55 YEARS OF AGAPE
A reflection on love, acceptance, and connection
I feel so privileged. Yesterday, my wife Ingrid and I celebrated our fifty-fifth wedding anniversary. That is, of course, a very special moment. Not only because it is a respectable number of years that we have been together, but also because we have had to deal with quite a few health issues recently. We have both had to deal with serious illness—fortunately, I have now recovered.
Nevertheless, there have also been moments of sadness and great difficulty in our lives. Sometimes due to circumstances beyond our control, such as illness in the family or other unavoidable issues, but also due to things that can happen in a relationship, such as moments when you don’t quite understand each other. That’s just part of life, because ultimately the goal, and the challenge, is always to find each other again and again.
So I had to think: what is the deepest meaning of our marriage? What value do I attach to it? What word would I like to use to describe it? I came up with the word Agapè. Agapè, a concept from the Bible, essentially means giving love. A love that is unconditional. A love that does not think of itself first.
I can only say that this has certainly always played a role on my wife’s part; she has always put the other person first. And I appreciate that so much in her. With Agapè, there are actually three letters at the forefront: the A, the G, and the P. We talked together for a while about how those three letters have also taken on meaning in our lives.
The A for acceptance
First and foremost, the A for Acceptance. The acceptance that the other person is allowed to be very different. Or as I sometimes say: just celebrate the differences! The differences in a marriage, the differences in emotion, the differences in thinking, sometimes even the differences in intellectual level. But these are all things that can definitely be overcome when love—Agapè love, giving love—comes first.
That is one of the most important things we have learned in our marriage: that the other person is allowed to be different and that you should not feel the urge to change them. Because the other person is allowed to be who they are, and it is precisely the beauty of marriage and relationships when the other person can function alongside you in the way that feels most comfortable for them. Acceptance is one of the most crucial things in a marriage. And that also means giving. It is not give and take, but give and receive. And that is so wonderful, that you can live your life that way.
The G of God
The second letter is G. We have placed the G at the center of our lives. After all, the G in Agapè is also in the middle. That is the G of God. From the very beginning, when we first got to know each other, we actually found the way with our Lord. Of course, that was not self-evident. We both came to conversion in our teens and, from the very beginning, we very clearly put the Lord at the center.
That is not always easy, because sometimes there are emotions or other forces that want to pull you away from God. But time and again, we sought communion with God. God at the center of our lives. And we have seen with great gratitude how that has unfolded. How we repeatedly turned to the Lord together when things weren’t going well between us, confessing to each other, but also to God. And then we said, “Lord, give us the strength to continue together.”
That takes no effort, because I have a wife whom I love very much and who is actually just oozing love. The G for God means that God may be central in the middle of the word Agape, but also in the middle of our lives.
The P for talking and pleasure
The last letter is the P. And that is also something I think you have to learn in every marriage: the P for Talking. Learning to communicate with each other. Learning to express what you find difficult, what makes you sad, what has hurt you, what you don’t understand in a certain way. Just not understanding each other, and then continuing to talk, respecting each other, listening to each other. That way, we have learned to keep finding each other, even when things got rough or when we didn’t understand each other.
Talking is a wonderful way to get to know each other better, but it does require patience and time. Sometimes you have to put down your newspaper, turn off the TV, or put away your iPhone and take the time to look at each other and listen to each other.
But last but not least, there’s the P for Pleasure—and that’s definitely part of it! We talked about it yesterday: if there’s no humor in our relationship, then things aren’t going well. So we laugh a lot. We have lots of things to laugh about. Just everyday things in life: a good joke, a funny article, a beautiful piece of music, or whatever else we love. We can laugh together and we sometimes say to each other: “If we don’t laugh anymore, then there’s something we need to discuss further.”
Gratitude
We are incredibly grateful for these three aspects of our lives: the A for acceptance, the G for God being central, and the P for learning to talk to each other. These are such rich things that after fifty-five years of marriage, looking back, you can indeed say: how wonderfully the Lord has helped us in this! Because it is not self-evident that all these qualities are just there. We have learned in life that this is something that has taken shape in us, through God’s Spirit but also through mutual love.
I am incredibly grateful for this wonderful woman, because I find her only more beautiful as she grows older. We enjoy each other’s company every day and, above all, we are both happy people at this advanced age, in which the love of God is central. And above all, the love for each other.
@wimvanputten