"Proven Wrong by God. Again."
We lay there in the pitch-black living room sprawled about on couches and chairs. A bunch of 17-year-old boys chilling after a night of “going out.” It was 3 am. We were now ruminating on the general topic of girls, girlfriends, and marriage. I declared into the dark something like, “I can’t see any good reason to get married.” I can’t remember if anyone commented back. Maybe everyone else was asleep. I continued with assurance however, “That’s not for me.”
It was the first of many times that God would prove me wrong. Eighteen months later I was at the altar saying, “I do” to the woman I’ve been married to for eleven years and share three wonderful kids with.
That summer of my negative proclamation about marriage, I took a job at a new pizza place that had opened in a local shopping center. They were hiring lots of high school kids as hosts and servers, so it was a fun place to work and meet people our age. I was a host and so was Andrea. That’s how we met. She was cute and friendly, but she had a boyfriend, went to a different high school, and I was going out with someone also. We shared some shifts and got to know each other at work though. Summer faded into fall, school started up, and as we got to know each other better, our previous relationships ended.
Andrea was from a strong Christian home and had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I was not and did not, but we still got along well. I hung out with a bunch of guys who came from Christian families and I would go to youth group at their church because they all did, but my family didn’t go to church.
By December Andrea and I were boyfriend and girlfriend. It was kind of funny because my grandfather had met my grandmother working at a pizza place back in California. Now here I was going out with a girl from a pizza place. As things developed, I met Andrea’s family. They were pretty conservative Christians with her parents having gone to a small Christian Bible College. They were not open to Andrea and I being alone together, which was wise of them all things considered.
Andrea and I talked about all kinds of things, including God. I was pretty sure there was a God of some sort, but I couldn’t believe all that Bible stuff. I “knew” of too many objections and difficulties with it. Andrea did believe though, and that made me curious to explore it some more. I liked to read and there was a Barnes and Noble across the street from the pizza place where we worked. After my shift I would often walk over there and just hang out and read. This was back in the day when they had big leather chairs and couches and places you could take a book off the shelf and just hang out and read. I used to do that a lot. I’m pretty sure I’m the reason they changed that “hang out and read” policy.
I started reading some basic books on apologetics while I was there. Books like Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ was one. These books began to provide answers to some of my questions and objections about the Christian faith. As I read more and more, God continued to show up with answers and prove me wrong and I began to entertain the possibility that all this Bible stuff might be for real. Intellectually, at least, I could see that it appeared to be true. I mean there was a lot of evidence, but…and it was a big but…if it was true, and God was real, and what he said was real, I would have to change my ways. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do that.
As winter rolled into spring, one afternoon, I was in my high school chorus class. It was pretty laid back. I was sitting in the very last row of students leaning back against the wall in my chair. The teacher had left the room for some reason and so we were on our phones, reading, playing cards, and hanging out. I was actually back there in that last row alone thinking about this whole God thing. I was turning it over in my head. It all seemed real. It all seemed to make sense and then I found myself not just thinking, but suddenly praying very honestly, “God, I believe all this about you, but I don’t know that I want to change my ways.”
The moment I had that thought, my eyes were suddenly drawn to a three-ring binder laying on the seat in front of me. The cover was one of those clear slip covers where you could slide in a drawing or photo for the front. Girls were very in to writing stuff with fancy, colorful calligraphy at that time, and there was a piece of notebook paper with that kind of writing on it on the front of this binder. It read, “Proverbs 3:5-6 – “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths .”
That was my moment. I had to give up my ways for His ways and I had to confess about some of them to Andrea. That was the peak of the mountain I had been climbing and I could see ahead now. So, within the next year, I was baptized and ready for God to continue proving me wrong. Which included marrying that girl from the pizza place.
Just like my grandfather had his.
J.B., Hilton Head, SC
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