Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

Michelle

How to Have More Fun

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“Do you think it’s too late for me to become a fun person?” I called out to Brad from my perch on the sunroom loveseat.

“That’s a really un-fun question to ask!” Brad called back from the kitchen. His answer made me laugh, but my question was a serious one. I wanted to know: is it possible for a person – for me – to learn how to have fun?

This past September my 14-year-old son Rowan and I drove to the sprawling Lancaster Event Center to attend the Lincoln City Library’s annual used book sale. I’d marked the sale on our family calendar months before, and we’d been anticipating it for weeks, eager to see what literary treasures we would uncover among the thousands of books.

“Now don’t get your hopes up,” I cautioned Rowan as we wound our way through the packed parking lot, recyclable grocery bags tucked under our arms. “The sale started two days ago, so the selection is probably pretty picked over by now. I don’t know if there’ll be anything good left.”

I continued along in this vein for a few more seconds until Rowan interrupted me. “Geez, you really know how to suck the fun out of everything, don’t you?” he huffed.

I stopped walking. “Wait, what? What are you even talking about? I’m fun! I love fun! I’m way more fun than Dad! [When in doubt, always throw the other parent under the bus, right?] I absolutely do not ‘suck the fun’ out of everything!”

Rowan and I each left the library sale that morning with a hefty bag full of books. But weeks later, I was still thinking about his accusation. Do I suck the fun out of everything? Am I the nail-biting, naysaying, fretting fish to Rowan’s exuberant, fun-loving Cat in the Hat?

Do I even truly know how to have fun?

Lately I can’t help but wonder if perhaps I’ve camped out a bit too long (read: my whole life) in the realm of responsibility, rule-following and routine at the expense of spontaneity, creativity and fun.

Being responsible and fulfilling obligations are very good habits, to be sure. But I’m beginning to realize that responsibility can also be a cleverly disguised means of self-protection. Keeping on task, meeting deadlines and ticking items off a never-ending to-do list are all ways I attempt to maintain control over my life. After all, if I’m in control, nothing bad can happen, right? While I know this equation is deeply flawed, I still often live like it’s the truth.

The same can be said for my tendency to manage expectations. Entering into an experience with rock-bottom expectations is one of the ways I try to protect myself (and those I love) from disappointment. The trouble with this attempt at self-protection, though, is that not only is it not failsafe, it can also detract from and dilute the experience itself (or, as Rowan so succinctly stated, it “sucks the fun out of everything.”).

Over the last few weeks I’ve been working through the Cultivate What Matters 2020 Goal Planner – considering where I’ve been, who I am and who I might want to become. One of the six goals I’ve identified for this coming year is to have more fun.

It feels ridiculous to admit that here, and it felt ridiculous to pen it into my planner as an actual goal. It seems frivolous and more than a little silly. I mean, this is my big issue…to have more fun? Woe is me, right?

And yet, while I know it’s a privilege to have the means to focus on fun, I also believe that having fun is important because it’s one of the ways we live most fully as God intended. I believe God created us to be responsible and productive, but I also believe he created us to be playful, creative and fun-loving – full of joie de vivre, the joy of living, as the French say. Having fun is one of the many ways we come alive.

I don’t want to ditch my responsible, dutiful, rule-following nature entirely, but I do want to embrace a more open, curious, creative, whole way of living, which means nurturing and growing the parts of myself that have lain dormant for a good long while.

I suspect there are as many definitions and iterations of fun as there are people on this planet, but the truth is, I don’t really know what having fun looks like for me in this season of my life…which is exactly why I’ve kicked my frivolity-shame to the curb and made “have more fun” a goal for 2020.

And as the mom of the kid whose favorite question just a few years ago was, “What fun thing are we doing next?”, I am glad to have a fun mentor living right under my own roof.

Enter Into

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Last weekend I read through all my journal entries from the past year (a task that was equal parts cringe-y and illuminating), and I was shocked to see I’d written in mid-May that I was ready to begin my next creative project (though I admitted I didn’t yet know what that “creative project” would be). It had felt, then, like I was on the cusp of something new. I was eager to plan, to begin putting steps in place toward execution. I was ready for the next thing.

It’s clear to me now, six months later: I wasn’t even close to ready.

Although I wrote a whole blog post about “right now being my next thing” – and those words were true – at the same time, the productive, striving and achievement-oriented part of me assumed quitting one thing would inevitably open the way to another creative opportunity. And so, for several months now, I have been impatiently asking, “What’s next, God?”

Last weekend when I read through my journal entries from the past year, I did so with a yellow highlighter in hand. I was looking for hints, trail markers pointing to where the path might be leading. I circled a couple of passages and notes, but in the end, I didn’t find what I was looking for. No clear arrows, no flashing neon signs.

What I saw instead as I read through days and weeks and months of musings was the slow, almost imperceptible work of God. I saw the tiny seeds of transformation that had been planted and tended in the ordinary and quiet. It seems stepping out of book writing has indeed created space for something else, but that something else is not another opportunity to do or create or produce, but rather, to enter into.

“Doing things for God is the opposite of entering into what God does for you.” (Galatians 3:11-12, Msg.).

When I read Paul’s words recently, I realized how much I prefer “doing things for” over “entering into.” Doing things plucks my Type A, productive, achiever strings. I like a plan to execute, steps to tick off and, most importantly, something to show in the end for my efforts.

“Entering into,” on the other hand, while not entirely passive per se, is an act of relinquishment. When we enter into, we surrender control, releasing our desires, our ambitions, ourselves into what God is doing and has been doing all along.

It’s a little bit like the difference between vigorously swimming the crawl stroke upstream and strapping on an orange life vest, lying back with arms extended and toes pointed skyward and letting the current take you where it may.

Swimming the crawl stroke has its place, to be sure. Planning and accomplishing goals is part of healthy living. But I do think Paul is encouraging the Galatians (and us) to be patient with the process – or as philosopher and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin put it: to “trust in the slow work of God.”

“We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient to being on our way to something unknown, something new,” de Chardin acknowledged. “And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability – and that it may take a long time.”

These are hard words. These are words we might not easily accept and embrace. The intermediate stages of anything can be awkward and uncomfortable, and the middle always seems to last forever (remember middle school?). Most days, I am not down with floating in my orange life jacket. Most days, uncertainty is the worst, and instability is for the birds.

But I also know there is so much truth in de Chardin’s words.

It wasn’t obvious to me until I read back through a year’s worth of journal entries, but now I clearly see: this whole past year has been a practice of entering into what God is already doing – not only what he is doing in me, but also what he is doing in my place, in my communities, in the people I know and love and in those around me who are strangers.

I’m not sure when the “next thing” will present itself. Frankly, I’m not at all sure there is a “next thing.” Maybe it’s all one long walk through the intermediate stages. Maybe here, in the middle, is the actual sweet spot and entering into this is what we are called to do.

I Contain Multitudes

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Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
— Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

“I’m not a gym person.”

This is a declaration I have made often, and for the last 15 years or so, I’ve believed it and lived it. For as long as I have been a regular exerciser, I have been a runner who runs outdoors. I relish the bite of winter on my cheeks in January and summer’s humidity pressing heavy against my limbs in June. I love to glimpse what’s blooming as I run past – from the first hardy crocus pushing through the snow in early spring to the last of the goldenrod and purple aster in late fall.

Recently, though, sidelined by a chronic injury, I decided to accompany Brad to the Y to experiment with the elliptical machine. Much to my surprise, I enjoyed it – not so much the elliptical (which is frightfully boring), but rather, the whole gym “experience.” The camaraderie of exercising silently side-by-side with strangers before the sun has risen. The smooth vinyl under my body as I stretch on the blue mat and catch my breath. Watching people of every shape, age and size running, walking, pushing, pulling, lifting and climbing – striving toward whatever goal they’ve set for themselves that morning.

Turns out, I am a gym person after all.

“Those who attempt to work too long with a formula, even their own formula, eventually leach themselves of their creative truths,” writes Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way. Cameron is referring specifically to the writing process, but I think a similar statement can be made about our own selves.

I am a creature of habit who thrives within routine and structure. This explains why I have run the exact same route three to four times a week for the past 18 years. It explains why I have eaten the same mid-morning snack (16 almonds) at the same time (10 a.m.) every day for the past 10 years. I could give you a dozen such examples. Suffice to say, routine is my default mode.

Routines can be healthy and good, to be sure, and the truth is, I feel most safe, secure and confident when I am clicking along within my familiar routines. But I’m also learning that this kind of contained living can, over time, inhibit growth and lead to stagnation. Ultimately, being too wedded to our structures, routines and habits – to our “formula,” as Cameron calls it – will suffocate our soul.

Recently my son Noah and I explored a new-to-us local greenhouse, and while we were there, wending our way between stately candelabra cactus and lush fiddle leaf figs, I felt an inexplicable desire to buy a plant.

I have a handful of houseplants positioned in various sunny spots around my sunroom, but I’ve never considered myself “a plant person.” Suddenly, though, immersed in all that fecund green, breathing in the rich, humid scent of new growth, I knew something new about myself. The realization was like the sharp chime of a church bell reverberating across an Italian piazza: I love plants. Plants make me happy. I want a life with more plants.

So I bought a philodendron and a white pot, transplanted it on the driveway when I got home, and placed it on top of a bookcase near my desk in the sunroom.

“There’s something enlivening about expanding our self-definition,” acknowledges Cameron, “and a risk does exactly that.”

True, going to the gym or buying a philodendron are hardly big risky endeavors, but at the same time, I believe there is something important and telling even in these small steps. Any step outside the boundaries by which we have defined ourselves is a step into newness, and stepping into newness, no matter how seemingly small or inconsequential, is always a risk.

But it’s in these smallest of steps, these smallest of risks, that we begin to recognize and embrace the multitudes contained within us. When we allow ourselves to open to these small moments of knowing, we unclasp something deep within us, which in turn opens the way to living more fully and wholly as our true selves.

Turns out, I’m a gym person. Turns out, I’m a plant person, too. I contain multitudes.

And so do you.

Move at the Pace of What Is Real

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Yesterday, as I gathered my water bottle and purse to make my way to The Salvation Army community center in north Omaha, eight words on the back of my notebook caught my eye.

“Move at the pace of what is real.”

I’d scrawled the sentence at a stoplight when I’d heard it on a podcast a few days before. I hadn’t been sure at the time what it meant exactly, but it somehow seemed important, something to pay attention to. I read the words a second time as I fished out my keys and slipped into my winter coat.

As I turned down Pratt Street, I saw that the line of people waiting wrapped around the outside of the low-slung brick building and down the sidewalk. The gym, when I walked in, smelled like sneakers and cooked vegetables. I settled into a metal chair at the tables in front, straightened my pile of forms and reviewed the instructions. The hundreds of folding chairs in rows across the length and width of the basketball court filled quickly. Each person held a slip of paper with a number penned in black Sharpie.

I signaled to the organizer that I was ready to see the first Christmas assistance applicant.

***

I held up her child’s Social Security card. “Girl or boy?” I asked, pointing to the name on the card.

“A girl – nina,” Florencia said, smiling. “In Spanish, girls’ names end in ‘a,’ boys’ names end in ‘o,’” she explained, her accent thick, her voice kind.

“I should know that,” I said, laughing sheepishly. “I’m sorry my Spanish is so terrible.”

“No, no,” she assured me. “You are fine. You are good.”

“Your name is beautiful,” I said, as Florencia gathered her paperwork. “And now I know you are a girl because your name ends in ‘a.’”

She smiled. “You are learning,” she said.

***

“I thought I was going to have to tell you that you didn’t qualify for senior assistance,” I replied to Ernestina when she told me she was 77. “You don’t look a day over 60!”

“People tell me that all the time,” she said, the skin around her eyes crinkling into a smile. “I believe it, Ernestina,” I replied.

“Call me Ernie,” she said, as I handed her back her Social Security card.

***

“How are you two this afternoon?” I asked the couple slumped in the folding chairs across from me. “I’ve been better,” Billy said. “It’s gotten cold too early this year.”

Lana said nothing as she pushed their Social Security cards toward me. Billy’s card was worn soft as flannel, the nine-digit number faded to a blur.

“Looks like this one has gotten some use over the years,” I said, holding up the card. “Yup,” Billy said, nodding. “It’s the original. I carry it with me everywhere.”

“Try to stay warm today,” I said, as they stood to leave.

***

They came and sat across from me – some old, some young; some stooped and slow with canes, others with babies on their hips, stuffed diaper bags hanging from their shoulders.

Some spoke perfect English; others labored over their few words. Some were put together, hair flat-ironed, makeup perfectly applied. Many more were disheveled, in mismatched clothes and layers.

I completed the proper paperwork – checking boxes, confirming addresses and telephone numbers, verifying documents, asking names and ages and shoe sizes and toy suggestions for their children and grandchildren. The line was long, and the chairs in the gym kept filling one after the other, but it seemed important not to rush. We made small talk and eye contact, and sometimes we laughed before we got down to business.

We sat across from one another in metal folding chairs in a gym that smelled like sneakers and cooked vegetables, and we moved at the pace of what was real.

 

Photo by Sangga Rima Roman Selia on Unsplash

The Small but Important Work of Talking in Rooms

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Two years ago my husband Brad and I received an invitation from the Bishop of our Nebraska Lutheran Synod to join an anti-racism committee. Honestly, I couldn’t have imagined a more unappealing idea at the time. Discussing racism with the Bishop and a bunch of church people, all of whom were strangers, sounded like a decidedly uncomfortable endeavor – one I frankly wanted no part of.

Then again, who says no to the Bishop? Not me, evidently. Not Brad either.

At the first meeting we sat with 20 or so others around a large conference table, and it was as awkward and uncomfortable as we had imagined it would be. Several people – me included – talked far too much. A few shared very little or were completely silent. The man sitting next to me wept. I remember thinking, Lord have mercy, please get me out of this.

Most of the people who showed up for that first meeting never returned (God apparently answered their prayer). Others faded away over time. In the end, we were left with seven regularly participating members.

Though we are small in number, we have made some decent progress over the last two years. We’ve completed several projects, including an online annotated resources list and a small group film discussion guide. More recently we developed and have begun to present a workshop at retreats, churches and gatherings around the state.

Honestly, I would have been content to create the online resources and call it good. Truth be told, I would much rather compose a study guide safely seated behind my computer screen. Or better yet, declare my opinions about racism in a Facebook post, where I can quickly disengage by simply logging out.

In-person dialogue, on the other hand, is unpredictable by nature. The truth is, walking into an unfamiliar setting amid a group of strangers and knowing I could receive a confrontational response or a challenging question makes me palm-sweating nervous. Co-leading in-person racism awareness workshops is infinitely out of my comfort zone.

And yet, I know it is exactly this kind of in-person dialogue that will help us move the conversation farther as a whole. As author Jenny Odell asks, “What if we spent our energy on saying the right things to the right people (or person) at the right time? What if we spent less time shouting into the void and being washed over with shouting in return – and more time talking in rooms to those for whom our words are intended?”

As someone who has spent more than her fair share of time, energy and words “shouting into the void” of social media, Odell’s questions give me pause. What if?

I think what’s more important than any of the tangible things our group has accomplished or produced is the fact that together we are practicing what we preach in real life and in real time. I can’t help but see that something beautiful, hopeful and real is being born out of our small committee and the work we are doing together – in large part because we are doing it in person, “talking in rooms,” as Odell says, both with one another and in small gatherings.

Two years ago the seven of us convened at a conference room table as strangers with seemingly little in common. Five of us are white; two are black. Some of us are pastors, some laypeople. Some of us are members of large urban congregations, others belong to smaller churches in rural communities.

We began by listening to one another, and, over time, shared our stories with increasing vulnerability and candor. Our “meetings,” which started in a church conference room, eventually moved to our living room, where we now sit on the sofa and nibble on snacks around the coffee table. We’ve enjoyed holiday meals and shared our favorite dishes. We have grown in community, discovering along the way that we are much more alike than we are different.

This past Sunday Brad and I attended our friend and fellow committee member Miriam’s ordination and installation at a church in Omaha. As Miriam kneeled at the altar, a diverse group of pastors from a variety of ecumenical traditions gathered around to lay their hands on her. In the pews, we stood shoulder to shoulder with the many colleagues, friends and family, black and white, who had come to celebrate with Miriam. At one point Brad leaned toward me and whispered, “Why can’t the church be like this?”

It’s true, for the most part it’s not like this – not yet. And the truth is, most days the very small work of our very small group feels like little more than a drop in the proverbial bucket. At the same time, though, I know and can feel in my heart and soul that this small work is in many ways the most important kind of work. I see promise, possibility and hope here. In our small group I see the promise and possibility of what we hope for the church, for our country and for our world.