Hugging

There has been WAY too much hugging in my life lately. If you know me at all, you know that I really don't like to be touched at all. Pretty much anyone but Joe will be shut down. My friend Jessie even asks if she can hug me (She's a hugger). But, for the last month I feel like I have been doing nothing but hugging. Between volunteering in the flood areas, my dad's retirement, and two funerals, I have probably hugged a billion people. OK maybe just several hundred. What is it about suffering and death that makes people hug?

I remember a sermon that one of my classmates gave during our preaching class. She was talking about the bleeding women who simply touched Jesus and was healed (both in body and in spirit). She was healed from the power of touch and Jesus (pretty much) always healed with a touch. My classmate talked about the importance of touch for healing purposes and I completely agree.

If I have had a bad day, I wait for Joe to come home and get myself a good, big hug. I don't have to tell him what's wrong, he doesn't have to say it's ok- I just need touch. I have realized through the flood and the funerals that a touch says things that your words can't. "I'm sorry for your loss" only goes so far. Many times I have no other words. This is all we can do. Just by touching someone we are taking on (or bearing) some of their suffering and pain and offering ourselves (making ourselves vulnerable... ugh).

One of my field education pastors when praying about or with those who were ill, would always say "God, wrap your loving arms around them." I always thought that was a strange image and not one I was really comfortable with. But, the more suffering I see and the more people I hug (voluntarily) the image makes more sense. We are praying for God to touch them, for the ill or grieving to feel God's presence in a very real way. In the way that I go to Joe and just need a hug. Also, when we offer sincere touch and hugs, we are offering ourselves but we are also representing God. We are making the comfort of God REAL to these people! Especially those who can't recognize him on their own.