A story:
Someone breathing beside you
Done with gratitude
The wind swept across the flat fields. It was September, and the earth already seemed tired. Frederik stood at the window of his house on Hereweg and watched the streaks of rain running diagonally across the glass. They were the same streaks that had fallen here since time immemorial, the same wind that had blown across this land since the first people built their houses here to protect themselves from the elements.
The letter lay on the table, written in the handwriting of his wife Marike, who had always been better with words than he was. “Done with gratitude,” it said, and something else about appreciation. Politeness packaged as sincerity. Or was sincerity packaged as politeness? Even he no longer knew.
He had come here fifty years ago. A boy from the south, a stranger in this northern corner where people used their words as sparingly as their smiles. He had studied theology, specializing in pastoral care, got married, had children, grandchildren. He had grown attached to this landscape of horizontal skies and vertical church towers. The Reformed Church on Noordweg had become his anchor in a world that seemed to be spinning faster and faster.
Until now.
The phone rang. Frederik answered without haste. He knew who it was. “This is Gerrit,” said the voice. Young, confident. One of the new elders. “We need to talk.” Need. That word. Frederik let it hang in the silence between them. “It’s about loyalty,” Gerrit continued. “About unity. You understand that we must stand fully behind each other.”
Frederik looked outside at the rain, which was now falling harder. In the distance, he could see the outline of the church, a dark mass against the gray sky. How many Sundays had he spent there? How many psalms had he sung, how many prayers had he prayed? The church had become like an old friend, familiar down to the cracks in the wood.
“I support the office,” he said. “But not every interpretation of it.” There was a moment of silence. Then: “Then we can no longer keep you as leader of the pastoral team.” After the conversation, Frederik remained seated. Marike came in, saw his face, and said nothing. She knew him as only a woman can know her husband after forty years. She poured tea, set the cup down in front of him, touched his shoulder. A gesture, small as a drop, big as an ocean.
The problem was called Bram. A pastor, powerful in word and with a complete lack of doubt. A man who preached as if God had personally whispered the truth to him. Frederik had tried to accept him. He had prayed, talked to himself, searched for something in those sermons that touched him. But it wasn’t there. Instead, he felt something else: discomfort. The unease of someone who realizes that the truth is not as simple as others claim.
“I tolerate him,” he had said to Gerrit. It was an honest statement. No lie, no distortion of the truth. Just tolerance. It was the best he could muster.
The days that followed were strange. He still went to church every Sunday, fifth pew on the right, as always. He sang the psalms, bowed his head in prayer. But something had shifted. The congregation felt different, as if he were there and yet not there. As if he had become a ghost in his own life.
One evening, Frederik and Marike walked along the Paterswoldse Meer. The sun was setting behind the trees; the water lay still, as if waiting. Ducks left their tracks on the surface of the water.
“What are you thinking about?” Marike asked. “About Jesus,” Frederik said. “Who left ninety-nine sheep behind to search for one lost sheep.” “And?” “Bram would keep the ninety-nine. He would say that the one should learn to find its own way.” Marike nodded. She understood. She always understood.
November, and the wind grew colder. The land prepared for winter, retreating into itself. Gerrit called again. “You understand that we can’t go on like this.” “I understand.”
And he understood too. He understood that there were people who valued obedience more than conscience. Who valued unity more than sincerity. They weren’t bad people. They believed they were right. Maybe they were. Who was he to judge? “I admire how you’re handling this,” Gerrit said. There was something new in his voice. Something like respect. Or confusion. Or both. “I am not accountable to you,” said Frederik. “Only to God. And He knows my heart.” That evening, when he wrote to the pastoral team that he was stepping down, it felt as if something had been released in his chest. Not pain. Something else. Space, perhaps. Or simplicity. The simplicity of someone who makes a choice and then moves on with their life.
They kept coming. Every Sunday. Fifth pew on the right. But Frederik noticed that he listened differently. No longer with his whole soul, but with part of it. The rest had already left, was already on its way to something he didn’t know and didn’t need to know.
“Do you think we’ll ever leave?” Marike asked one evening. “Maybe,” said Frederik. “But not with anger. Just quietly. Like leaving a house that has become too small.” And that was it. No drama, no noise. Just a slow letting go, like water sinking into the ground.
Months later, when spring arrived, they walked past the lake again. The trees were budding, the grass was greener. Life returned, as life always returns, indifferent to human sorrow. They stopped at the church. Frederik looked at the building, the tower reaching toward a sky that did not respond. “Was it worth it?” Marike asked. “All those years?” Frederik thought about it. The wind swept across the fields as it always did. Somewhere a seagull screeched. The world kept turning. “Everything,” he said finally. “It was worth everything. Not because they were right. Not because I was right. But because it was my life. And life is always worth living, even when it hurts.”
They walked back home. The sun sank below the horizon; the land grew dark. Soon the stars would come out, those ancient stars that were already shining when no one was here to see them and that would continue to shine long after the last human had disappeared.
Frederik thought of his grandson Lars, who had asked last week why Grandpa was no longer allowed to talk about the Bible. “Because Grandpa doesn’t agree with the boss,” he had replied. Lars had looked at him as if that was stupid. And maybe it was.
At home, in the warmth of their house, Marike poured tea. They sat across from each other at the kitchen table, the same table where they had sat for forty years, where they had laughed and cried, where they had doubted and believed. “Are you sad?” she asked. “Yes,” said Frederik. “But also relieved. As if I’ve put down something that had become too heavy.”
“What?”
“The pretense that I knew how to do it. The illusion that there was only one way. The fear of being alone.” Marike nodded. Outside, evening was falling. The land grew quiet.
Later, when Frederik was lying in bed and couldn’t sleep, he thought about his life. About the choices he had made, the paths he had taken. He had tried to be a good person. He had failed, often, and sometimes succeeded. He had lived as best he could, with the limitations of his time and his character. Was that enough? He didn’t know. Maybe it wasn’t up to him to know.
Somewhere in the distance, a clock chimed. Midnight. A new day was dawning, still invisible in the darkness. Frederik closed his eyes. Next to him, Marike breathed, calmly, regularly. The sound of someone who belongs. And he thought: maybe that’s the only blessing that matters. Not the hands laid on you, not the words spoken. But this: someone breathing next to you in the dark. Someone who stays when everything else is gone.
That was enough. More than enough. It was everything.
Years later, Lars, now an adult, would call his grandfather. A question about the past, about the church, about why he had left. Frederik, already old and frail, would think for a long time. “Because some places become too small,” he would say. “Not because they are bad. But because you grow. Or because they shrink. And at some point, it no longer fits. Then you can do two things: make yourself smaller or leave. I chose to leave.” “Was that difficult?” “Yes. But not as difficult as staying.”
Lars would be silent. Then: “And now? Do you regret it?” Frederik would look outside, at the land that was still flat, at the sky that was still big. The wind that was still blowing. “No,” he would say. “No regrets. Just melancholy. And that’s something else. Melancholy is beautiful. Regret is not.” And that would be enough. An answer, not perfect but true. Like everything in this life was not perfect, but true, and in that truth lay something more valuable than all the perfection in the world.
The wind rushed across the fields. It always rushed. The land remained, unmoved, eternal. And in between, people lived their small lives, made their small choices, sought their small truths.
It was enough. It was more than enough. It was everything.
@ Wim van Putten