Double A's - Chapter 16

Nope. Not talking about batteries. Or my bra size. Nor is it baseball terminology.  

It’s the tag team twins of Abandonment and Attachment. 

I had known at some level, virtually for my whole life, that I had abandonment issues. As a young child, although unable to articulate it, I knew my mother and father had both chosen to leave me and never look back. As the years progressed I saw my mother, now married, have three children and establish a family that did not include me. I imagined, at the time, that my father had done the same.  

There is a symbiotic relationship between abandonment and attachment issues that make forming lasting relationships especially difficult.  There is a deep yearning within a person to feel attached to another human being. We all crave a connection to someone and relationship is sought at every level - family, friendship, business, neighbours - we feel most satisfied when we have a sense that relationship and connection have been achieved.  Once a connection has been made, it forms the basis for attachment. 

But what if a connection can’t be made? What if relationship never goes deep enough for a connection? And what if something prevents a connection. 

Abandonment prevents connection. 

And the more that abandonment is repeated it solidifies the belief - the knowledge - that attachment to another is not possible. You would think that once a connection is made a person would hang on to it with dear life and never let it go. But repeated abandonment teaches you to hang on to connections and relationships with a very light grip. An open palm. Because whether you want people to go or not, they all, seemingly, eventually do. And they can go with little fuss or by tearing themselves from your grip with great force. It’s easier in the end to just release them. Abandonment tells you one thing - that you were not made for people to stay. It doesn’t matter if the issue is with you or with them, the result is the same; people leave. So, despite the overwhelming wish that you could form a connection - a bond - an attachment to another, the very real fear is always, always present; this relationship, most likely, has an ending. And the inability to bond or attach to another sets the stage for eventual abandonment; creating the exact result you are trying to overcome. 

I have recently realized that in addition to the Abandonment Issues, there is also its tag-team-twin called Attachment Issues.   

These types of issues have their genesis in abrupt separation from caregivers in early childhood. (Those years being identified as birth to age three). Attachment issues typically result in lack of basic trust and difficulty in forming future attachments. We all remember when the horrific and heartbreaking conditions were exposed in Romanian orphanages under the rule of the dictator, Ceausescu. Infants were ignored, given 5 to 6 minutes of attention a day. They were vacant looking, imprisoned in their own cribs, rocking back and forth as the only way to try and console themselves. People tried to adopt them but found they suffered from profound attachment issues resulting in tremendous challenges for the parents, families and orphans. Too many of those orphans were given back when it was clear that no amount of good intentions could bridge the gap.  Devastating.  

While my attachment issues are certainly not of the same magnitude, they do exist nonetheless. 

Although the abandonment by my dad was something I started to understand and internalize when I was a young girl, certainly as an infant I had no knowledge of him in my life. He was not a primary or even secondary care giver. My mother and grandmother, however; different story. I can only assume that as a newborn, I bonded with my primary caregivers; Carolyn and Granny. To what extent I bonded is unknown. I don’t know precisely when Carolyn left to start her new life in Calgary, but I can do some math and estimate it was when I was likely 17 or 18 months old. And it was this early age in my life when I had to process the first departure - the ripping of a bond - from a key person in my life. Here one day, gone the next. I can’t truly fathom how an 18 month old processes this kind of abandonment but I think, for lack of any other way to explain it, I would imagine at a minimum they would experience distress.  Persistent distress. A relentless distress that never finds a resolution and becomes part of their daily existence.  

I certainly never lived my life consciously not forming bonds with people. In fact I would say I did everything I could to facilitate that. That’s where that people-pleasing addiction came in. That dedication to good behaviour was the carrot that I walked toward. It promised me relationship if I just acted and behaved the right way.  

Fundamentally, I knew there was something wrong with me that prevented people from loving me. Engaging with me. Something that prevented them from staying. The common denominator was clearly me. People walked away from me. And I knew that my dad had known this from the very beginning. That it was the reason why he had stayed away all those years.  

The clarion of Carolyn’s message in my head “You ain’t much kid” was soon to be joined by other loud and sustained voices declaring the same sentiment. I spent much of my life on the perimeter. Never feeling as though I had the permission to join in. And yes - I needed permission. I knew I was not wanted. I knew I was a guest.   

I recently ran across of picture of myself when I was 8 years old. It was the birthday party of one of my best friends who lived next door to me. The little girls, 12 in all, were lined up, two deep, to take a picture. As the birthday girl, Patty was front and center, shorter little girls in the front, taller girls in the back.  Off to the side - slightly turned away from the group, and standing in neither the front row or back row, was me. I was struck by the picture and how it depicted, then and now, how I perceive myself in the world. Not quite part of the group. As an invited guest, I would engage, but I learned to always disengage before I wore out my welcome. I never felt a true sense of belonging. I felt like a mistake. 

Certainly my marriage exacerbated these feelings. Entrenched them, actually.  Entrenched them then put them on steroids. And I soon found it harder and harder to establish friendships. Even the relationship with my kids was redolent with the fear that they didn’t want me in their lives. My best efforts to counter these beliefs were short lived. There were those clarions that never shut up.   

For most of my life I believed God made a mistake when He made me. And I have told Him so, often. There was lots of evidence that proved what a mistake I was. Most people were too polite to confirm it, but their exit from my life (to me) was proof positive of what they wouldn’t say. Some weren’t so polite. They told me, to my face that I was not deserving of the most basic respect or common courtesy because I was who I was. Nope, I’m not even kidding. Among those voices was my daughter declared me “dangerous” when I informed her I was leaving my marriage and she cut off all contact. (If anyone sees a ripped out heart on Lewvan Drive, it’s mine.) Even the most secure of my relationships were undermined by these beliefs about myself.  

So - if I was a mistake, if there was something fundamentally wrong about me that caused people to flee and forget me, then surely God must feel the same way. I could see Him, the mould of me sitting on His work bench, and with anticipation He carefully removes the mould to reveal the beauty beneath. Then His face falls. His shoulders slump. His head dips down and He lets out an exasperated sigh. “This wasn’t what I thought it was going to be! Look at all these flaws! Critical mistakes in this one! Who will ever want this?” A lot of time and effort wasted on this creation, and now He’s stuck with me.  

I walked through my life believing that the reason I didn’t have a mom and dad, or the marriage everyone else had, or the belonging to a family that seemed to be a part of everyone else’s life, was because I was a mistake.  Mistakes don’t get mothers who stay. Mistakes don’t get dads. Mistakes get forgotten and pushed to the side. Mistakes don’t get loved. Certainly not by a perfect God. (I know, I know; the logic in my thinking wasn’t there. How could a perfect God make a mistake?  I didn’t know the answer to that - I just believed it). But David abruptly called me out on my faulty thinking declaring it to be absolutely untrue. When he said that I needed to immerse myself in God’s love for me, I dubiously turned to God and said, “OK - if it’s not true, You’re going to have to show me because right now I believe it with all my heart.”  

God must grin big when we challenge Him like that.  

Game on, He said. It was then that God slowly started showing me the scope of my life through a different lens. It was then that God started showing me the scope of my life through His eyes. He began to walk me through every lonely moment. In every solitary situation, He had been there. In every painful exit, He remained. He stood beside me while we watched people walk away. He had known every suffering. Every wounding. Every abuse. Every pain. Every tear I had ever spilled had been collected in a bottle by Him. (Ps 56:8) They were there; all different shapes and sizes and colours, ornate, beautifully sealed bottles, displayed as a stunning memorial. He had been there through it all. From the first moment. He had never abandoned me. And He never would. Why? Because He loved me. 

“But,” I said - “I don’t know if I can love You the way I’m supposed to.”

“You don’t have to,” He said. “Just let me love you.”

“But I should love you more. I should do something to show I love you. I should be more obedient and well behaved. I’m sure I can do better.” He lets me finish the laundry list of things I feel I need to do to make Him love me. To prove I’m worth loving. And when I’ve run through them all, He says 

“Child, you don’t have to do a single one. I get to love you.” 

“But I’m afraid God - I’m afraid to get close to You. I’m afraid to fully trust you. I’m afraid You’ll leave. I’m afraid You’ll be disappointed.”  

And He takes my hand and says “I’ve not left you yet and I never plan to. You’re mine and I get to love you.”  

And God still doesn’t get it, so I remind Him of all the ways I’m deficient, all the reasons I’ve been told I wasn’t enough. All the reasons people have walked away from me. And I’m convinced that once He’s reminded of those, the light bulb will finally turn on and He will realize…“ah yes…she was the mistake I made”.  

Instead He says, “I made those ‘mistakes’. And they aren’t mistakes you know - their beautiful embellishments that I gave only to you.They are what make you unique and so special to me. Not everyone gets that, but I do. You are enough.  And I get to love you.”

“But what if my dad decides he doesn’t like me. What if he doesn’t get me like You do? What if he discovers all the things that are wrong with me and walks away.” Certainly God will concede this point, right?

“Then I’ll still be here. Just like I always have been. I’ll collect those tears too. If he leaves, I’m not going with him. I’m staying here. Where I get to love you.”

There is still a part of me that can’t trust that He won’t walk away some day. I flail and wrestle, struggle and debate, thinking that God has His limits and I need to test those; to make sure He’s telling me the truth. Just like those Romanian orphans who don’t know how to let the love in and are eventually relinquished back to the orphanage, I’m afraid I’ll be given back - left alone. However, my beliefs don’t change what is true. And my beliefs certainly don’t change who God is. He’s never left my side and He’s not going anywhere.