He still calls her “Sweetie.” My wife, Gladine, and I were enjoying a visit with our friends, Ray and Rosemary. They are well into their 90s and married an incredible 75 years. We were captivated by how this long-married couple looked at one another and spoke to each other. There was a mutual tenderness–a tangible, loving care for one another as husband and wife.
Being married for 75 years is so rare–quite an extraordinary milestone. Even as Gladine and I were being impacted by Ray and Rosemary’s remarkable example, I wondered what younger people might be impacted by our example as a long-married couple. I was a bit surprised when a couple in their early 20s asked Gladine and me if we would meet with them for premarital counseling. I assumed that they would be drawn to one of the younger pastoral couples on our church staff–a couple closer to their own ages–from their own generation. But no, this couple wanted to meet with us because we were older. They wanted to hear our story and how that might help them navigate the years and decades God may have laid out before them.
Sadly, many of us in the second half of our married years assume that young adults wouldn’t want to have a friendship with those of us in an older generation. Yet, many younger couples crave relationships with older couples–especially older couples who are honest, willing to discuss not only the “ups” in their marriages but their “downs” as well and how God’s grace has shaped and sweetened their long marriages through life’s many challenges.
So, what impact can we long-married couples have? If we have been gripped by God’s saving and sanctifying grace, and if we have had years of seeing his grace shape us and empower us to live for his glory, we do have something to offer the next generation. Consider the legacy we can leave to younger people by our seasoned marriages:
Purpose: We can show younger people the very meaning of marriage by how we live as a long-married couple. Many (most?) people get married assuming “marriage is for me. I’m getting married so that my spouse can devote his/her life to making me happy.” Yet, how does that turn out? We have lived long enough as a married couple to know from God’s Word that marriage was never designed to be self-centered. Marriage is for our spouse and marriage is for Christ. Marriage is a mission shared by husband and wife of showing a watching world a reflection of the greatest love story ever–the love that Christ has for his bride, the church (Ephesians 5:22-33). In reflecting Christ, we know that marriage is more about serving than it is about being served. This focus on giving oneself for the benefit if one’s spouse is epitomized in the sexual relationship. The apostle Paul said it this way: “The husband should fulfill his wife’s sexual needs, and the wife should fulfill her husband’s needs. The wife gives authority over her body to her husband, and the husband gives authority over his body to his wife” (1 Corinthians 7:3-4, NLT). What a beautiful picture of reflecting Christ’s generous love to one’s spouse–a pattern that carries over to other dynamics of marriage such as sacrificially caring for one’s spouse when he is ill or when her abilities are gradually diminished with age. We longer-married couples can underline the purpose of reflecting the love of Christ in our marriages by how we tenderly care for our spouses during times of emotional challenges or how we encourage one another in our pursuit of knowing Christ in a deeper way over the years. Yes, we can show younger people the Christ-reflecting purpose of getting married—and the Christ-honoring purpose of staying married.
Perseverance: I can image hearing a number of “amens” to our confession that still being married after 48 years is a testimony of God’s sustaining grace. Rather than reaching for a parachute and bailing out of the marriage plane when the going gets rough, we have had to face our own sin, confessing our offences to the Lord and to one another. We have experienced his amazing forgiveness—and the forgiveness of our spouse. When we have experienced being sinned against by one another, we had to “draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). How many times over the decades of our married life have we been reassured of God’s promise never to leave us or forsake us as we have encountered yet another difficult situation? By God’s sustaining grace, our marriage has persevered, and we can serve as living examples of God’s sustaining, empowering grace to the coming generations.
Passion: How does a husband of 75 years still look tenderly at his wife, calling her “Sweetie”? Because he has not depended on what he can get from his wife, but on the immeasurable, unstoppable love that Christ has for him. He has drunk deeply of that love that is above every other love–even the love of his sweet wife. “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Knowing and relying on God’s love for us (1 John 4:16) empowers us to love our spouse through the challenges of life and the ravages of increasing age. Decades of marriage have taught us that, as much as we enjoy our spouse’s love for us, that is the icing on the cake, but not the cake itself. The cake is Christ’s love for us, and there is no shortcoming or disability in our spouse’s life that can diminish the flow of his unceasing love. We will always have enough of his overflowing love being poured into our lives that we can show Christ-reflecting passion for our spouse “till death do us part.”
Yes, let us leave the legacy of a long marriage, shaped and sweetened by God’s amazing grace, for the glory of Christ and the good of the next generation.