Howard, you are a nice guy but... That was how girls usually began informing me that our brief relationship was coming to an end. But... they never finished the sentence and told me exactly why it was coming to an end. Where was I deficient? How could I improve? I started wondering, is there something wrong with being a nice guy? Were they looking for bad guys to have relationships with? But then I actually met a girl that finished the sentence and gave me a specific reason for ending the relationship and I was so amazed at her reason it triggered a "born-again" experience and I asked Jesus, the God-became-man, the Son of the Most High God, one of the 3 persons in the one God, to come into my life at age 20 and He did! End of story. Jesus and I have been together ever since.
But wait a minute, Howard, what was the reason? But more later. One does have to work for a living. So stay tuned.
Okay, let me back up. She was one of my classmates at college in the San Francisco Bay Area and I asked her out for a date and so we had our first date together. Then I asked her for a second date and I was going to take her up to San Francisco for a nice dinner and she said yes so at the appointed time I swung by her place to take her up there. But she appeared at the door in a t-shirt, jeans and slippers and told me she was sick so we postponed the dinner until the following week.
The next week she was ready to go when I picked her up but as we were driving up there she was pretty quiet and I thought to myself, "Oh boy, here it comes, "Howard, you are a nice guy but...". She was quiet during dinner and asked to be taken home shortly afterwards. All the time I was thinking the same thought, here it comes.
When we got to her parents' house, she asked me to come sit with her on their front porch. That was a bit of a change. So the first thing she said was, "Howard, I need to ask for your forgiveness." I think my eyebrows must have shot upwards. Then she went on to tell me that she lied to me the previous week when she said she was sick and she wasn't. She was trying to figure out a way to break off the relationship but that wasn't the right way to handle it. So I said that I accepted her apology and I forgave her and I thanked her for being honest with me. I was impressed at her courage and humility.
Then she went on to explain why she couldn't go out with me anymore and it boiled down to the fact that she was a believer and a follower of Jesus Christ and that I wasn't and so she never should have said yes in the first place to going out with me. But as she was talking it seemed like she was glowing and I could see Jesus in her and I wanted what she had. So I asked her to tell me about her relationship with Jesus and she did and she glowed even more. Then I asked her, "My friends say that I need to ask Jesus into my life and all that I have to do is pray." "How and what do I pray?" And she gave me a brief outline of what I needed to cover in my conversation with Him.
Then I told her that I understood her reason for breaking up and I thanked her for her courage and honesty. I took my leave of her and went home and asked Jesus to forgive me for my sins and to please come into my life. And He did! But it took me about 3 hours sitting in the dark at home to get the prayer out.
I called and asked if I could meet with her to tell her what had happened and she agreed to and so we met and talked. I never asked her out again because I wanted to make sure my motives weren't mixed. It was too important.
And that is how I became a Christian in the first place. Pretty rad, huh?
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