Agape love

As a culture (and especially as a girl) we tend to use the word love a little liberally. We say we love our kids, our favorite television show, our husbands, our chocolate, our coffee...  The list goes on and on.  But there are differing degrees of love. You can't love your peanut butter as much as your kids or chocolate more than your husband (on most days) JK.  Seriously though, there is a difference. 

 I've been reading Max Lucado's book, 3:16 The Nubers of Hope ,during my morning devotional time and yesterday's chapter was on love, agape love.  Agape love is more of an action and a decision rather than a feeling. It is the kind of love that leads mothers and fathers into burning buildings to save their children's lives.  It is the kind of love that you see in the hallways of children's hospitals everywhere. Mothers and fathers that have gone without sleeping, without eating without leaving their child's side for days without end.  I have been fortunate enough to have been witness to agape love in action. 

There's my friend Krissi who has devoted her life to keeping her son alive. She never, not once took no for an answer-even when the doctors told her that it was hopeless "prepare yourself, for he is not going to make it", they said. She said "I'm not accepting that" and found an answer, half a country away. He beat the odds a hundred times and counting.  His story would take a book to tell.  His name is Dylan and he inspires me so much that I named my youngest son after him.  But this story could not be told if was not for the agape love of his mother who gave and sacrificed it all to make this moment happen:

His high school graduation. This picture brings me to tears because I know the price that was paid to see this moment happen. 

Another example of agape love is my friend Heather.  Despite having six children, the last of which had seizures in utero, leukemia at one, and awaiting brain surgery continues to fight for  Down Syndrome causes.  She makes blankets for the kids in the cancer ward.  She spends time talking with moms at their darkest hours. She brings food and love for those that are weary. She makes those she touches feel like they are so important to her that there is nothing else in the world that she has to do but to spend time talking and encouraging them.  She also has time to blog about her journey. You should read her inspiring blog here:

 

Littlewonders blogspot

Agape love is not just about parental love.  It's the couple that has been married for 50 years and still hold hands as they stroll through the park.  My grandmother who recently died, had agape love.  The love of her life, my grandpa, died at 58 years old of Alzheimer's.  She slept on the floor next to his bed for years before he died so as to make sure he didn't escape. The last few years of his life he did not know who she was, but that didn't change her love for him.  He would tell her "you're too old and ugly to be my wife", yet she never stopped taking care of him. She never complained, she just kept pressing on, taking good care of him, loving him until the end.

People used to ask me how I did it when Chris was in the hospital. How do you manage to do what you do? I would just say that I just did what I had to do.  There wasn't another option. I guess my answer would now be "agape love". Agape love comes from God. "We love because He first loved us" 1John 4:19. I never understood this passage until now.  The indescribable love that  comes from situations like these are a mere glimpse of how God loves us.  It is hard to take it all in, much less really believe that he could love us so much.  Really?  Me, the sinner?  Yes, all of us, with all of our imperfections.  "For God so (agapao) the world..."