getting touchy about touching

Scott and I attended a marriage retreat this last weekend which covered the five love languages, as "discovered" by Gary Chapman. Quality Time, Words of Affirmation, Acts of Service, Giving of Gifts, and Physical Touch. As always, I of course came out screaming physical touch as the strongest of my love languages in our 35 question "diagnostic" test. It's been that way for as long as I can remember. Save your words and give me a hug. When I was a little girl I used to crawl up in my Daddy's lap and sit there for hours or just lean on him while he watched football. Or I'd go find Mom and tell her not to just give me a "hug," I need a "big hug."

However, in America this can be the curse of all curses to have for a love language. We are just not a touchy people. My first month of living alone in Dallas, attending classes at seminary and working in a brand new environment where I knew no one, proved to be one of the loneliest times of my entire life. It wasn't for lack of attention, people at work and school talked to me a lot. They even did things for me and gave me little welcome gifts. They took me out for lunch. But nobody hugged me. Nobody gave me a pat on the back. Nobody played with my hair as we sat in the floor and watched movies, or gave me a foot rub as my best friends and I used to always do. I didn't mind living alone, I enjoyed it even, but I missed coming home to my college roommate, Kara, and she would play with my hair as I talked about my day. In fact, the third week of my new life in Dallas I came home on a Friday night and wept until I had no more tears, because no one had touched me in weeks.

This is already making many of you uncomfortable. We're not supposed to need touch like that. Because somehow our culture has figured out a way to take something as loving and special and innocent as physical touch and dirty it with sexual connotation. I'm not talking about sexual touch. There is such a huge difference between the two. Yes, I'm serious. Those of us who have the love language of physical touch can explain it so clearly to you. Because having the love language of physical touch does not mean we have an insatiable hunger for sex. Instead, it means that we feel the most loved when someone physically says "I support you." or "I think you are special." It means that we can walk by a billboard that says "You are wonderful" and feel nothing, but we can walk into a room where a close friend puts their arm around your shoulders or fluffs your hair playfully and says nothing, and suddenly we feel loved, appreciated, and special.

All this to say, I've always loved the passages in Scripture that talk about touch. The Jewish people were a touchy people. I think I could have done well as a Jew. "Greet one another with a holy kiss." It's all over Scripture, whatever happened to that, anyway?

Jesus touched everybody. He touched little kids and held them in his lap. He touched his disciples (can't you just picture him putting his hand on Peter's shoulder to gently hold him back from saying the first thing that popped into his head, like he always did?), he touched his friends Mary and Martha, and he touched when he healed. So many accounts of him touching peoples eyes, faces, hands, while he's healing. Mark 1:40-45 records possibly one of my favorite accounts of Jesus' touch... when he healed the leper, but touched him before he healed him. Nobody touched lepers. They were unclean. But Jesus touched him, because he loved him. Can you imagine what it felt like to a leper who hadn't been touched in all of his diseased years to feel the warmth of Jesus' hand upon his withered skin?

I heard a story the other day about a young lady who was in the hospital in great pain, on morphine. A nurse came in to change her bandages, and the lady began to weep loudly. The nurse went to increase her morphine drip, but the lady just cried louder. Finally, the nurse asked her if she wanted some water or something for the pain. "Can you please hug me, instead?" the girl cried. The nurse put her arms around her, and began coming in and hugging her every day. In a matter of weeks, the young lady was off of morphine completely.

Yet with all of this, it is still hard for us as Americans to touch. This is bad. Christians, we need to be supporting each other with words, actions, and a firm hand on the shoulder, a hug, a pat on the back, a high-five. What could it hurt? The culture around us is crying out for touch... where do you think the sex obsession originates? (I know, it's more than touch, but that is also a central key!) Come on, we're the body of Christ. And bodies are created for touch.

I'll go ahead and speak up. I need touch. Not just from my hubby, but also from the body. I need that pat on the shoulder, that little supportive hug now and again. And if I need it, I know there are so many more out there who do, to, but are afraid to say because it has somehow become a sensitive issue in today's America. But we need to be touched, loved, appreciated. So let the touching commence, without shame, for we are all brothers and sisters in the bond of Christ, and he touched people. Isn't that reason enough?

So, someday I will have the privilege of walking into the arms of my Lord, my Savior will enfold me in his loving and merciful arms which bear the scars of the wounds he endured for my benefit, and I will receive the greatest hug I've ever known. Until that day, I will look to the Body to be the arms of Christ.