Book Review:: Handle with Care
BY SARAH ANNE HAYES
Sarah Anne Hayes is a believer, writer, and unabashed bibliophile. She spends her days running her small business, planning out her next adventure, belting out show tunes, and hanging out with her incredible fiancé. Sarah believes life is a gift meant to be celebrated, Tuesday morning should be as memorable as Saturday night, and nothing boosts your confidence like the perfect red lipstick.
“This hand, your hand, changes things,” he said, his fingers intertwined with mine.
This was at the start of a conversation with my now-husband that, ultimately, led to us deciding to make things “official,” as they say, and let the general public in on the fact that we were dating.
It was at the end of our third date, during which he had finally made physical contact beyond a hello or goodbye hug. As we sat on the couch watching a movie, he’d put his arm around me, eventually intertwining his fingers with mine.
After the movie finished and our conversation began, he voiced what we both knew — physical touch changes things in a relationship.
The thing, though, is we often think of that change as something bad. Touch adds a new dimension to any relationship — platonic or romantic — but that doesn’t make it bad. So why do we think so?
The reality is our culture — in the Church and at large — doesn’t do well with touch. Characterized by the #metoo movement in one sphere and freak outs over front hugs in the other, it seems we have no grid for how to touch or be touched without raising questions, reigniting fears, or reliving trauma.
But at this point the fact is indisputable — touch is necessary for healthy living. Its presence or lack thereof impacts babies straight out of the womb for the rest of their lives. It improves stress levels, cardiovascular health, and so much more. There are some things nothing but a hug from the right person can fix.
With her characteristic nuance and care, Lore Ferguson Wilbert dives into this topic fraught with so much controversy and concern in her new book, Handle With Care: How Jesus Redeems the Power of Touch in Life and Ministry. Exploring what touch looks like in the context of different relationships, Lore encourages us to reframe how we think about touch and see it for what it can be — a beautiful, powerful gift and ministry tool to ourselves and others.
From start to finish, Lore’s words encouraged and convicted me, but a few lessons stood out:
1. Care of self matters
Like many women, I have long struggled with my body. I have berated it for looking or being a certain way and I have berated myself for letting it look or be a certain way. I have bemoaned lack of tone, hidden parts away, and pinched, poked, prodded love handles and extra rolls I wished would magically disappear.
I forget, too often, that while effort and discipline can affect change in my body, my body will always be my body. It will always be 5’2 ½”. It will always have curves, a short waist, and scars on both feet.
But what Lore reminds us of is this — our bodies are good, just as they are. Scripture tells us our bodies are temples of the living God and, as Lore points out, “It certainly can’t be bad if God dwells in it.”
This means I need to care for my body, now, as it is. With every roll, dimple, wrinkle of its imperfect existence. And caring for my body often means touching it — putting on moisturizer to nourish my skin, rubbing tension out of my hands, scrubbing dirt away to clean my face or body or hair.
“These little moments of self-touch aren’t—or shouldn’t be—mindless things,” Lore says. “This is the rudimentary work of the body at work in the world… When we touch our bodies with the kind of holistic care God has toward them, we remember our frailty and God’s unchangeableness. We remember our weakness and God’s strength. We remember we are mere temples, not the God who inhabits them.”
2. People are worth more than appearances
I’ve always been a rather touchy feely person, rarely concerned about giving front hugs or handshakes or touching someone’s arm in an effort to comfort. It wasn’t until I realized those touches could be perceived differently than I intended that I began to withhold them, out of fear more than anything else.
But fear of what, exactly? Fear of perception, fear of misunderstanding, fear of nothing substantial or tangible.
Scripture, however, commands us to live courageously, not fearfully, yet fear guides so many of our interactions with others in our midst, especially those who are single.
The single people I know are doing incredible things. They are serving in countless ways, giving of themselves day after day after day. While they may be receiving encouragement in words, what they may need more than anything is encouragement through touch.
We shrink back from such interaction for sake of appearances, but Lore encourages us to ask this question instead: “When it comes to our single friends in the church, instead of prioritizing the keeping up of appearances, what might it look like for married people to prioritize giving them the gift of physical touch in appropriate and intentional ways?”
Single or married, we should remember the people in our lives are worth more than keeping up appearances.
3. Deep and true friendships can exist
It has been my desire for many years to see healing where there is so much brokenness, specifically in the area of friendships between men and women in the Church.
I don’t know exactly when it broke, how it broke, or if it’s even possible to fix, but I do know I would love to see healthy, deep friendships existing between men and women. I would love to see a culture where we love and are loved, where we express that freely through words and action and the first thought is not that people are in love with each other.
This is perhaps one of the most difficult areas Lore asks readers to rethink their perceptions about touch — in the context of friendship. She asks us to acknowledge the goodness and beauty of deep and true friendships, to step outside the Western thought process that leads us to believe intimacy and sexuality are identical and, as a result, all touch must be sexual.
“To be loved as a friend,” she says, “at the very least… means to be touched with care.”
Setting arbitrary boundaries related to a person’s gender or assuming our own perceptions on the relationships of others only serves to sew more hurt and pain where there should instead be healing.
More than anything, Handle With Care caused me to think — about how I touch myself and others, how others touch me, and how we can all use this beautiful gift, embodied by God made flesh, to minister and love each other well.