I kind of feel bad that nearly all of my blogs thus far have been blogs about personal lessons on this journey as opposed to the effect of my presence on the people we are ministering to. Yet, this is what God is doing, and the lessons I have been learning of late are intense ones that I believe will impact my ministry as time continues to move forward. That being said, a new lesson…
Do you remember the first time you to the 5 Love Languages test?
I do. I was around 14 years of age, sitting in the youth group classroom at my church, and as my parents, who were the youth pastors at the time, finished up the conversation about the differences between the languages and passed along the test I very vividly remember thinking within myself…
“I don’t care what love language it tells me I have as long as it doesn’t say Physical Touch.”
It was pretty obvious to me which answers to the questions were associated with which love language, and I remember intentionally answering questions certain ways just to ensure it did not give me a physical touch result. I was successful. At the end when the results were tallied up Quality Time took first place and Physical Touch was all the way at the bottom.
Perfect! I remember thinking.
As years and years have gone by I’ve continued to hold onto those results like gold nuggets, convincing myself and others that physical touch is at the bottom of my list when it comes to affection. Yet, there has always been a deep question about it inside of me, a hidden knowing, really, that my results were skewed.
I’ve watched myself, though.
Especially since my niece and nephew have come around.
When it comes to kids, I am super affectionate, physically. I love to hold them, hug them, kiss them, tickle them and all kinds of physical touchy things. When I’m with the teens in the youth group I love to hug them and play with their hair and scratch their backs, put my arms around them, etc.
I can recall through the years noticing these things and thinking, “Why do I do these things when I’m not a physical touch person?” Like I said, I even convinced myself that my love language results were perfect.
Now that many of you know about my past abuse situation, it’s easy to think of why physical touch would scare the hell out of me. And since fear is part of what The Lord is working on within me right now, it only makes sense that He would bring this up. I realize now that in my reality as a child growing up I was afraid of physical touch. My mom used to tell me often that before the abuse took place I was extremely physical. I was always touching her, rubbing her face, giving her hugs and kisses, but after this event I changed. Dramatically.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about all of this a lot. As I sit here with my team around our little dinning room table, talking about girl stuff and getting into deeper conversations about our lives and pasts, I find myself just wanting to rub their backs as we sit and talk, play with their hair, give an occasional hug – but I don’t. Mainly because I know that the majority of them aren’t physical touchy… lol… but truthfully, the big culprit is this big realization I recently had – Fear.
A couple of days ago I was sitting alone, playing my guitar and thinking about some events from earlier in the morning when I began to think about all of this. I don’t know if it was The Lord, or perhaps just the processing of my mind in this instance, but I began to accept a pattern in my life. The people I am closest to are the people I am not physical with at all. My mother, my sister, my brother – these are people who I have the hardest time being physically affectionate with. And now, as I find myself growing closer to the members of my team, the more I find myself shying away from being physical. Is this normal? I continued in this thinking process and thought back to past relationships with others and realized this has always been a common theme for me. The closer I become to someone, the more I back off from being physical with them.
Why?
Well… Fear.
I am willing to accept it now. Physical Touch is my love language. But because my love language was abused, I now see it as a bad thing. I love these people. A lot. Like hardcore, I’ll take a bullet for you kind of love. And even though I do my best to show all of them the love I have for them in their own unique languages, for my own personal benefit sometimes I just want to play with their hair or lay on their shoulders. But physical touch is bad. It leads to bad things. It makes people think bad things about you. It will drive people away and you will never see them again like it did with my grandmother. It’s not something we do with the people we love – we just use our words and tell them. Physical touch is scary.
Lies.
But they run through my mind every day.
So, today I made it a point to try to shut those lies up. I stood behind Andy and played with her hair. I sat next to Karla at lunch and rubbed her back. I laid my head on Katy’s shoulder as she cried during the Women’s Conference we put together for the ladies in our neighborhood. I sat next to Shae… my dear, dear Shae… and as the fear welled up inside of me because, let’s face it, she’s very quickly becoming a best friend, I placed my hand on her back. Not for their sake this time, but for mine. Because physical touch is my love language and I need to take back what the enemy has stolen from me. I need to know that it’s okay to love people by holding their hand. It’s not scary, or bad, or going to push people away. It’s the way God made me – to love with hugs and kisses and smiles, and an occasional slap in the leg with a damp towel.
