With whom might I connect more deeply through the care that gratefulness inspires?

Yes, the sentence is a bit awkward… but if you take off the prepositional phrase it becomes easier to understand, “With whom might you connect more deeply through care?”

My husband had an injury this week – a badly pulled muscle in his thigh that locked up and swelled to quite a large, hard, knot.. about the size of an open hand. He is very leanly muscular, so when his muscle locked up it seemed even worse and as hard as a steel radial tire. He could barely walk. It didn’t help that it coincided with his getting his second Covid vaccine, so we could not give him any anti-inflammatories. We used ice, of course, but for the first time in our marriage, he let me massage him. I spent an hour, twice a day, massaging that knot, and it gave him quite a bit of relief. I had to begin very lightly, because he was in such pain, and very slowly increase the strength of the massage until it was rigorous, and then when I finished, I’d apply Tiger Balm before bed. You could literally observe the swelling going down as I massaged. The touch did something else… a connection he hadn’t felt before. It was new territory for him. He was surprised it worked and felt so good. Lol.

The question (and recent experience) inspires me to try to connect better with my son today through care and appreciation. He is a teen – moody, often spending too much time on his phone/web and too silent with us. Sometimes he shuts us out. His dad and I both are trying to draw him out and get him to do other things and to talk more – about anything. Wish me luck today.

And good luck to all of you!