Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

Ann Voskamp

Authentic You: Find Your YOU {Day 5}

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Not long after I started blogging I came across Ann Voskamp’s blog A Holy Experience, and I was instantly smitten with her gorgeous photography and her poetic words. I aspired to write like Ann Voskamp. She was my muse and my model.

It didn’t take long for my prose to begin to sound a teeny bit like Ann’s. Subconsciously I began to imitate her style and voice. I dropped articles like “a” and “an” and “the.” I started to use more fragments. I tried to make my writing more lyrical — I wanted my sentences to pulse with emotion like hers. I wanted my posts to be evocative, deep and spiritually dense.

The problem with this, of course, was that I stopped writing like me and I started trying — failing, of course — to write like Ann. And you and I both know there’s only one Ann Voskamp.

What I didn’t know then (and still, on some days, struggle to know now), is that there’s also only one Michelle, too. And each of us — Ann and I and you, too, my friend — has a God-given role and our own, unique calling to pursue and fulfill.

I still grapple with my voice. I still fall into the trap of thinking maybe I should try to write like someone else – someone who has more readers or more “Likes.” I’ll read an intriguing “How To” post by a well-known writer, and I think, “Maybe I should write more how-to posts.” I’ll read someone like Shelly Miller or Amber Haines or Kelli Woodford and I’ll think, “Maybe I should be more poetic.” Some days I think I should write fancier. Other days I think I should be funnier. Still other days I think I should be more Jesus-y.

Thankfully, although I do doubt and stray, I always come back to my own voice. I’m a concrete kind of writer. I describe what’s happening in the here and now. I don’t usually fancy it up with eloquent language or evocative imagery. It’s how I talk, too — fairly frank, without a lot of fluff in between. It’s how my whole extended family talks – we get straight to the point. [just ask Brad]

Turns out, according to Paul, this straight-talk might serve a purpose. “So if you speak to people in words they don’t understand, how will they know what you are saying?” Paul asks the Corinthians. “You might as well be talking into empty space.” (1 Corinthians 14:9, NLT).

Paul is talking about the gift of speaking in tongues, but I say the message applies to writing styles as well.

Poetry speaks to some, straight-talk to others. We’ve each been given a unique voice to reach different people, working together in the Body of Christ.

I believe it’s important, even necessary, to try on different voices as a writer, even to emulate other voices. The process helps us find our own authentic voice. I might not have come back to concrete me if I hadn’t first gone all Voskampy. I might not have realized I’m a conversational writer if I hadn’t first dressed my words in lyricism.

This whole writer-voice thing is a little like fashion. Sometimes you have to experience with different fashion styles before you settle into your own groove. For the longest time, I wanted to have an edgy style — all New York City, kind of funky, kind of cool. My sister’s that way – she dresses cool.

But the truth is, I’m a preppy at heart. I’ve always been a preppy. I could make a lip piercing look preppy.

So I dress preppy and I write concrete.

I know I’m talking about writing and fashion here, but what I’m also getting at is this: who are you at your core? What is the essence of you? How did God make you and what is it that makes you unique?

Go ahead, try on different voices, different styles. Go New York City edgy. Try on fancy or funny. But if it doesn’t fit, if it doesn’t feel right, take it off. Don’t keep on the mask, the costume. Don’t keep trying to be someone you’re not. Because God made you YOU for a very good reason.

[Next week we’re going to talk a little about David, because he’s got something to tell us about this topic, too.]

What about you? If you’re a writer, how would you describe your voice? And how did you uncover it? Or tell me about your fashion style – preppy? Funky? Edgy? Have you ever tried another style, only to realize it just didn’t fit who you are? {lots of questions – sorry!}

 

I Complain about My Kitchen When 26,500 Kids Die Every Day

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“We have a small kitchen,” he noted, sitting on the counter, a plastic bowl of Cheez-Its in his lap.

“Actually, we don’t,” I answered. “Not really. Not compared to most people in the world.”

I chastised Noah, yet I knew he was only repeating what he’d heard from my own lips. I’d complained about a too-small kitchen, a too-small house before. More than once.

Later that night Noah stood next to me in his pajamas as I clicked through Ann Voskamp’s post about her trip with Compassion to Guatemala.I paused on an image of a kitchen.

“What do you think about that kitchen?” I asked Noah, pointing to the cinder block walls and the cement floor, the dingy sink with the tumble of plastic plates and the ramshackle cupboards with no doors.

“It doesn’t look very nice,” he admitted, his eyes glued to the computer screen.

“Why aren’t there any windows?” he wondered. “And what’s that blue stuff for?” He pointed to the plastic tarp pulled loosely over the gaps between the tin, a flimsy shield against wind and rain.

“How would you like to share a bedroom with six other people?” I asked him.

“I definitely wouldn’t want to share my room with Rowan,” he said quietly.

That night Noah and I talked for a long time about what we have. We talked about our home here in Nebraska – our newly remodeled kitchen with the six-burner gas stove and the stainless steel fridge; our two bathrooms; our goose feather pillows; our backyard patio with the striped umbrella and cozy seat cushions and fancy potted plants.


That was the night I decided to stop shopping for a year, and use the money I saved to sponsor a child through Compassion.

Twelve months later I clicked on Pedro’s picture on the Compassion site – five-year-old Pedro, who lives in Bolivia with his mother and five siblings. “How about this little guy?” I’d asked Noah and Brad, who were standing next to me.

Pedro Mae was the one.

Sponsoring Pedro has helped our family connect in a real way to people in need. It’s one thing to think vaguely about “doing something” (thinking vaguely: something I’m very good at), but it’s another thing entirely to connect a beautiful face and a very real person with a cause.
 
It’s one thing to know and be paralyzed by the fact that more than 26,500 kids die every day due to preventable causes related to poverty (statistics from The Hole in Our Gospel), but it’s another thing entirely to do something about it, even if it’s only a little something.

I know Pedro is only one boy in 26,500. And sometimes that feels insignificant. Small. Almost inconsequentially small.
 
But when we receive a letter from Pedro or his sister or his mother, we realize that to sponsor even just one child isn’t inconsequential at all. Because a child – even just one living, breathing, playing, laughing child living in desperate circumstances – is always significant.

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So here’s the real deal. September is Blog Month at Compassion, and their goal is to find sponsors for 3,081 kids around the world. You can sponsor one of these kids. For $38/month, you can decide to change a child’s life – a decision that will have beautiful, powerful, lifelong consequences.

Will you consider it? Click here for details.


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Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: Two Words

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Yup, that’s Brad, slogging through the Mud Run.

I really wanted to go with Deidra and Jennifer to hear Ann Voskamp speak at the Women of Faith conference in Des Moines this past weekend. Really, really.

But I didn’t go. I didn’t go because the Holy Spirit told me to stay home. {although for a few days I pretended not to hear}

You see, Brad ran in the Lincoln Mud Run 5K on Saturday morning – a race he’d diligently trained for over the past few months. {and yeah, it’s as gross and grueling as it sounds: slogging through knee-deep mud, scaling walls and squirming beneath obstacles on your belly}. And even though he told me, “Go, go! Really, go to Women of Faith, you don’t need to stay just for the race,” and I knew he meant it, I felt something else in my gut. I felt the Holy Spirit telling me to stay in Lincoln. To go to the race and support my husband.

Fast forward to Sunday morning, when I read this from Psalm 134:

“Come, bless God, all you servants of God!”  (Psalm 134:1, Msg)

In fact, I read it twice to make sure I had read it right.

Isn’t God the one who does the blessing, I wondered? Isn’t he the one who bestows all good things, and isn’t it our job to praise him and thank him? So what’s this about us blessing him? What kind of blessing can we flawed and insignificant beings offer the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-creating God?

These were my questions as I sat in the pew and listened to yesterday’s reading. And truthfully, I didn’t get much of an answer from the pulpit. Or so I initially thought.

The problem wasn’t with the sermon, per se. It was simply the fact that I couldn’t understand or hear the minister well. Pastor Mmanga, who is visiting from our sister church in Uswaa, Tanzania, has a beautiful, melodious voice and a thick accent – and as Brad will attest, I do not do well with accents. That, combined with the fact that my left ear is almost entirely blocked from an infection, had me leaning forward in my seat, squinting (because that helps with hearing, right?) and straining to hear the sermon.

When Pastor Mmanga returned to his seat, I realized I’d gotten just two words from his sermon:

Obey. And trust.

But those two words were more than enough. Those two words made all the difference in my understanding of how we flawed and insignificant beings can, in fact, bless God himself. Those two words got me thinking about that crazy Mud Run race again, and the fact that when the Holy Spirit told me to stay home, I actually listened.

Crossing the finish line

You see, when Brad crossed the finish line filthy and soaked, Rowan and I cheering under our umbrellas as the rain came pouring down, I couldn’t have been prouder of him or happier that I’d stayed in Lincoln to watch the race instead of going to Women of Faith (a race in which he finished first place in his age division and in 14thplace overall out of more than 700 runners!). And when I heard those two words in Pastor Mmanga’s sermon I knew why:

When we bless God through our obedience and trust, God blesses us, sometimes in the most unexpected ways.

“Come, bless God, all you servants of God! You priests of God, posted to the nightwatch in God’s shrine. Lift your praising hands to the Holy Place, and bless God. In turn, may God of Zion bless you – God who made heaven and earth!” (Psalm 134)

Have you ever imagined that you, yes you, can bless God?!
 

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