The spiritual practice of "cocooning"

So there’s an adoption practice known as “cocooning.” It’s what you’re supposed to do after you bring your adopted child home. According to most experts, the child is not to be exposed to very many people for at least a month. It is related to attachment, which is the goal of the first several months after adoption. Attachment happens when the child feels that he can’t live without you, similar to the way a biological child feels. Mom and dad are the only ones that are supposed to feed, clothe, take care of and nurture a child until attachment takes place.

So we started this process with Matthew (pictured above), and of course it is difficult since he is a 5 year old boy. He would much rather be climbing a tree with a friend, or maybe even owling. But it is true that the newness of all this leaves him overwhelmed when there are too many new people around. You could imagine how it would feel to hear all these strange looking white people speaking all this gibberish. Plus, everything is a first. Just on the way from the airport to our home he encountered a number of firsts: first water-fountain (“bubblah” for my RI friends), first escalator (he decided to take the stairs), first McDonald’s cheeseburger (he didn’t care for the pickles), and first car ride on a super-highway.

I was thinking that this practice is something we Christians need to do. We forget to periodically take time to be with God in an intense, exclusive, and utterly dependent way for the purpose of attachment. The goal is the same: we need to get to the place where we can’t live without him.

Can you say that you can’t live without him? Is he the most important person in your life? Is he what your heart longs for?