Susan Spurgeon admits she hasn’t always listened to the divine messages she’s been sent in her life, but these days she’s an enthusiastic convert.
“God poked me all my life, even before I was born, until I finally said, ‘I get it,’ at age 71,” says the 75-year-old Chattanooga resident.
Her goal now, with God’s guidance, she explains on her website, is to make her hometown “the most positively connected city in the United States.”
She’s doing so with Chattanooga HUGS, an acronym for Hearts United Grow Stronger. It’s not just physical hugs she’s sharing, though she’s happy to embrace that aspect of the movement. She believes a hug can also be accomplished through a smile or kind word. To do that, she keeps a supply of encouragement cards to distribute at everything from standing-room-only community events to one-on-one interactions.
Her website, www.ChattanoogaHugs.com, offers guidance for others who want to be part of Chattanooga HUGS, and she elaborates further in a new book, “Chattanooga Hugs: One Woman’s Response to a Lifetime of God Pokes.”
She was inspired, she says, by the July 16, 2015, terrorist attacks in Chattanooga that took the lives of five servicemen.
“Chattanooga Strong was a wonderful response to tragedy,” she says, “but I thought, ‘We’ve got to connect all the time.'”
With that in mind, she began her campaign at a Pray for Peace service for those killed.
“I had not anticipated going to the remembrance service,” she says, “but I woke up that morning and felt like I’d got God-poked.”
It was there that her idea blossomed. She first approached then-Police Chief Fred Fletcher and said, “I’m starting Chattanooga HUGS. Do you want a hug?” He did – as did many others in the crowd that day.
Not everyone is comfortable with a physical hug, though, so the encouragement cards are a way to give a lasting morale boost – and broaden the impact.
The palm-size cards come two at a time, connected by a colorful paper clip. The first has a word of encouragement she has handwritten on the back. The other is for the recipient to write an encouraging word to pass on to someone else.
As listed in the book, there are 126 words in Spurgeon’s encouragement vocabulary. They span the alphabet from acceptance to zest.
“I could have these printed with the words already on them,” she says of the light blue, 2- by 2-inch cards, “but I want them to have that personal touch.”
Born on Jan. 1, 1944, to Al and Mary E. Porzelius, Spurgeon graduated from Bright School and Girls Preparatory School before earning an engineering degree from Vanderbilt University. She was raised in a Christian household and was baptized at 12 years old, she says, but spent 71 years as a “supposed Christian,” 50 of them as an agnostic, a practice that began when she went away to college.
While she didn’t wholly renounce God, neither did she fully embrace a belief in God’s existence. Even when she felt the presence of a higher power.
“I actually got touched by the Holy Spirit while I was home for Christmas [one year in college]. I remember feeling an intense peace like I’d never felt before. I still didn’t get it.”
Her book is both a how-to guide for furthering Chattanooga HUGS and a rollicking autobiography of her early life, her trailblazing career, her 49-year marriage to husband Bill and their two children together.
In retrospect, Spurgeon says, she can find many ways to connect the dots among so many of her life’s triumphs and challenges when God was sending her messages. “God loves to be sneaky sometimes,” she writes.
Even with her new-found embrace of God, Spurgeon’s perspective is unconventional. She perceives God in the female form.
But Spurgeon says when she put Her in charge of her life in 2015, “amazing things started happening.”
“I finally understood how many times in my life She had been trying to get my attention,” she says. “I got the message. I have been filled with more joy almost every day than I have ever known before. Everything in God’s time.”
Contact Lisa Denton at ldenton@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6281.