Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

True You

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.

Drop Your Nets

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Last weekend I read the story in Matthew 4 of Jesus’ call to Peter, Andrew, James and John to follow him and become his disciples. “Come,” Jesus said to the fishermen. “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.”

Matthew tells us that all four men immediately dropped their nets, left their boats and followed Jesus, and I wondered, in that moment, what Jesus might be asking me to leave behind in order to follow him. My initial response was, “Nothing.” After all, I reasoned, last year was the year of leaving things behind. I quit book publishing, I quit writing my monthly column for the local newspaper, I quit speaking. I let so much go; surely there couldn’t be more to release, right?

In addition to the Year of Quitting Everything, 2019 was also a season of deep soul-searching. I read several spiritual and secular “self-help” books, re-entered counseling and filled journal after journal with questions and reflections. I was on a quest, a pilgrimage of sorts, to uncover my true, God-created self, and I was determined to leave no stone unturned. It was an exhilarating, gratifying, transformational season.

Research is my sweet spot, my comfortable place. Nothing makes me happier than gathering facts, evidence, knowledge and answers – especially, it turns out, when my research topic is my own self. I dove into my year of self-discovery with gusto. But here’s what I am realizing about my desire for knowledge, information, clarity and answers: it is, ironically, yet one more way I keep myself at arm’s length from my own self, from others and from God.

There is nothing inherently damaging about [most] self-help books (spiritual or secular). There’s nothing wrong with looking to the guru of the day for guidance and insights. Many offer a tremendous depth of wisdom and compassion, and I learned a lot from what I read this past year. The problem arises, however, when this quest for knowledge and insight becomes both another distraction – a way to avoid – and a means to control.

As long as I assume I can find the answer – the way – “out there,” I don’t have to sit with what’s right here in the deepest part of myself.

When I heard Jesus tell me to drop my nets, I realized he was asking me to drop what had become a safety net. “Come, follow me,” he said. He was asking me to leave my desire for clarity and direction behind in order to walk alongside him in trust, regardless of whether or not I know where we are going.

Jesus didn’t give the disciples any direction when he called them. He didn’t point out which way they were headed; he didn’t offer any clear insights or answers or even hint about where they were going. He said nothing other than, “Come, follow me,” along with the cryptic, “and I will make you fish for people.” Jesus’ presence was answer enough, and he asked his disciples to trust him with that single piece of evidence.

Nets can offer us safety, but safety is not always the better way. What looks like safety can end up entangling us. What looks like security can keep us from the true freedom into which God invites us.

It is good and right to be attentive to God’s movement in our lives, but it is also good and right to trust that he will make the way known without our grasping or pushing, without our seeking or striving – without, in fact, a lot of effort on our part at all. This is not complacency or apathy, but rather, a receiving, a yielding – a surrendering in confident trust that God is putting everything right with us and for us.

As I am learning, there’s always more to leave behind; there’s always something else to drop. Each time we release, we come closer alongside God.

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.

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.