Something happened today. I was with a friend who is
grieving a recent and terrible loss, she was crying and I leaned over and took
her hand. And we sat. And cried. I have only known her a few months and for many
of those we did not see each other much but I knew that taking her hand was the
right thing to do, that it would be OK, for one simple reason. She’s not
English.
We have fetishized touch as a culture, limited to romantic
relationships only, to the extent that walking around in public holding another
woman’s hand feels awkward for fear onlookers will question your sexuality. I have some female friends with whom I will snuggle under a
blanket or lie with my head in their lap to talk about serious things, but although I get a huge amount of comfort from the action, talking
about it makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable. This is not a universal cultural
norm, in fact in my experience it is rare. My Chinese boy students will hug and
hold hands throughout a class in a completely unselfconscious, platonic way, my
female Arab friends will sit with their hands on my knee when we are talking,
but for many of us Brits at some point in our life we learn that close,
prolonged physical contact is reserved only for people who are ‘in a
relationship’ and anything else is weird.
This creates a problem for some of those of who are single.
It’s a difficult thing to admit but I need physical contact. It makes me feel
loved and safe and secure. It makes me feel connected to other people and
accepted. And the point when I need it most is the point at which it is often
completely withdrawn. See a person in pain, wrapped up in a ball, head down,
hurting and the English instinct seems to be back away, give them space, ignore
it. We think it is what people want. It’s what many people do want, and to
offer physical comfort to a person experiencing such intense emotions is a
risky thing in a culture where most physical contact is taboo. But there are a
significant minority of us for whom that is the wrong answer. When people see
me in distress they touch me less and it leads eventually to me feeling
untouchable, even dirty. It contributes to my sense of isolation, to feeling
not understood, separate, sometimes even not quite human.
That’s a very specific issue which operates when I am very
unwell but being a physical person affects my day to day relationships as well.
My desire for sustained physical contact which is often chronically unsatisfied
can lead to feeling profound wellbeing when with certain friends who are
capable and comfortable with friendly touch. I value these friendships to
extremes, frankly I often make idols out of them and often experience acute
fear of rejection and envy of others with whom I have to share their friendship
or a dramatic feeling of betrayal and overwhelming hurt when they let me down or seem to reject me,
as humans must inevitably do. I hate this reaction in myself and I fight it and
hide it and deny it, but it exists and it certainly can make me a difficult
person to be friends with.
People with BPD are vulnerable to black and white thinking
when it comes to people, believing them to either be perfect and unable to hurt
you or horrible and deliberately out to damage you. I have the gospel that
whispers in my ear, they are human, sinners in the image of God and loved by
Jesus but it can be difficult to hold on to that interpretation when you feel
baffled, bewildered and desperately hurt because this friend that you thought
cared about you, who you love intensely, suddenly seems to be saying, “hang on,
you’re not that important to me”.
Some people will read this and think, the culture is right
then, we shouldn’t touch, look how powerful it is and what it can lead to. I
think that is the wrong conclusion. The people who have most profoundly helped
me change for the better in my life are the people who have loved me and kept
loving me through my difficult behaviour, who have been hurt by me and have
come back again and again. Because I am a Christian and I can change, and the
more you put me in a situation where I see my rotten, stinking sin, the more
you love me so I hate what that sin does to you, the more I pray and turn to
God and seek to become more like Jesus. Pull away, try to teach me ‘boundaries’
and I will turn inward with self-loathing and self-destruction but keep loving
me when I am awful and I will turn outward to Jesus in desperation for change.
And I’m never going to boil anyone’s bunny rabbit. I have walked away from
several people for a time when I just couldn’t get any perspective and my
idolatry has been out of control. Walked away, prayed and in time been able to
come back and start again on a healthy footing by the grace of God and of those
friends. I hope they know who they are and how much I appreciate them.
But this blog is not about coping it’s about healing, so how
can I move from fighting to keep my relationships under the Sovereignty of God
to freedom to love my friends and enjoy my friendships, especially the ones
that give me a deep sense of peace and contentment? I have been thinking about
this lately and have come to some discoveries. The first is that the Bible
recognises us as physical people and offers a multitudinous array of imagery
that involves receiving comfort and safety from God, Father and Son in the form
of physical contact. From the image of a father carrying his son through the
desert in Deut 1:31 to the picture of a hen gathering up its young under its
wings (Matt 23:39). Even, astonishingly, we find the glorious and terrifying
Son of Man of John’s vision in Revelation 1 stooping
to lay a hand on John’s shoulder as he lies face down in terror before
uttering his words of comfort.
But the Bible goes further, far further than I would possibly
dare to go. I hesitate to imagine physical contact and intimacy with Jesus for
fear that I will pollute him with my sinful thoughts but the Bible pushes right
through where I fear to tread in describing the church as Jesus’ bride. His
bride who he has cleansed (Jer 33:8), divested of her filthy rags (Zech 3:4)
and beautifully clothed, coming down to him in Revelation 21. The Bible says
that marriage is only a partial fulfilment of our desire for intimacy, our need
to know and be known, to accept and be accepted, to be one flesh, united with
another, and that the true fulfilment of that desire, true intimacy in every
sense, will only arrive when we are finally united with Christ in the new
creation. That intimacy will be so absolute that the partial picture of it in marriage
that we have here will cease to be needed or have meaning.
What is more we have already tasted this intimacy. I fall
into a trap of thinking that Jesus isn’t here.
He’s ‘up there’ in heaven, loving me, yes, interceding for me, yes, but not
physically here. And of course I am wrong, Jesus is very much here by his
Spirit. Just because you can’t see the Spirit doesn’t mean he has no physical
presence, Jesus describes him like the wind, which has a very powerful,
palpable effect on the physical world. Of course the Spirit is able to interact
physically with the world he helped to create. The idea that Jesus is not physically
with me is a massive lie that is concocted somewhere between my low
expectations of God and my culture’s cynicism of physical, spiritual
manifestations, and like all of Satan’s lies it has robbed me of a precious
truth. Christ is here, physically with me and he is not running away from my
sin, my dirt, my mess, my need. He’s not frightened by it, he’s not disgusted
or repelled by my filthy heart, my filthy life. Not this Jesus, who touched
lepers and ate with ‘sinners’ and washed his disciples’ feet. This Jesus says, “I
will cleanse you from all your impurities and all your idols. I will give you a
new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone
and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you”, (Ez
36;25b-37a).
Jesus’ Spirit is here and he is within me. And I am in hidden with him in God (Col 3:3). You can’t
get more intimate than that. The complete intimacy that I will enjoy with
Christ has already begun. Jesus does not keep me at arms’ length, he doesn’t give
me space and to him I am never untouchable or too dirty. When I start to panic
with a fear of rejection, I have begun to imagine Jesus placing his arm around
my shoulders and saying the only message simple and direct enough to get
through, “I love you, you’re safe, I’m here”.
