Healing Broken Attachments by Embracing God's Steady Love

The Lord has been teaching me over and over that satisfaction in Him is not reliant on outward circumstances, especially through our current circumstances. 

And He has also been peeling back layers of my heart that need healing. 

The process of sanctification and spiritual formation is not comfortable, but the end results are so rewarding when we choose to bravely yield to the process.

This morning during my contemplative prayer time, an image came to mind of me as a little girl, maybe around the age of 4 and I was being held on someone’s hip and this person was walking away with me and I was reaching back in tears, reaching anxiously for my biological father. (I was taken from him around the age of 4 because he was a felon and arrested and sent to prison and as a result, a felt sense of abandonment often arises inside of me from time to time). 

Only this time, in this image, it was God who I was being ripped away from. I was reaching for Him anxiously and in fear but He was staying steady, reaching back. It felt as if we were in slow motion. 

And I wondered what this image was about?

So I sat and contemplated, I reflected on what I have learned over the years about broken attachments to family members. And I reflected on what I know to be true: trauma + broken attachments impact us physically, at a biological level and continue to impact us until we name the brokenness and tend to it.

This is something I have been tending to over the years, but this time, I wondered what this might mean for me spiritually, “is there a new layer I hadn’t tended to?”

I found myself wanting to get up and not sit and contemplate anything longer, but I decided to stay and continue to sit and contemplate in prayer, asking for clarity. 

And I realized, this was deeper than I thought. 

Another piece of story I have not fully tended to is that my biological father took his own life a few years ago and when that happened, there was a piece of me that fell into ruminating thoughts and anxiety, “if I would have done more, would this have made a difference?” I found myself often in shame and “shoulding” myself thinking “I should have done xyz.”

And through this reflection, the Lord has been refining my relationship with Him and inviting me to work on my secure attachment to Him, because it is very easy, due to my earthly, human experience, for me to fall back into an anxious attachment with Him, a fear based one where I am constantly reaching for Him, striving for His love and acceptance out of fear. Afraid if I mess up, He will leave me or I will be abandoned.

Feeling a drive to perform to keep His love. That maybe if I perform enough, maybe if I help more and more people, I will be pleasing to Him. I thought I hadn’t struggled with this, because it was something I had addressed awhile back when I was struggling with severe burn out. 

But today, the more I sat, and the more I contemplated, the more I realized I still have an urge to do more and more for Him, and feel bad when I am not producing visible fruit.

And I often forget about the internal fruit of who I am becoming along the journey. 

And this morning, I realized He was inviting me to just be with Him and reflect. And so I sat. Continuing to unearth my burdens, and give them to Him, and feel the felt sense of relief, while also receiving the refining fire that is sanctification. 

I walked away with even more clarity of the importance of working with God and not for Him and how working with Him often involves allowing him to continuously heal the broken areas of attachment we have in our stories and repeating that healing over and over as we unravel more areas of insecurity.
The beauty of repentance is that we get to be welcomed home with open arms. Like the prodigal son who strayed and was met with open arms and a party on His behalf, our Father waits for us, with His kindness to come home. It’s not a one time thing, until we reach heaven. It is an ongoing invitation. 

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30

Are you feeling stuck and want to probe the depths of your story and start tending to your wounds?

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