“I need you, you need me. I love you, I need you to survive.” -Hezekiah Walker

I tend toward affection. Hugging, touching and saying, “I love you” to people I know and trust doesn’t phase me or make me uncomfortable – usually. Covid has certainly made me a little bit more awkward and hesitant to touch, but I’m still perplexed when I hear stories of friends whose families don’t have physical contact or speak words of affection. I’m comfortable with affection, but there are, of course, always exceptions. 

Hezekiah Walker sings a song called, I need you to survive. The song begins with, “I need you, you need me.” I like the song, but every time I’ve sung this song with a congregation I’ve felt awkward. I mean really awkward. It kinda makes me cringe and I’ve sung it before with embarrassment. I’ve never really looked at that until recently.

Let me switch to another topic here and return to that affection in a bit. Today as I walked through a quiet country garden store, the buzz of patrons was missing. It’s not yet time for purchasing seeds and bulbs to hide in the dark soil or plant starts to sink into holes. We were there for bird seed, but other than us and the cashier, the store was empty of life in human form. We broke that silence.

Our little one broke it, actually. She recently started saying to me, “Mama, I need you.” It started as a sort of verbal game and it surfaced again in the store.  I left her in one aisle to look at the fake porcelain puppy alone so I could find the aisle with the plant holders. Soon she was following at a distance. “Mama, Mama,” she said, “I need you. I need you. Mama, I need you.” She continued speaking as she ran around the isle cap and towards me two rows over. It wasn’t a call of desperation. It was a call of delight. She has found this phrase and held onto it. And I responded, “I need you too.” She caught up with me, smiling and happy to have a warm place to run in. Then she happily took the item I asked her to take to her dad and her words calmed with the task of delivering an item.

Despite the fact that the woman at the register was conservative (wearing a dress, head covering, dark clothes, etc.) and likely had no issues with our simple conversation, I felt a little bit awkward about this interaction – just like my awkwardness with singing the Hezekiah Walker song. And the return message that I need her, too.

I was struck by that piece of discomfort in me with my own, dear daughter stating her need for me. Why? Maybe because it’s just so, so vulnerable – intimate, even. Who wants to be quite that vulnerable in public? But she didn’t care. She stated this need/fact with trust and shamelessness. And I realize that frankly, I shouldn’t be embarrassed either. In fact, perhaps I should start to embrace that vulnerability a bit more. Lord knows this world needs more love and intimacy that states openly and with no shame, “I need you.” From mother to daughter, from blood brother and sister and from brothers and sisters in Christ. And actually, from human to human and human to nature. We need one another. 

I’m guessing our daughter’s phase of stating her need for us will last a while. While it does, my goal is to savor it. If others hear and have an issue with it, they can deal. Or, if they hear it, perhaps they’ll warm to the message and be inspired to tell their loved ones that they need them.

(As I write this I think of course of the unhealthy reality of possessive relationships between people who feel possessive towards the other. I guess that could be a piece to address in this, but I don’t have energy for that now. Suffice it to say that I speak here of an innocence, freedom and love that can be spoken without guilting someone or shaming them into loving you or being with you.)