MA painted this 42 years ago and it is the story of Linda's and my life together up to that point. The details will be below the picture.
Click on the picture to enlarge it.
I met Linda while I was in the Army and had just returned from Turkey. I went to A&W Root Beer after playing golf with some of her classmates and guess who was our 'carhop?' No roller skates, but a great smile and personality. There she was, Linda Taylor,
After six weeks of asking for a date, she finally said yes and we went bowling. We dated on and off for six years and the 'off' came after she went to Word of Life, a Christian camp in upper state New York. While there, she met some 'College and Career' campers from Chattanooga, TN, who encouraged her not to date someone that was not on the same page spiritually, because I was an unbeliever.
When she came home, we we on Musquash Road and it was raining hard that day. It was there that she told me that we were not going in the same direction and she told me that she wanted to move to Chattanooga. Yes, she dumped me.
She did move and I would like to say that we kept in touch, but, in reality, I kept in touch with her. A year or so later, I visited her in Chattanooga. She took me to church (Highland Park Baptist Church) as the annual Bible Conference was in progress. On New Hampshire terms, it was a very big church. Never seen anything like it. A lot of preaching and I left the same as I entered. The next day, a friend of Linda's invited me to go to a Christian Business Mens Committee luncheon. I had nothing to do, as Linda was working, so I went.
I remember it as it was yesterday. It was the first time in my life that I heard a grown man speak the name of Jesus without swearing. He was Tom Pilosi...I doubt any relation to the one from California. Nah! No way! He shared how Jesus Christ had changed his life as a result of being born again, he had accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior.
After the meeting, Ted DeMoss, the one with whom I attended the luncheon, put his hand on my shoulder and asked me, "Ray, have you ever made a decision to accept Jesus as your Savior?" I cannot explain it, but his hand felt as if it were the hand of God. It felt so heavy. I said the I had not, to which he responded, "Would you?" I said yes, but I did not know how. There in the restaurant on Market Street, I asked Jesus Christ to be my Savior. I accepted His payment for sin on the Cross as the payment for my sins. In effect, when I accepted Jesus Christ, I accepted His payment for sin as payment for my sin, which I was obligated to pay someday.
The Cross in the center of the picture is there because Jesus became the center of my life. The asterisk next to the Cross is for all the people that Linda had praying for my salvation.
I had no background in the Bible and felt the need to know more thus I enrolled at Tennessee Temple College in Chattanooga a year later. Another year goes by and we went back to New Hampshire to visit our families. We had not dated for some time because we were 'just friends,' but that changed as time past.
On the way back to Chattanooga, we were joking around about marriage and on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, I said, "If I asked you to marry me, what would you say?" YES!! We were married and MA says that the future was behind the tree yet to be told.
The rest is His-Story.
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