What a Hug Can Do

The weekend before last, I hugged a complete stranger. The weird part was that it wasn’t weird at all.

Perhaps hugging someone you don’t know isn’t that unusual for you, but I’m not much of a hugger. I’m not into touching other people. Not even people I know. All day long at work, I touch people I just met. I feel their knee. I examine their hip. I push on that one spot that hurts really bad. But outside of work, I’m done.

I certainly don’t hug people I don’t know.

This hug from the stranger wasn’t weak. She gave me all she had. It wasn’t a side-to-side hug. It wasn’t the kind that you do because you feel like you should hug but don’t really want to.

The hug was honest. The hug came from her soul. She used both arms and I felt it.

It was an embrace.

photo by Amanda Tipton (creative commons license)

Her name was Yvonne. I only know it because of her name tag. She never did ask me mine.

We were on our way to church. We came up the escalator from the train and stepped into a rain storm. It looked like the bottom fell out of the sky. Everything was getting wet. It was the kind of morning you should stay in bed. The kind where once you get wet and cold, you stay chilled the rest of the day.

We ran to the restaurant just around the corner. Our plan was to get something for breakfast. The need to eat became secondary to the need to stay dry.

We quickly stepped inside and ordered our food. Fruit for my wife. Oatmeal for me. We grabbed a table and started the process of describing how wet we were. We rubbed our hand together to get them warm.

Soon, Yvonne brought us our food. She sat it down on the table and then looked at us with a big smile on her face. Before I knew it, I was standing up and had my arms around her.

She was smiling. She was laughing. She was excited about seeing us. In that one moment I felt like the most important person in the world to her.

When we stepped in, we were cold and wet, but Yvonne warmed us up with her smile and her hug.

She didn’t have a blanket or a towel or a dry shirt. All she had was a hug and the warmness of her personality. And she gave us that. She gave us a piece of herself.

It was a simple sermon that Sunday morning. Yvonne preached to us not with words or beliefs or theology. There is enough of that in churches. Probably too much, actually.

Instead she preached a sermon with herself. She gave. She didn’t let wetness and unfamiliarity and routine get in her way. She loved.

Imagine what the world we be like if we talked less and hugged more. (Share this on Facebook)

I don’t know how many hugs Yvonne handed out that morning. I doubt that we were the only ones to experience something of her. But our day was better for having stumbled across her, even if it was only for a moment.

What is the best hug you have ever received?