No. 002: I Want a Hug.
On vocabulary, embodiment, and a Good Father.
We named our youngest of three sons Nicholas. He was born within a week of Christmas, and as a newborn he was unusually easy to please, so for a while I figured that the nickname “Jolly Ol’ Saint Nicholas” would stick. But soon his personality took form, and before he could walk, he had earned a new nickname—and this is one that all members of our family still use to address our three-and-a-half-year-old son multiple times each day: “Ri-dic-uh-lus Nich-uh-lus.”
We had welcomed two babies, Frederick and Simon, into our family in the four years before Nicholas was born, so we were pretty sure we knew what “chaos” was. But this kid, I swear… If a stand-up comedian owned and operated a demolition derby and that comedian was also a Tasmanian devil, it might come somewhat close to replicating the force of personality that is Nicholas Smith. Maybe.
In one of my favorite photographs of him, Ri-dic-uh-lus Nich-uh-lus may be seen running around outside in the driveway with a vibrant smile, a bare bottom, a fox costume on his top half, and a pair of scissors in his hand. I think that sums up his spirit pretty well.
Nicholas is neither mean-spirited nor devious. He is chaotic, he is hilarious, he is charismatic, and, yes, he is very ridiculous. His volume dials go up to eleven, and since he was barely a toddler he has been capable of performing dramatized renditions of the full range of human emotions (as well as, perhaps, some animal emotions) through his facial expressions alone. We have a favorite video of him as a one-year-old serving me some nasty side-eye while I try to feed him bites of waffle at Cracker Barrel; I mean, he drops his chin all the way down and to the right, touching his collarbone, in order to relegate his iris to the absolute tiniest, top-left sliver of his eyeball.
Nicholas’s personality showed up powerfully and quickly. His words, however, did not. By his second birthday, the breadth of his vocabulary was essentially the same as it had been when he was born, and after a year of speech therapy between his second and third birthdays, little had changed. “I don’t see any concerns with cognitive or social development—” his speech therapists would say, “I guess he just doesn’t want to talk!” He was always sociable, he was always smart, and he was always good-humored (and loud). He just didn’t have the words.
I’m not entirely sure what changed, but just a few months ago, Nicholas decided that he was ready. The words started coming out, first one by one, and then few by few. We have now entered into one of my favorite windows of childhood development to witness as a parent: when a big personality with big ideas starts trying to understand and interact with a big world, all with a very small vocabulary.
At the moment, I am pretty sure that Nicholas believes that “God” is any visible construal of two intersecting, perpendicular (that is, cruciform) lines. Whenever something exciting happens in any given sporting event, you can be sure that he will repeat one of his favorite cheers—“Holy smokes! … Hole-in-one! … Let’s go, Tigers!” or, my personal favorite, “Yeah, baby!” Last week, he flipped open a storybook to an illustration of a fiery, glowing angel Gabriel. He looked up at me, pointed at the flaming figure, and declared confidently, “That’s Hot Jesus.”
Alongside the many complex verbal constructs that are still coalescing in Nicholas’s mind and, consequently, his vocabulary, there is one phrase we heard from him almost immediately, whenever he started talking, and that we now hear on repeat dozens of times each day. That is, “I want..!”
Nicholas can articulate when he is hurt or hungry, but he does not have a verbal category for what it means to be sad, angry, frustrated, bored, lonely, or afraid. I certainly would not call him “introspective” or “self-aware.” However, he is able to communicate with great passion when he wants Cheerios or that marble his brother is playing with or to go to the pool or to be carried up the stairs. He is a force of embodied desire.
In the world of Evangelical discipleship and counseling, I have observed a renewed emphasis on “getting to the root” of our desires. We recognize that, at a deep level, all of our desires are ultimately pointing us to Christ, and Christ stands ready to receive us. Mentors encourage their mentees not to ignore their desires, but to probe them in order to understand their spiritual foundation. The message, applied to real situations, goes something like this:
You don’t really want “to own your own home”—you just want Security.
You don’t really want “to lose eight pounds”—you just wand Affection.
You don’t really want “that cute, yellow dress from Madewell”—you just want an Identity.
You don’t really want “a Caribbean beach vacation”—you just want Peace.
You don’t really want “to get pregnant”—you just want a Purpose.
You don’t really want “sex”—you just want Relational Intimacy.
You don’t really want “your own bowl of that Blue Bell Cookie Two Step you’re serving up for your kids”—you just want Comfort.
Once we “get to the root” of our desires, so the logic goes, then we can pray to God, “Hello, God—please give me Security and Affection and Identity and Peace and Purpose and Intimacy and Comfort,” and God will guide us to Scriptures that redirect our hearts to the ways in which the death and resurrection of Christ have already won for us all of the above.
Yes, Christ is the terminal object of all of our desires, and yes, they will all ultimately be fulfilled in him. And yes, it is vital that we immerse our hearts in the Scriptures that point us toward the inheritance of riches that are ours through Christ. However, how often have we tried to beat our souls into submission to spiritualized desire fulfillment, only to find ourselves minutes later ashamedly reaching for junk food or a shopping spree or pornography or alcohol?
What am I doing wrong? Am I a bad Christian? Am I a lost cause?
A couple weeks ago, Chris and the boys and I went for an evening walk along the Chattahoochee. We brought the fishing rods, and the boys all cast into the shoals for a while. Simon reeled in a bluegill, but for the most part we just stood there with our feet in the shallows as terrapins slid by, likely laughing at our futile quest for fish.
As dusk was approaching, we started to walk back to the parking lot. Simon, Nicholas, and I skipped a little bit ahead, while Chris and Frederick stopped below the I-75 overpass to try a few more casts. The younger boys and I paused on the path and danced to a couple rounds of “Ring around the Rosy.” Then, Nicholas stopped, looked toward the bridge, and with several cyclists and walkers watching on, he yelled as loudly as his tiny body could muster, “DAD! I … WANT … A … HUG!”
Can you imagine if I had looked at my son in that moment and glibly encouraged him, “Oh, sweetheart, you don’t really want a hug—you just want Love. But don’t worry; Jesus loves you!” I’m sure one of the passersby would have paused to shoot me a judgmental glare, and rightly so. No—I picked the boy up myself and squeezed him tight and kissed his cheek.
Jesus admonishes his disciples, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (Matt. 19:14). What makes the little children such great candidates for entrance into Christ’s kingdom? I believe it is the fact that these impulsive, candid toddlers instinctively know—sometimes better than us spiritually-minded adults—that God designed us as embodied creatures, made to inhabit an embodied kingdom, and he desires to meet us through embodied means.
Even those counselors who confidently tout “the sufficiency of Scripture” for those whose hearts are restless will often recommend that their mentees curl up on a cozy armchair with a warm mug of coffee while they read their Bibles—and maybe put some Andrew Peterson on Spotify and buy yourself one of those “aesthetic” Bibles from Crossway. Why? Because ultimately, we cannot escape the reality that God often facilitates our spiritual health through bodily means.
This is not a flaw of our sinful flesh—it is a good gift from our Father, given to us with a purpose. God created humans with brains that burn the fuel of dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins, and we are not doing our souls any favors when we neglect embodied activities that promote the functional health of these neurotransmitters.
Meditating on Scripture is certainly a beneficial use of our time when our minds feel enslaved by tangible desires. Through humble engagement with Scripture, the Spirit will shed light on the contours of our desires and anxieties; it will help us to understand why we want what we want. It will be legitimately helpful to recognize that what we are truly searching for is Affection or Purpose or Identity, and it is right to acknowledge that all of these desires are ultimately met in Christ.
But when we survey the earthly ministry of Christ—as recorded by the exact Bible to which we are instructed to look in order to find answers to our deep longings—we read of a Savior who consistently met the hungry and the lonely and the sick with food and relationship and healing—and only after he had given these embodied gifts did he turn his listeners’ attention to the transcendent spiritual realities of his kingdom. The Book of Common Prayer encourages us, when we present ourselves to God, “to ask those things which are requisite and necessary, as well for the body as the soul” (p. 6).
Throughout my years-long battle with debilitating depression, I worked hard to “get to the root” of my desires, to submit them to the teachings of Scripture, and to construe them mentally as fulfilled in Christ. These disciplines did offer some temporary peace—and at some times in our lives perhaps those spiritual meditations may really be the only clear avenues for us to find such peace. However, I did not find myself on a trajectory to true healing and wholeness until some of the real, embodied, circumstantial and relational factors in my life had been adequately addressed, or until my clinician and I had worked through the trial-and-error process of more than a few antidepressants and mood stabilizers in order to find, finally, a treatment regimen that served me well. Think what you will, but I do not personally believe that I am a “bad Christian” for having needed tangible measures of healing—in addition to the teachings of Scripture—in order to find myself living a life of sustainable joy.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus preaches to a crowd of hungry souls:
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for fish, will give him a snake? If, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (Matt. 7:7–11).
Rather than waiting until you have excavated every stratum of your tangible desires until you have discovered the spiritual foundation, I implore you to be honest with God right from the start, just like a toddler would, about what exactly it is that you want—whether it be a donut or sex or a job promotion or a Tesla or a moment of quiet while your kids tornado through the house.
The point is not that God will then dispense to you whatever it is you’re wishing for, like a Great Vending Machine in the Sky. (That said, if he does give you exactly what you wanted, then you will recognize this act of provision as a gift of grace from your Good Father, given so that you might use it to love God and love your neighbor—rather than as a possession you have earned through your own striving and may therefore use in any way you wish.)
The point, rather, is that we acknowledge before God that not just our souls, but our bodies as well, are craving some sort of desire fulfillment, and we therefore petition God to meet our desires through embodied means. We are likely to experience God as aloof and silent if we decline him access to the desires of our bodies. But if we engage him in honest prayer about what exactly it is that we want, then our hearts will be awakened to see our Good Father showing up for us—sometimes in the way we hoped for, and other times through unexpected channels.
We will often find that our desires are met most holistically through embodied participation in the local church. There is a reason that the ordinances (or sacraments) that Christ left with his church require physical acts—not just spiritual meditations. These physical acts point our hearts to the reality that Christ is actively redeeming our bodies and our relationships with the material world. When we enjoy face-to-face relationships with our brothers and sisters in Christ, when we dedicate our wealth and time and energy toward serving the church, and when we raise our hands in worship, we will find tangible relief for our deepest desires. Yes, our desires are being fulfilled “in Christ,” but the church is the body of Christ, and it is through the real hands and feet of this body that our souls are most likely to find whatever it is we are looking for.
But Christ is the Lord of all Creation, and he is also ready to meet your spiritual needs through embodied means any day of the week—not just on Sundays. When we actively serve our neighbor; when we pursue wholesome interactions of physical touch; when we exercise and eat nourishing food; and when we enjoy meaningful work or life-giving hobbies, we can recognize the consequent health of our bodies and souls as a real, tangible manifestation of the grace of Christ. You have a Good Father who desires to give you good gifts; you honor him when you embrace them.
Sometimes, when you want a hug, what you really need is … a hug. Don’t be afraid to let Christ wrap you in his love through the physical arms of your brother or sister.
A note to those enduring seasons of suffering or mental affliction: The intended message of this post is certainly not that if only you would exercise for 20 minutes each day or listen to happy music or eat a salad every once in a while, then your heart would feel peachy keen. I hope that you are able to find some relief through measures such as these, but please hear me—even after all of this, it is okay if you are still not okay. Even in your suffering, Christ upholds you, delights in you, and is using you to build his kingdom. Know that I love you and am praying for your healing.
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Until next time—
Affectionate thanks,
HLS
Truly heart touching and empathy filled. I felt God's love while reading these penetrating thoughts.