Blog 3576 – 08.21.2025

First and Last Love

Ideas and inspiration for blogs come to me most often first and then I try to find a picture quote or song to add after I have written the blog, but sometimes I see a picture quote or hear as song that is the inspiration for my writing. A dear friend posted this picture on Facebook yesterday.

Youthful passion says, “I want to be your first love” yet the wiser mature heart says, “I want to be your last love.” Jealousy is a foolish notion, that is why I am sure that some foolish man trying to put words in God’s mouth wrote, “I, the LORD thy God, am a jealous God and will have no other gods before me.” How could the God who is all in all be jealous or Her/Himself? It is a nonsensical thought and only a foolish man could have come up with such a limited view of our Higher Best Self.

Many years ago I was attending a Presbyterian church just a few blocks from our home and I became quite found of the pastor and was really enjoying his Sunday morning sermons. It was announced this would be his last sermon as he was moving away to another assignment. After the meet and greet after the morning worship service I spoke with him in his study and shared that one of the biggest temptation that I had always had in my relationship with God was loving my wives or girlfriends more than God. The pastor smiled and said, “God knows that I love my wife more than Him and he does not mind in the least.” He went on to share that as a Vietnam veteran like myself he had long felt called to do something for his brothers that were still dealing with trauma that they had experienced during the war. He was leaving the church to work with Veterans in another state. Then he asked me if I did not think in was high time that I got out of the church and really did something for God.

My first love or calling was always writing and in the years since that former Presbyterian pastor comments I have pondered his words over and over in my heart and mind. My last love is my wife of thirty six years. Her mind and health are failing her and I know that our days together are numbered. I am trying to make each of those days as comfortable and full of love and kindness for her as I can. Sadly her failing mind is consumed with all of the unkind and hateful words that she has heard and thought in her lifetime and I cannot make her believe that only she hears them.

I say this not for your sympathy but to warn all who read these words of the danger of negative self talk and listening to closely to negative comments and giving them weight and space in your heart and mind. Do not carry that baggage and allow it weigh you down to the ground.

This disease has taken my sparkling and shining wife into the darkness of utter despair and it seems so unfair. I pray that she finds sweet relief from her burdens and this terrible debilitating disease. I am determined to stay by her side till she is released from these troublesome voices. She is my last love.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David James White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TO_4yTWkyDT_lqX7-BVOAa7tk8zXeoCk/view?usp=drivesdk

What Makes You Stay

Author’s Note:

There is a line in another of my favorite songs that says:

“Don’t want to be an actor pretending on the stage.

Don’t want to be a writer with my thoughts out on the page.

Don’t want to be a painter ‘cause everyone comes to look.

Don’t want to be anything where my life’s an open book.”

It is a danger in all creative efforts, this exposure, this putting ourselves out there on the stage or on the page, but sharing our experiences, our triumphs, our tragedies, this unspeakable gift called life, can help others to not feel alone. And we are not, my friends, for we are all in the same boat – We are One – God is indeed all in all.