Attunement – Cultivating maturity and joy – Growing from fearful attachment into mature love attachment.

 

Slide - “You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound.  In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.”  Psalm 4:7-8.  “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”  Psalm 16:11

 

What word or phrase are you noticing? 

 

What do you sense you are being invited into?

 

How would you like to respond to God? 

 

We all long to grow and be mature spiritually.  Who are some spiritually mature people you know?  What characteristics reveal their maturity? 

 

When I was 12 years old we had chores every Saturday morning.  I hated chores and tried to get out of them in any way possible.  The chore that I didn’t mind the most was vacuuming the out the car.  Part of this is because I could lay on the seats and take my time vacuuming and the bigger part was that I could back the car out of the garage.  This day I had been wondering what would happen if I gunned it in reverse?  Would it burn out.  So I was not mature enough to be driving but my dad liked to give us some freedom.  I was acting like I was more mature than I was.  It was a crisp Saturday morning and I started up the car.  Put it in reverse and turned around.  When I hit the gas instead of it going backwards it lunged forward.  At first I was disoriented because I was expecting it to go backwards and then as I heard the crashing of things falling off the garage wall and looked forward and recognized that I had pushed multiple things through the front of the garage I was devastated.  Then I saw my younger brother with his jaw on the ground run in to tell my dad.  I knew I had seconds to try and clean up and pull the car out to make it look better than it was.  Seconds before the life I knew would be over.  I put it in reverse and tried to cover my tracks.  My dad came out and looked at me and I thought I was going to be grounded forever.  Instead he showed me grace.  He looked at me with compassion and hugged me and said I knew that was going to happen to someone and I am sorry it happened to you.  They worked on the steering consul and messed up where the drive and reverse was so that is part of why I made the mistake.  His mature grace filled love and his hug helped me grow up that day by being parented in love.

 

Slide - Eph. 4:11-16. 

 

This is talking about maturity.  Moving from childhood to mature adulthood.  Even though we have these adult bodies it doesn’t mean that we are mature spiritually or emotionally.  So how do we identify where we are emotionally/spiritually and how do we grow?  That is what we are going to talk about this morning. 

 

Define emotional health –

Slide – “An emotionally healthy person experiences a full range of emotions, including anger, sadness, fear, guilt, and joy and can regulate or differentiate from these emotions appropriately.”  -Alison Cook

 

The first real indicator of maturity is love.  Notice in vs. 16 that they building one another up in love.  At the beginning of the chapter we bear with one another in love in vs. 2.  This passage is bookended with love.  Relationships always start with love and it is the glue that holds everything together.  As we grow into love we learn to give and receive love.  We don’t have an over inflated view of self or a self-deprecating view.  We have God’s love which allows us to tell the truth about ourselves and right sizes us. 

 

The Triune God is highlighted in this passage.  Unity of the Spirit, One Lord - Jesus, One God and Father who is over all and through all and in all. 

 

The Triune God is unified and they are self-giving in their love for one another. 

 

Col. 1:28-29– “Christ (He) is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ.  To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me.”

 

One of my favorite things about missional communities is that we have to potential to grow in maturity together in Christ.  We are creating these spiritual families that allow us to grow in areas where we lacked maturity in the family that we grew up in.  This is both my favorite thing and it is the most challenging aspect of doing life in this close of relationship with others.  You bump up against a lot of immaturity.  Children are a lot of work and have a lot of needs and if our families are filled with too many children and not enough parents it can burn people out quickly.  So the antidote to this is learning to name our maturity levels and learn to grow up together into our head Christ.  Remember that to truly raise healthy kids it takes a village and that is true in spiritual parenting as well.  Regardless of where we are in maturity we all are growing up into our head Christ

 

Oneness in this passage does not mean uniformity.  We are seeing unity contrasted with diversity.  Diverse gifts that God has given to the church to play different roles.

 

One of the marks of maturity is unity in the midst of diversity which is called differentiation.

 

Unity – relationship/grace

Diversity – understanding of yourself and what is true about you. Truth

 

Jesus came full of grace and truth… he is the Lion and the Lamb.  He is full of steadfast love and faithfulness.  There are commentators who believe steadfast love correlates with grace and faithfulness correlates with truth. 

 

Eph. 4:15 – A mature person is able to receive love from God and give love to others.  This looks like speaking the truth in love.  Truth without love is harsh and love without truth is passivity.  Those who are have truth without love are often dominated by their emotions.  Those who have love without truth often diminish their emotions.  This unity through grace and difference through truth helps us grow in giving and receiving love.  This is the mark of maturity.  The world calls this emotional differentiation –

 

In almost every couple there is a person who is higher on truth and lower on grace or love.  If they call themselves a truth teller let's be honest they are normally a jerk.  They have neither grace or truth.  This goes back to having less of a relationship and being less of a person.  There is also a person in the relationship who is higher on love and lower on truth.  This is passivity or flattery.  These seem contradictory but they are complimentary.  The way we grow up in Christ is by speaking the truth in love and later he talks about the importance of submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.  You see, Jesus is the Lion and the Lamb.  We grow up into Christ by learning differentiation. 

 

Differentiation = secure loving attachment – Differentiation is being individually free and relationally together simultaneously.  It involves both individual self-regulation and the togetherness to be close relationally.  Basketball team in high school.  I was the shooting guard.  There is a point guard, two forwards and a center.  We all have our own unique roles but we are part of a larger team/system.  “Emotional differentiation involves balancing two basic life forces: the drive for individuality and the drive for togetherness.  When these two life forces for individuality and togetherness are expressed in balanced, healthy ways, the result is a meaningful relationship that doesn’t deteriorate into emotional fusion. (co-dependency) Giving up your individuality to be together is as defeating in the long run as giving up your relationship to maintain your individuality.  Either way, you end up being less of a person with less of a relationship.”  David Schnarch  .  Differentiation involves having relational grace and individual truth.

1.   Togetherness - Grace. The pull to be loved and belong. This really carries the idea of grace in relationship.  If we are too high on grace and too low on truth, we might choose to minimize our personal preferences or dull our traits in order to be loved by our partner.  Another way of looking at this is passivity.

2.   Individuality – Truth. The pull to be myself. This is the truth about who I am apart from you. When this is extreme and we are high on truth and low on grace we are harsh or aggressive and we say things like take it or leave it.  Truth tellers are often proud of telling the truth but are not realizing how harsh or critical they are. 

4 steps of emotional differentiation – Maturity is a way to care for self and others

 

1.          Calm - Keep a quiet mind and a calm heart – The ability to self sooth and regulate your own anxiety.  Naming and taming your emotions.  (You are your own primary care giver along with God and when you can sooth yourself in Him you can be present for your spouse)  This is the number one predictor of long term mental health.  Verbalizing your feelings has a grounding affect.

a.          This is probably the most loving thing you could do for those around you.

b.          It is important that you learn to self soothe instead of asking your partner to do this.  Being able to name and tame your own feelings.  Soothing your emotional bruises and monitoring your body.

2.          Aware - Maintain a Solid flexible sense of self – (Know thyself) The ability to maintain who you are (sense of self) while you are close to people important to you.  (Many people have no real identity of their own.)  Stop suppressing and denying parts of you that you don’t like. 

3.          Rooted - Remain grounded when responding – Learning to remain grounded when responding even when your spouse or others are triggered.  This allows you to feel safe and open up with one another.

a.          Over-reacting to tense or anxiety-filled situations is a common problem.

b.          Under-reacting (avoidance) is also not grounded responding.  It is not as obvious and more socially acceptable.  Sometimes avoidance masquerades as grounded responding but it is not.  Many of us disinvest instead of differentiating to train or not care to be close. 

4.          Endure - Engage in Meaningful Endurance –  Committed, long term relationships are people growing mechanisms.  Tolerating discomfort for growth.  In any healthy relationship there will be ruptures and repairs. 

a.          Very little gets accomplished in life without meaningful endurance. 

b.        Meaningful endurance is about tolerating pain for growth.  If there is no growth, its not meaningful. 

 

This also ties to the younger son and older son in the story of the prodigal God.  One son knew what he individually wanted and could take grace from the father but couldn’t give it.  He became less of a person with less of a relationship.  The older son had relational grace on the outside and it looked like he could give love but couldn’t receive the Fathers love.  In otherwards one son was high on truth and low on grace which is harsh.  The other son was high on grace and low on truth but then his anger came out sideways.  It was a passive approach to relationships.  He too had less of a relationship with the Father and had less of himself. 

 

When the son recognized his sin, acknowledged the truth of his need he could truly receive the Fathers grace and had a genuine relationship with the father.  Notice that it always starts with grace and Jesus came full of grace and truth. 

 

John Calvin along with many other theologians say you cannot know God without knowing self and you cannot know self without knowing God.  These are inextricably linked.  We must start with knowing God but not neglect knowing self.  This is differentiation. 

“God clearly separates divine areas of responsibility from human areas of responsibility. Humans are responsible for maturity. God is responsible for redemption.”  -Jim Wilder

It says we are to grow up in every way.  This is our responsibility to do the work of growing up.  I see that it takes grit on our part and grace from God to bring the redemption.  This must happen in relationship it cannot happen in isolation.  God created us for relationships. 

John 10:17-18 – For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again.  No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.  I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. (Individual)  This charge I have received from my Father.  (In Relationship) He was differentiated. 

 

Love is the mark of maturity.  Actually, better said being able to speak the truth in love is a true mark of maturity.  The quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives.  People who are mature are able to return to joy from any emotion because they are able to remain attached even in difficult circumstances.   The stresses of life do not disconnect them from one another. 

 

Slide - Stages of maturity

 

·      Infant Stage– 0-3 – Primary goal – Learning to receive love: Live in joy and peace.

·      Child – 4-12 – Primary Goal = Take care of self

·       Adult Stage – 13+ Primary Goal = Taking care of two people simultaneously (self in a relationship)

·      Parent – Birth of first child until launch of last – Primary goal = Taking care of children sacrificially with joy

·      Elder – Launch of last child into adulthood – Primary Goal = Caring for the community sacrificially with joy.

What is a mature person considering what we talked about today? They can give and receive love.

Where are you on the grace and truth matrix.  What is your default and what is a specific take away that you can begin to grow in to take your next step in growing into maturity.  For me it is growing in grace.  I tend to be a truth teller and am naturally squarely in the stressed culture for me I need to grow in showing Christ.  That is my next step for growing up into Christ.

Pride is an exaggeration of something good and on the flip side there is a diminishment of your true identity – This probably belongs in the first session.  Greed is an exaggeration of meeting my needs. 

 

Giving and receiving love – to receive love must happen first and it involves learning to trust others to care for you.  To give love involves trusting self. 

 

This is true in our relationships with our kids.  This is true in marriage as well.  Ultimately we need to point our kids to their heavenly Father.  He is the one that we most desperately need secure attachment with but we also grow in maturity through earthly relationships.

 

Abiding intimacy with God isn’t only thinking about Him all the time it involves trust and surrender.  It is being securely attached to him and learning to receive and give love.  We love because he first loved us.

 

Caiden in the pool at the YMCA.  Flailing vs. floating in the love of the father.  This is us. 

 

Exercise – How do I image God?

 

Earliest image of God

Childhood image of God

Adolescent image of God

Current image of God

 

Parts work meditation – To give them an example of welcoming the various parts.  Learning to welcome them home through the Father’s love. 

 

What are you feeling?  8 emotions.  Reminder that parts feel and the more we can feel our feelings it reveals needs.  This is the one thing the Lord asks of us to bring our need to Him.  DNA Triads – identity groups – listening to feelings and coming back to what you know to be true. 

 

What questions do you have coming out of this teaching? 

 

Take 1 hour and go on a walk with God.  Envision how he would like to look at you while you walk.  Tune into your 5 senses and identify what it is like to be with Him.  If you encounter any negative experiences like shame, fear or guilt simply submit to God and resist the enemy in Jesus name. 

 

I cannot believe how often in the Bible all the way through it… it says they obeyed the voice of God or ignored the voice of God.  We need to grow in being more aware of God’s voice.

 

 Those who came from a home that provided secure attachment had these 6 things.

1.        Attunement – Parents that were attuned to you and this helped you name and tame your emotions.  A parent that is distracted by their own needs, wants, emotions and personal pain cannot be emotionally attuned to their children.

2.        Responsiveness – When you were distressed (mad, sad, afraid), did your parents respond and comfort you?

3.        Engagement – Did you parents have an intention to truly know you and your heart?  Where they will and able to engage you on the heart level?  Were you pursued by your parents? 

4.        Ability to regulate – If your mother was attuned enough and responsive to your distress then she helped you emotionally regulate.  She soothed you when anxious and stimulated you when you shut down.  As an infant we have no ability to regulate self so we use mirror neurons to borrow from our parents.  We are dependent on our mothers ability to regulate our emotions because children have no ability to regulate their own emotions.

5.        Strong enough to handle your uncomfortable emotions – Did your parents welcome your anger, sadness and fear?  As a child, you needed to be free to express these emotions.  You needed to know down deep that your emotions were accepted and allowed.  Did your parents communicate (verbally and nonverbally) that these emotions were somehow bad?  You needed to be able to say, “I hate you” or “you don’t love me” knowing that you wouldn’t be met with go to your room or how can you say that?

6.        Willingness to repair – When your parents hurt you did they own and repair the harm done?  Healthy attachment doesn’t have the absence of failure but the willingness to own the rupture and make repairs.  There are times when even the best parents are not attuned or responsive.  The mark of a good enough caregiver is that these ruptures are repaired through a process of attunement and re-engagement with the child.