Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

transformation

Why I Am Choosing [Flat Bread] Life

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The same verse — Deuteronomy 30:19 — crossed my path twice in two days last week, and when that happens, I pay attention. I first read the verse in Sarah Bessey’s new book Miracles and Other Reasonable Things (which I loved and highly recommend). Then I read the very same verse again the next morning in Christine Valters Paintner’s book The Soul of a Pilgrim (which I also loved and highly recommend):

“I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live.” (Deuteronomy 30:19)

In other words, we have a choice, right? And, as Paintner puts it, “Each choice allows us to move toward the things which bring us life. If we don’t choose the path of growth, we can move toward that which drains us of life. The call of the pilgrim is to stay awake to our own patterns of life and death.”

Staying awake to our patterns of life and death sounds like a valuable and fruitful practice, but I know from experience that it’s easier said than done. It takes deep intentionality not only to stay awake, but also to awaken to these patterns — many of which are deeply ingrained in us — in the first place. So much can get in the way of both our awakening and our staying awake: busyness, distraction, expectations (our own and others’), depletion (physical, mental or spiritual), fear, self-protection and our insecurities.

I’m nearly 50. But only in the last year have I begun to figure out exactly what gives me life. I simply had never taken the time to stop mindlessly going through the motions in order to ask which ways of being made me come alive and which depleted me. Always three steps ahead of myself, always striving to accomplish the next goal or meet the next milestone, I tumbled from one project to the next without pausing for a breath. I didn’t ever stop to consider whether I was actually getting life from this tremendous expenditure of energy.

When I finally did stop to reflect, I realized most of my ways of being and doing – platform-building, speaking, social media, saying yes to things I didn’t want to do, striving, comparing – were draining the life from me and driving me farther and farther away from my true self.

Ironically, I think one of the reasons I stayed caught in the “death pattern” for so long was because I was too depleted to begin to make the hard choices and changes I knew I needed. I was simply too tired to care and in too far to know where or how to begin. It stands to reason that the more depleted we are, the less we are able to make the very choices that will begin to replenish and sustain us.

I remember during the first few days of January last year I read a verse from First Corinthians that resonated deeply with me. I had just released True You and that, combined with the holiday season, had drained me to my core. I was running on fumes when I read this:

“Let’s live our part of the Feast, not as raised bread swollen with the yeast of evil, but as flat bread — simple, genuine, unpretentious.” (5:6-8, The Message).

I could see that flat bread in my mind’s eye — light, good, warm from the oven, unadorned and plain, yet satisfying — and something in me knew that’s what I desired in the deepest part of myself. I yearned for simple. I desired genuine but ordinary.

These days my life looks very much like flat bread. I go to the gym with my husband and we spin side-by-side. I walk the dog in the Nebraska winter wind. I drop Rowan off at his viola lessons and return 45 minutes later to pick him up. I write fundraising copy for The Salvation Army. I take my vitamins and go to bed early.

I still occasionally gaze longingly through the bakery window at all the fancy loaves lined up on the cooling rack. The siren song of “more, bigger, better” still captivates me from time to time, tempting me to revert to my old patterns and ways. Mostly, though, I am working on staying awake to that which gives me life, and in the process, I am discovering that flat bread is much more satisfying and filling than I ever could have imagined.

Photo by Nancy Hann on Unsplash.

To the Land I Will Show You

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I have always loved the start of a brand-new year. I relish swapping out the wrinkled, scribbled planner for a brand-new one chock-full of white pages and empty squares. I love to make resolutions, to list out goals, to dream and plan. I love that the dawning of a new year offers the perfect opportunity to reflect on what has passed and plan for what is to come.

I spent some time over the holidays thinking back on 2019. It was a year of big change and transition for me – both  professionally and personally – as I stepped out of the publishing arena, put book-writing on the back-back-back burner, turned my attention to my work at The Salvation Army and began to figure out who I am and who I want to be.

The year was not without sorrow. Case in point: I bawled my eyes out at the end of the new Little Women film, as Jo stood behind the plate-glass window and watched her novel being typeset, printed and bound. The joy and satisfaction on her face as she held her first book in her hands pricked a tender spot in me, and as I left the theater all glassy-eyed, still dabbing at my nose with a Kleenex, I couldn’t help but panic a little bit: “Why on earth did I quit? What have I done?!”

Still, when I look back at all of 2019, I feel solidly good. On one hand, not much happened – at least outwardly. But the transformation that has taken place within made it one of the most exhilarating years of my life. I’ve stripped a lot away; I’ve been pruned back to what feels like my pith. This past year marked the beginning of a journey toward reclaiming myself – a journey that will continue for as long as I am alive.

At the same time I am sensing a restlessness, a low-level agitation humming beneath the surface of these early January days. I feel like there is a “next thing” on the horizon – the problem is, I don’t yet know what that “next thing” is. I’m confident that writing will continue to be an important part of my personal story and my vocation, but I am still uncertain as to what shape it will take. A new creative project? A more substantial commitment to non-profit work? Blog writing? Something else altogether?  The role writing will play in my life going forward is still a shifting mirage in the far-off distance.

In the quiet early morning of New Year’s Eve, tucked into the corner of my brother- and sister-in-law’s sofa in Minnesota, eight inches of freshly fallen snow blanketing the back yard, I read the story in Genesis of Abram’s calling, specifically these words:

“The Lord said to Abram: ‘Go forth from your land, from your relatives and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you.’” (12:1)

The distance between Haran – Abram and his wife Sarai’s current town of residence – to the new land God had for them in Canaan was about 400 miles. Abram didn’t know which land, exactly, God had for him. He didn’t know where it was, what it looked like or how long it would take to travel there. He couldn’t see Canaan from where he stood in Haran. And yet, with his wife, his nephew Lot, and his livestock and people, he set out for that unseen land. Abram simply trusted God at his word. He trusted God would tell him when he had arrived at the place God had for him.

Turns out, like Abram, I’m en route to the place God has for me. This place has not yet been revealed. I can’t yet see it from where I stand, and I don’t really have any idea what it will look like. It is, at this point, a matter of trust – trust that God will indeed show me not only the land I am traveling to, but also the way to get there.

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.

Navigating the New Landscape of You

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A few years ago I dramatically pruned the shrubbery in my backyard. For two days I went at it with the loppers, chopping off clumps of foliage, clipping dead twigs, sculpting and reshaping the remaining branches. When I was done, the landscape was transformed.

Noah, our resident Tree Lover, was not pleased – he disdainfully called me Paul Bunyan for weeks afterward – but I loved it. I could see more of the sky and the neighbor’s house across the street. Light streamed into spots that had previously been dank and dark. Though it was still the same size it had always been, the backyard suddenly felt much more spacious – open, airy and inviting.

Still, for about a week after the dramatic pruning, every time I glanced out the sunroom windows into the backyard, I did a double take. The landscape was so different, so unfamiliar – I hardly recognized it. Even though I loved the openness and was glad I’d pruned the shrubbery, my new backyard took some getting used to; I had to reacquaint myself with it.

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A few weeks ago, my friend Kimberly read my blog post about whitewashing the reality of poverty and Voxed me with an idea. It was a good, strong piece, she said, and she suggested I might want to rework it a bit and pitch it to Christianity Today. It was a timely topic, she noted – something she thought would resonate with a broader audience.

I immediately set to work researching other online articles on global poverty and mission work, reviewing Christianity Today’s submissions guidelines and considering how I would reshape the post into an article that might resonate with CT’s audience.

In the middle of that process, though, I became aware of the slightest bit of a pit in my stomach, which in turn prompted me to ask myself a question: Do I actually want to revise this blog post and pitch it as an article to Christianity Today? Do I want to do this work?

At first, in spite of the stomach pit (note to future self: the pit tells the truth!), the answer was not readily apparent, and so I held out the question – Do I want to do this work? – and examined it further. I turned the question around and around and gave myself the space for my true desire to make itself known. I allowed myself to figure out how I actually felt about pursuing this opportunity.

In the end, I realized I did not want to revise my blog post into an article to pitch to Christianity Today. I realized it was, in fact, the very last thing I wanted to do.

Turns out, striving is still my default mode. After a lifetime of pushing to make progress and striving for measurable results, it’s easy, almost mindless, for me to fall into my old habits and rhythms. Striving is familiar terrain for me (and just to be clear: striving to achieve a goal or make progress is not inherently a bad thing; in fact, it can be a very good, very positive thing. But it’s not the thing I want to do right now). On the other hand, this new place I’m now navigating – this place of writing solely for creative pleasure, of writing toward no particular outcome – is still largely unknown and unfamiliar, which makes it equal parts exhilarating and unnerving.

I am discovering that it takes intentionality to learn to live and thrive in a new landscape. I’m learning to slow down rather than steamroll ahead, to look inward at my own needs and desires rather than capitulate to what I think I should do or what I assume is expected of me. I’m learning to ask myself probing questions and then allow the time and space to listen for and hear the answers that come from my soul.

I’ve done some dramatic pruning in my life over these past several months, and while it’s been a fruitful, space-making, life-giving process, and I generally like the results, it’s also taken some getting used to. I am, in many ways, getting reacquainted with myself. I am still navigating this new landscape of me.