As I’ve reviewed options and opportunities to love people, I’ve realized that our hands, our time, and our food carry more influence and weight because they lead us to connection with people.

I hope, as you’ve moved through February, you’ve been able to slow down enough to see how you’re loving people, whether to confirm that you are, or to make changes and grow in how you love others.

Loving through our hands, through our time, and through food are all good practices. The better news is, these aren’t the only practices! I view them as umbrellas to categorize actions rather than limits to possibility. You are able and welcome to brainstorm how your life looks and how you can use your resources to speak love into others’ lives. Love is a radically creative and flexible mindset and state of being that can grow outside any boundary we set for it. It does not stay within the limits of a list!

My hands can lift weights and run errands and make food, but if I limit all of those functions to serving myself, then I also limit my abilities to relate, grow, and learn. My time can help me work, accomplish my goals, and enjoy new things, but my joy is often doubled when I share that time with others. I enjoy food, but I usually remember food in the context of experience, and the most memorable experiences have come from cooking and sharing meals with others, trying new foods, and tasting other cultures.

These tools allow us to love ourselves, which is big. Cutting off our own sustenance, health, and time management will cripple us eventually, if not immediately. But just as we need those things to get moving, connection to other people has the power to keep us moving, to prod us into growth and community and experience that further magnifies our potential in an individual sense and in a communal sense. A pandemic of separation, isolation, and removal has challenged this introvert in her skills for relationship, but regardless of my skills, I know my cravings. I crave connection, and work through my hands, my time, and my meals makes room for more of it.

How can we keep these avenues – that’s what they are, after all: means to deeper things – in perspective? I have three affirmations to share to remind us.

• Hands matter because we need others and affirmation of our own presence in the world.
• Time matters because we know it has different levels of value. Spending time attributes value.
• Food matters because it not only sustains our bodies but also sustains our spirits.

None of these things mean so much without the attachment of people in how these resources are spent.

As we depart from this month, I’m cheering for you to show up with your hands, your time, and your food. Make the phone call. Ask, “How are you, really?” Allow for tears and laughter in your time and over meals. Give gifts of treats or meals. Offer encouragement. Surprise the people around you.

The benefits of these acts of love are mutual. May you sense them as you resolve to love others through our circumstances.

All the best,

Rebekah