Attachment & God (pt3)
"'Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!'" -Isaiah 49:15
"'As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; and you will be comforted over Jerusalem.'" -Isaiah 66:13
"'So you must remain in life-union with me, for I remain in life union with you.'" -John 15:4a, TPT
"'As you live in union with me as your source, fruitfulness will stream from within you—but when you live separated from me, you are powerless.'" -John 15:5b
Restoring Secure Attachment
I am so grateful for this third opportunity to expand on your experience of God and attachment. In Part One, we learned about attachment science and how God installed this bonding system within each human as a way of ensuring physical survival and emotional safety throughout the lifespan. We are divinely created to be connected with both Him and the special others in our lives. From the cradle to the grave, when we don’t experience safe and secure connection with a significant other, we fail to thrive physically, emotionally, socially, and spiritually. Marriage and attachment expert Sue Johnson often espouses that our main survival strategy as humans is having someone come when we call.
Part Two emphasized Jesus’ making a path for our attachment with the Father. He painfully forsook His deep connection and intimacy with the Father so we could step into a place of wholeness, intimacy, and deep connection with our Abba.
As I write this, I pray that you will find this third writing to be your launching into an expanded and fresh experience with His love (hesed- everlasting love revealed in affection, loving kindness, and mercy).
In Him, our soul is nourished, our identity established, and our rest made secure.
I’m guessing that as you read the first two writings about attachment, you identified places of longing in your own heart. You might also have gained clarity about where in your lifespan you have not experienced attachment security. With the fall and the subsequent limitations of our humanity, we fail and are failed in creating safety and security for our most special others.
However, attachment security lies on a spectrum, and for that reason, we are all in different places.
In my study and practice as a therapist, I lean into developmental and attachment theories for how I conceptualize cases, create treatment plans, and guide others in their healing journeys. What I find most intriguing about attachment wounds is that they can be repaired with novel experiences that are exactly what our attachment system has always needed: emotional attunement, responsiveness, engagement, and accessibility.
That means that a compromised view of self (i.e. where one feels flawed, deserving of rejection, or not permitted to exist) can be restored. Experiences of desolation and desertion can be re-storied.
Where do we begin? For many of us, we begin at the beginning.
What was your attachment experience in early childhood?
Who did you go to for soothing and comfort when you were hurt, scared, or unsure?
If you couldn’t go to anyone, why was that? What did you do instead?
If you had someone, and that someone was attuned to your heart and needs, responding to you with comfort that settled you and left you with a message that you are delighted in and matter, you have been given a very special and unique gift. You face life confidently because you can carry that sense of safe haven and secure base with you throughout life.
On the other hand, you might not have had someone to go to. For infinite reasons, parents are not accessible to their children and often the reasons make sense when we as adults look back to understand the world of those parents. Yet good explanations and compassionate perspective-taking don’t negate the impact that attachment wounds have on our nervous systems, identities, emotional development, ability to trust, and our overall sense of being lovable, secure, and safe.
Once we see our history with attachment, we have a place to start. Whether our start included reliable attachment behaviors from our caregivers, or if it was compromised, we are all built with a need to enter into a deep attachment with our Creator, often called union with Christ. Before attachment science ever existed, those who experienced the depths of intimacy with God referred to that marvel as union with Christ.
Unlike other developmental challenges in life, ruptures to your attachment system can be repaired. Certain therapies help individual clients heal their early attachment experiences and support couples who want to move from toxic and chaotic interactions to restored love bonds. I say this to encourage your faith that, if there are clinical methods to restore attachment within yourself and with others, then you better believe God’s got his own powerful system for repair-enting you into a total restoration of your attachment to Him—union with Christ.
Emotions Move Us Toward Healing
Consistently unavailable and unresponsive attachment figures create deep attachment wounds in their children. If unhealed, these wounds can be triggered in other important close relationships. Thankfully, corrective emotional experiences provide the mechanism to healing attachment ruptures. The etymology of emotion, movere, means “to move.” Emotions move us. For example, infants and young children reflexively move toward their caregivers for emotional soothing. God made their cries so shrill that we must respond! We also see David expressing unrestrained emotions before His Father. God receives and responds to David, coming near and soothing him. In Psalm 34:17-18, NLT, David pens, “The Lord hears his people when they call to him for help. He rescues them from all their troubles. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; he rescues those whose spirits are crushed.”
James 4:8a, TPT, encourages the same: "Move your heart closer and closer to God, and he will come even closer to you." Again, it’s in our vulnerability and risk taking, coming before God without censorship or holding back our emotions, that He has the opportunity to move us toward union with Him. A great place to start is with the attachment ruptures you have identified over these past three weeks. Allow yourself to carry the full expression of your pain into His presence.
It is in union with Christ that our eternal attachment system gets rewired and healed. The Kingdom of God is within. It’s in this place of abiding in Him that His perfect love casts out fear as we discover that in Him we are loved, accepted, chosen, safe, secure, protected, cherished, and delighted in. Fully alive and existing, intimately bonded to our Creator, supporting the view of St. Irenaeus who wrote, “The glory of God is the human person fully alive”—fully alive in our union with Christ.
Read Romans 8:14-16, TPT, with this in mind:
"The mature children of God are those who are moved by the impulses of the Holy Spirit. And you did not receive the ‘spirit of religious duty,’ leading you back into the fear of never being good enough. But you have received the ‘Spirit of full acceptance,’ enfolding you into the family of God. And you will never feel orphaned, for as he rises up within us, our spirits join him in saying the words of tender affection, ‘Beloved Father!’ For the Holy Spirit makes God’s fatherhood real to us as he whispers into our innermost being, 'You are God’s beloved child!'"
You are His beloved child! No matter your early experiences, you can trust in His love.
1 John 4:15-16a, TPT, continues this thread: “Those who give thanks that Jesus is the son of God live in God, and God lives in them. We have come into an intimate experience with God’s love, and we trust in the love he has for us.” Also consider the encouragement in Ephesians 3:17b, TPT, that through union with Christ, “the resting place of his love will become the very source and root of your life.”
Living in union with Christ enables us to find a place where we can go deep within to experience his abiding presence. Through that intimacy, fear and anxiety dissolve.
Let His word go deep:
"By living in God, love has been brought to its full expression in us so that we may fearlessly face the day of judgment because all that Jesus now is, so are we in this world. Love never brings fear, for fear is always related to punishment. But love’s perfection drives the fear of punishment far from our hearts." -1 John 4:17-18a, TPT
As Graham Cooke writes, “Spiritual warriors practice the art of looking into the face of God—always longing to live one more day under His smile. We become preoccupied with His nature, and live a life in His presence. It is our intimacy that makes us intimidating to the enemy—our confidence in the Father’s love, our position in Christ, the fellowship with Holy Spirit. They all combine in us to take us to a place of being so loved that we lose all fear.” Cooke is right on, and he goes on to say, “Mature love has a settled nature to it that cannot be overcome. This is the root of fearlessness. If we know with absolute certainty that we are accepted and loved, we are not afraid to make mistakes.”
My Prayer for You
I have so much more to say on this. It’s my prayer that through these writings you have recognized not only your deepest longings for intimacy and connection but have also started carving out new pathways to union with Christ. In the days to come, may you:
Carry a reverence for the God-designed and God-assigned attachment system as you engage in your most important relationships. You are irreplaceable as a purveyor of safety and security in your relationships with family.
Experience the restoration of your identity and true self as you lean into rhythms of abiding.
Practice a restful, enduring, abiding connection with the Godhead, bearing lasting fruit that overflows from your divine union.
Dive Deeper…
Our course on attachment explores the concept of attachment with God. Learn more about the course by clicking the button below.