Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

1000 gifts

When Today Feels Heavy

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I love how my friend Evi Wusk keeps her eyes wide open to God’s graces in her everyday ordinary. Right now she’s in the middle of a 30-day Gratitude Challenge – she’s aiming to reach #1000Gifts in just one month! Yowza! Be sure to stop by her beautiful blog, Gratitude Gal, to say hi, and while you’re there, enter to win the perfect November giveaway – a fresh-baked pie, delivered to your doorstep (details here).
Text and Photo by Evi Wusk

I stopped up short before grabbing the heavy black church door.

“Wow, that looks like hard work,” I said to the men bundled up on a sunny-yet-chilly late October day. As I zoomed in to drop something off at church–doing my normal, checking something off the list quick–I couldn’t help but stop and notice how these two men were lifting large piles of bricks and working on their hands and knees to slide them together into a intricate design.

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Snapping a picture of the scene, I wasn’t quite sure why it intrigued me so much, this picture of two men doing cold physical labor to create something beautiful. Maybe it’s because my work is so much more covert. You don’t see the sweat running off me, or the bundled up fingers, or hear the grunt of me sliding a comma into just the right place. Writing is work, but of such a different sort. People come to the ready-made pieces and don’t see the process. There is a reason we call things like paintings and books and music “works” of art, they require effort. They require that the artist go through a sort of labor to birth this new thing into the world.

As is the case with babies, sometimes the labor is short, some times it’s long, but if God is calling you to the work, rest assured that it doesn’t start with the pretty picture. There will be bricks to move–heavy ones, sometimes bricks that we’ve put in our own way, bricks like fear, anxiety, perfectionism, pain we just can’t let go.

God does not promise us comfort–in fact just the opposite. He promises a life that follows the pattern of Jonah. If you recall Jonah was spit out by a whale in a place where he didn’t want to be. Awesome. Why did I sign up to be a Christian again?

All joking aside, perhaps the beauty lies in standing in the creative tension, in loving the labor and knowing that even though we can’t quite see the full picture yet, that we’re putting our brick in for today. I don’t believe that God calls us to “some-days” and grand plans as much as he calls us to small acts of love today, in our life situation right now.

You can see the work or you can see the beauty that’s unfolding all around us. And perhaps the bricks seem a bit lighter when we realize we’re not being called to lift them on our own. In John 4:36 it says both the sower and the reaper will be glad together. I see that as a call to adventure, to take the courage God is offering me today to move my brick, and play a small part in the story God is telling to our world.

#201. Seeing people literally working and walking on the cross.

Day 13 Challenge:
Create something. Many people say they’re not the “artsy type,” but we’re all creators. Make a meal, make someone’s day, make a craft–and do it in the spirit of thanksgiving, giving back what we’ve been given by overflowing to others.

* This post is part of Evi’s 30-day Gratitude Challenge. Subscribe to her blog or post a comment here to enter her random drawing for the most perfect November giveaway ever: a homemade pie! 

EviWusk2Evi (say it like Chevy) Wusk is a mom, teacher and lover of words and licorice. Her work aims to reimagine and honor schools, businesses, and churches through gratitude. Evi lives in small town, Sterling, Nebraska with her hubby, Ralph, and kiddos, Charli and Oliver. Connect with Evi at her blog and on Twitter.

 

 

 

Thinking about writing a book but have absolutely no idea where to begin? Join Chad Allen, Editorial Director of Baker Books, and me for “How to Get Published” – a series of three teleconferences that will cover how to create a strong book concept, how to build your platform and how to write a book proposal. The first session launches a week from today (Monday, November 17!). Click here for details and registration information.

How to Get Published2

 

Why I’m Back to Counting Daily Gifts

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I gave it up for a while. Somewhere around number 1,780 I stopped listing daily gifts in my gratitude journal, the one that sits open on the kitchen counter, right next to the paper towel roll. I figured after more than two years, I had the routine down pat by now.

The act of counting gifts had become instinct. My brain listed as I ran along the concrete paths, as I pushed my cart through the grocery store, as I drove to the dry cleaners and the library. Using an actual journal was a crutch. It was cumbersome, old-fashioned, passé.

Or so I thought.

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As the weeks passed and the pencil and paper sat untouched on the counter, I discovered I’d gotten lazy. I wasn’t noticing bountiful beauty as I churned out four miles or ran errands around town.

Instead, I filled that whitespace with grumbles and complaints.

I fixated on what was missing, what I lacked, rather than what had so abundantly been given to me.

I worried more. Negative thoughts unfurled in my head, persistent, insistent, like the dotted yellow line disappearing into the horizon on a Great Plains highway.

I’d grown distrustful, too, of God. I found myself questioning whether he really did have my back, if he really did turn all things toward good. I didn’t have enough, I complained — enough readers, enough book sales, enough Amazon reviews and stars. I bargained a little bit…”I swear I’ll be happy if…” “If only you’d do this, then…”

A bottomless pit yawned wide, home to an insatiable monster who clamored for more, more, more.

It’s easy to miss the connection between gratitude and trust because it’s a subtle one. But as author Brennan Manning observed, “The foremost quality of a trusting disciple is gratefulness.”

I’ve learned the hard way that Manning is right.

And he’s right, too, in his observation that trust can’t be self-generated. We can’t simply will ourselves to trust. “What an outrageous irony,” Manning wrote in his book, Ruthless Trust. “The one thing I need to do I cannot do.”

But what is in our power, Manning reminded me, is the ability to pay attention, to notice the presence of God in our everyday lives.

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Tallying daily treasures is a tangible, concrete reminder of God’s ever-present, never-wavering provision. When I see that list of gifts lining page after page in my journal, I can’t help but begin to trust the God who lavishes his love so abundantly, so exuberantly, day in and day out, minute by minute.

Doubt fades and trust grows as I begin to recognize his presence, even in the minutiae of my everyday.

And so I sharpen my pencil to a fine point, smooth the wrinkled, spattered pages and begin again. I list the gifts I’ve been missing for weeks, the ones that have been obscured by ingratitude and complaint.

Grilled fish served on a wooden plank…dinner on paper plates at the picnic table…a husband who bakes a birthday cake from scratch for me on vacation…sleeping in my own bed after being away for 10 days…two hours to write on the back patio…a sun-warmed hammock swinging in the breeze…turning the last page of a good read…a boy who makes faces over his breakfast cereal…time in the garden with my camera…

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The practice of keeping a gratitude journal may indeed be a little bit passé. But I still keep the pencil poised and the list front and center on the kitchen counter, because now I know one thing for sure:

It works.

*This essay originally ran in the Lincoln Journal Star.

Now {When You Need to Focus on the Gifts, Not the Gets}

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I stoop to double knot my sneaker before I step out the door into the blistering sun. Still kneeling on the kitchen floor, I glance up, and that’s when I see the window, and beyond that, the garden gate and the goldenrod ablaze.

It stops me right there, that picture of ordinary perfection. Clean dishes stacked on the rack. Seven tomatoes ripening to red on the sill. My watch, left there when I stripped it from my wrist to do last night’s dishes. A row of Lake Superior rocks, shaped like hearts, collected over the years by my sweet-hearted son.

An ordinary scene, an ordinary kitchen, an ordinary day.

But these? These are no ordinary gifts.

It’s easy to miss it all, isn’t it? If I hadn’t stopped to tie my shoe before dashing out the door, I would have missed them, too, these ordinary extraordinary gifts, all laid out, picture-perfect, just for me.

That’s usually the case. Truth be told, I focus much more on the “gets” of the future, rather than the gifts of now.

How can I get more readers?

How can I get more people to like my posts and my Facebook page?

How will I get people to buy my books?

How can I get my kids to listen better?

How can I get that basement renovation I think I need?

How can I get, get, get?

I worry more about what’s happening tomorrow instead of appreciating what’s unfurling right now, before my very eyes.

A focus on getting blinds me to God’s giving. A focus on getting blinds me to the gifts God gives right here, right now.

The kitchen window. Those beautiful tomatoes all in a row, the red striped curtain, the garden gate and the goldenrod. This is the reminder I need right now, the reminder to be less preoccupied with getting, and more grateful for all God’s giving.

I straighten up, shoes double-knotted, hair pulled back into a ponytail. I swig twice more from the water bottle, leave it on the kitchen counter, and then step onto the driveway, hot already in the morning sun, pulling the door closed with a click.

The goldenrod, straight and proud against the picket fence, waves in the breeze behind me.

“What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving…Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.” (Matthew 6:30-34, Msg.)

 

1595 Rowan’s bowl of berries
1596 Cardinal wrestling with the piece of string
1597 Fuzzy yellow caterpillar on the running path
1598 A dad who brings the pet lizard to the emergency vet
1599 Frill the lizard feeling better
1600 Mirror note from Noah
1601 First hummingbird of the season
1602  Garden gate through the kitchen window
1603 Ripening tomatoes all in a row
1604 Goldenrod ablaze in the sun
1605 Morning light reflecting off the desk lamp

Why Gratitude Has to Become a Habit

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“If we are lucky,” writes Anne Lamott, “gratitude becomes a habit.”

I’m reading Lamott’s latest book, Help, Thanks, Wow, on the screened porch of my childhood home. It’s raining, gently, the scent of water on hot pavement wafting off the driveway.  I used to spend hours out here as a kid, my feet tucked into the vinyl floral cushion on the aluminum rocking chair, The Secret Garden or The Borrowers or Where the Red Fern Grows spread open in my lap.

In the next room, my dad sleeps under the barely revolving fan in the bedroom,  a pillow cushioning the raw incision in his chest.

“I’ve got a blog idea for you,” he’d said to me two days earlier, wincing as he pulled the table closer to the reclining chair. I had smiled at the way my dad pronounced “blog,” like “blaahg.”

He’s been through the ringer these last few months, in and out of the hospital four times. He sat pale and haggard in his hospital room, machines beeping, tubes spiraling, the tray table between us. A curtain separated him from his moaning roommate.

“It’s about this gratitude thing you’re always talking about,” he said, leaning heavily on the table and looking me straight in the eye. “I’m not sure it works.”

My dad admitted he’d been trying. Trying to focus on the positive, trying to be grateful. He said he looked at the patients around him, patients far sicker than he is, and he told himself it could be worse.

I nodded. “It’s true,” I said. “You could be on a vent or something. At least you can sit in the lobby and have a coffee and watch people come and go.” My dad took the elevator down from the sixth floor to the main entrance, pushing his IV pole ahead of him. He sat in the leather armchair near the front desk and watched drama unfold and life stream in and out of the hospital.

“It doesn’t work though,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s one thing to be grateful on a regular day, but when you’re sick? When you feel lousy and are suffering and are stuck in here?” He tipped his head toward the nurses at the station in the hallway. “It doesn’t work,” he said. “Gratitude doesn’t work in the middle of suffering.”

I sipped my coffee, looked down at my half-eaten blueberry muffin on the tray. I didn’t know what to say. Because really? I’ve never been in these shoes. I don’t know what it’s like to be tethered to a catheter and an IV pole and a beeping machine. I don’t know what it’s like to spend day after day in the ICU, poked and prodded with scalpels and needles, x-rays at 5 a.m., the blood pressure cuff three times every night. Would I be grateful, given similar circumstances?

If we are lucky, gratitude becomes a habit.

I read Anne Lamott’s words out on the screened porch. My dad is home now, sleeping in the next room. I ponder his declaration. And I wonder if maybe Anne Lamott isn’t quite right.

I wonder if maybe gratitude doesn’t become habit out of luck, but out of practice.

Maybe practicing gratitude in the everyday mundane paves the way to gratitude in the dramatic, in the wild untamed, in the out-of-control, in the fear-full times. Maybe it’s not just gratitude itself, but the practice of gratitude in the day-in and day-out that makes the difference.

Practicing gratitude until it becomes habit, second-nature — the habit of noticing, seeing, appreciating, giving thanks.

Practicing gratitude until it becomes habit, second-nature — so that when the world tips topsy-turvy, dizzyingly off-balance, we have the foundation of gratitude already in place.

Maybe making gratitude a daily habit is the way to find gratitude when the going gets tough, when our life spins out of control, when suffering descends.

Honestly? I don’t know for sure. I still don’t have any clear answers for my dad about how to find gratitude in suffering.  All I have right now is the habit of gratitude, a habit I’m hoping and praying will hold up when times get tough.

That’s why I’m going to keep listing gift after gift, these daily miracles, these small joys — practicing the habit of gratitude line after line after line on wrinkled notebook pages.

I’m going to trust that the habit of gratitude will sustain me, even when I can’t sustain myself.

With Ann Voskamp’s Monday 1,000 Gifts Community:

1575 two men chatting on the stone wall
1576 yellow leaves swirling onto the running path
1577 a gentle rain while I run
1578 iced coffee on the back patio
1579 and a husband who makes it!
1580 Angry Trout chowder
1581 British soccer coaches calling Rowan “Rowanski”
1582 Rowan’s delight at the fair
1583 petting the goats and the llama
1584 2:30 a.m. meteor excursion
1585 showdown between Brad and the gorilla

When You’re Looking for Your Place

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He asks me every couple of months or so. “Mommy, where is your favorite place on earth?”

Noah and Brad share the same favorite place: up at the cabin on the north shore of Minnesota’s Lake Superior, where the lupine bloom in pastel waves and the birch trees peel papery and the air blows chilled off the water. Noah even has a specific spot in his special place: a mossy mound, surrounded by a forest of birch. He sits on a log dotted with red mushrooms, quiet behind a screen of lush ferns.

The boys are always disappointed when I tell them I don’t have one special place. “I haven’t found it yet,” I answer. “I’m still looking.” This worries them. “Think harder,” Rowan urges. His special place is down in the Florida Keys, where he fishes for snapper lurking under the gnarled mangrove.

I’ve been looking for my place for several years now, ever since I read Desert Solitaire, by naturalist Edward Abbey. “Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place,” writes Abbey in the opening paragraph, “the right place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary.”

I want that, I thought when I read those lines. I want a right place, a one true home, a place where I feel wholly at home, wholly content, wholly me. And I don’t just want the vision of an ideal place. I want an actual place.

This weekend, after years of looking, I finally found my place. Turns out, I didn’t have to look far. “This is my place,” I announce to Noah and Brad on Saturday evening, as the setting sun glows over the backyard.

“What do you mean?” Noah asks. “Right here? Like, the backyard?”

“Yup, right here,” I say, nodding and sweeping my arm toward the grass. “Sitting in my lounge chair, watching the cardinals, listening to the cheers at the ballgame across the field. Right here.”

“Well, all right, it’s your place I guess. You can choose wherever you want,” Noah says, looking askance at the chipped table and sun-faded umbrella.

What I realized as I sat on the back patio on Saturday night is that I’ve finally reached the point where I can find contentment in the moment, in the now. Restless and agitated by nature, I’ve always felt a yearning for something … something else or something more or something different. Recently, though, in the last year or so, that restless yearning has dissipated, replaced by simple contentment and a better ability to appreciate the moment.

This, I know, is a direct result of the practice of gratitude.

I’ve been counting gifts for two years now. I just passed #1,500, and I’m reaching the last wrinkled, worn pages of the journal I purchased on a whim, from a sale rack next to the prescription counter at Walgreen’s.

This practice, this daily gift counting, has singlehandedly altered my attitude toward life. Gone is the glass-half-empty girl. And while I might not ever become a textbook optimist, I know I’ve changed. I notice gifts everywhere now – on the running trail, at the grocery store, in my own backyard. My eyes see. My brain records, spooling a ticker tape of gifts. I don’t even write them all down. But I notice.

This past weekend, after years of searching, I finally realized I don’t need to travel far and wide to discover my right place, my one true home. It’s here. Right now. Under the faded umbrella. The goldfinch singing from the magnolia tree. The heady scent of lilac settling like a fragrant blanket over the whole backyard.

So tell me, do you have a true home, a right place, a favorite spot on earth? 

Sharing with Ann Voskamp’s 1,000 gifts community:

1490 first blooming lilac
1491 working on the couch when I’m sick
1492 pink petals on the pavement
1493 a soaking rain
1494 scent of lemon cake baking
1495 a boy who still wants to sleep in our bed
1496 single droplet of pinesap
1497 card from Sara
1498 Rowan’s toes, peeking out from the comforter
1499 improvement for dad
1500 my backyard – my favorite place