Harold and the Laying on of Hands

Some of my clearest childhood memories of church are not from Sunday worship itself but from the odd currents that swirled around it—potlucks, basement coffee, revival language drifting through fellowship halls, and certain visitors who seemed to arrive from a much wider, stranger Christian world.

At Grace Lutheran there was an event called Lutheran Lay Renewal. Even the name felt mysterious to me as a child, though the adults said it matter-of-factly, as if everyone should know what it meant. People came from far away for it, staying in church members’ homes as guests, almost like pilgrims in reverse. Our family often hosted one or two of them.

I mostly remember sleeping bags brought out, extra towels in the bathroom, my mother preparing more food than usual, and strangers suddenly sitting at our kitchen table speaking in intimate tones as though they had known us for years.

One year there was Harold.

He was older—already old to me in the way anyone over fifty seemed ancient—and had the earnest intensity many of those renewal people carried, as if every ordinary conversation might tilt into testimony. Yet what I remember most was how much my father liked him.

My father was quiet with nearly everyone. Friendly, yes, but measured. You noticed when he gave himself over to conversation. But with Harold, he did.

I remember the two of them talking longer than usual, leaning in, laughing softly over something I was too young to understand. There was a warmth there that caught my attention because it was rare enough to register.

And when Harold left, there was a hug.

Not the brief Midwestern half-pat men often gave, but a full embrace, the kind that made me realize some bond had formed in only a few days. I remember watching it with the vague amazement children feel when they witness adults reveal unsuspected tenderness.

But Harold also believed he could cure my headaches.

I must have complained about one—those childhood headaches that seemed to visit me often—and Harold took this as an opportunity for intervention.

He placed his hands against my temples and pressed hard.

Very hard.

Then the other sides of my head.

Then front and back, as though testing a melon for ripeness.

He worked with grave concentration, almost liturgical in his seriousness, while I endured this escalating cranial compression wondering whether healing was supposed to hurt quite this much.

Finally he stopped and asked, hopeful and expectant,

“Does it feel better?”

It did not.

But I said yes.

I can still feel the small moral calculation behind that lie. I did not want to disappoint him. He had tried so sincerely. Even at that age I sensed he needed the cure to have worked.

So I gave him the miracle.

For years I remembered the scene as comic, and it is comic. There is something wonderfully human about a man traveling across states for spiritual renewal and deciding, while lodged with strangers, to treat a child’s headaches by squeezing his skull.

But now I see something else in it.

Those lay renewal people moved through the world believing grace could appear through ordinary people, ordinary homes, ordinary touch. Harold may have been mistaken about headaches, but there was something beautiful in his confidence that care could be enacted with one’s own hands.

And there is something revealing, too, in what I remember most.

Not the pressure on my temples.

But my father’s hug goodbye.

Because my father was not demonstrative in ways children easily recognize. Affection often appeared sideways in him—in fixing something for you, in staying near, in inviting you to keep playing while he worked.

Yet here, suddenly, was overt warmth.

A hug held long enough to notice.

My father the quiet farmer.

My father the former chess-club president.

My father embracing Harold, a passing pilgrim with healing thumbs.

All of it belongs.

And somewhere in memory Harold still asks, with complete sincerity,

“Does it feel better?”

And I am still saying yes.