Affection

Love and connection is a wonderful thing! This blog post idea came from an article I read in Good Housekeeping today. It's entitled "Comfort and Joy: Hugs and kisses deepen family ties - no money or mistletoe required" by Gretchen Rubin. (You can read the entire article here.) You may recognize her name from "The Happiness Project," a book she wrote on the subject of happiness (obviously). :) While I believe that true joy comes from having a personal relationship with God, I think her tips on happiness when it comes to everyday life are helpful and insightful.

In this article, she talks about a proposition she made to her family. She said she wanted their family to have a rule that when any one of them would come home or were leaving that they all had to pay attention to that person for a minute. She said, "Let's give warm greetings and farewells." She further said, "I think we've fallen into some bad habits of not paying attention, and it's important to show affection for each other."

This made me stop and think about affection in my family. From the time I was a little girl, I have known affection from my family and learned to share affection in return. We had a daddy who we were always happy to see come home from work and would run into his arms for hugs. We were blessed to have a stay-at-home mama who was always ready with a hug and kiss whenever we needed one or even if we didn't realize we needed one. They both showed us unconditional love. As we spent time with our extended family on my mother's side, we learned that the type of hugging we all practiced was called "flipping". Not one of us can hug the other without patting each other on the back a few times. I'm not sure who started that, but it's a seemingly genetic trait that continues to this day. :-) And when we are getting ready to leave each other, we cannot depart without making our rounds and hugging everyone.

When I gave birth to my daughter, I hugged her closely and promised her that I would take care of her to the best of my ability all of the days of my life. I hope that I am doing that. When she was big enough to squeeze back, we started the "big squeeze" hugs. Those continued for many years and now they are a fond and cherished memory for us both. I always tucked her in and said, "I love you bigger than space!" As she is older now, and doesn't need to be tucked in anymore, I must be happy with just a hug before bed. This is a time I cherish every night and not one night goes by that she doesn't come find me if I haven't already come to her for a goodnight hug. The power of touch is so strong. I know there have been studies done on this topic. I won't go into all those details in this post, but I knew a foster mother who took "failure-to-thrive babies" into her home. With a lot of grandmotherly affection, those babies were thriving in no time at all.

Vince Gill wrote a song entitled "Let's Make Sure We Kiss Goodbye". Some of the lyrics are:

Let's send up a prayer for this love that we share
'Cause it could change in the blink of an eye
No, you just never know how tomorrow will go
So let's make sure we kiss goodbye
Let's make sure we kiss goodbye

When I first heard this song, I had just married my second husband. Because I knew how true the lyric was "cause it could change in the blink of an eye", we decided that we would always kiss goodbye even if it meant waking the other. After almost seven and one-half years of marriage, there have been very few times that we haven't able to do this. We also have some word art that hangs in our room that reads "Always Kiss Me Goodnight." I cherish him and the blessing that he is in my life and I thank God for him everyday.

It is not my goal to be mushy here, I just want to stress the importance that I believe affection has in our lives. My heart aches for families who never learned to show affection. I believe this is part of what tears at the fabric of our society. We can't fix the whole world, but we can do our part by showing affection to those in our corners of the world. We may never know the impact of our words and our touch in the lives of others.

Hugs,
Christy