Ep. 257 Michael John Cusick - Sacred Attachment

attachment. And if we don't have a secure attachment, it's avoidant, anxious or ambivalent, then being a disciple and following Jesus is to follow him so close, with permission to be so messy and permission to be so broken, because God loves to inhabit and move toward all that's broken and unfavorable, that in that process of being who we really are, we begin to be parented by the father and brother, by Jesus and nurtured, almost in a maternal way, by The Holy Spirit and held within the Trinity.

to be a good one. Today, I'm excited to bring you a conversation that gets to the core of what it means to be human, to grapple with pain, with trauma, and the longing to be truly seen and loved. My guest is Michael JOHN CUSICK, author of the new book sacred attachment, and he's here to share his deeply personal journey of moving from a place of fear and shame into an embodied experience of God's

love and security. Michael reframes the concept of sin not as moral failure, but as the mishandling of our pain, and this shift opens up a whole new avenue for understanding the human condition and the path to healing. He unpacks the 5w of brokenness, wretchedness, weakness, woundedness, warfare and wiring, illuminating the complex, multi layered nature of the struggles we all face. But this isn't just an intellectual exercise. Michael grounds his insights in his own life story.

His own experience of life became a journey as he wrestled with the fear that God was displeased with him, only to be met with an unexpected embrace of love and acceptance. Michael's exploration of Jesus's own secure attachment to the Father, and how that provides a model for us to follow, even in the midst of our own pain and trauma, was particularly

insightful. He emphasizes the importance of relational encounter, of being seen, soothed and held in order to move from intellectual belief to embodied experience of God's love. This is a rich, nuanced conversation that challenges us to confront the deepest parts of ourselves, to acknowledge our brokenness and to open ourselves up to the transformative power of love. There is profound wisdom here for anyone seeking to live a more whole integrated life. Get ready to receive the

love of God. Enjoy my conversation with Michael. JOHN CUSICK, Michael, welcome to shifting culture. Excited to have you on thank you for joining me,

grade. For the final time he got sober one of the monthly things we did as a Catholic family, we went to visit my dad's sister, and we called sister Anne because she was a cloistered Carmelite nun. Carmelites are like the Navy SEALs. They brought us Teresa of Avila, St John of the Cross, Theresa of lesu and many others. They were cloistered in the sense that they had no contact with the outside world, and to this day,

many of the. Carmelite monasteries, they are behind a wall which goes around their monastery. But then inside, they're behind the grill, and the grill was a cross hatched wooden or steel set of bars that separated them from contact with people, except for the occasional priests that would come in to say mass. And then if you went into the chapel, which was available to the public, the nuns would all be behind a separate grill from where the

choir would sing. And this is kind of you might see in certain movies, even in The Sound of Music, they're not cloistered, but they're singing from behind this grill. And so we would visit, and we'd go to the parlor, all five of us, kids and my parents, and we'd be on one side of a counter, a Formica counter, and this grill was there, and the nuns were on the other side, my aunt, sister, Anne, and there were about 16 other nuns, and I remember their faces and their names to this

day. Well, one day, in the corner of this room where we're visiting, because you could have no contact, there was a cabinet, and then the cabinet was a lazy susan that spun around, and the idea it was just small enough to give gifts and food and for them to pass things through, you know, a prayer book or beads or something like that. And one day, my brother, when no one was looking, lifted me up, put me in the cabinet, spun me around, and I was terrified, thinking, you

know, I'm gonna die. And then it stopped, and I expected my brother to pull me out, but I was on the other side of the grill, and sister Ann was there.

And I didn't know if the Pope or the bishop was going to come and and ex communicate me or spank me or send me to hell, but sister Ann took me out amongst the other nuns, and my my memory, which I've since corroborated with one of the living nuns that this did happen is that they started to do Ring around the rosie, and we answered in a circle, and it went from this moment of of me, I compared to what Walter Brueggemann called in his book, praying the Psalms, he talks about being oriented, then

disoriented And then reoriented, or what Richard Rohr called order, disorder, reorder. Life was going well as I was playing with Hot Wheels cars and rolling a ball with my sister on the floor. And then something happens that shouldn't be

happening. I'm in this place and I'm literally spinning, and I would get very dizzy and be nauseous a lot, and I thought I was going to die, and then I thought I was in trouble when I was on the wrong side of the bars, but I was embraced by love and welcomed into this dance in a very unexpected way, interestingly, by women who represented the feminine side of God and the nurturing, tender

side of God. And as I reflect back on that, and as I wrote the book, that became a metaphor Joshua, for this idea that if people can see me, I've got my glasses down on the end of my nose, that God is looking down his nose at me like a British schoolmaster, and he's displeased, and I'm in trouble, and I've just flunked and I'm going to get kicked out of the

academy. That was my picture of God, that I'm on the wrong side of things, and it's not good when, in fact, in the midst of that disorientation and the spinning, there was this unexpected, surprising embrace that really became a great template for what would happen in my life. Because it wasn't just boom, everything was great. So it was during that same year of my life, when I was four

years old. It would have been 1968 when during that wonderful experience of disorientation to the welcome embrace of love and the nuns that I was being sexually abused by my uncle, and so it did provide a backdrop of basic safety and a sense of love that wasn't actually being experienced in my family, and that pattern of being oriented, disoriented and reoriented would continue through my whole life into addictions that manifested in my life, and that's really become a template of learning

and growing and sometimes battling to live on the side of and to embody the reality that that I'm embraced by the God who is love. And that God, and especially the Christian God that looks like Jesus, is not one who's looking down his nose with disapproval at me as

How have you seen those two different paths play out in your own life?

and things like that. But in the work that I do, both formerly as a youth pastor and then for the last 30 years in clinical counseling and pastoral care and spiritual direction, people have been deeply wounded by how the concept of sin and the word sin has been used against them to foster shame and in a certain way, to try to motivate people to be better. And it's really

hard to be loved by God. And if we love because he first loved us, if we're not being loved, if we don't have an experience of love, then we will not be very

loving. And so in my own story of of my own marriage blowing up and almost ruining my marriage, three years into my marriage with a hidden life of sexual addiction and alcoholism, God rescued my marriage, and we've been married almost 34 years now, I've come to use this phrase that sin is about how we mishandle our pain in the same way that Jeremiah, in chapter two of Jeremiah spoke about that our problem is that we're very

thirsty. We're thirsty for for connection, for relationship, for significance, for impact. But the problem is in our thirst. The thirst is that we turn from the source of living water, which Jeremiah tells us was God, and we dig broken cisterns. And Jeremiah says that there are cisterns that can't even hold water. So they're cracked, they're leaking. We've got to keep going back again and again and again, and that's kind of the basis for all addiction.

So to understand that sin is how we mishandle our pain, I've come up with five W's, which I discuss in the book, which which help us to understand the nature of brokenness. And first w is wretchedness. Some people might go, Well, that sounds awful, because we all know the we all know the song. So bear with me, listeners. We all know the song. Amazing Grace. How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. And if you look up the word wretch in the dictionary, it says someone who's despicable or

vile. And how many times have I stood there singing that song in church, basically saying, God, I'm so despicable and vile, and I sure felt that way because I was I was unfaithful to my wife, and I was addicted to porn and acting out sexually before I was married, and lying and living a double life when I was in ministry. Surely I'm despicable and vile, but that's not what God says about me with the gospel and through the eyes of

Jesus. And so the word wretched, as I began to explore this actually means a person who's in exile, a person who's homeless, a person who's wandering. And particularly, the richest meaning of the word wretched is impoverished. So I've got nothing that I can bring like The Little Drummer Boy. I've got no gift to bring, just this little rumpa Pom Pom, and that's going to have to be good enough

for Jesus. And that's what made that cute little Christmas song so popular, is, wouldn't that be awesome if we could just bring our weakness and our vulnerability, so our wretchedness is the fact that we've got no game, the fact that we've got there's no way that we can earn love. And in dickinsonian literature, wretchedness was most typified through characters that were homeless and begging for money.

And I think that helps to reframe our understanding of sin, that it's less about that we're despicable and vile, and more about the fact that that we're impoverished spiritually, and that that alone, as Theresa said, is our capacity for God, then you've got weakness the second W that's just our vulnerabilities, our human limitations. Jesus had them. We all have them. Jesus had to sleep, eat, go to the bathroom. He asked his friends to pray and get 70. Then you have woundedness, which includes

trauma. But it's not just the wounds of the things that have happened to us. It's also the things that were meant to be done and were left undone, and those are oftentimes the more difficult to heal, and the ones are more difficult to recognize, because, hey, I'm okay. I didn't get X, Y or Z that I needed

growing up. I'm okay. So woundedness and then warfare is not demon possession as much as the fact that revelation 12 tells us we've got an accuser, somebody who's hurling insults at us, as one translation says, and who is lying to us about who God is and who we are, and the why is always that you can't trust God. He's not really going to be there for you when you need him. And it seems like there's a lot of evidence in

life that proves that. And then the lie about us is that we can be self sufficient, that we can beat God, that we can ultimately take care of ourselves and get our needs met. And then the last w is the neurological aspect, that it's our wiring. So we got wretchedness, weakness, woundedness. Warfare and wiring. And I like to think is that last W of wiring is kind of a circle around all the others. And the wiring is that we are embodied.

And the idea of the soul, at least the Hebrew idea of the soul, is the body, the mind, the emotions, the will, versus the Greek idea that we're just heads, the mind, the emotions

and the will. And so a holistic Jesus understanding of the Soul is ALL of those W's in the context of where physical beings and our bodies get pathways and and ruts that create certain behaviors that is are really difficult to break out of, and that have to be compassionately considered to to grow as human beings, to use religious language, to be sanctified, to be free and to live wholehearted. I want

place that he was born. His family was around because a Herod was killing all these these babies, and it was really because of him, because of Jesus. It seems to me like there was a lot of generational trauma, there was a lot of woundedness and pain within him, but he was able. I mean, he is, he's God man, like it's Jesus, but I think he's a good example for us, because he is able to then receive who he is from the Father in heaven, that he's able

to be attached to him. And he's probably the the one that has the most secure attachment to God, the Father, than anyone in history, of course. And he was only doing what He saw the Father in Heaven doing. How does Jesus get from that that place of pain generational trauma into this place of secure attachment with his father and doing only what he sees the Father doing in heaven.

peasant teenager. And here's the beautiful thing, who had a who had an extraordinary amount of emotional, spiritual well being, she was a mature human being, even though she was presumably, you know, 1415, years old. Why? Because she had this profound encounter with an otherworldly creature that would have been terrifying. Do not be afraid, Mary. And she said, Yes, she

trusted. She and trusted. And so it's the beginning of Advent, as we record this conversation, and many church traditions will look at Advent and the the kickoff to that is the Magnificat, Mary's song of praise and her prayer. And it is yes, let it be thy will be done, the sense of

surrender. And so there was something in Mary that was both vulnerable and innocent in the midst of all of that generational trauma and poverty, that was able to surrender to love, surrender to something and someone greater that she could trust. It wasn't a religious act of devotion. Saying, here's this verse in the Psalms that tells me blank. It was a relational

reality where she said yes. So I think that Jesus was born into a healthy family, albeit a family that had a lot of complications, right from the very beginning, homeless and presumably, maybe some shame that was put upon them because of her being unmarried and how her and Joseph's relationship started. But then Jesus, as a human being, fully God, fully man, he

grows up. And surely he was picked on, and surely as he played on the playground, you know, Jesus, because He was God, didn't mean that he kicked the kickball or the soccer ball the farthest, or that he pounded the nails the straightest. He was a human being. And part of his experiencing, all of what we've experienced for humanity, is he probably hit his thumb with the hammer a lot, and had to go, Ouch. That hurts. And he'd go to Mary and say, you know, mommy,

give kiss my boo boo. Kind of thing that we really have to imagine his humanity that way. But two things extraordinary happen. There's there's that sense where, from the very beginning, people have a sense when Mary shows up at Elizabeth's house, and Elizabeth, of course, is pregnant with John the Baptist. She. Says, Who am I that the mother of my Lord would be here?

And so right away, there's this story that's being unraveled, that there's something very special about this little boy, and I think that specialness isn't just this, aha, He's the Messiah, but aha, this child is connected to divine reality. They wouldn't have called him Abba at that point. But this child is connected to heaven. This child is connected to love itself, to Yahweh. And as he grew, they find him in the

temple when He disappears. And even there, he says, didn't you know I'd be about my Father's business. And again, it's more than just he. He has a real insight into the Hebrew scriptures, but there's a sense where he and the Father are connected in a way where he's just off doing what the Father tells him to do, and when Jesus said, I don't do anything that the father doesn't tell me to do, he wasn't just speaking about it from that day forward. I presume it was his whole life.

But here's the beautiful thing about this attachment that Jesus had, that I think is a is so poignant that before Jesus goes into the desert, and we see this in the in the book of John, Jesus is being baptized, and before he gets dunked by his cousin, John, uh, heavens break open, and the father says, This is my Son, whom I love, And with him, I am well pleased God, the father sees him. God is in that intruding and the dove that is descending, he's soothing Jesus. He's giving Jesus a sense of

safety that I am present. And there's a basic security, a secure attachment. And why is that important in the story, because the very next thing that happens when you go into the next chapter is he's in the desert being tempted by the devil for 40 days. And we know that story and and it was a big deal because angels had to attend to him. There's another extra kindness of God in terms of security and the well being

of his soul. But it's as if the narrative is God is saying you are going to be tempted so deeply and suffer so much with your hunger and your thirst and and your temptation will be like Adam and Eve to turn away from me and to turn towards someone or something that's going to give you power and promise that you can be okay without me. So just know this. I want to initiate you. I want to dunk you underwater. When you come up out of that water, you're going to see me saying, Son, you're mine,

and I love you. And I think that's the ultimate picture of secure attachment, perhaps second only to the picture on the cross of secure attachment.

we have. How do we move from this knowledge that this is actually true to an embodied experience that I am loved and I could rewire my my body to move forward in this world securely?

sides. I'm holding up to the camera, a coaster. It's made of terrazzo tile, and on one side of it there's dots, and on the other side there's cork. And if, if truth is like this, this coaster or like a coin, one side is the truth of who God is, and that's revealed in his word. But then the other side is the truth of who I am. And many Christians I've, I've witnessed over the years, and I myself included, we have two selves. There's the Public Self and the private

self. And the Public Self is just fine, and we show up for church and we look good, and the private self, in my own story, was addicted, filled with shame, had a history of abuse that a lot of I couldn't remember because I pushed it out. A lot of I remembered and I didn't want to deal with I told myself, I have Jesus. I'm a new creation in Christ, so I can just move

on. So we have to tell ourselves the truth about what is my story, not just the past, but right now is my life, the life that I actually signed up for when I received Christ. I mean, so I I remember being led to Jesus and hearing this wonderful story of abundant life, and over and over and over again for the first 15 years of my faith, that was like, I'm doing all kinds of things for God. I'm praying, I'm trying to lead people to Christ. To memorize the Scripture. I don't feel like I've got an

abundant life. I know I look good to other people, but if they saw me on the inside so the truth will what John tells us, it will set us free. And if I begin to tell the truth to God and at least one other person, the Bible calls that humility. Thomas Merton said that humility is being precisely who we are before God and maybe one other

person. If I humble myself like that, then the parts of me that I feel are unlovable, the parts of me that feel shame, the parts of me that feel exiled or that I have to protect, I can start to be loved, and those parts of me

can start to be cared for. And ultimately, and this is back to your your central question, I can begin to be an integrated human being, because these parts of me that I've had to disown or dislike, they no longer have to be shoved down or put away in a safe I can now be the person that I actually am, and therefore the person that I actually am could begin to attach to get my needs met in a healthy way by others, by God, and it begins to reshape everything in our lives that we

don't have to pretend, we don't have to strive, we don't have to be better than we are, and we don't have to somehow become diminished or be less than we actually are.

How does that attachment help us move forward in a healthy way, rather than reverting back into similar patterns of what we have been doing?

a judgment statement. That's that their brain has not been developed. Their brain that is undeveloped and immature has to draw upon the mature brain of the adult caregiver, presumably the parent, and that that happens when the parent is attuned, when they see, when they soothe, when they create a sense of safety, physically and emotionally, and provide a secure environment for that child to be completely dependent and needy and to receive care.

And to the degree that that happens resources that child to be able to sense within themselves what's what's happening in the world, and to be able to organize themselves

in the world. If that, if that attachment process doesn't happen, that infant that grows for 1016, 60 years old, they won't be able to self soothe, and they'll be much more likely to turn to addictions, compulsive behavior, unhealthy belief systems that will reinforce how they get their soothing, not in healthy, safe relationships, But in unhealthy and sometimes harmful ways, and then it affects their ability to move into the world and to organize their world in a certain way. So that's what

that's what attachment is. And about 60% of Americans were told have a secure attachment. Most therapists and probably senior pastors will tell you that it's more 40% people with secure attachment. And then there's attachment styles, and that's the second definition. An attachment style comes as a result of that attachment process. And that's basically how we show up in the world, relationally, to get our needs met for closeness and

connection. And so the person that has not had a strong attachment process where they've been seen, sooth, safe and secure, they're going to show up in the world in one of three ways. One is, they'll be anxious relationally. So they're working, they're striving, they're co dependent, sometimes clinging to this relationship, trying to get their needs met.

And if that person doesn't connect, reciprocate or meet their needs, then there will be a lot of anxiety and working to get that person to engage with them in an affirming kind of a way, that's called anxious attachment. Then there's avoidant attachment, which is just the opposite, where the idea of connecting actually causes a significant amount of anxiety, and so the person. Person stays withdrawn and disengaged, or the moment they start to become close to someone, they're out of there.

And then there's that bivalent attachment, which has, if you will, the best of both worlds of that. So it can be close, kind of a come here, go away, kind of thing. And a lot of what I talk about in the book is how those attachment styles actually become a basis for how we experience God and why we oftentimes don't connect with Him as God, as Kurt Thompson says God inherits all the same neural networks that are in place with other people, that play out

receive love. And for many people, myself included, the idea of being loved and of being known was absolutely terrifying. And I've often said that love is more terrifying than judgment. That's why Romans two tells us that it's God's kindness that leads us to repentance. Right? A person may come to God because of a threat of of whatever belief system they have for where they're going to go after they die, but, but ultimately, the heart is won over through

kindness. And therefore how we have this received attachment, or this earned secure attachment. How that transformation process happens is we begin the long, slow process of understanding why we can't trust love, and moving into a space in an embodied way to learn how to trust love. And as you alluded to earlier, there's a big difference between understanding God loves me in my head, intellectually, cognitively, and an embodied

experience of that. And so as people might begin to understand their attachment process and their attachment style, oh, the reason why I can't experience God or feel His presence is because I can't feel my own presence. Years ago, Joshua, I read the classic book I'm sure you're familiar with practicing the presence of God. I got every translation of it that I could read, the modern ones, the old ones. I was like, I'm gonna I'm gonna figure this out. I made three page outlines of

everything. Brother Lawrence said. I came up with acronyms. It didn't work. I was like, I'm no further along. I'm still filled with shame and anxiety, and I was addicted back then, and it was just a few years ago when I realized, how can I practice the presence of God if I can't practice the presence of Michael? I was so anxious I couldn't be in a car without turning on the radio. When cell phones came about, I couldn't drive somewhere or wake up in the morning without calling a

friend saying how you doing. And my buddy Ian said to me one day he goes, You're not calling because you want to know how I'm doing. You're calling because you want to feel good checking in with me like he saw through my stuff, my my point being that how we develop a secure attachment goes back to what you are already actually said in James chapter five. We all know the part about you know, confess your sins and you'll be healed. But let's look at that passage

through an attachment lens. And my friend, Auntie Colbert, the therapist and author of the book tri software, I think she's been on your podcast, she said to me one day, walking out of my office like this, this passing comment, and it changed my life. She said, Michael, all theology is attachment. And I would go so far to say, after I've thought about that, that all good

exegesis is attachment. You know, how, how we interpret Scripture, and so if, if the Trinity is relationship, in the beginning was relationship, then that's basically attachment, that the Father Son and Spirit are connected in unique ways. And as they pour into each other, there's never a diminishment or a loss, but actually an expansion, one

love me? How has is his story? How did he move into a place of being able to receive love when he first wasn't?

church upon him? When Jesus says, I'm gonna build My church upon you, Jesus presumably knows that he's gonna blow it significantly. Well, here's this calling, here's this orientation. And I bet you there was something in Peter because of his competence. And I'd like to think that he's an Enneagram eight, right? He's a good leader. He can push into things. He's going, huh? Yeah, okay,

that's quite an honor. I'm kind of humbled by it, but I think I've got this, I'm going to be able to make this happen for Jesus. I'm going to build the church. And then he follows him for three years, and we know all the stories of his impulsivity, of stepping out of the boat, Lord, if it's you tell me to walk on water. But the the night of the Last Supper, Jesus says, At that meal in John 13 um, after he talks about Judas being the betrayer, he says to Simon, um, Simon Peter, you're going to

deny me. And he says, I will never deny you. Before the cock crows three times you will. So we know the story right? That that he denies Him and He weeps bitterly, by the way, the third denial was to a little girl, and just a small, fun little detail. And then Peter's restored in the story of the the disciples are there on the beach, and Jesus is cooking breakfast for him, and he tells them to pull their nets from the other side, and they

get this big haul of fish. And there's this contrast between Peter, who weeps bitterly, and who, in this moment of restoration, says to Jesus, Yes, Lord, I love you. When Jesus asked three different times, symbolically for each of the betrayals, why did Peter go in the direction of weeping bitterly and being able to receive that restoration, versus Judas, who went and hung himself and said, there's no hope. I've got to offer myself. All hope is

lost. I think it's because of this attachment lesson, if you will, that Jesus gave Peter right before he told them that he was going to deny him at that meal. It says, After the meal is over, Jesus gets up, removes his outer garment, and he kneels down. He begins washing the disciples feet. He's going around the circle, wash a foot, wash foot, wash foot, wash some feet. He gets to Peter. Peter says, Lord, you'll never wash my feet, which, of course, is like, I'm a good leader. You don't

need to do this for me. I'm good. I'm covered. And Jesus says these, these spooky words, Peter, unless I wash you feet, you your feet. You can have no part of me. Now, Jesus is not saying Peter, you're not going to go to heaven, because that wasn't actually part of Jesus language. What he was saying was, Peter, remember when I said that I was going to build my

church on you? You can't be a part of that vision, and you can't live in that kingdom reality apart from your ego and your brokenness and in your impulsiveness. And what you are going to have to learn for what's going to happen in about four or five hours, and what you're going to have to learn to lead the church is how to receive and so I think that that foot washing for Peter is Peter, you're way more vulnerable than you think. So let me this god man that you've come to dedicate

your life to. Let me kneel down and become small in my outer garment. Let me tend to your dirty, smelly callous feet. Let me tend to this vulnerable part of you that's socially inappropriate, and let me love you. And I think that that's what made the difference. When Peter betrayed Jesus, he had already had this experience that was embodied. It wasn't just a

belief. Jesus didn't say, Hey, Peter, you can trust me that I love you after you deny me, by the way, you know it's gonna be three times, but I'm really a good God, and you know this little cross thing, blah, blah, blah. No, he embodied it, and that touch was something that was now in Peter's muscle memory, the soothing that Jesus offered, and by the way, doing that after the meal was over, when Jesus just said, I'm going

to betray you. That must have gone into some of Peter's words and resistance to having his feet washed. But that's a beautiful picture of attachment, and this is why pediatricians and obg away ends will tell. Parents, you know, the best thing you can do at the moment that your child is born and they come out is to do skin on skin contact, because skin on skin creates this chemical reaction in both people, where oxytocin is released, and oxytocin is known as the cuddle hormone, or

the bonding hormone. It's also what's released when a mother nurses in her breast milk, there's a release of oxytocin, which, if we thought about from an evolutionary perspective, it reinforces, even though mothers are, especially in old cultures where food was scarce, it gives this positive chemical reinforcement to nurse your child for the proliferation of the species. And so it's just brilliant how God has created us this way. It's

And either we we go through some sort of a crisis, and then we get to the other side, and we're starting to be able to then receive when we go through something like the dark night of the soul, where we feel that God is distant or he's not there, what do we do? Because we're if we're talking about relational encounter, I've, I'm, I'm somebody who likes to feel that. I want to feel this embodied experience. I want to feel that the presence of God is with me.

But if I'm not feeling it, if I'm going through those times, what helps us move through that to know that God is still present and we can move in this world with him.

up. We trust, and we trust that love has us, capital, l, o, v, e, that love has us true confession. I wanted my book initially to be called Love has you. And the publishers and my agent and I, we came to a very peaceful conclusion that it was called sacred attachment. But years ago, when I wrote surfing for God, I sent a copy to Richard Rohr, who influenced my book, and he was so kind to write a handwritten note back, and the little sign off said,

Love has you. Comma Richard, and I immediately took that inside, and I thought that summarizes my

journey. I actually feel today back then considerably less, but I I touched on it I feel today in an embodied way like love has me, and that has been a decades long journey, that I was a Christian for 14 years and believed in God, and I believed I was saved, and I believed in Jesus and could articulate the good news, but I never once felt the love of God until my life blew apart on July 10, 1994 when I was caught in a sex addiction

and lying. And so we trust that love has us whether it's the worst day of our life and everything is blown apart, or whether it's the best day of our life, and we're afraid that things will blow apart. Now, the problem with that is that trust is not something that can be done intellectual.

Intellectually, trust must be an embodied experience, whether it's as simple as I'm holding up my fist now on the camera that I'm holding on and then I have to let go, and I have to trust that whatever I'm letting go of that I'm going to be okay, and so I either have to somehow trust within myself, or I have to trust in goodness outside of myself. As the 12 Steps talk about trust in a higher power, something that's bigger and

better than me. And for many people, they can't trust not because they have weak faith, but because their body has experienced trauma, because their nervous system is constantly dysregulated, because maybe they're in a rice paddy in Cambodia or Thailand, or, you know, working crops in South America 16 hours a day to feed their children and. And they're just trusting that they're going to stay well and not get COVID or something so their family

starves. My point is, is that trust is so complex and so multi layered, and it really has to do with whether we've been seen sooth, safe and secure, and ultimately, we will generally trust to the degree that we have a secure attachment, and if we don't have a secure attachment, it's avoidant, anxious or ambivalent, then being a disciple and following Jesus is to follow him so close with permission to be so messy and permission to be so broken, because God loves to inhabit and

move toward all that's broken and unfavorable, that in that process of being who we really are, we begin to be parented by the father and brother, by Jesus, and nurtured, almost in a maternal way, by the Holy Spirit and held within the Trinity. And so I think one of the subtitles in one of the chapters is beholding and being held. You know, there's a play on words, with the word be held, and I have two tattoos. One is on my right arm, and I'm right handed.

It says, Be still. That's my strength, and then my vulnerability, or my weakness, is my left hand, and it says, Be Loved. And it doesn't say

Beloved. It says, Be Loved. And for me, how I have slowly, inefficiently developed a secure attachment that I did not have in my earlier life, in my 20s, 30s, 40s, and most of my 50s is I've got to be still from all the striving and the deep, deeply held belief that I somehow have to earn love and be good enough for God, and that the parts of me are not welcome. I need to be still, and then I need to be loved. I need to practice being loved. So let me just kind of answer your

question a very concrete way. If someone would come and say, how do I grow as a Christian? That's a very different question from, how do I experience God's love? But the answer is actually the same, how you grow as a Christian is, yes, you read your Bible, yes, you pray, yes, you go to church or listen to podcasts and fellowship and cert engage in service, but be loved. Let let the goodness of God and the mercy of God and the tenderness of God fall upon you.

Position yourself to be gazed upon interesting in Psalm 27 four. Well Psalm 27 most people will know you know the Lord's my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? He's a stronghold of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid? And I memorized a lot of Scripture when I was a kid, and I go, Lord, I believe that you're my light and my salvation. But I'm afraid. I'm anxious, what's going on. Thought there was something wrong with me. My faith wasn't

strong enough. I hadn't somehow deeply internalized that proposition enough. And then I got to verse four, several years ago, and it says, it's David saying one thing I ask of the Lord. This is what I seek, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord, and to seek Him in His temple, to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. And I heard in my head, well, what's the temple of the Lord that he wants to gaze upon, and what's the house of the Lord that he wants to dwell in? It's

me, it's him. We are the house of the Lord. We are the temple. So maybe a paraphrase which could answer this question of what it means to to be loved is one thing I ask of God. This is what I seek. To dwell within my own self, to dwell in my body, to be present, physically, emotionally, relationally, mentally, and to gaze upon God within me, and therefore to be present in my own life, so that I can actually be present to God. And then in that being

present to be gazed upon. And it's almost as if David, as you go through that whole Psalm, and then at the end, he's like, Hey, my mother and father forsake me. If the attachment is completely broken even, then will I trust you? And there's this, this what Eugene Peterson used to call the

dialogic reality, right? So there's a dialog going back and forth, but with no words, I am being gazed upon by the God that looks like Jesus, not a God who looks like Zeus or an Old Testament person who's killing 40,000 ammonites all at once, but the God who looks like Jesus and I am gazing upon him and that simple, still intimate relationship, like two people that have been married 60 years sitting in rocking chairs next to each other all afternoon, sipping lemonade. They don't

need to say anything. They don't need to exchange greeting cards. He's not doing the Love Dare. He's just they're just there with each other, just deeply trusting. And to use religious words from John. John 15, they're abiding, they're remaining, they're dwelling. They're just with that's that's

beautiful. And I think that if, if Christians began to have language and maybe a lens to see that this is the foundation of all the heroic, triumphal, dynamic faith that we sometimes believe we have to have, then amazing things would happen in the kingdom, because then we would overflow. See Psalm 23 the picture there is Lord's my shepherd. I shall not be want, green pastures, quiet waters walking through the valley of death. I'm not going to fear any

evil. And then it says, You nourish me, but I'm actually at a table with my enemies. That's how good you are, God. And then you anoint my my head with oil. So you soothe me after you feed me. And then it says, My cup overflows. And I think my vision for the kingdom is, I just turned 60 years old, and I consider myself an old fart. My

vision for the Kingdom. And what I pray for is I pray the Lord's Prayer of Thy kingdom come and Thy will be done is that people would begin to dare to experience that the God that looks like Jesus actually longs for this kind of a relationship, that that would be the foundation of everything, and that God's kingdom comes into the broken parts of Our souls, into the broken relationships, communities, societies, countries and world as we overflow spontaneously, because

we are still and we know that he's God. And out of that, something really wonderful happens, even supernatural,

Fantastic. I have a couple really quick questions at the end here. Michael, one, if you go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you give? Oh, wow.

the Beatitudes. I'm constantly reading Dallas Willard. I'm mostly reading my own book to try to be more and more articulate, because it was we finished it over a year ago, and I'm going back. Going, I teach this stuff all the time, but I actually want to remember some

of the bullet points. But I also just read a work of fiction, a novel called cloistered, which interestingly, is the story of a Carmelite nun who was cloistered for 10 years and experienced emotional and physical abuse in the convent, and that was the same order of nuns that my aunt was in. So I finished that in about three days.

called restoring the soul. We do intensive counseling with couples and individuals, where people meet here for two weeks, three hours a day, to get unstuck from trauma and relational difficulties and compulsions. And our website is restoring the soul.com, we've got a podcast, a bunch of other free resources there. So check this out.

we get to this place? Place where the belief system is not just in our head, but we could actually move across the delta into a place of embodied experience with God, that we could receive this attachment so that we could be seen and soothed into a place of knowing that we are beloved, that we are loved, and we can be held in the love of God, which is incredible. And so thank you for this conversation. I loved it. Thank you, Joshua,