Episode 352 - Summer Joy Gross, "Attachment, Lament, and Healing"

Welcome to another episode of Restoring the Soul with Michael John Cusick. In today’s conversation, Michael is joined by Summer Joy Gross—Anglican priest, spiritual director, and author of the new book, The Emmanuel Promise: Discovering the Security of a Life Held by God. Together, they dive into the transformative power of secure attachment with God, exploring how our personal histories, traumas, and life transitions shape our ability to connect with both ourselves and the Divine.

Michael and Summer unpack the vital concepts of attachment theory, discuss the different attachment styles, and reflect on the power of lament, imaginative prayer, and community for deep inner healing. Summer shares candidly about her own story, the wounds and resilience that formed her, and her passion for helping others experience true rest and rootedness in God’s presence.

Transcript

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Hi, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Restoring the Soul. I'm Michael, and today I am talking with Summer Joy Gross, whose new book is the Emmanuel Promise. I always have to look for the subtitle, the Emmanuel Discovering the Security of a Life Held by God. Hi, Summer. Welcome to the podcast. Michael, it is such a joy to be with you. And as I told you, I have just loved your book and just feel like these books are such siblings and love the therapist viewpoint, of course, but also you can hear the spiritual director in your book as well. Oh, thank you. Yeah, it's such a joy. Yeah. I've been a therapist, licensed therapist for 32 years and worked in mental health for a couple of years before that. But at my heart, I really do feel like I shepherd and pastor people. So thank you so much for that, you know, so I love the phrase sibling books because a dear friend, Lisa up in Seattle, who's a spiritual director, as soon as she read my book, she said, you've got to be introduced to Summer and her ministry and the new book, the Emmanuel Promise. And she was absolutely right. As soon as I opened it. I generally read the second half of books first because sometimes that's where the really good stuff is. But what was beautiful about your book is unlike mine, and these are very complimentary, is that you spent a significant part of the book talking about different ways, and I think it's 20 different ways to actually build a secure attachment with God. So when people get halfway through the book, there's. There's this question that's already lingering at the forefront, and that is, okay, how do I do this? Where do I begin? And so you give a lot of beautiful practices and tools for that. And I would say that if anybody is wanting to know, how can I grow and gain a secure attachment? Get this book. And just the second half of it is great, but the first half is also great because all the theology is there and all the unpacking of attachment. I thought you did a beautiful job in unpacking the. The four different attachment styles, the three insecure attachment styles of avoidant, anxious, disorganized, and than secure. So kudos on that. Just so, so well done. The book is so readable. Thank you so much. I have to say that that means a lot coming from a therapist who's been in practice for so long. And I really did 10 years of study on attachment before writing the book, but. Yeah, that just means a lot coming from you. Well, if you started studying 10 years before writing the book, you probably saw What I've seen, and that is the evolution of the field and this revolution of it being a pretty esoteric idea, going back to Bowlby and Ainsworth, and then Sue Johnson with EFT kind of being the forerunner to popularize it in emotionally focused therapy. And then ultimately during the pandemic, I think that was the tipping point where mental health has been so destigmatized and people have been so hungry and realizing that this is a category. Because if nothing else, one of the things that was a downside of the pandemic is we found ourselves isolated, and all these attachment needs came to the forefront. One of the upsides of that, because I like to think that there is an upside to every downside, especially in something so catastrophic as the pandemic, is that there was this awakening that I see happening all over North America, but especially in the church, to the interior life and to the longings of the soul for connection and to substantive, authentic spirituality. Yeah. Amen. I really appreciate the focus on lament that seems to be happening across the church, where people are starting to realize this focus on contentment and victory constantly was actually kind of a toxic spirituality and keeping people from coming to. To God as they were. Just on that day. It was almost like they were feeling like they had to clean themselves up and say all the right words before they came to God. And, oh, I'm just so grateful that we're getting back to what David taught us in the Psalms of just come as you are to God, that he wants to meet us in all of the emotions that we're bringing. So I want to come back to David, Although I kind of want to jump into your story, but maybe you can help me remember, because you made the statement in the book that David was an example of a secure attachment. And I'm certainly open to that. But I've taught for a long time that David was actually. That he had an anxious or ambivalent attachment style. So can we come back to that? Well, that's really interesting, isn't it? Let's think about it together. Yeah, let's do it. Now, is it possible that he was receiving from the Lord what the Lord wanted to give him, which was a secure attachment? And so we can hear that through security. Psalm 23, of course, of this invitation to not be in want to experience God as his shepherd, to experience God restoring his soul, setting a table before him? I mean, these are all great attachment images, but is it possible that he wasn't able to fully receive that and that that was something he had to grow in over time. I wonder about that time period when he was running from Saul as well. There's all of this language of, lord, you are my fortress. He's out there in the caves, he's out there in the mountains, he's running from Saul, and yet he's talking to God as if God is his hiding place, his refuge. So there's a lot of attachment language in here of his. And the attachment language of his turning towards God, no matter what's going on in his life. Yeah, no matter the level of. But you're right, it's clear that he still struggled and was trying to find himself in the female relationships of his life as well. And I would say definitely the secure attachment shows up in his willingness and in his ability to share whatever's there. You know, whether it was the bad stuff or the good stuff, that he had a fundamental humility, which is about trust more than it is about lowering ourselves to some, you know, base level. So I'm going to have to give some thought to that. I think the one area where I've always thought that it's not secure is that he was so obsessed with God killing his enemies and basically causing harm to the people that were against him. And that seems to go all throughout his life, even at the end. And so that idea of him taking on a Beatitudes posture to his enemies, he never quite got there. Now, granted, a secure attachment doesn't mean that people are wholly sanctified. Right. But I will give some thought to that because I wholeheartedly believe that the foundation as you talk about in the book is our ability to say, God, I'm thirsty and you're not coming through for me or God, I'm angry. And why do you let the wicked prosper and all of those kinds of things? So thank you for that. Thank you for engaging me. I want to just hit pause and will you share with our listeners who you are and what your journey has been? Because early in the book, I think in the introduction, you share about a move that happened geographically from where you were raised in a somewhat rural setting and where there was a great deal of security. And this move really caused a significant attachment wound. And the reason why I think it's important to start here in this conversation, just as you did in the book, is many people think, well, only if I was physically beaten or sexually abused or abandoned or something like that, only then do I have an attachment wound. But there are things that are major life transitions that actually can cause these kinds of wounds. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. Those major transitions in life, really, if we talk about neurobiology and interpersonal neurobiology, then the loss of a big community can shake up our sense of security in a huge way. So I'm a spiritual director. I live in the northern Columbus, Ohio area and I've been an Anglican priest for 20 years. I worked as a pastor in a church in a sweet congregation in south haven, Michigan for 10 years with my husband. And that was. That group of people was such a joy. It was at that time, sitting with people and hearing their stories over and over, stories in which they were stuck, that they kept going back to a resentment or a grief or an unforgiveness in their life. That I started going to healing care ministries and learning from Terry Wardle and Ann Halley and learning about inner healing and inner healing, healing care groups that were created. And we just did one of these healing care groups after another in this congregation. Just I did 12 at a time there. They were 16 weeks at the time. Now they're 12 weeks. But they were deep work of moving through spaces, of recognizing how the Lord wants you. Our, our full humanity wants us as we are and then moves, helps us to move into places, of recognizing the wounds of our life. So I am just really grateful for the deep work that the Lord has done in me. Essentially every time I did a healing care group or led a healing care group, the Lord would do new work in my life. He'd be like, okay, we're going to work on your relationship with your dad this year or we're going to work on this. And so for me, the deep slow work of the Holy Spirit through the scriptures, through the spiritual practices became such a place of adventure. Like, okay, Lord, I know you want me healed and whole. Where are we going to go next? And it felt like an invitation of the Lord to do deep work. But before I got there, since we're talking about my larger story, I was born into a time period of high anxiety in my parents life. They were just 22 and I'm just so proud of them. But it was a really difficult time. My dad had, was in Italy trying to get his medical degree. He then came over here and got it from Cincinnati, the medical school, Cincinnati. But he started over there. And I was born pretty much a year after their honeymoon. It was a time period of poverty for them, of trying to make it work for their family. And so they didn't really have room for childishness. Class. I was born in that, that Dobson time period. Of everyone reading the books about the strong willed child and that type of thing, breaking the parents. Right, right. And so that was pretty much the only parenting material in the church at the time. So I was born during that time and I grew up with my dad's going from one school after another. We ended up in Maine in at. He was at the main medical center getting his degree in surgery. And we were given the incredible gift of a community during that time, the Goodall community, who opened their arms to all of these families that were transitory, coming in and out. And we did beautiful work together. This group really held up my family. And there were. We did Bible study, of course, together and that type of thing. But I felt rooted, deeply rooted in this community. And then we moved to a rural community, community in northern Ohio where it. Where there was just a sense that we know our people and you're not one of us, essentially. And so it was just really hard work to go from New England, which is much more about the arts, and to come into high sports area where I had no skills whatsoever and no skills for kind of coming in and making friends in that new environment. So it was a total disruption. And as you know, the brain during those 10, the years 10 to 14, it's so moldable that those years of being bullied was really created a deep wound of attachment for me. You used the word rooted, and I think that's a classic, classic word metaphor for attachment. You know, Paul in Ephesians 3, 15, 16 talks about being rooted and established in love, in our inmost being. And it's not just a metaphor, but something that's actually supposed to happen in us. And for you, those roots were disrupted. You were uprooted. Not only did you get bullied, as you talk about in the book, but there's just not a sense of belonging. So how did that impact you at an attachment level? Yeah, that's such a good question. But it's like I walked alongside myself in that when I was at home, I had a sense of rootedness. But as soon as I opened the doors to this junior high, it was like I had lost the truth of who I truly was. So I could often get back to that rooted place at the end of the day or with my church. My church was a very rooted place. But because this school experience was so disruptive, I began to really question who I was. Struggle with rejection, sensitivity to a pretty high degree. And yeah, I think that. I think that that metaphor of kind of walking alongside myself helps because I felt like a Different person in both places. I get the question a lot, and you're addressing it, is that we can have a secure attachment and to be rooted and established in our inmost being. And then trauma or life circumstances, major transition, the disruption of those roots can give us the experience where we're not securely attached anymore, but that we have then a resiliency to kind of come back to that. That place. And it sounds like that's what happened with you, right? Yeah. I think my parents created such a beautiful home of rest for us. We lived out in the country. There was a stream that went beside the house. There was a beautiful little forest where I was allowed to explore. And I was able to commune with God early by taking walks on this beautiful proper. So after I got home from school, I was able to take walks and be quiet with the Lord and then reestablish for the rest of the evening. But, yeah, just really struggled in peer relationships for decades, really. It sounds like from an early age you've had a contemplative spirit that has always sought God at a deep level. Would you say that's true? Yeah, I. I'm really grateful for growing up in a home where we opened scripture. My dad taught me to spend time with the Lord, and he said, come back after you spend 15 minutes with the Lord reading the scripture and we'll talk about it. So from the time I was 10, 11, 12, I was spending time in the Word by myself. But. But also those sweet little places around our. I called the. The stream beside the house. There was kind of a little bit of a waterfall there. And I called it my trysting place. But now that I know more about the nervous system, I know how sweet that sou. The waterfall was for my. For my system. And I was able to come back into a feeling of connection during those times. It's beautiful how God's grace plays out in those ways where in seasons when we may not even know that we need therapy, and if we did, we might not have access to a therapist. But moments like sitting behind rushing water or moments of feeling the sunshine on you as you sat on a park bench or something like that, and how those sensory experiences can put in us some kind of sense of calm and peace, that there's almost always a reference point to go back to of feeling safe and secure. And again, for listeners that don't have that reference point, that a person can have an earned, secure attachment or a gained attachment as well. So, summer, one of the beautiful things about the book, as in the title of the Emmanuel promise is that the whole book is really revolving around Immanuel, this idea of God with us. And you help to awaken people to that sense of God with us, to point them to the fact that that's a reality. But talk about how you see in the work in the ministry that you do, how you see this Emmanuel presence and promise transforming lives and leading people into a secure attachment. Yeah, it is such a joy. For me, it was a huge aha moment. I don't know what it was like for you, Michael, when you started realizing, oh, yeah, practicing the presence of God can absolutely transform my everyday experience. So I. For me, it. That awareness came with reading Leanne Payne in her book Healing Prayer. She spends a lot of time. Every book that she wrote was really around this subject about practicing the presence of God and how when we're rooted in the truth that he is with us, that his. His face is turned towards us, that we can receive a secure attachment. And she wasn't using that language at that time, but we can go back and we can see that that's what she was talking about, being secure and rooted in God. So it is such an incredible joy in spiritual direction to invite people to. To practice the presence of God even before they do. Time in Scripture, like even that can transform us if we have this knowledge that Christ is in the room with us, that his face is turned towards us in kindness and tenderness, that as we're reading scripture, we're reading his heart towards us. And that shifts everything from being a. Being a checklist of something we're doing in the morning to communion and connection. And that's been one of the biggest hungers of my life, is just knowing there's something more. There's something more than just information about God and doing the Christian life correctly. There's a communion with God that He has created, that he's been looking for, knocking on the door of our heart. Like Revelations

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20 talks about that he's been looking for this relationship with us. So one of the things that struck me in as I was learning about avoidant personality or avoidant attachment is, is that God through that we know through Psalm 139, he was practicing our presence from the womb. It says, in my frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, like his face has been turned towards us even in the womb. He's been practicing our presence from the very beginning. And to me, that that has to be one of the most healing ideas that. That he has been moving towards us all this time and just inviting us to turn towards the one who's always been turned towards us. So I want to go back to Leanne Payne, 2001. My wife and I and a community that we were part of. We went to Wheaton and attended her pastoral care ministry. And Leanne's gone on to be with the Lord. But you're right, they didn't have attachment language. At least it wasn't being used back then. But she would speak around it in terms of the early relationship. And she spoke of this Emmanuel idea as incarnational reality. And this idea that God has come, that Jesus was and is Emmanuel, that he's with us. And that was really something we could do. But I remember I had a copy of Practicing the Presence of God before I went. And if you remember, they would have these book tables out there. She'd give a talk and she'd say, go look at these five books. And they would sell a lot of books there and great authors. And I got a fresh copy, a more modern translation of Practicing the Presence of God. I outlined it. I still think I have the 3 page PDF I tried to do would not work. And little did I know that I still had some very deep trauma inside of me. And what I came to see was that I couldn't practice the presence of God because I couldn't practice the presence of Michael. Oh my gosh, I love that. Say more about that. Well, the idea in Psalm 27, for example. We all know the Lord is my light and my salvation. He's my stronghold. Whom shall I fear? And yet I would walk around saying, well, God, how come I'm so afraid? How come I am fearing? Though an army besieged me, my heart will not fear. Well, I've got enemies. There's people that if they found out who I was then or what I was really like, they would leave me. So I saw this discrepancy, or as I write about the gap between what I was promised and what I actually experienced and what I did was, to use the phrase that you used a couple times in your books. I downgraded my expectations. So I said, this is as good as it gets. I'm going to have to strive and try to get God to like me because I believed he loved me. But then when you get to verse 4 of Psalm 27, David is practicing the presence of himself, paying attention to his fears. And then he says, the one thing I want is to gaze upon the presence of the Lord, to seek him in his temple, which is David. It's Michael. It's summer. Right. And if you don't have that connection to yourself, if I don't have the connection to Michael, then I'm not going to be able to practice the presence of God. So what would you say and what do you do in your healing ministry when someone comes and their level of trauma or anxiety or disruption is so great that they can't even be present with themselves, much less to be present to God? And I'm asking this question because I think that the world that we live in today, I don't even think people need to have high, high levels of trauma, but rather the overstimulation of technology and media and the pace at which we're bombarded by, you know, news from around the world that it's very difficult to practice the presence of oneself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For me, getting alone in nature is huge. And having a space of low distraction, one of the important gifts for me has been so that place of low distraction has been so important. But also centering prayer has been extremely important to me as well. I think we live in, like, this high level of intensity all the time. The television shows we're watching is trying to get us to watch the next television show, right? To binge watch. Instagram is trying to keep us on their platform. Facebook is trying to keep us on their platform. X is trying to keep us, you know, aroused and angry and frustrated. So we stay on their platform. So I think we have such a high level of anxiety and frustration that's being cultivated that we desperately need to be still and know that he is God, but also to be still, as you're saying, and know that I am safe just in the present moment. So I do a lot of present moment work with people, do a lot of grounding before we do the work of inviting ourselves to know the presence of God in this space. So as soon as I do a spiritual direction session, we might do havening. I don't know if you've done that before, but essentially you're. You're starting with one hand on the bottom of your elbow and sliding up. And we do this quite a few times. The science says that it slows down your brain waves and then you do like a sliding down from your shoulders to your elbows, and again there's this feeling of calm and rest and then on our faces as well. So giving people time to be still, to be grounded, to be gathered before we do any work with their story. So really what you're saying is you help them through these practices to Be present to themselves 100%. The beautiful thing about those people who are listening and not watching the video, you know, as you did what you called havening, and I don't call it that, but those kind of grounding exercises, they are wonderful to do for ourselves as we learn to self soothe, but they also replicate the kinds of tactile, soothing care that an infant or a child would get. You know, the gentle touching of the shoulders and you know, it's interesting, I often think as I'm reading through the Scriptures and you talked about this with Psalm 23, just how rich and relentless God is from Genesis to revelation of all of this imagery of attachment. And my friend and colleague Andy Kolber, who wrote the book Try Softer, she has used this phrase, she said to me once walking out the door this very casually and it's impacted me very deeply. All theology is attachment, which if you go back to the Trinity, that's of course true, but God comes in so many ways. You mentioned Psalm 139. We can just go through scripture after scripture that we think of typically as a right brain kind of propositional idea like the Lord is my light, my salvation, whom shall I fear when if we stay with it and we look at the context of all that's written, it really is about attachment and an invitation into that place of rest. I'm wondering if you would quickly, because I want to spend a little bit of time talking about the practices. I think our readers would really miss out on the richness of the second half of the book if we don't talk about the practices. But you do such a beautiful job in a very priestly pastoral way of talking about the three insecure attachment styles. Could you run through those maybe even at a 30,000 foot level? Yeah. So insecure, anxious, there's this fear of abandonment. And I think what's so interesting about when I've learned about this, because that is, that's my, my attachment style, is that not only is there a fear of abandonment, but there's a desire to keep your loved one in the room and attentive to you and kind of whatever it takes in order to feel safe and to have that loved one pointed towards you is what you do. So you learn people pleasing in order to make sure that that other person is happy to take care of you. Or maybe you get loud and angry in order to keep that person in the room. So that one has been really interesting for me to learn about the avoidant personality or attachment has to do with feeling of self reliance and one of the things that I've learned over time is wondering if the avoidant has actually been an insecure anxious who lost hope that someone was coming. And so there was this sense of up, I'm all there is, I've got to take care of myself. And so that sense of self reliance, that if they don't take care of it, no one will. And that that means there's a fear of vulnerability as well, a fear of showing their true self because there's this need to have armor on and to be self reliant. So that fear of vulnerability also causes people to put a false ego self up or to wear different masks. And I just, I thought it was really fascinating to spend time thinking about Thomas Merton and his understanding of the false selves and his desire to be a true person, knowing that he is beloved by God. So you could see that, that loss of hope in that sense that he had to take care of himself. And then once he was in community at Gethsemane, what happened as he started kind of taking off pieces of armor and receiving from the community, receiving from God. You can see all the beautiful healing that was done in his life. And by the way, I, I think you did a, a really masterful job of summarizing his story that a lot of know the fact that he, he drank and womanized and had a child. People think of Merton as this beatific kind of saintly person. And he was saintly in his monastic life and his union with God. But I think so much of his writing came out of his own suffering and how he gained that secure attachment. So that was really beautiful talk about disorganized. And then I want to shift into the practices that bring about secure attachment. So disorganized is the precious person who has experienced trauma from their caregiver or who saw someone else traumatized from them, or perhaps their caregiver had mental illness or something like that. But they were scary, confusing, or bizarre. And so there was this sense that I, that this precious person didn't know whether to come close or to go away to protect themselves. So in life there's this pendulum swing back and forth between the avoidant or the anxious trying to keep themselves safe. So put a few words before we talk about the practices. You've been talking about it in effect through the whole conversation. But a simple definition of secure attachment. Because the people that I work with, it's almost like they're checking in and saying, do I have a secure attachment yet? But it takes a very, very long Time in one sense. And what does it look like? So for me, Michael, the idea that I can get myself home to the heart of God, that I might not always be home, there might be moments when I am in fight or flight or I am struggling, but that I can always get back home. And that there's a sense that the love of God is so profound that he's always, always inviting me. That he's always inviting me home. That's beautiful. And you allude to this in the book and it becomes a motif, but the story of the prodigal son and the Father that runs to him, and that's really beautiful. So would you pick two or three of your favorite practices out of the 20 that are in the book to just share with our readers? Who's not readers? Listeners. If someone's saying, okay, how can I get started in a really concrete way. With practices, Goodness, down to two or three, huh? Yeah. So one of the ones that I find most important in the hard work of receiving an attachment, I mean, the truth is the Lord wants to give it, but. But we have to position ourselves for him. So the Ignatian imaginative prayer, I find is one of the most helpful ways of gaining a secure attachment. And what it is, if your listeners don't know, it's that beautiful practice that Ignatius created in which we. We walk into a scripture with all of our senses alive. And sometimes we're one of the characters in the story, but we're always encountering Jesus from the Gospels. So it's in that encounter that we experience attachment as we see him faced towards us, as we experience his connection. And so one of the things that I've been really interested in is learning from someone at the church, Church of the Resurrection in Wheaton. So her name is Valerie, and she's a deacon there. And she runs these groups that are really formed. They're about the healing of our attachment, and they use Ignatian imaginative prayer. But she talked about mirror neurons and what happens when we see someone else being someone else, encountering the love of God, that we can start to imagine that we are that loved as well. So I believe that the holy imagination, or the sanctified imagination is where a lot of our deep healing happens. So I'll start there. And I'm sure you'd have so much to say around this. Well, you talk about Luke 8, for example, and I think it's also in Mark 4 or 5, where Jesus and the disciples are in the boat. Talk about, just as an example of imagination, for example, the Story of the disciples in the boat with Jesus in the storm. Yeah, I wonder if in that storm it tells us a lot about our attachment stories. If we were to be in the boat like a disciple and experiencing Jesus feeling safe and secure in his Father and being able to fall asleep. What happens for us when we feel like he's left the room? And so you see that in the disciples, the sense of Jesus has fallen asleep, he's no longer available for me. And I'm in this huge storm, what do I do? And so you hear them talking amongst themselves, you hear them getting angry or getting scared. And then finally someone wakes Jesus up and obviously he has power over this storm. But I think that's a lot of what happens in our own life as we wonder, is Jesus available for me? Is he tuned towards other people or is he actually tuned towards me in my storm? That's so beautiful. So beautiful. You know, as you were talking about that, I thought about there's some level of attachment that's required or at least still hope within just for the disciple who woke him up to go over and say, hey, wake up. Because you know how many kids have walked into their parents room and that parent has passed out or they've, they, they're simply not there or something like that. And how he wasn't available but he was still present. Just like the Emmanuel idea. Right. So talk about after imaginative prayer. What's another one that you would encourage people who are saying, how can I gain a secure attachment or grow into this area? Yeah, another one is lament and learning how to lament. And this is something that I feel like is vital for the church to really learn how to do and invite their people to do. Because just Sunday morning is not enough for people. People need to be able to bring their full stories into the church and to know that their story is going to be heard by God, but be heard by others. So following along a classic lament style like David used in the Psalms, that can be very helpful. Helpful. Making sure that we're being precise and detailed, but also not censoring ourselves, allowing the pain of our story to come out and then asking that question. And this is something Terry Wardle teaches and teaches so beautifully of asking the question, what has been the cost of this? Spiritually, emotionally, physically, relationally? What has been the cost of this in allowing ourselves to know that God is attuned towards us? There's another beautiful practice that was created by Sangshim Lopnow and Jim Wilder around this experience of feeling attuned to by God, which is called Emmanuel Journaling. And I've go ahead and look up Life Model works and Emanuel Journaling. They do a beautiful job inviting us into that process of experiencing God attuning to us. So I really appreciate that. Sometimes people will even have a hard time kind of nailing down how they feel. And even that can be a great gift to nail down how they're feeling and just hold it up before the Lord in a space of quiet. Not running too numb, not running to a coping mechanism, but just being quiet without this hurts before the Lord and then possibly using a lament psalm to speak to God from that place of ouch, this hurts. It goes without saying, but some people may need to be reminded of this, that it's really difficult, if not impossible, to just gain a secure attachment with God, that we need community, that we need others, that we need human eyes to see us, especially in those places where we've not been attuned to and afraid. And that's the power of. Of your groups. Is that what you're. You're creating a context of safety? You're. You're giving them a curriculum, for lack of a better term, and a path in which to do these practices and experience Emmanuel. But we really do need other people say a word about that as we come to a close. 100%. Yeah. The. The experience of being in safe places where our vulnerabilities can come to the surface and be safe seen, where we can be seen and known and loved in that place is absolutely vital for our. Our healing, spiritual direction groups, healing care groups, confessional communities, as our friend Dr. Thompson talks about. All of these things are ways in which the Lord uses others in order to build community and to heal our attachment story. Well, Summer Joy Gross, I want to thank you for this conversation. It's been rich. It makes me hope that our paths cross. Hope makes me hope that you continue to write books and that I and others can benefit from them. But it's called the Emmanuel Promise. I highly, highly recommend this for anybody who's on a healing journey of any kind, if you want to deepen your relationship with God and if you want to have deeper connections with others. But also if you want to become yourself, if you want to be able to live out of that true self that you were created to be. So thank you so much for sharing your heart, your wisdom, and your own journey today. Such a privilege, Michael. And as you know, I've been listening to you and your podcast and really appreciating the work that you do for a long time. Well, bless you.