my mom’s. The first car wreck that I ever got in was with my mom and she set the pattern for the rest of my life.

Now you got to understand something about my mom. She was tough. She was like a combination of a soccer mom and the terminator. She was the mominator!

To her the car she drove was more like a tank that she was commandeering through the battlefield of rush hour traffic. And pity the fool who got in her way or cut her off. It was then that her road rage took steroids.

Needless to say I got a little nervous every time I road with mom somewhere. I never knew what was going to happen.

It all came to a head when I turned fifteen. Fifteen is a bad age. Why? Because you’re almost there, you are almost old enough to drive by yourself but your parents have to still pick you up from school in the dork-mobile.

And that night my mom was picking me up in the family dork mobile…a huge car that is considered cool by today’s standards but back then was embarrassing to be seen in…a 1969 Chevrolet Impala. It was a huge car. It was like a barge with wheels. You could drive it out on a lake on a hot Summer day and it would just keep going.

I’ll never forget it as we pulled up to a stoplight and right next to us were four of the cutest high school girls I had ever seen in this 1965 Ford Mustang. All of a sudden these girls burst out of the car and ran around there car a few times yelling and screaming and messing around. On the way around one of the girls hit our car and that made my mom mad. By this time they’re back in their car waiting for the light to turn green, laughing!

Mom was mad and told me to roll down the window. She was going to yell at these girls.

I told her that I wasn’t going to do that.

She told me to roll it down.

I said “no mom!”

She said, “Do it or die boy!!!” (I rolled down the window!)

I rolled down the window as one of the most humiliating experiences of my teenage years was about to unfold.

She yelled at these girls, “Hey you little brats do you think your hot stuff?”

“Yeah, you old lady!”

That made Mommy mad.

“You wanna race?”

“Yeah! Let’s race!!!!”

So my mom starts revving her engine and they start revving theirs and we are both waiting for the light to turn green.

Here am I in the middle. My crazed mom on one side and four of the cutest girls I had ever seen on the other. I’m sitting there thinking “I will never date again!”

Well the light finally turns green and mom steps on the gas, peels a bunch of rubber and leaves these girls in the dust. And I’m thinking, “Well, I’m humiliated forever but at least we won the race.”

Then all of a sudden mom puts on the brake and slows way down to let these girls catch up…and they do. Now were driving down the street side by side and I turn to look at these girls. Well, they give us the international symbol of love and peace.

Well, that make mommy mad…again.

So she takes the car and sideswipes these poor girls as we are driving down the street. These poor girls just pulled over and stopped right in the middle of the street.

Mom, laughing like a crazy lady while driving down the street says, “Did you see that?”

“Yes mom. I saw it. You sideswiped my face right into their car. That’s probably the closest I’ll ever get to kissing a girl!”

Fast forward five years.

Now I was driving the car…and I use the word “car” loosely. It was a tiny car called a Plymouth Champ. I don’t know why they called it a champ. There was nothing championship about it. It was small, slow and ugly…kind of like I was as a teenager. It was so small that it looked like a roller skate on steroids.