Touch

Mary’s Monday Musings to Quilt Encouragement
Touch

Small arms around your legs after a youngster rushes across the room to embrace you. The light touch of reassurance on my arm from a person I don’t see often but admire. The grip of a shoulder to bolster your knowing someone cares and stands with you. The warmth of an enthusiastic handclasp of someone who is glad to see me. The hug of a friend to confirm love. The crush of a spouse’s hug to meld together a love that never ends. The magic of touch! God gave us touch. He created it. He gave us arms, hands, lips, and eyes to convey it. Touch reassures, comforts, accepts, bolsters, cheers, settles, and conveys worth. For now, it is the victim of social distancing. For those of us who value touch as an important source of love and worth, we especially suffer from this loss Coronavirus has forced upon us. How often do we reach out an arm, a hand, a step toward someone to convey some deep feeling only to withdraw because we don’t want to endanger them if we carry some dastardly germ or disease? How often do we forget in our enthusiasm for social connection?

Gary Chapman is the author of the book, The Five Languages of Love which has helped multitudes of people better understand and communicate with one another. Touch is one of those languages. This time of social distancing is particularly painful for those of us whose primary love language is touch. It must not remain a permanent loss, to our way of life, these acts that carry a reminder of tenderness, gentleness, caring. In the meantime, we have other precious ways to convey a divine quality in the shape of humanness. To borrow from Mr. Chapman’s most valuable book, we still have words of affirmation. Use the words of our mouths to reassure others of our acceptance. We can offer acts of service. We can give gifts and offer our time to others. The human need for involvement with other humans and means to convey that value must not become the biggest loss of this time of quarantine. God, please help mankind find the means to conquer this novel virus and prevent it from destroying the blessed means of touch you give us to convey human worth from one person to another. Don’t allow the gift of touch to become the successful victim of this blasted coronavirus.

Check out the books of Gary Chapman for insights about how to achieve blessed human relationships.