The power of a hug

Three weeks ago at church, Masha sat next to me.   Masha is ten, has Downs Syndrome and is a fantastic hugger.  She just loves hugging.  So I try to always stop and hug her back.  During the service, she came in and sat between me and her dad, for a while she loved on her dad and then she leaned her head on my shoulder, so I leaned my head over onto hers, and she looked up at me with this big smile.  She reached around and gave me a shoulder hug, and then patted my head, and then rubbed my back for a few minutes.  I didn’t move the entire time because it just felt so good.  It was just simple, innocent affection, and it sent tingles up my spine.  If you don’t know what I’m talking about you need more hugs and back scratches.
Human contact is so important.  That’s why I try and hug the kids when we go up to the orphanage.  These are just a few stories of some of the hugs I’ve given and gotten this past month, and why hugs are so important in our ministry.

My friend Viktor and some of the boys from the orphanage.

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Meisha and I really clicked when I visited him at camp two summers ago.  He and I have been buds since then.   A few Saturdays back,  a few of us got to go up to the orphanage and just be with the kids.  Usually the kids have about two hours between the end of school and their mandatory study time, and so we only have a little window to hang out with the kids, but Saturdays are nice, relaxed and tend to be a better time to connect. 
I followed a few of the boys into the computer lab that I didn’t even know existed before that day.  All the computers were taken by older boys who were playing first person war games and the like, and groups of younger boys were gathered around them.   Meisha was watching a boy play Grand Theft Auto.  I walked up behind him and put my hands on his shoulders.  He looked up at me, grinned, and then pulled my arms around him and held my hands.  Eventually, he pulled my hands up to his face and I brushed his cheeks with my thumbs.  We probably sat there for about 20 minutes.  That means I watched Grand Theft Auto for twenty minutes, which is not on my list of things to do … ever, but it was worth it to just give Meisha some attention. 
I have a loving wife who hugs me everyday whether she wants to or not.  I rarely see my family, but when I do, my parents shower me with affection and I reciprocate.  But Meisha doesn’t have that.  As I watched that day, his sister ganged up with another girl to punch Meisha a few times.  That was all the physical attention he got from her.  He took it in stride, but I wandered how that affects him. 

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When I saw Dasha at the beginning of the year after not seeing her for about seven months, she would smile at me but kind of kept her distance.  But not long after I hung out with Meisha in the computer lab, I was walking with Nadya and Dasha to the cafeteria.  I was playing around with them and ended wrapping them both up in a little tickle hug.  After a little giggling, Nadya pulled away, but Dasha turned into me and wrapped her arms around my neck.  When I straightened up she clung to my neck.  We were still about 150 yards from the cafeteria, and Nadya started walking, so I followed, wearing my little Dasha necklace.  I used my right arm to hold her tight and let her know she could hug me as long as she needed, and with my left arm I pulled her legs up a bit so that walking while carrying a 4th grader was less awkward.  She didn’t move until we reached the cafeteria.  Sometimes the kids just want a quick hug and sometimes they latch on and need to really be held.  I’m glad that I was able to hold Dasha when she needed it.  The next week, I got another latch-onto-my-neck hug, and I hope there are more to come.

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This past week, we spent three days with the 27 kids who didn’t have anywhere to go for spring break.  It’s a great time to connect with kids on a more individual basis.  Zena is one of Janna’s favorite little girls, she’s in seventh grade, and very bright, but reserved.  She has always been shy around me, until this week.  As a group of us left the football field the first day of camp, Zena came up next to me and started to talk to me, asking how to say different things in English.  I would give her a high five when she would repeat the words properly.  After a little while, she was telling me to stand behind her and catch her as she fell.  I would let her almost reach the ground before I stopped her, but I caught her every time, so she began trusting me more and more.  Later we were heading to the gym for our team’s program and she pulled my arm around her and held my hand as we walked.  For many of the girls in the orphanage, the only relationships they have had with males have not been positive.  So for Zena to finally come to a point where she could trust me enough to hold my hand was a great feeling.  As the girls get older their need for human contact can lead to them reaching out in ways that aren’t healthy.  This is one of the biggest reasons that so many of the girls from the orphanage are pregnant within one of two years after leaving the orphanage at 9th grade.  But girls who get hugs in a healthy, innocent relationship (i.e. father-daughter or similar) are less likely to seek out relationships that will likely end badly for them.  That’s why I try and reach out to the older kids like Zena.  And its not just the girls.  This week I got into bear hug contest with Bogdon and Yaroslav, two of the boys in the 9th grade.   Older boys are easy in comparison, they always want to show that they are strong and so are totally willing to wrestle around with me to prove it.  Wrestling without anger can still be good human contact and just to prove that it was all in good fun, I pull the guys in for a little hug when we are done. 

Me and Zena goofing off together

 

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This morning we took Ruslan to church with us.  Ruslan had come to camp and helped us by running the games and helping with all of our programs.  He is an awesome guy and I’m hoping we can work more with him.  We showed up early at church and Danya was almost the only person there.  Danya is only 10, but he is pretty tall for his age, and so Ruslan asked him why he is so big.  Danya shrugged his shoulders, but I answered, “Its because he gets lots of hugs.”  Ruslan gave me a confused look.  So I explained, healthy human contact is almost as important to our physical development as vitamins.  We had just come from the orphanage, where compared to Danya, the kids are tiny.  I heard that kids graduating from the orphanage are on average 2 inches shorter than their counterparts in Ukraine, and that fits with what I’ve seen.  Two of the biggest contributors to the lack of growth are stress and lack of human contact.  While I was explaining this, I put my hand on Ruslan’s shoulder and rubbed it for him a little bit.  His eyes went wide and as he held out his hands he told me that when I did that it sent tingles all over his body.  Danya has a mom and dad who love him.  He lives in a transition home get plenty of loving from all his older brothers and sisters who are coming out of the orphanage.  Plus, Janna adores him and gives him a bug hug every week at church and in between if we happen to see him.  Sure, genetics may play a part, but the kid can develop well because he is fed love all the time. 

That’s what I wish we could give all the kids who live in the orphanage.

On Friday night, we threw a bunch of mats on the ground in the gym of the orphanage and watched Monsters University with the kids.  As we were about to start the movie I looked around for a place to sit, Vadeem grinned real big at me and waved me over.  Dima was next to him and joined in on the waving.  When Vadeen first came to the orphanage last year he was always sad, and he wouldn’t talk to me.  It took me four weeks of asking just to get his name.   Last year, I found him crying in a corner because his mom didn’t come visit when she had said she would.  I can’t imagine going through that ever, but even more when you are in second grade.  But, Vadeem and I are buds.  So I was stoked about sitting next to him.  I sat down, and Vadeem slid in close on my left side.  Dima slid in on my right.  About ten minutes into the film some of our team got up and started passing out cups of popcorn and juice.  I didn’t even make a move to help them.  Hugs are better than popcorn.  The whole movie, Vadeem didn’t move out of his little snuggle with me. 

It would have been ok with me if the movie would have kept going.