Worship
“I Lose My Ability” by Jonathan and Melissa Helser
Scripture
“Yet you are he who took me from the womb; you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts. On you was I cast from my birth, and from my mother’s womb you have been my God.” -Psalm 22:9-10 (ESV)
“I love you, O Lord , my strength. The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.” -Psalm 18:1-2 (ESV)
“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord , “My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”
“Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him; I will protect him, because he knows my name. When he calls to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him.” -Psalm 91:1-2,14-15 (ESV)
A Note From Julie
I have a new friend, Lanie Timko, who is a trauma and marriage counselor in Pennsylvania. She has been sharing with me about God’s deep attachment to us and our growing attachment to Him as sons and daughters. This has been a deep revelation from the Holy Spirt that she has been carrying for a long time. I asked her to share this with you since it was a fresh and powerful revelation for the Bride of Christ.
Attachment: God’s Idea
Beautiful friends, we have been missing out on a law of living that, once we grasp it, will forever change our connection with our Heavenly Father and one another. Just as gravity existed and impacted everyone’s human experience before its discovery, so does what’s been discovered about human bonding. We have learned through the science of attachment how bonds to significant others impact every detail of our lives, from the cradle to the grave. Please hang in there with me for the following oversimplified explanation of attachment. Volumes of studies have been written on attachment, and I’m going to attempt to keep it to a few paragraphs.
What’s Attachment?
In the past 60 years, the field of attachment theory has brought to light some of the most incredible truths of our existence. With the help of MRI machines and decades of thorough research studies, the world is finding out what Adam and Eve learned in the garden: We are made for emotional connection. We are relational beings, and our connection with others is the force that empowers us to face life’s hardest challenges; and, conversely, it’s in isolation and deprivation that all of life is a constant threat.
The world is waking up to the scientific evidence of our attachment system. Attachment is hard wired into our brains and nervous systems, determining the quality of our mental health, impacting our propensity for addiction, affecting our capacity for relationships, and so much more.
Families are birthed in attachment. As couples experience intimacy oxytocin, the “love” or bonding hormone is released. The couple’s bond strengthens as a way to ensure their mutual survival and the survival of the child just conceived. At the moment of the child’s birth, bonding with that little one begins. The euphoric feeling after birth that both parents experience, the eye contact between baby and parents, and the nursing relationship are all examples of times that oxytocin is released in the family members. Oxytocin is the glue of the bond. The bond ensures the survival of this helpless and dependent little one. God designed attachment to play into physical and emotional survival.
When attachment is secure through parents reliably responding to their baby’s varying needs for sustenance, comfort, holding, or closeness, what results is a regulated nervous system. The child experiences home with mom and dad as a safe haven and secure base. He or she experiences what David says when he writes, “You made me trust when upon my mother’s breasts (Psalm 22:9, NASB).” And ideally, as the parents continue being emotionally responsive, attuned, and engaged throughout all of the child’s developmental stages, the child carries this trust and security into adulthood throughout the lifespan.
What happens when a child comes into the world and he or she experiences an infancy, childhood, and adolescence full of deprivation, abandonment, or rejection? Fear. An overactive amygdala. Helplessness. Survival is threatened. The child adopts a view of self that can be heard in phrases like, “I don’t matter. I’m unlovable. I’m flawed. I’m a mistake. I’m a bother. I’m alone. I’m not wanted. I can’t have any needs.” Without intervention, this view of self remains throughout the lifespan and shows up over and over again in future relationships and other important aspects of life. It’s where we see truth in the phrase, “Hurt people hurt people.”
Attachment is God’s Design
In “Renovated,” Jim Wilder writes:
“Attachment begins long before birth and continues developing across our entire life. Attachment is exclusive. Although we may have many attachments, one attachment cannot be exchanged for another. Attachment links us to the flow of life; it grows identity and builds resilience, and it governs what gets our attention and forms our thoughts. Attachment is the strongest force in the human brain.”
Read that again. “Attachment is the strongest force in the human brain.” God is our Creator. He designed every aspect of our being, including our brains and the attachment system housed there. As believers, when we learn the science of attachment, we have an opportunity to love more fully the God-appointed special ones in our lives. Are we attuned, responsive, and engaged with our spouses and kids?
On a Kingdom level, what’s been uncovered in the field of attachment and bonding science brings me to a place of wonder and amazement when I see how God, the Ancient of Days, already spoke to the reality of secure attachment in His Word. Again, David provides a perfect example. He starts writing a psalm, and he’s a chaotic mess of emotional intensity and energy. He’s questioning everything, accusing God of abandoning him, and experiencing the full spectrum of negative feelings. And as he dwells with God with the full force and full reveal of his uncensored emotional state, you watch the tone of the psalm shift, and he ends the psalm soothed. After turning toward the Father with his emotional pain and brokenness, David experiences union with Him (attachment), and he regains his composure. He finds comfort like a little baby who has fallen asleep in his mother’s arms. This connects to El Shaddai who, when mentioned in Psalm 91:1, is explained to mean “God the Self-Sufficient One” and “God the Nurturer of Babies.” John J. Parsons explains that some Hebrew scholars translate El Shaddai to mean the one of the breast. He goes on to write, “Understood in this light, the name El Shaddai provides a picture of God’s nurturing love for our lives… God sustains us and loves us, like a mother loves her newborn child.”
What does all of this mean for you? Everything. Too much to include in my 1,400-word limit. So let me leave you with this:
In “Renovated”, Jim Wilder writes:
“Hesed [Attachment] is the strongest force the human brain knows—more important than our own life and existence. Should we consider this force as we consider spiritual formation and developing the character of Christ? If this is the force Jesus uses, then we should. The attachment love of Christ will compel us. We will be transformed by who we love.”
Attachment Establishes Identity
Our early attachment experiences tell us who we are. For example, before we can even speak, we learn that we are either loved or unlovable, valued or devalued, delighted in or cast away—we matter or we don’t. Clinical psychologist Sue Johnson tells us that as humans we are “truly safe and sound only when infused with a felt sense of secure connection to a valued other.” Compromised attachment relationships, characterized by deprivation and desertion, destroy a person’s sense of safety, security, purpose, and healthy identity.
Here’s the good news: Union with Jesus can redefine our identities as we attach to Him. Here’s the amazing news: The Scriptures are bursting with references to God’s attachment love. And even more incredibly, as we learn to experience His felt presence and as we start to emulate David by bringing Him the fullness of our emotional experiences, uncensored and raw, we give Him the opportunity to respond to us and rescue us, establishing us as safe, secure, loved, and held by Him. And in that experience of union with Him, our attachment system gets rewired and our identity restored.
Attachment science tells us that what we behold, we bond to. Saint Claire of Assisi is said to have written, “We become what we love and who we love shapes what we become.” In the following weeks and months as Julie’s devotions lead us to behold the face of Jesus, allow her words and suggested worship songs to usher you into encounters with His felt presence in a way that will bond you to Him and restore your identity as He loves you into who you really are.
About Lanie
Lanie is a resident of Grove City, Pennsylvania, who enjoys sharing with her five children her passions for skiing, the outdoors, and life. She also relishes the rare moments when she can settle into a good book, take a long run, or go on a walk with her husband. Her greatest sense of fulfillment occurs as she helps families and individuals reorganize their trauma, pain, and confusion into a place of wholehearted living and connection. She can be found on Instagram at @generationaltransformation (a brand-new concept), @lanietimko (her personal account), or @soulcareplace (her business account).
