How Can I Develop a Secure Attachment to God?

What if your relationship with God could actually change how your nervous system handles stress, grief, and trauma? We close the year by wrestling with two essential questions: does a secure attachment to God reduce distress, and how do we move toward that security in the real world of loss, pressure, and unanswered prayers. Drawing on research, lived experience, and Scripture, we chart a path that honors pain without papering it over.

We explore why some of us interpret suffering as punishment while others drift into self-reliance and numbness—and how both patterns often come from early attachment and church experiences. Then we get practical. You’ll hear how lament can coexist with trust, why “Abba” language matters for an embodied sense of belonging, and how community presence outperforms spiritual clichés. From John 15’s call to abide, to Hebrews 4’s invitation to draw near with confidence, to the Psalms’ raw honesty, we map out daily rhythms that create corrective experiences of safety, responsiveness, and meaning.

If you’ve ever wondered how to pray when you feel both hurt and hopeful, how to reauthor your inner story around grace instead of fear, or how serving others can soften your own anxiety, this conversation offers tools you can use right away. We talk prayer that holds two truths at once, Scripture meditation that centers God’s steadfast love, and community practices that make care tangible. Over time, these small, steady choices help transform divine struggle into resilient trust.

If this resonates, share it with someone who needs a gentle, grounded way back to God. Subscribe, leave a review, and tell us: where are you on the journey from anxious or avoidant to secure with God? Your voice helps others find their way too.

Chapters

• 0:00 Year-End Check-In And Wins
• 1:41 Framing Two Big Questions
• 3:20 Can God Attachment Reduce Distress
• 8:23 Church Clichés Versus Real Care
• 12:15 What Secure God Attachment Looks Like
• 18:37 Insecure Styles And Divine Struggles
• 23:10 Grief, Meaning Making, And Lament
• 28:45 Prayer And Mixed Emotions Together
• 33:02 Scripture, Grace, And Community

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:05

Alright everyone, welcome back to the God Attachment Healing Podcast here with Dr. Sam Landa. Now use that as an intro. Yeah, I'm excited. This is part two of the most common questions that are asked about attachment. And I'm gonna tackle two today and explain those. Um and before sharing about that, today is the last episode of year 2025, which is kind of crazy to think about. Uh it's been a long year, it's been a good year, but a long year. Um, as I've shared with you as many times before, I finished my doctorate this past month. And uh yeah, just feels great, just kind of doing some things around the house, trying to get ready for the new year, um, having some plans with the boys, um, plans for the podcast, plans for things moving forward, a lot of new opportunities opening up as well. So I'm just really excited about all of that as we start year 2026 next week. So, yeah, very thankful about that. Also, have about I think I want to say for the month of January, I have 10, maybe eight interviews that I've already scheduled. So it's gonna be a busy first month of the year, but I'm excited about it. And you're gonna see a couple of new guests and some older guests that we've had previously, or some previous guests that we've had on the show. And uh they've been great. I love interacting with all of them, and I'm looking forward to the topics that we have in store. So I think you will appreciate all that. Again, thank you for being here. And yeah, this is the last episode of year 2025. So we're gonna jump into our topic and we're gonna answer two questions. Two questions. I put up five fingers, two questions. Uh, can attachment to God really help with anxiety, grief, or trauma? Or is this just a spiritual Christian cliche? All right, that's one of them. And then the second one is how can I move towards a more secure attachment to God in practical, day-to-day ways? So those are the topics or questions that we'll be answering today. And let's go ahead and start with the first one. Okay, the first one says, Can attachment to God really help with anxiety, grief, or trauma? Or is this just a spiritual cliche? So, one of the main reasons why I started to dig into the topic of God attachment was because I personally, in my own experience in my own life, uh saw how my attachment to God really helped with grief, helped with anxiety. Um, again, you guys, if you've heard me speak on the podcast, there's things that I have gone through in my own life where I wouldn't classify as trauma, but there are symptoms of trauma. And again, one of the things that I do with my clients is I try to use their lens as to how they're interpreting or making meaning of the things that they've experienced in their own life. And for me personally, in some of the things that I've experienced, I wouldn't label them as trauma. Now, that can be good or bad, um, but I've learned to create some levels of meaning through not defining them as trauma. And maybe I'll do an episode on that. Just, you know, is there a benefit? And I think I've touched on it a little bit. Is there a benefit to describing your experiences as traumatic or as trauma? And there's different levels. Um, so I'm not saying don't describe it as trauma if you did go through something traumatic. Uh, what I'm saying is that how what kind of meaning are you able to get from describing your situation as traumatic? So for me personally, like I said, yeah, I don't define it that way. Um, but again, the point of this question was can God really help me in coping with these situations in in life or life circumstances? And that's really where I start to see even more at a deeper level how God was able to meet those areas of need, um, areas of comfort that were necessary in order for me to heal. And also for my clients when I work with clients. How can I help them find a way to see God working through what it is that they're going through? Now, I'm gonna have an episode actually about this very topic of not over-spiritualizing a dark or difficult situation in your life or stage of life, but um how the church has kind of removed itself from the responsibility of helping people who are going through these very difficult circumstances, um, and just kind of pasting some verses over it or pasting some spiritual cliches over the pain so that they don't necessarily have to deal with it. And that can be a problem, right? So that's speaking from a community perspective, like the church community, how they meet the needs of other people. I'll have a guest on that. We're gonna talk about that and um and see where we where we arrive with that, right? But from a personal perspective, like your own personal relationship with Christ, there is a lot of healing that can be obtained through that relationship. Attachment to God research consistently shows that secure attachment to God is associated with lower stress, more effective religious coping, and greater post-stress growth, while insecure attachment to God is linked to greater depressive symptoms and spiritual struggles. Okay, so that's kind of just what you see in the research that those who are securely attached to God experience lower distress. Why might that be? Why do Christians who have a secure attachment to God, again, that's the key there, that they have a secure attachment to God. Secure attachments are often developed through one's personal relationship with their parents, and basically the patterns of those relationships we carry on into our relationships with God. So it's very important to understand that background because there's a lot of Christians who do come to know the Lord, and because they had such a traumatic experience with their parents, they tend to bring over some of those same characteristics or same coping mechanisms, same behaviors into their relationship with God. Um, you've heard me talk about the compensation hypothesis, and this is someone who would develop a more securely attached relationship with God because they see God as someone who compensates for what their parents were not able to meet their needs. So they come to know the Lord later on in life and they see how God, through community, through prayer, through scriptures, uh, through other relationships, how God is able to meet their needs. So they develop this very secure attachment to God. The ones who actually have more of a problem with this secure attachment are those who grew up in the church because they have been told all their lives that God is this way, Jesus is this way, he's gonna meet your needs. But if they don't have any examples of that in their lives where people were able to do that, or they see a disconnect between how their parents lived at home and how they were at church, then they're gonna have a hard time believing these things because they don't have a model of what that would actually look like. So they struggle a little bit more developing an anxious or an avoidant attachment style to God. But those who are securely attached and who do see God as a uh source of comfort, they experience lower distress, which again would make sense for my boys when they're experiencing something that's difficult for them, whether it's doing their homework or trying to learn a skill while they're playing football or some other sport, and they get frustrated, they are able to express anger and they share that with me, right? So I'm a safe place for them when they're going through those struggles. And I'm not beating them down, I'm not yelling at them, I'm really trying to comfort them and encouraging them so that they see that they can do what it is that they're trying to do in that in that moment. So obviously, when you have someone who's able to comfort you when you're in distress, then that's gonna provide this sense of, okay, you know, I can express how I'm feeling, no matter how out of control I may feel, in this case, anger for my sons. And they know that they can share that with me and that I'm not going to um suppress what they're feeling. I'm gonna explore with them, I'm gonna ask what's what's going on with it, and then I teach them how to control that, right? So they need to have a safe place for that. And if I can do that for them, my hope is that they're able to translate that over into their relationship with Christ as they continue to get older. So again, lower distress, more effective religious coping, and these religious coping skills can be simple as uh turning to God during difficult times, seeking spiritual support, Christian community, and integrating suffering into a larger redemptive story, right? So they're able to see, and this is why I don't agree all the time with those who say that we're only putting a spiritual band-aid on something that is difficult or traumatic, but there are people who are able to gain meaning through the suffering. I mean, really, a lot of the books that I read, and even in scripture, especially in scripture, is that I often see that a lot of people go through suffering, and it's only because of that suffering that they're able to see God in a new light. Now, that doesn't minimize the damaging effects of the traumatic experience that has gone on. I mean, again, uh right now I'm reading through uh Genesis, and you know, we see the trauma really that Joseph went through with his brothers and how he went through all of that time, and yet the Lord was with him. He was accused of committing adultery with um with Potiphar's wife, and again, he was doing what was right, and yet he was receiving this punishment, right? And then he was jailed, and then you you know the whole story where he was then redeemed and brought up again. Um, and yeah, so so we see all of these different things that happen in scripture, and we don't share these things with people that we're interacting with, right? We don't tell people who are going through suffering, hey, everything's gonna be all right, God has a plan for this, right? You really want to just sit with people and be comforting to them during that difficult time. Like they know they're already processing all of these things that's going on in their lives, and they're trying to make sense of it. So they may have questions, you can listen to them, you can provide comfort, but there really is no need in that time to say that God has a plan for everything. If the person is a believer and they trust God or are wanting to trust God in that in that um situation, they will. They're gonna have questions, they're gonna have anger, they're gonna have confusion, they're gonna have some depression potentially. Um, they're gonna experience a lot of different emotions. And that's what they are. They're just feelings in that moment because it is a painful process. So, in that time, even if we were to communicate that God has a plan for um for them in the midst of their pain and suffering, it really wouldn't register just because the emotional overload of the experience won't allow that to really press into their prefrontal cortex where they can understand it and try to make sense of it. Like it they just can't. So we can't really expect that from people. Now we give it some time and then we slowly start introducing some truth to that. But it's it's twofold, right? One part is the relational part, which is we're there for them. We're providing encouragement, um, comfort, and just the listening ear. And with time, they start to become more open and they start to think a little bit clearer because the emotions have, you know, minimized a little bit or they're not as strong as they were at the beginning. And then they start becoming more open to receiving these biblical truths that we know uh are biblical and are from scripture. So they may be more open to that, right? And again, that's everyone. Some of us, when we go through suffering, we automatically try to um put this spiritual covering over it where we are wanting it to be okay. We know and understand that God is still good, but we don't allow ourselves to feel the emotion because we think that's something that's bad or that's going to um negatively impact our relationship with God. And what I found in just my personal experience and working with a lot of clients is that no, it's in those moments where as you share those things, you start to see how God can be a safe place to share those things with, right? He is that for us. So some of us may seek out Christian community, so people in the church. And a lot of us, and this is some of the work that I do as well, some story work where we do a way of integrating suffering into a larger redemptive story, right? So once the emotions have subsided a little bit, once we've made sense of, not even make sense of our feelings, but once we've allowed ourselves to experience them, then we can start integrating this redemptive piece of what is the Lord trying to teach me here? What can I take from this experience? How can I apply this and be a blessing to others in the future, right? So the person themselves can come up with that meaning as opposed to other people trying to implement or uh share that meaning with them, right? Let people arrive at that meaning. The Lord is going to speak to them. If they're again, if they're believers, they love the Lord, they want to trust Him, the Lord will lead them to that understanding. So we just need to give people time. I think that's what I've what I found. Those with insecure attachment, though, are more prone to divine struggles. So in the literature, in the research, the way that this is described are divine struggles. And these are basically feelings of being punished, abandoned, or betrayed by God. So imagine feeling those things and thinking that um obviously that's gonna have a uh a negative view of God, but these are things that people experience. If they're not securely attached to God and they're more insecure, so again, that can be anxious or avoidant, um, they're gonna potentially see God as being punishing of what it is that they're experiencing. So, for example, this used to be me, where I remember I would do something. I'm trying to think of a specific example, but let's say in school, if I lied to my parents about something and I got away with it, and later down the line it got exposed, and now, you know, my friends they got in trouble, and then I would get in trouble. I would look back, I mean, it could happen months or years down the road, and I would look back and you know what? I'm getting punished because of that lie that I told years ago. You know, now this is all coming down to uh a close, and uh, you know, I'm gonna get in trouble and all these different things. So people who have an anxious attachment style always feel like they're being punished by God for previous sins or past sins or past things that they haven't confessed with. Now, that may be true, you know, we do see that in in scripture where there is a punishment applied for sins of a person. Um, but that's not always the case. Sometimes life just happens, right? Let's say one of my biggest fears when I was growing up was uh becoming handicapped, was because I love sports so much, I still do, but at the time, I mean I was a fanatic, I would just want to play sports all the time. And my biggest fear was what if one day I just get so hurt that you know my legs they break or or something tragic happens, right? And I remember saying this to myself too. I was like, Lord, if you take away my ability to walk, I think I would be very, very upset with you. And I don't know what I would do after that. I probably wouldn't want to be here. And uh I just remember sharing that. Now I look back on that. I'm like, man, that that's kind of crazy to think of it that way. But even if it were to happen now, obviously I'd be sad, but I wouldn't see it as God punishing me. I would say, you know, this happened, you know, what am I gonna do? Um, you know, what what can I take away from this? Um, I think I would go to maybe through a season of the person. I don't, I don't know, but I know that I'd be turning to the Lord much differently than I would if I was um when I was younger. So the insecurely attached is going to feel punished, abandoned, or betrayed by God. Like, why did this happen to me, God? And I remember that too as well. Broken relationships, Lord, why did you allow this to happen? What did I do? What could I do differently so I could restore this relationship? So then we start kind of bargaining with God and trying to rectify past hurts or past sins, right? So this is how the insecurely attached individual would respond in a time of stress or anxiety or trauma or grief, right? Now, in grief, studies have found that secure attachment to God and positive religious coping, so I feel secure, I see God as a as a secure base that I can share my emotions with and my thoughts with. And I also have good religious coping skills, which is seeking community, prayer, reading scripture, so on. These are associated with decreased distress and increased meaning making and stress-related growth. And that's really the part where I focus on a lot. Like, what meaning can we create from this? What meaning can you create from this? So sometimes you're co-creating meaning. So the counselor and the client, they're co-creating meaning from the difficult situation. And sometimes I just encourage the client, like, what does this mean to you that now you're not able to be in this relationship anymore? What does it mean to you that you uh have a broken relationship with your parents, that you can't don't feel like you can trust them? What does that mean for you? And what is it causing you to do? So I explore those type of things with them so we can find, hey, this has to mean something, but let's wait till we can get there. Let's process the emotions and then you can start creating meaning from it. So obviously, at the beginning, one of the things I try to do is to allow them to just feel what they're feeling and see where that takes them. Okay. Um, again, with time, as we develop a secure um relationship with each other, then I can look at um what kind of meaning we can create from that. You know, interestingly enough, as we look at this, the this mirrors biblical patterns of lament and trust. In the Psalms, we frequently see how believers honestly express anger, right? Um we see this in Psalm 22, verse 1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? We also see that the language along with Jesus when he was on the cross, right? Yet returning to God as a refuge and rock. So we see this, these parts of the Psalms where at the beginning it's this anxiety, this depressive state, this anger state, and then moving from there from there to gratefulness and um and trust in who God is, right? Um, we also see in scripture that we're invited to cast all our anxieties on God because He cares. That's in 1 Peter 5 7. And we see God as a very present help in times of trouble, Psalm 46, verse 1. But also, one of my favorite verses that I actually it kind of sets a tone for how I approach counseling is in 2 Corinthians 1, verses 3 to Four, where it says, the God of all comfort who comforts us in all our afflictions, so that we ourselves may comfort others in theirs. So that is how we start to see God as a secure base, as a secure attachment. Attachment language really undergirds these texts. God is portrayed as emotionally responsive, not indifferent. So when we have a secure attachment to God, we see him as emotionally responsive. That I can share what I'm feeling and God's not going to shut that down. I can share what's going through my mind and God's going to hear that and listen to that, right? He's not indifferent to our struggles. He's present and he's available and he's ready to listen, right? And we're also called to turn towards him during times of distress instead of relying on ourselves or avoiding him, right? And again, for the avoiding attachment, they're going to rely on themselves. I'll find a way to fix this, I'll take care of this. I don't need God right now. I know that he's there, but let me try to figure this out myself, right? So there's this self-reliance, or just I'm not going to turn to God. I'm going to turn to these other things that can make me happy. I'm going to avoid the pain that I'm feeling right now by taking on these vices or these addictions that I have. Right. So the securely attached is going to seek God during times of distress. The anxious or the avoidant is going to either rely on themselves, is going to feel guilty, or is going to feel um abandoned or betrayed by God, and or also they may feel avoidance. Okay, so to answer the question, can attachment to God really help with anxiety and grief or trauma? Yes, right? We need to learn how to see God as this secure base. And how do we do that, right? And that's really the question that I'm sure many of you want answered is how can I move towards a more secure attachment to God in practical day-to-day ways? Well, evidence suggests that attachment patterns, including our attachment to God, are relatively stable, but can't change through repeated corrective experiences of safety, responsiveness, and coherent meaning making. So I usually also add not just the consistency, but also the effectiveness of how God is meeting those needs and the timeliness. And let me explain why that's important, is because oftentimes we want, and this makes perfect sense for anyone who goes through any type of suffering, we usually want immediate relief, right? So a secure attachment once may want immediate relief, but understands that that relief sometimes takes time because it can be a very painful experience that they're going through, but they're trusting God is going to bring healing in due time, right? That's part of having a secure um attachment to God, is that they know that God will eventually come through. Why? Because there's been repeated, consistent experiences of seeing God come through on a situation that they were wanting to trust Him, right? And they've had other relationships where they've seen that same level of consistency and effectiveness and timeliness and meeting their needs, right? Um, one of the things that I often share with some clients is I wish I could remove this pain from from your life. Um I just wish that I could. But I know that if I do that, I it may um not necessarily rob you of an experience, but it also doesn't provide me the opportunity to just sit here with you through it. Right. So we start to feel or the the client starts to feel like it's okay that they're experiencing what they're experiencing and regarding their feelings, and that they um have someone who is willing to walk through the pain with them, right? And that's really what we want. We want someone to walk through the pain with us, and it's a very cool way, a very um special way in which I'm able to model how Christ would be there for them during that difficult time. And how do I know that? Because God comforted me during my times of difficulty through his word, through prayer, through people, um, mentors, uh, friends, family. Like he was meeting the needs when I was in the most pain. And because I've experienced that, I know now that that's what people need when they're coming into my office and they're sharing things that they've gone through, right? So as I continue to do that, they start to see God hopefully in a new light. Um, further research shows that positive religious coping, gratitude, and spiritual practices indicate that when believers consistently turn towards God in distress, interpret their relationship with God through grace rather than punishment, and receive support from Christian community, they tend to show better emotion regulation and more secure attachment to God over time. So, again, kind of that's kind of what I was alluding to earlier, is that we start to see all of these things as ways in which God is trying to meet our needs at that time, right? We experience pain and we start to see how Christian community, people, very specific people in our lives, start to reach out. Hey, what do you need? Do you need me to be over there right now? Uh, can I, you know, do you want to call? Do you want to text? Like, what do you need, right? And that to me is God speaking or using those people to speak to me, right? And then before I go to sleep or when I wake up in the morning and I think about a scripture or a passage, like, gosh, you know, that's really meaningful for me. The psalms were especially helpful during during a time of difficulty where I was able to read all these very raw emotions that the the psalmist had, and that that was okay, right? Um, most of them, I think, yeah, most of the psalms always had this positive reflection on God's character in a positive light. Like, you know, there's this distress, and they shared their complaint and they shared what they were going through. And then at the end, there's this recognition of, but God, I know that you're still true. I know that you're still here with me, I know that you are good, and so on. And that's again goes back to what is a secure relationship with God look like? It looks exactly like that. Okay, so things that we can do are prayer that can express both distress and trust. That's very, very doable, right? Where I can have two things going on at the same time, meaning this is a painful experience. I don't know why this is happening. Um, Lord, it does feel like I'm being punished, and maybe, maybe I deserve it, right? There was even language like that. Maybe I deserve this. Um maybe this is something that um yeah, that I that I deserve. This is something that I brought on myself, this is something that um is punishment, right? So there is that language too, and then we start to wonder, okay, well, even if it was, I still know that God is good, right? So I experienced the distress and I'm sharing those things with God. And at the same time, I still realize and recognize that He is good and that He's my father and that He's here with me, right? Those two things can be true at the same time. And I think oftentimes we try to eliminate one over the other, right? We try to pick one over the other, and we say, no, only this can be going on right now. It's only trust fully or nothing at all. But it's a mixture, right? There was uh I wanted to trust God, but the pain kind of blinded me at times from what that could actually look like. So what it looked like was I'm experiencing pain, and Lord, I I feel this pain, and I think it's because you brought this on me and I deserve it, but I know that I still need to trust you. And whatever it is that you have in store for me, let me just have open ears and open eyes to see what it is that you're trying to do. And that's kind of how I started to look at things. So that was very, very important for me that there is this ability to express both trust and distress at the same time, right? This is part of having a secure attachment to God. Other practical things that we can do is meditating on the scriptures that emphasize God's love for us, especially for those of you guys who grew up maybe in a more um in a church that expressed more of the justice and truth and judgment of God, not because those things are bad, but because that may be the only framework that you had. And it blinded you potentially from being able to see God's grace and love. That's that was my experience. Um, I grew up in a very um sound doctrine, truth, uh, biblical Bible teaching church. And one of the things that I didn't hear a lot of, and I wish I did hear more of, was God's grace and love, that there was a balance of both, that there's his grace and love, there's his truth and justice, that there's mercy, there's compassion, and then also again, going back to God's um authority in our lives and obedience, right? Those all of those things are part of our relationship with God. But sometimes one was emphasized more than another. Um, so that's another thing that we can do where we can focus on um meditating on God's steadfast love and participating in nurturing church relationships. What does that mean? You know, there's I think there's a very important thing to say about serving others, right? It feels good to serve others, and I think God intended it that way. That this culture emphasizes so much to focus on yourself and focus on your happiness and focus on what you can get out of something and not enough on serving others without the expectation to get something in return, right? Just serve others. It feels good. God intended it that way, and I think it removes the full focus and emphasis on our own troubles because um, I mean, that's just what it does. Like you're focusing on someone else, how to be there for someone else. And the more that you get in tune with how God has been present with you during your difficult times, the more in tune you can be when someone has a need that you're able to meet that need for them. Again, and you can help them establish a secure relationship with God because they may never have experienced that before. So if you're able to do that, you are helping them be seen or feel seen, loved, and accompanied during their difficult time. Okay, a couple of things here as we wrap up. Uh, biblically, secure attachment to God is reflected in abiding language. One of my favorite verses, John 15, 4, where the languages abide in me and I in you, speaking of the vine and the branches. And what I love about this passage is how much it speaks to how we fully need to depend on God for everything, right? Everything that we go through and experience, that we need to have this full dependence on God. He is the vine, we're the branches. He has the life, we need the life. And because he is eternal and because he is life, he gives us that life so we can continue to live in ways that honor him. It shows our full dependence on him. Um, uh, another passage that I really much appreciate. Uh, it talks about where John says, um, he must increase, I must decrease, right? This is from uh John the Baptist, I believe it was, as he's preparing the way for Jesus to come through. Another passage here, drawing near with confidence because of Christ's priestly work. This is in Hebrews 4, 14 to 16. This reminds us of how the confidence we have in Christ's ability to meet our needs, right? He knows us better than we know ourselves, he knows what we need, so we have can have the confidence to come to him with our needs because we know that he will be able to meet those needs. And specifically, lastly, living as adopted children who can cry Abba Father. And I really love this passage. This is you can see this um type of language uh in Romans 8, 15 and 16, and Galatians 4, 6. Um, this reminds me of an episode that I did with my friend Dr. Josh Waltman, and um speaking specifically about Abba Father, he said that the Jews at the time did not or were not very in tune or not accustomed or not using the language of Abba Father, right? They saw God as God Yahweh, right? The authority, the creator of everything. So when Jesus started to introduce this into a language of prayer, it was new for them because now it involved this personal relationship that we have with God. And again, because of Christ's work on the cross, we have direct access to God through Jesus in our relationship with him, right? He is our father. We are adopted adopted sons and daughters of God. So he's now brought us into his spiritual whole spiritual family, and now we have this direct access to him. So that is something that is very was very different for them at the time, but this is something for us now as modern Christians that we understand, and we have this access to him through prayer, through scripture, through Christian community. Again, those are the big three. Um, so turning to God and being able to see him as a father is very powerful for us. We have new meaning in our relationship with God because of what Jesus has done for us. Again, what this seeking God out as a father can look like is turning to him during real times of distress rather than after the fact. So it's not like we're going through something difficult and then we experience it, we go through it, and then after we come out of that, then we say, you know what, Lord, thank you for going letting me go through that. Like it, that's not really what we're looking at here, right? It's it's almost like with my kids, if they do something bad or if they did something good, I want them to tell me in the moment, right? That that's really gonna bring me a lot of joy for me to be able to see what they're doing and they are very excited about things that they share with me. So when they do that, I feel excited with them. Uh, if they're going through something that's difficult or they're sharing a frustration, I want to know at that time so I can find ways to help them. But when I find out later, it almost removes the um the joy from it in a sense, because I feel like I missed out on something that was part of their lives. Now, because God is sovereign, because God knows everything, he does not necessarily feel that. But for us as his children, how good is it for us to turn to him as we're going through the difficult time, as opposed to after the fact, right? So when we're going through something, we can turn to God through prayer, through scripture, through Christian community and see what he has in store for us or what does he have to say for us. Also, allowing for scripture to reauthor internal narratives about God's character. Again, this is the work of this is narrative work, right? What story are we telling ourselves about our relationship with God? And the story that I've been wanting to tell myself and continue to tell myself is that God is my father and I can turn to him at any time, and he's not going to push me away, right? That belief, that anxious belief that he doesn't want to be around me, that I'm not good enough for him, that he only sees me as a sinner and not as his son, like all of those things, you're you're learning how to narrate a different story using scripture. So, this is one of the ways in which I try to reshape a person's understanding of how God is in their lives. So these the question, the second question was um, how can I move towards a more secure attachment to God in practical ways? Again, seek out that Christian community, pray, know that you can turn to God during your times of distress, read scripture, the truth about God's character and who he is, and allow that then to create or use that to create meaning about your own relationship with God. And eventually you'll move into a secure attachment with him. So a lot of good stuff that we talked about today, guys. Um, I hope that this was helpful for you. Uh, remember to stay engaged in a local body where others embody God's steadfast care, right? Again, those examples that we have in our lives are good for us to experience because we need to know what that actually looks like. And it'll make it easier for us to see that in our relationship with God. Okay. Uh, over time, you know, the Holy Spirit uses these experiences to move believers towards a more secure, resilient, and trusting bond with God. So hopefully, this is helpful. Again, this was the last episode of this year, and uh hopefully you guys have a happy new year, and I will see you guys next week with a brand new episode for year 2026. Alright, guys, well, have a good one. Take care, and I'll see you next year.