Touch

 March 10, 2019

There’s no sense in hiding it; I am now officially a statistic, a card-carrying member of the COVID community. Yes indeed, I tested positive. Quarantine is my new least-favorite word, especially since it’s the second time I’ve been down this road. I had driven to Ohio for a pastor’s retreat, and to abide by our state’s requirements, went for a COVID test on Tuesday so I would be allowed to re-enter the state without having to quarantine. Of course, that was only if I tested negative, which unfortunately, didn’t happen. I had spent Monday in my room at the retreat center, tired and unable to concentrate even enough to read my Bible and pray, not the best of scenarios for a pastor’s retreat. I kept my distance from the others and decided after the test to simply drive home rather than run the risk of exposing anyone to the possibility of COVID. I guess it was the right thing to do. 

Loads of vitamins, plenty of fluids, lots of rest, and I’m doing pretty well except for losing my sense of taste this morning. THAT I don’t appreciate, but maybe it’ll be enough to lose the five or ten pounds I’ve been half-heartedly wanting to shed. After all, there’s not much sense in eating when you can’t taste it. 

That regimen doesn’t bother me, and neither does the quarantining, except for one small detail: actually being infected means I not only quarantine from life, but also from Linda who is what makes our house a home to me. When I arrived home Tuesday, I couldn’t give her a hug. We’ve had to sleep in separate bedrooms; we eat from TV trays while sitting at opposite ends of our back room. I have learned something from this that I should have known years ago—the importance of touch.

I am not a touchy-feely kind of person, but I long to be able to hold my wife in my arms, to lay beside her at night, to give and receive the small nudges and the brush of her fingertips across my back if she walks by my chair. We are living in mutual isolation; we’re able to talk, but not touch. It makes me think about what it must have been like for the leper when Jesus not only pronounced the words, but also reached out and touched him (Mark 1:40-41). Back then, when someone contracted this disease, they were isolated from the community, but even worse, from family. They had to warn off anyone who came too near to them. Some of them had lived this way for years, never held, never touched, never knowing the warmth and pressure of another human hand upon their skin. I suspect that when Jesus touched this man, it wasn’t the healing of the body that was so important at the moment, but the healing of the soul, the experience of simply not being cast aside.

It makes me wonder about life here and now. How many people are there who simply need a love-inspired touch? In a world where child sexual abuse is rampant and school administrations forbid teachers to touch their students, how many of these children are starving for meaningful touch? How many only know touch as a slap or beating, and are dying inside for someone to reach out tenderly with a hug they’ll not receive anywhere else? We know from babies born in NICU units that failure to touch means failure to thrive. A child can simply die from not being touched.

And what about the elderly, the widow and widower? Over the years, how many of these sweet ladies lived year after year after the death of a husband, never to be touched again? How their souls must suffer; how their spirits would sing if we simply reached out and touched them! The divorcee, the single person who goes home to an empty house or apartment are often people whose spirits are only partially alive. We in the Church speak of Christian compassion, and are willing to serve and give to ministries, but will we touch the unsavory and dirty homeless person, or keep her at arm’s length? 

I’ve only been without Linda’s touch for less than a week. Quarantine rules are stretching it out to another week before I can feel her fingers intertwined with mine, her arms around me, her body beside me at night. Years of this I cannot imagine. So if nothing more comes from COVID than this, I will have learned a valuable lesson I shall not forget. If when this is over, you reach out to touch me, I will remember Jesus who touched the leper and said, “I am willing for you to be whole,” and it was so.