“I decided to admit once and for all that I didn’t know what I was doing, what I thought, what I believed, even sometimes if I truly believed. I would tell the truth: I wasn’t like them; I didn’t fit in. I wasn’t a proper Christian. I didn’t have it all together like they did. Why not, I figured? What in the world did I have to lose?”
After twenty years of unbelief, estranged from her childhood faith and ultimately from God, DeRusha found herself wrestling hard with questions of spirituality—and frustrated by the lack of clear answers. Until she realized that the questions themselves paved a way for faith.
“Declaring my unbelief,” writes DeRusha, “was the first step; declaring my unbelief allowed me to begin to seek authentically.”
Spiritual Misfit chronicles one woman’s journey toward an understanding that belief and doubt can coexist. This poignant and startlingly candid memoir reveals how being honest about our questions, our fears, and our discomfort with black-and-white definitions of faith can move us toward an authentic and a deepening relationship with God.
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Praise for Spiritual Misfit
“Michelle DeRusha is a masterful writer who brings fresh insight, imagery, and wisdom to the spiritual memoir genre. Spiritual Misfit invites the reader to climb a tree and cock the head to see the world from a whole new perspective. It’s funny, smart, and brimming with hope — a book for those new to faith and those who long for a faith that’s new. I look forward to reading everything Michelle DeRusha writes.”
—Rachel Held Evans, author of Searching for Sunday
“This book is profoundly insightful and laugh-out-loud funny — the kind of book you carry with you to the kitchen sink and to the laundry room and even to the bathroom, because you can’t.stop.reading. World, meet Michelle DeRusha — master storyteller, brilliant writer, spiritual misfit.”
—Jennifer Dukes Lee, author of Love Idol
“This is the book we’ve been waiting for! It’s the book we need, because there is no way we get to faith without asking a bunch of questions and fumbling around in the dark for a while. This book frees us to be ourselves with Jesus, and to let him pursue us and woo us and love us and challenge us and stretch us. Michelle tells her story with humor and heart. It’s as if someone needed to go first, giving the rest of us courage to exhale and say, ‘Whew! I’m not the only one!'”
—Deidra Riggs, author of Every Little Thing
“It’s rare to find someone who seeks God as Michelle DeRusha does — with an authenticity the world lacks, with the wit and candor of Anne Lamott, and with the humility of Christ himself. Spiritual Misfit is the unadulterated journey of a woman who knows what it is to struggle and what it is to overcome. You’ll come away changed.”
—Emily Wierenga, author of Searching for Home and Atlas Girl
“Michelle DeRusha shares an honest and heartfelt personal perspective on the journey of faith. She takes us to the hard places, through the doubts, and brings us to this reassuring truth: sometimes when you’re searching for a place to belong, what you really need to discover is how much you’ve been loved all along.”
—Holley Gerth, author of You’re Already Amazing
“Michelle DeRusha’s Spiritual Misfit is a generous and honest portrait of stumbling into faith. This book is an invitation to wonder and journey, masterfully crafted by Michelle’s insights and humor. At once vulnerable, at once assumed, this narrative offers a welcome and fresh perspective on the spiritual memoir and on the coming to terms of faith without ourselves and our communities.”
—Preston Yancey, author of Tables in the Wilderness
