Blog 3251 – 09.26.2024

Heart Trouble

When I once considered myself a Christian, from about eight years of age till in was in my mid-forties, one of my favorite Biblical passages was the Fourteen Chapter of the Gospel of John. That is the one where Jesus is preparing his disciple for his impending death on the cross. He says, “Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid…”

Like most of you I have had my share of heart troubles. I began my formal education about three months before my sixth birthday. Back then children in the Chattanooga Public School system were allowed to start the first grade as long as their sixth birthday took place before the end of January that first school year. I had a very difficult and troubling time being separated from my mother for so many hours. I was well into the fifth grade before my heart was less troubled by having to leave my home and mother each morning.

This was also troubling to my mother who herself being a life-long Christian sent a donation to the radio and television evangelist A.A. Allen and received a prayer cloth (a small rectangular piece of white cloth with saw cut edges made by pinking shears, that she faithfully pinned inside my tee-shirt over my heart each morning before I left for school. I am not sure I ever believed there was any special power in that little piece of cloth, but it was a tangible reminder that my mother loved me and was always with me.

That is what Jesus tried to convey to his disciples in the fourteen chapter of John. “I am with you always…I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am, there you will be also.” As a boy my greatest fear was losing my mother, of not having that connection that was truly my life line. I was almost fifty years old when my mother after years of chronic depression took her own life at sixty-nine years of age in the year two thousand. Even professed Christians like A.A. Allen, my mother, and Jesus own twelve disciples were not immune to heart trouble, anxiety, and depression.

One of my favorite Charlie Brown Peanuts Bible quotes is where Linus, the true believer in the group clinging to his security blanket offers:

Some years ago a few lines came to me out of the blue that have been even more comforting to me than Jesus’s purported words or Linus’s quote from the Book of Job. These are words that I wrap my ever expanding daily mantra around:

“I am so glad and grateful that everything that I could ever want or need is already mine and coming to me at just the right time and in just the right way from my loving and infinite source.”

I believe that my loving and infinite source is none other than my own highest and best self. That knowledge comforts my sometimes troubled heart and mind. I hope it will yours too.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White