Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

Michelle

The Spiritual Discipline of Driving with the Radio Off {and how it might just change the world}

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Yesterday, as I backed out the driveway on my way to attend an evening event, I clicked on the radio to catch the last bit of news for the day. I’m not a big music person, but when I’m driving I’ll often listen to the news or a talk show on NPR, much to my teenagers’ chagrin, and during my hour-long commute to and from Omaha once a week for my part-time job, I typically have a podcast playing in one earbud.

Yesterday, though, a few seconds after I’d turned the radio on, I clicked it off again and instead rolled down my window and drove the rest of the way to my destination in silence.

A brief shower had swept through the south part of town. As I drove I breathed in the scent of rain steaming off the hot pavement. I let the wind have its way with my hair and felt the humid breeze on my face. As I idled at a traffic light, I heard the steady whine of crickets in the field and the piercing call of a red-tailed hawk from its perch atop a telephone pole.

I realized it had been a long time since I’d driven with the radio off and the earbuds out of my ears.

It was only a 20-minute drive from my house to where I was headed, but when I pulled into the parking lot, I noticed my whole demeanor had changed. My mind was free of clanging thoughts. My pulse was slow and steady, my breathing even, my hands relaxed on the steering wheel.

Later that night, when I mentioned in an Instagram post how much I had enjoyed my silent drive, a friend commented that a year or so ago she’d made a conscious decision to drive with the radio off. “It’s amazing how much more margin I have in my life now,” she said.

Initially I was puzzled by her comment. After all, 15 or 20 minutes of silence is but a drop in the bucket of a typical busy day. How could so little quiet create “more margin” in her life overall, I wondered?

As I thought about my own quiet drive just a few hours before, though, I recalled how I’d slid out of the driver’s seat and ambled unhurriedly across the parking lot, noticing, as I walked, the clouds billowing on the horizon.

I remembered how I’d paused for a few seconds to listen to a meadowlark trill from the prairie grass nearby.

I considered the fact that I’d been noticeably less distracted in my interactions that night, more present to the people with whom I’d engaged.

Our lives are filled with a lot of noise. The clatter of the television, radio and social media. The barrage of advertising. The beeps, dings and ringtones from our smart phones, alerting us to a text, a Facebook comment, a tweet. The back-to-back-to-back meetings at work, the conference calls, the webinars.

So accustomed are we to its constancy, we don’t realize how much this relentless noise and distraction taxes our bodies, minds and souls.

We also don’t notice how much space this constant noise occupies, how it is infused into every facet of our days, how it even impacts how we move and who we are in this world.

Spending even a few minutes in silence has an immediate and discernable impact on our own physical and mental health, to be sure. But as our less distracted, more present selves step back into the world at large, it’s clear the few minutes of silence we take for ourselves also have a ripple effect, reverberating from ourselves into our environment and out toward those around us…perhaps reverberating from them still further, on and on, in wider and wider circles.

It seems, then, that perhaps the few minutes of silence we take for ourselves aren’t just for ourselves after all. As our calmer, more present, more attentive selves step back into our families, our neighborhoods, our workplaces, our communities, those few minutes of silence are making way for a kinder, more compassionate, more spacious world.

…So tell me: do you ever drive with the radio off? What’s your favorite way to enjoy a few minutes of silence? 

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Please consider signing up to receive my weekly blog posts in your in-box (or, if you’d prefer, my monthly newsletter, The Back Patio — a casual chat about books, podcasts, and fun, everyday life kinds of things). You can sign up over HERE, and as a free gift for subscribing, I’ll also send you my free e-book, Learning to Listen to Your Soul: 5 Tips for Beginning a Daily Practice of Intentional Rest. 

What I’m Reading {Summer 2018 Edition}

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When I was a kid I spent most of my summer afternoons on the screened-in porch, tucked into a rocking chair, the vinyl seat cushion sticking to the back of my legs in the New England humidity.

Often my best friend Andrea would fold herself into her own rocking chair next to me, and together we’d while away the day in quiet contentment, each with a book in our hands. It seems funny now that we intentionally got together in order to spend hours without speaking, each of us with her nose in her own book. And yet, there was something perfectly right about those long, hot summer afternoons spent in companionable silence.

Decades later, Andrea lives 1,500 miles away, I don’t have a screened-in porch or a set of aluminum rocking chairs, and I don’t often have a whole summer afternoon in which to dedicate solely to a book.

Nowadays I often pull a novel from my purse to read a few pages in the car as I wait for a boy to emerge from one activity or another. Or I squeeze in a chapter before turning out the light, my eyelids growing heavy but my mind and heart still eager to turn the next page.

Reading will always be my pastime of choice, which is why every few months or so I love to share the books I’ve enjoyed lately (and I love to hear what you’re reading too – let me know in the comments!).

Here’s what’s been stacked on my nightstand this summer:

The Edge of Over There
by Shawn Smucker
Genre: YA Fiction

The Edge of Over There has a Madeleine L’Engle-ish feel – a little bit fantasy, a little bit mystery, and a whole lot riveting. Though it’s technically Young Adult fiction, I guarantee this book will have you reading late into the night, no matter what your age. Start with Shawn’s The Day the Angels Fell first, if you haven’t read that one yet, and then move on to this equally satisfying sequel.

Why I loved it: It’s a page-turner with a fast-paced plot, but it also got me thinking about deeper questions.

Raise Your Voice: Why We Stay Silent and How to Speak Up
by Kathy Khang
Genre: Christian nonfiction

A powerful, convicting new voice, Christian activist Kathy Khang makes an important, convincing argument for why it’s imperative that we use our God-given voices and intellect to confront racism, discrimination and injustice. As a person who is often hesitant to speak up, this book gave me a much-needed push toward raising my own voice, as well as a whole lot to think about.

Why I loved it: Kathy’s approach is grace-ful yet firm. I deeply appreciate her wisdom and her courage in telling the hard parts of her story.

Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage
By Dani Shapiro
Genre: Memoir

I’ve read all of Dani Shapiro’s memoirs (Devotion, Slow Motion) and some of her fiction, and Hourglass is my favorite so far. Tender, intimate and vulnerable, yet also ruthlessly honest, Shapiro looks hard at her own marriage — “a reckoning in which she confronts both the life she dreamed of and the life she made, and struggles to reconcile the girl she was with the woman she has become.”

Why I loved it: Maybe it’s the voyeur in me, but I love a good memoir for its intimacy and vulnerability and the way it prompts me to look at my own life. And this one has the added benefit of being expertly written in beautiful, luminous prose.

A Year by the Sea: Thoughts of an Unfinished Woman
By Joan Anderson
Genre: Memoir

When she hits middle-age, her children grown and married, her husband focused on a new job, Joan Anderson decides to take a hiatus and go her own way. Her year alone on Cape Cod is a rebirth of sorts, a time in which she begins to know her true self for the first time in a long time, perhaps ever. A Year by the Sea is a beautiful reflection on the passage of time, on seasons and the gifts of nature and on the process of deep transformation. Wise, compelling, poignant – this is a book I will return to again.

Why I loved it: At 48, I’m nearly the age Anderson was when she spent her year by the sea and penned this memoir about her transformative experience. I don’t know…maybe I am on the cusp of a mid-life crisis? All I know is that this book spoke to me deeply.

The Poisonwood Bible
By Barbara Kingsolver
Genre: Fiction

I tried reading this one years ago and put it down. But this past spring my son Noah read it for one of his high school classes, which compelled me to pick it up again, and I am SO glad I did. A riveting, compelling saga, The Poisonwood Bible is narrated in alternating chapters by the four daughters and the wife of a Baptist missionary who relocates his family to the Belgian Congo in the early 1960s in order to save souls. I’m a little rusty on my African history and my knowledge of post-colonialism, so I undoubtedly missed some key points, but wow, this book was fascinating. It had me staying up WAY past my bedtime most nights. Kingsolver is a master storyteller, and this book, one that is at the same time very dark and richly beautiful, is one I will not soon forget.

Why I loved it: Plain and simple, The Poisonwood Bible is a masterful novel with deeply compelling themes, rich, multi-layered characters and stunning prose.

Up Next in My To-Be-Read Stack:

An Unfinished Marriage and The Second Journey, sequels to Joan Anderson’s A Year by the Sea.

March, by Geraldine Brooks – The story of the absent father in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women.

A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table, by Molly Wizenberg – Part cookbook, part memoir, my favorite (Though I don’t actually cook, I like to read about cooking, which is odd, I realize. Also, I got this for .99 cents on Kindle; check to see if the deal is still on!).

Food: A Love Story, by Jim Gaffigan – I’m reading this one for my book club in August. I think Jim Gaffigan is hilarious, so I’m looking forward to this.

So tell me, what have you read this summer that has you staying up way past your bedtime? 

 

I Wrote a New Book for You Called “True You”!

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God never ceases to amaze me. He’s always working in us and through us in the most surprising ways. Just when I think I’ve got him pinned down, he takes me deeper into his beautiful mystery, revealing yet another path to travel.

God has been working hard on me and in me these last two years. Turns out he had a thing or two to teach me about love – specifically about his love for me.

I’ve known for a while now that God loves us. But the thing is, I hadn’t understood that love is personal. I’d always thought of God’s love as “love for the world,” or “love for humanity” or “love for creation” — a big, broad, all-encompassing love.

God’s love is all that, to be sure. But God also loves each one of us in a deeply intimate, deeply personal way, much like a mother loves her child.

This is what I’ve come to understand, at least a little bit, over the last two years. And so, because I work my way toward understanding through words scratched out on the page, I wrote a book about it.

True You: Letting Go of Your False Self to Uncover the Person God Created releases January 1, 2019, and friends, I am really excited about it!

As you might imagine, given what I’ve just confided here, True You is a deeply personal book. And yet, as much as there is a lot of my own story woven into it, it’s also very much a book for you.

I wrote this book as an invitation to you to come alongside me in this journey toward a deeper understanding of who you truly are.

I wrote this book so that you, too, could begin the journey of letting go of your false self to embrace your truest you, the perfectly beautiful and beloved you God created.

I wrote this book so that you, too, could come to understand more deeply who you are as one loved deeply and unabashedly by God.

Here’s a little bit more from the back cover:

Many of us are bent on producing and achieving, striving and hustling for our self-worth. Beneath this relentless drive churns a deep yearning to uncover our true selves and our purpose in this world.

Gardeners familiar with the technique called “pruning open” know that the secret to healthy plants and trees lies in subtracting rather than adding. Similarly, we begin to flourish as we let go of our false selves and allow God to prune us open.

With powerful stories and revealing research, Michelle DeRusha helps readers:

– learn how to declutter their hearts, minds, and souls through the practice of directed rest

– let go of busyness, striving, and false identities to embrace their truest selves as beloved children of God

– grow in their relationships, vocations, communities, and intimacy with God

True You offers those exhausted by the pervasive do-more, be-more messages of our society a path toward rest, renewal, and, ultimately, wholeness in Christ.

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True You is Available for Pre-Order

I would be so grateful if you would consider pre-ordering True You. Pre-orders help a book reach new readers, and I would love for this book to reach those who, like me, need to hear this message of living into and embracing their truest selves and learning to understand themselves as deeply and personally loved by God.

You can pre-order True You at the following online retailers (and just so you know, if the price drops — which it undoubtedly will — you will get the lowest price when the book is released in January).

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Christian Book

Baker Books

Books-A-Million

And if you know someone who you think might be interested in this book, feel free to forward this post to them or share it on social media – thank you!

Thank you, friends. I can’t wait for you to read True You!

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Please consider signing up to receive my weekly blog posts in your in-box (or, if you’d prefer, my monthly newsletter, The Back Patio — a casual chat about books, podcasts, and fun, everyday life kinds of things). You can sign up over HERE, and as a free gift for subscribing, I’ll also send you my free e-book, Learning to Listen to Your Soul: 5 Tips for Beginning a Daily Practice of Intentional Rest. 

Why the Plural Pronouns in the Lord’s Prayer Aren’t a Fluke

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Not long ago, I took it upon myself to edit the words of the Lord’s Prayer. That’s right: I rewrote the prayer written by Jesus himself. It wasn’t a complete rewrite, mind you; I simply tweaked the pronouns.

I decided the prayer would work better for me with singular rather than plural pronouns. For example, “Our father, who art in heaven,” became “My father, who art in heaven.” Likewise, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,” became “Forgive me my trespasses, as I forgive those who trespass against me,” and so on.

After all, I reasoned, the whole purpose of faith and religion is to encourage a personal relationship with God and, ultimately, personal salvation, right? What, then, was the point of praying in a plural voice? The “us” aspect of the prayer seemed to complicate the matter.

The funny thing was, I couldn’t do it. Every time I tried to pray my new individualized version of the Lord’s Prayer, I tripped over the words. Suddenly, the lines I’ve known by heart for decades refused to flow. My mind went blank, and I forgot whole sentences of the prayer I’d been praying since the second grade. Without the familiar plural pronouns in their rightful places, the prayer didn’t work.

The reason for this, of course, is the fact that, in the same way any habit is formed, the repetition of the same 70 words traveling the same neural pathway day in and day out over decades of recitation had firmly etched the Lord’s Prayer into my brain. Old habits die hard.

That said, though, the failed experiment gave me the unexpected opportunity to consider the question of why Jesus taught his disciples to prayer the Lord’s Prayer in the plural in the first place.

Turns out, the plural pronouns weren’t a mistake or even a fluke. Jesus taught his disciples, and us, to pray the Lord’s Prayer in the plural voice because our lives here on Earth aren’t about you and me individually, but rather, about you and me – us – here together.

Jesus knew that community is an integral component of faith. He knew that we need one another and that, ultimately, we are better together. When I pray the Lord’s Prayer, both alone and with others in communal worship, I am reminded that my relationship with God extends beyond myself. I am reminded that all of us together are Christ’s body. My daily bread is given, and I give daily bread to another. I am forgiven, and I forgive another.

Truth be told, I like my version of the Lord’s Prayer better, because on most days, I’d rather it be all about me. Living in community isn’t always easy. Our co-workers vote for the candidate we don’t like. Our neighbors think Creeping Charlie is a fine substitute for grass. Our family members leave their dirty socks on the living room floor (I’m speaking hypothetically, of course). Our friends hurt us, our loved ones betray us.

I don’t necessarily want to share my bread. I don’t necessarily want to forgive. I don’t necessarily want to see “the other side” of an argument.

Which is exactly why I need Jesus’ version rather than my own version of the Lord’s Prayer. I need to be reminded again and again as I pray the familiar words that it’s not just about me. It’s about us.

This post originally ran in the Lincoln Journal Star on July 14, 2018.

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If this post resonated with you, consider signing up to receive my weekly blog posts in your in-box (or, if you’d prefer, my monthly newsletter, The Back Patio — a casual chat about books, podcasts, and fun, everday life kinds of things). You can sign up over HERE, and as a free gift for subscribing, I’ll also send you my free e-book, Learning to Listen to Your Soul: 5 Tips for Beginning a Daily Practice of Intentional Rest. 

Learning to Listen to Your Soul: 5 Tips for Beginning a Daily Practice of Intentional Rest {Free E-Book!}

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Oh, summer…a time of lazy afternoons by the pool, mystery novel in hand; days at the beach, drowsing to the sound of the surf, warm sun on your back; evenings on the back patio, sipping Chardonnay as the fireflies spark.

Wait…what? Your summer doesn’t look exactly like that? Yeah…mine either.

Case in point: A couple of weeks ago, I was at a conference in Wisconsin, my husband Brad was at a conference in Washington, D.C., and our two boys stayed home by themselves for the first time ever. In the 48 hours we were out of town, a water main burst in front of our house, the city had to dig up half our front yard, there was talk that the 50-year-old honey locust tree might have to be removed to get at the pipe (thankfully that didn’t happen), the dog you-know-whated on the rug and a son who shall not be named cleaned it up with the bleach spray he found under the kitchen cabinet, and, to top it off, all my homebound flights were cancelled due to weather, so I ended up having to rent a car to drive 9 hours back to Lincoln. Oh, and my sister and my nephew were due to arrive the next day…and sleep in the guest room where the dog you-know-whated and which was now flaunting freshly bleached carpet.

That’s summer for reals.

Which is why we all need to make a little more time for intentional rest, right?

I have a solution, and clearly I need to be first in line to take my own advice!

My new e-book, Learning to Listen to Your Soul: 5 Tips for Beginning a Daily Practice of Intentional Rest, will help you:

  • Understand the mind, body and soul benefits of intentional rest
  • Learn how to step away from busyness and productivity in order to hear the quiet whispers of your soul
  • Integrate five concrete steps into your daily routine that will help you establish a short but impactful daily practice of silence, reflection, and rest.

I’ve been practicing daily intentional rest for as little as five minutes a day for more than a year now, and I can assure you from first-hand experience that this little tweak to your day can and will have a profound impact on your whole life.

Five minutes isn’t much…but it’s enough to change everything.

If you’d like to know how you, too, can integrate the practice of intentional rest into your day, I’d like to send you a free downloadable copy of Learning to Listen to Your Soul. You can sign up HERE. 

I would love for you (and I) to have a lazy summer spent lounging under a beach umbrella, but if that’s not your reality, the next best thing would be to learn to how truly rest amid the crazy. My hope is that this little e-book will help you do exactly that.

As Ruth Haley Barton writes in Invitation to Solitude and Silence, “The presence of God is poured out most generously when there is space in our souls to receive him.”

Together, let’s make the space in our souls to receive the presence of God, this summer and beyond.

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Friends, if you already subscribe to my blog posts or to my monthly newsletter by email: you should have received a link to download my new e-book, Learning to Listen to Your Soul, on Monday in your in-box. Drop me an email if you did not receive it, and I will get it right out to you. Thank you for reading and subscribing!