Blog 2593 – 12.04.2022

Love The One You’re With

I often feel it is my number one job to remind you, my readers, and myself that “perfect love” begins with learning to love the one you are with. A MoTown song from the sixties says, “If you can’t be with the one you love, Honey, love the one you’re with.” I admit that having had a young wife who was supposedly waiting for me during the year I was in Vietnam who did just that was a rather disturbing development at the time. But I think a deeper meaning of that line is that to truly love anyone we must learn to love the one we are with most of all, ourselves.

This amazing companion is with us through thick and thin and needs no wedding vow to prove their undying and unfaltering devotion. Yet we have the audacity to think we that are alone and to even bitterly say “Nobody loves me.” My mama was the first person to love me and for a long time I thought I could never love anyone more than her nor that anyone would ever love me as much as she did. Mom, I think was jealous of my first little wife and so I forgave her for the most hurtful thing that she ever said to me. Upon my return from Vietnam to find my little wife had found another I was listening to “our song” playing on the radio in my parents home. It was “Am I That Easy To Forget?” sung by Engelbert Humperdinck. Mom looked at me and said, “I guess you were.” Her words stung mostly because I think I knew that somebody loved me even more than my mama did – me. Before that next year was out she knew it too, but that is another story.

The point I am trying to may is to encourage each of us to work on our love life. If we ever expect to find unconditional love we have to first find it in our own hearts. The greatest love of all is not mother’s love, nor father’s, nor romantic love but to love the one you are with – you. I often quote Jesus two great commandments that supersede all others, “Love the LORD, your God, with all your heart, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as you love yourself. The standard measure for love being “as you love yourself.” In another places Jesus said, “In that you did it not to the least of these my brothers and sisters you did it not to me.” Or loosely translated, “Honey, love the one you’re with.”

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OBCchFH6AVk55iiiOP5ZRJErTMINrJZn/view?usp=drivesdk

The Greatest Love Of All