Blog 3370 – 01.24.2025
My Resting Place – Newton County, Texas
Almost thirty-seven years ago during a particularly stressful time in my life, when I was separated pending the eventual divorce from my third wife, Sandra Darleen, the mother of my first child, my beloved daughter Emily Elaine, my dad gave me some very wise and sage advice. He said to me in both one his rare letters and also in a phone call, “Son, you need to find your resting place.” My dad’s resting place was in the woods hunting or in a boat or on a bank fishing. Turns out mine is too.
At this juncture I need to share another of my heroes and my dad was one of my heroes and always will be. Reverend Earl J. Collin’s was once my Pastor but from the time I met him Brother Collin’s was a a true elder brother, hero, and friend. He worked a full-time job at Fowler Brothers in Chattanooga, Tennessee repairing Westinghouse appliances, installing and repairing Hammond organs, clocks, and anything else that the department store sold and serviced for its customers. Long after he retired from Flowler Brothers he continued repairing organs and clocks and at the insistence of his beloved wife Rachel who was head of their small church’s Ladies Missionary Society he donated every penny that he earned to the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana) World Service, their foreign missions program. It was a source of pride for Rachel that the hand full of ladies at the Neighborhood Chapel Church of God in Red Bank, Tennessee, a suburb of Chattanooga, always out-raised for World Service (Missions) more than any of the other Churches of God in the great state of Tennessee. Of course, that had more to do with the labors of Earl J. Collin’s than any fund raising efforts of those ladies.
But back to one of Brother Collin’s favorite funnies. I never saw it, but he recounted a Westinghouse TV commercial from the early nineteen-fifties in which someone opens a refrigerator door to find a cute little bunny inside. Startled they remarked, “What are you doing in there?” to which the bunny replies, “Isn’t this the Westinghouse?” The bunny it seems had found his or her resting place.
My beloved mother, Alene Florence Davidson White, was not the easiest woman to live with (I have only met one of those in my almost three quarters of a century this go round, my wife’s angel mother, Betty Lou Lloyd Stokes. As a boy, as most boys do, I loved my mother to distraction and thought her perfect and my dad a cad and scoundrel for not making her happy. I later learned after four wives of my own that the only person one can make happy is their self. We can only try to share our happiness with others. Happiness is an individual choice.
I married four beautiful, lovely, and loving girls who were in many ways just like the girl who married dear ole dad. They were unhappy a good deal of the time and nothing I did, and perhaps I did not always try hard enough, ever made them happy.
Dad never could make my mother happy. Another of my great heroes, writer and Christian apologist C.S. Lewis, made a pack with a World War One buddy that if only one of them survived the war that the survivor would take care of the other’s mother. Lewis survived and kept his promise, and took care of his friend’s mother for many years till her death. Even his brother Warner who also live with Lewis from time to time remarked at how very unhappy this woman was.
Lewis found his resting place in books, those he read but also in those he wrote. In his children’s book series, The Chronicles of Narnia, he created a retreat and resting place of sorts. I am re-reading the complete series again before giving the book to my son and daughter-in-law so they can read it to my beloved granddaughter Emma Grace when she is a little older.
I think it is likely that I will out-live my lovely and lovely, but often depressed and unhappy wife, Linda Lee and so I am making plans and preparations for a place to live in Jay’s Hundred Acre Wood, near Bon Wier, Texas in Newton County. I spent the day there yesterday walking in those wonderful woods with ice on the pond and still traces of snow on the ground. I try to spend the bigger part of a day there once a week, following my dad’s advice.
One of the most hauntingly beautiful songs that I have ever heard is on the soundtrack to the Sandra Bullock movie Hope Floats. It asks the question, What makes you stay? Here are the complete lyrics to the song and I attach a link to it below for your listen pleasure.
I believe love makes you stay even when you are at the end of your rope without any hope. Still even the greatest love needs a garden to walk in, to pray in, to retreat to, to rest in – a resting place.
Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White
Deana Carter- What Makes You Stay
theencouragingword 