Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

True 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.

 

Terra Incognita

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A few mornings ago, when he glimpsed me reading my own book on the back patio, my husband yelled out to me from the living room, “That is the height of narcissism!” He was joking, of course (and he was wrong…the height of narcissism is actually taking a selfie of yourself reading your own book). I laughed – albeit a little sheepishly – but the truth is, I need to re-read my own book.

When I wrote True You, I assumed I was writing it from the perspective of a person who had done the hard work of pruning and come out the other side. And while that’s true – I had done some of the hard work of pruning, the fukinaoshi of the soul – what I didn’t know at the time was that I wasn’t anywhere near the other side. What I know now, from the middle, was that back then, I had only just begun.

As I told a friend recently in an email, pruning begets pruning. We make the first large cuts, and when we’ve pulled the dead, unnecessary limbs and branches away and discarded them, we discover we are not finished. Stripping away what’s not needed makes space for us to see what’s underneath. We realize there is, in fact, more pruning to be done.

Breaking my book contract and stepping out of the publishing arena was a very big prune. It took me a long time to weigh the pros and cons of that decision. As gardener Judy Maier advises, I looked at “the tree” from all angles. I asked a lot of questions. I consulted with people I trusted. I walked through all the steps toward change that therapist Lori Gottlieb outlines in her fabulous book: pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation and action. Over a period of about three months, I went from, “I can’t possibly break my contract” to “maybe I should break my contract?” to “I’m going to break my contract.”

And then I did it. I broke my contract, paid back the advance and withdrew from the publishing arena. I dragged the pruned branches off to the proverbial compost bin, dusted off my hands, and settled in on the back patio with a cold glass of iced tea to rest in my newly pruned life.

Except just as I was getting comfortable I spotted another branch. A smaller branch, but a branch nonetheless. And then I spotted another. And another. And I knew my pruning work was not done.

I’ve been practicing a creative ritual these last few weeks called morning pages. The idea, which comes from Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way, is a simple one: every morning you write three longhand, stream of consciousness journal pages. You can write whatever you want, whatever comes to mind, just as long as you keep your pen moving.

I’ve tried to do morning pages in the past, but I’ve always quit a few days in. This time, though, I’ve stuck with it (though I admit, not every single day), and while there are times the practice feels fruitless and boring and stupid, I am beginning to see the value in it.

What I am learning through the practice of near-daily morning pages, along with working through some of the questions and exercises in The Artist’s Way, is that I don’t know myself. At all. I don’t know what brings me joy or delight. I don’t know what my dreams and desires are. I don’t know what I like to do for fun (except read.) I can’t really remember what I loved to do as a kid (besides read). Most days I don’t know how or what I am feeling under the surface.

I am newly pruned, and I do not recognize myself.

Three years ago I heard a question resonate in the depths of my soul as I sat on a park bench on a November afternoon. Why do you have trouble with intimacy? I tried to answer this question in the pages of True You, but the truth is, I’m not sure I have lived into the answer. I might have answered the question with my head, but I didn’t answer it with my heart.

As I continue to be pruned open, this question about intimacy has resurfaced, and I know it’s not only a question about opening to others and opening to God, but also about opening to my own self.

Right now as I peer under my surface, what I see is blurry. This is progress. Six months ago I was fragmented, disintegrated. Cameron reassures me this blurriness, these questions, this vagueness are a normal part of self-discovery. “Remember that the more you feel yourself to be terra incognita, the more certain you can be that the recovery process is working,” she writes in The Artist’s Way. “You are your own promised land, your own new frontier.”

I Googled terra incognita just to be sure I understood its meaning. It’s Latin for “land unknown” and at one time was a term used by cartographers for regions that had not been mapped or documented.

This feels right to me. I am but a speck on the horizon – a land unknown, uncharted territory, ever so slowly coming into focus.

What I’ve Learned in the Six Months Since I Left Publishing

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A friend recently asked me what I’d wished I’d known before I published my first book. She may have been asking what I’d wished I’d known about the industry or the culture of publishing, but my answer went in a different direction. “I wish I’d known how deep my desire for approval and recognition was,” I told her. “I wish I’d known myself well enough to recognize that a career in publishing wouldn’t be the very best fit for me, for who I am.”

I knew I was Type A. I knew I was an overachiever with a deep desire to be successful. But I didn’t know how deep my desire was to be validated, recognized and known.

Turns out I had to learn that the hard way.

I would have much rather learned about my shadow side from a distance – who wouldn’t, right? But it doesn’t often work that way. We learn who we are not by holding ourselves – our good parts and our flawed parts – at arm’s length, but through real, lived experience, which more often than not includes struggle, pain, tumult, disappointment and failure.

My shadow side was only fully revealed when I was deep into my vocation as a publishing writer. And I was only able to recognize, acknowledge and ultimately confront this part of myself after it had fully emerged – and then only after I realized I couldn’t subdue it or overcome it through my own best efforts.

They say of all the nine Enneagram types, Enneagram Threes know themselves the least well. Apparently this is because we are so busy performing and producing, so busy trying to live up to who we think others think we are, or who we think we should be, we don’t acknowledge or even recognize who, in fact, we really are.

I can’t speak for other Enneagram Threes, but I can say, for myself, this assessment is spot on. When I page through the journal entries I wrote as I was moving toward my decision to step away from publishing, I see the same words repeated again and again. “Fragmented.” “Disintegrated.” “Fractured.”

It’s obvious to me now. Of course I felt fragmented. Of course I felt disintegrated and fractured. I’d spent so many years trying to be someone other than myself, I’d segmented myself into a million disparate pieces.

I realize this all sounds overly dramatic and more than a little psycho-babbly, but here’s the long and short of it; here’s what I have learned that I hope might be relevant for you too:

When we know ourselves, we are able to recognize and move toward the environments in which we thrive. And, at the same time, when we know ourselves, we are able to recognize and move away from the environments in which we fail to thrive.

Some of us – maybe most of us – will become better at knowing ourselves through trial and error. Some of us will learn more quickly than others where and how we thrive and where and how we fail to thrive.

Some of us will be stubborn. We will try to make ourselves fit into a space or a place that is not right. We will try to change ourselves to fit our circumstances. Ultimately we will fail at this. And ultimately, in failing, we will come closer to knowing our true selves.

Turns out, publishing was too big an arena for me. The public nature of the publishing industry fed my voracious shadow side like gasoline feeds a fire. The more I looked to the publishing world for approval and recognition and the more I pushed myself to be successful and admired and known, the more my ego demanded and the more distant I became from my true self, from the person God created me to be.

My shadow side has not vanished simply because I’ve stepped out of the publishing arena. My desires for validation, recognition and success are still there. The difference is, these desires are not being fueled in the same way and to the same degree. I’m still a Type A overachiever, and this is not inherently a flaw. I still strive to be successful in my work as a writer for The Salvation Army, and I still enjoy the validation I receive from my boss or my colleagues for work well-done. But because my work is not public in the same way, and the arena in which I am working is much, much smaller, my ego stays in check.

Over these last six months I’ve come to realize that there’s nothing I could have done that would have better equipped me to succeed as a published author while at the same time keeping my self whole and intact. I didn’t “do it wrong.” Nor is the publishing industry “bad.” Like a couple with irreconcilable differences, we – the publishing world and I – were simply not good together.

Still, I have no regrets. I haven’t for a moment regretted my decision to leave publishing, nor do I regret the fact that I entered in. The fact is, as Parker Palmer so astutely says, “There are no shortcuts to wholeness.” I learned a lot about myself through the ups and downs of that journey. I am closer to knowing who I am. And still I am learning, learning to recognize and embrace the whole of me – shadows and light, flaws and gifts. I am learning where I fit best – where I thrive and where I don’t. I am learning to live as my best self, the person God created me to be.

Arrive at the Ground at Your Feet

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Recently, while I was enjoying a quiet summer evening on my back patio, I became aware of a low but persistent thrumming inside me, like a cicada’s relentless buzzing in the background of an otherwise still night. It was anxiety, I realized – not a paralyzing anxiety, but anxiety nonetheless.

I was unnerved, not so much by the anxiety itself, but rather, by the sudden awareness that this anxiety I felt is nearly always there, simmering just under the surface.

For most of us, the temptation when we come face-to-face with something unfamiliar or disconcerting or downright uncomfortable about ourselves or our circumstances is to move on as quickly as possible. After all, who wants to sit with anxiety? Who wants to sit in the presence of grief or regret, disappointment or anger? This is precisely why we stuff our days full with work and social activities, errands, to-do lists and Facebook. This is why many of us numb ourselves with alcohol or peanut M&Ms, with shopping or Netflix. We stay busy, distracted and numb. We avoid quiet and stillness. We don’t want to see – or feel – what’s underneath.

Recognizing that anxiety is constantly eddying below my surface was hard and uncomfortable for me. Honestly, the moment that fact made itself known, I wanted nothing more than to bolt from the patio, grab a sponge and a bottle of Formula 409 and start scrubbing kitchen counters or the bathroom sink.

Instead, I stayed where I was. I sat with the anxiety. I resisted self-judgement. I resisted solutions and strategies.

“Arrive at the ground at your feet and learn to be at home,” suggests author Wendell Berry. It sounds lovely, doesn’t it? But the truth is, being present is not always an easy or a lovely practice. For many of us, the practice of being present to our own selves can lead us into surprising or disconcerting terrain – anxiety, grief, fear, anger, disappointment, bitterness, regret. And yet, arriving at the ground at our feet and planting ourselves there is, ironically, one of the most important steps we can take on the journey toward uncovering our true selves.

When I first moved to Nebraska from New England 18 years ago, almost everything was unfamiliar. The wide-open landscape and vast sky felt strangely oppressive. The searing heat of summer and the bone-jarring cold of winter were disarmingly extreme. The pace of everyday life felt too slow and the people seemed far too enraptured with the local university’s football team. Even the food was unfamiliar. People drank their Bud Lite mixed with tomato juice and ate a strange meat-and-cabbage concoction called a Runza.

Slowly, though, we carved out a life and a home for ourselves here. We made good friends. We painted the dining room walls, hung our kids’ drawings on the fridge, and grew a garden. We learned to appreciate the seas of bluestem, the trilling Meadowlarks, the big sky, the ever-present wind. We found satisfying work. We wore red Cornhusker t-shirts on game days.

In short, we planted ourselves in this place and we stayed. Over time, this place – once so foreign and even, at times, uncomfortable — became familiar. Over time, we learned to be at home in Nebraska.

Benedictine monks and nuns make a vow of hospitality upon entering the order. The Benedictines believe that all guests who present themselves at the monastery are to be welcomed as Christ. According to St. Benedict, “Our encounter with strangers – the unknown, the unexpected, foreign elements that spark our fear – are precisely the place where we are most likely to encounter God,” explains Christine Valters Paintner.

In her book The Artist’s Rule, Paintner suggests that we take St. Benedict’s vow of hospitality and turn it inward toward ourselves. “Inner hospitality is to open our inner selves to everything we fear and reject in ourselves,” she writes. “We extend a welcome to the stranger who dwells inside us.”

Discovering anxiety simmering below my surface was unnerving and uncomfortable. There is work to be done there, to be sure. But none of that work, no matter how important, can happen without first arriving and then staying in that uncomfortable place. We extend hospitality to ourselves – even to the parts of ourselves that unnerve us, the parts of ourselves we don’t much like.

Just like learning to be at home in Nebraska was born out of the long, slow work of arriving and then staying in an unfamiliar, uncomfortable place, finding and learning to be at home in ourselves comes from the long, slow work of arriving and then staying in the sometimes-uncomfortable places in our own selves.

We arrive at the ground at our feet. We stay. And we learn to be at home.

Why I’m Quitting Book Writing

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I tried to think of softer, more sophisticated title for this post, but the fact is, I’m quitting book writing, and there’s really no other way to say it. Turns out, I wrote a book about the journey toward uncovering your true self, and along the way, I discovered my true self does not align well with my work. This is knowledge I think I’ve understood deep down for a long time, and yet, I’ve held on, clutching and grasping with all my might, unwilling and afraid to let go.

Until now.

The truth is, working as a traditionally published non-fiction writer is a rough sea to swim in if you wrestle with a desire for success and recognition, if you grapple with a longing for approval and affirmation or if you tend to fixate on outcomes. Plenty of writers are able to navigate a smooth, steady course through these tumultuous waters without losing their whole selves in the process.

As it turns out, I’m not one of those writers.

I’ve learned the hard way over the last ten years of writing and publishing that staying whole and healthy in this vocation is, for me, not a simple matter of willpower, nor is it a simple matter of surrender. It’s not about trying harder or surrendering more. Believe me, I’ve done both. I can muster every ounce of willpower and surrender six ways to Sunday, and the bottom line is still the same: working in traditional publishing is not good for me. My tendency to seek affirmation and validation and my desire for recognition and success can quickly veer toward addictive behavior if I’m not careful. It’s a little like an alcoholic working in a bar. It might be doable for a while, but in the end, it’s probably not a wise choice for a long-term profession.

Last fall, two months before True You released, I stood at the curb with Josie on the leash and gazed up at a large pine tree in my neighbor’s front yard. The tree was wrapped round and round with a thick vine that snaked from the roots up the trunk, fanning out along the limbs and branches. I saw that beneath the lush and vibrant vine, the tree itself was dying, its needles crisped brown, its branches brittle.

Not long after that late autumn walk, as Brad and I sat talking on the living room sofa, he offered a quiet observation.  “Your work as an author in Christian publishing has brought you more sorrow than joy,” he said gently, as the snow wisped outside the windowpanes.

I knew the moment the words left his mouth that they were true. I knew I was the pine tree wrapped round by the vine.

In that moment I finally acknowledged that the culture of publishing is not a place I thrive. I can’t separate my self – my whole, true self – from the platform-building, from the push to attract and attain more followers and subscribers, from the Amazon ranks. I can’t separate myself from what often feels like a relentless drive toward bigger, better and more. I can’t separate myself from wanting to be known, affirmed and recognized by the “right” people.

That winter afternoon, sitting on the living room sofa with my husband, I finally understood that I can’t unwind the vine. And honestly, I’m flat-out exhausted from trying.

This has been a hard truth to face. There are the logistics, for one. I was contracted to write another book, which means I’ve had to withdraw from that contract and pay back the advance I had received to write the book. That is hard.

But even harder has been the unexpected grief that’s accompanied this decision. It’s painful to acknowledge that the story I wrote for myself in my mind and in my dreams all those years ago didn’t write itself the same way in real life. There have been joyful chapters, to be sure. But there have also been many, many chapters full of sorrow, disappointment, bitterness, resentment, anger and frustration. There is heartbreak in recognizing and acknowledging that my dream did not turn out as I had imagined and hoped it would. There is grief in letting go of the story I’d hoped would be true.

But there’s also hope in knowing the story is still being written. As Emily Freeman writes in The Next Right Thing: “Just because things change doesn’t mean you chose wrong in the first place. Just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you have to do it forever.”

As Esther de Waal says in her book To Pause at the Threshold, “Our God is a God who moves and he invites us to move with him. We must be ready to disconnect. There comes a time when the things that were undoubtedly good and right in the past must be left behind, for there is always the danger that they might hinder us from moving forward and connecting with the one necessary thing, Christ himself.”

God is moving and he is inviting me to move with him. It’s time.

So I am sad, yes. But I also know, as Emily Freeman says, that I didn’t choose wrong. And I know this because of you. I am full of gratitude for you – the generous readers who have come alongside me – for your kind words, your emails, your comments, your hugs when we’ve met in person. I’m grateful for what you have taught me along the journey. I’m grateful for all the things I’ve learned – about myself, about life, about faith.

And I’m also full of expectant hope for what might be next. I’m confident that even though I can’t clearly see it yet, what’s to come will be different, but it will also be good. I know this because I know God, and I know that he is good.

For now I am content to continue my work at The Salvation Army. I am glad to do my small bit for an organization that does good work. Most of all, it feels good and right to do that work anonymously, without fanfare, without pushing for recognition or readers, without trying to attract attention, without trying to be known.

As Akiko Busch writes in her book How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency, it’s time “to reevaluate the merits of the inconspicuous life, to search out some antidote to continuous exposure, and to reconsider the value of going unseen, undetected, or overlooked. Might invisibility be regarded not simply as refuge, but as a condition with its own meaning and power?”

I think it might indeed.

As I walked Josie along our favorite path a few weeks ago, I noticed that the branches of the white swamp oak were bare. The leaves that had held on through the long, hard winter had finally let go. Beneath the tree’s naked limbs lay its desiccated foliage, crumpled, ripped and bedraggled from months of hanging on tight through tossing winds and stinging snow.

Standing beneath the bare tree, I tipped my head back and saw that each branch and twig were crowned with a tightly curled bud. Over the dark days of our long Nebraska winter, the oak tree had been slowly, quietly working undercover, preparing new growth that has, I see now, begun to burst free.

First the letting go, then the unfurling. As is so often the case, the trees have shown me what I needed to see.

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I wanted to let you know that though I will not be writing books, I still hope, God willing, to write in this space. After months of discernment I was relieved to realize that writing is still life-giving for me. And so, if you’re still game, I would love to still meet you here from time to time and monthly via The Back Patio newsletter. I am ever grateful for you.