In 1983, I was thinking that I should and could do things by myself; that I should take care of a problem, on my own. Long before this, I use to do anything I could to make life miserable for the people who loved me, especially those who professed to be Christians. I could go for days and not talk to my wife. I would do anything to keep her from going to church or church functions.
After a while, I saw that I wasn’t going to break her spirit, so I started going with her on Sunday mornings only. I began to get sort of comfortable at church when we moved to 812 Baldwin St. We had a lot of remodeling to do and I got involved with the others as we did the renovations. This did not go un-noticed by our pastor. One evening when he knew that Nyla was gone, he came to our house and told me that he had seen the change. He wanted to know if I had accepted Christ, on my own. I told him that I hadn’t, because there was something that I had to take care of before I could do that.
As it turned out, about two weeks later, I tried to take care of that problem. All I succeeded in doing was embarrassing my family. I had my name on the radio and in the newspapers and was threatened with arrest. A couple of days after the incident, I called Rick, our Pastor, and asked him to come to where I was working. When he got there I went out in the parking lot and got into his car. We talked for a while and then I told him that I wanted to give my life to the Lord. We prayed and I gave the Lord, my heart. The next Sunday I went to the altar at the end of the service, because I wanted to let the congregation know that I had made this commitment.
A while after that I wondered if people might have thought that I had come to Christ just because of the crisis at the time. The fact is that I knew I was going to give my life to Christ, but in my own time. What this incident did was hurry up the process.
For me to say that everything has been fun and games since 1983 would be dishonest. Now when troubles and trials do come, I have someone to share it with. I don’t have to do it by myself. Dick