Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

book reviews

Community as a Courageous Act of Peace {and a book giveaway}

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Truly, I have never seen so much food at a single meal. Not on my mother-in-law’s Thanksgiving table. Not even at my Aunt Maureen’s annual Easter smorgasbord. The feast was epic.

A few weeks ago our friend Azzat mentioned that he and Afia wanted to host “a feast,” as the Yezidis say, as a way to thank all the people who had pitched in to set up their apartment before they arrived in Lincoln as refugees nearly two years ago.

“Invite everyone,” Azzat declared. He and Afia also insisted that no one bring a thing – not a bottle of wine or a liter of soda, not a bag of chips or a plate of brownies. “We want to do everything,” he said.

Sixteen of us squeezed into our friends’ townhouse living room on Sunday afternoon. We sat on the floor, our legs pulled in close so as to keep our socked feet clear of the plastic tablecloth that had been spread out on the carpet. Dish after dish was placed on the tablecloth: five roasted chickens, several huge tin foil pans of biryani and couscousi, 16 bowls of soup, 16 bowls of salad and a stack of naan so thick it could have doubled as an extra chair in a pinch.

We passed dishes back and forth, heaping spoonfuls of savory food high on one another’s plates, tearing pieces of soft naan, handing bowls around and across the makeshift table. I swear we ate for an hour and a half straight, and all the while, as friends new and old laughed and passed more plates, I couldn’t stop smiling. The photo my friend Kristen snapped with her iPhone captures my glee. In the picture, I’m grinning ear to ear like a fool, literally clapping my hands in sheer delight.

Our friends’ journey to Lincoln has been far from perfect. They wouldn’t have chosen it if they’d had any choice at all — that I know for sure. They left their beloved homeland, their culture, virtually all their possessions and most of their dearest friends and family to begin a new life free from the threat of ISIS, yet missing so many precious pieces of home. They have lived, and still live, daily heartbreak. They have lived, and still live, daily struggle.

And yet, in spite of incomprehensible hardship and loss, time and time again they give wholly of themselves and their resources to us. They don’t even think twice. They invite us and these friends of ours, strangers to them, into their own living room, they spread a table for us and lay out a feast and they lavish all of us with hospitality, generosity, warmth and love. They pour us the best wine, they cook for five hours to create all their best dishes (intentionally making extra so they can send every single one of their guests home with a plate of leftovers), they serve us, smiling and brushing off our praise like it’s all so no big deal.

But it is a big deal. As author Shannan Martin would say, this hospitality, this intentional walk toward, rather than away from another, is a very big deal.

“Offering ourselves as a kind-hearted presence in a world that has forgotten the meaning of community is a courageous act of peace,” writes Shannan in her beautiful book, The Ministry of Ordinary Places.

I love that, and I think that’s exactly why this beautiful family continues to astonish me. The ones considered outsiders and “other” by so many, the ones who arrived here from halfway around the world, the ones who have little compared to most of us, continuously offer their whole selves to us, welcoming us, embracing us and reminding us of what true community looks like.

Their kind-hearted presence in our lives and their generosity and investment in us is truly a courageous act of peace….and of love.

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I can’t think of a better book to give away with this post about community than Shannan Martin’s new release, The Ministry of Ordinary Places. If you don’t know Shannan, get thee to her website, pronto. She is of of my favorite writers, hands-down. I loved her first book, Falling Free, so much, I wrote about it in my own upcoming book. And I think The Ministry of Ordinary Places is even better! This book will make you laugh out loud and it will bring tears to your eyes, almost within the same paragraph. AND it will convict you in all the best ways about the power, beauty and gift of living with our ordinary neighbors in our ordinary places.

To be eligible for the drawing, please leave a comment telling us about one small thing a neighbor or friend did for you that made all the difference. I will draw one name at random on Monday, October 15 and will notify the winner by email.

What I’m Reading {Summer 2018 Edition}

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When I was a kid I spent most of my summer afternoons on the screened-in porch, tucked into a rocking chair, the vinyl seat cushion sticking to the back of my legs in the New England humidity.

Often my best friend Andrea would fold herself into her own rocking chair next to me, and together we’d while away the day in quiet contentment, each with a book in our hands. It seems funny now that we intentionally got together in order to spend hours without speaking, each of us with her nose in her own book. And yet, there was something perfectly right about those long, hot summer afternoons spent in companionable silence.

Decades later, Andrea lives 1,500 miles away, I don’t have a screened-in porch or a set of aluminum rocking chairs, and I don’t often have a whole summer afternoon in which to dedicate solely to a book.

Nowadays I often pull a novel from my purse to read a few pages in the car as I wait for a boy to emerge from one activity or another. Or I squeeze in a chapter before turning out the light, my eyelids growing heavy but my mind and heart still eager to turn the next page.

Reading will always be my pastime of choice, which is why every few months or so I love to share the books I’ve enjoyed lately (and I love to hear what you’re reading too – let me know in the comments!).

Here’s what’s been stacked on my nightstand this summer:

The Edge of Over There
by Shawn Smucker
Genre: YA Fiction

The Edge of Over There has a Madeleine L’Engle-ish feel – a little bit fantasy, a little bit mystery, and a whole lot riveting. Though it’s technically Young Adult fiction, I guarantee this book will have you reading late into the night, no matter what your age. Start with Shawn’s The Day the Angels Fell first, if you haven’t read that one yet, and then move on to this equally satisfying sequel.

Why I loved it: It’s a page-turner with a fast-paced plot, but it also got me thinking about deeper questions.

Raise Your Voice: Why We Stay Silent and How to Speak Up
by Kathy Khang
Genre: Christian nonfiction

A powerful, convicting new voice, Christian activist Kathy Khang makes an important, convincing argument for why it’s imperative that we use our God-given voices and intellect to confront racism, discrimination and injustice. As a person who is often hesitant to speak up, this book gave me a much-needed push toward raising my own voice, as well as a whole lot to think about.

Why I loved it: Kathy’s approach is grace-ful yet firm. I deeply appreciate her wisdom and her courage in telling the hard parts of her story.

Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage
By Dani Shapiro
Genre: Memoir

I’ve read all of Dani Shapiro’s memoirs (Devotion, Slow Motion) and some of her fiction, and Hourglass is my favorite so far. Tender, intimate and vulnerable, yet also ruthlessly honest, Shapiro looks hard at her own marriage — “a reckoning in which she confronts both the life she dreamed of and the life she made, and struggles to reconcile the girl she was with the woman she has become.”

Why I loved it: Maybe it’s the voyeur in me, but I love a good memoir for its intimacy and vulnerability and the way it prompts me to look at my own life. And this one has the added benefit of being expertly written in beautiful, luminous prose.

A Year by the Sea: Thoughts of an Unfinished Woman
By Joan Anderson
Genre: Memoir

When she hits middle-age, her children grown and married, her husband focused on a new job, Joan Anderson decides to take a hiatus and go her own way. Her year alone on Cape Cod is a rebirth of sorts, a time in which she begins to know her true self for the first time in a long time, perhaps ever. A Year by the Sea is a beautiful reflection on the passage of time, on seasons and the gifts of nature and on the process of deep transformation. Wise, compelling, poignant – this is a book I will return to again.

Why I loved it: At 48, I’m nearly the age Anderson was when she spent her year by the sea and penned this memoir about her transformative experience. I don’t know…maybe I am on the cusp of a mid-life crisis? All I know is that this book spoke to me deeply.

The Poisonwood Bible
By Barbara Kingsolver
Genre: Fiction

I tried reading this one years ago and put it down. But this past spring my son Noah read it for one of his high school classes, which compelled me to pick it up again, and I am SO glad I did. A riveting, compelling saga, The Poisonwood Bible is narrated in alternating chapters by the four daughters and the wife of a Baptist missionary who relocates his family to the Belgian Congo in the early 1960s in order to save souls. I’m a little rusty on my African history and my knowledge of post-colonialism, so I undoubtedly missed some key points, but wow, this book was fascinating. It had me staying up WAY past my bedtime most nights. Kingsolver is a master storyteller, and this book, one that is at the same time very dark and richly beautiful, is one I will not soon forget.

Why I loved it: Plain and simple, The Poisonwood Bible is a masterful novel with deeply compelling themes, rich, multi-layered characters and stunning prose.

Up Next in My To-Be-Read Stack:

An Unfinished Marriage and The Second Journey, sequels to Joan Anderson’s A Year by the Sea.

March, by Geraldine Brooks – The story of the absent father in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women.

A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table, by Molly Wizenberg – Part cookbook, part memoir, my favorite (Though I don’t actually cook, I like to read about cooking, which is odd, I realize. Also, I got this for .99 cents on Kindle; check to see if the deal is still on!).

Food: A Love Story, by Jim Gaffigan – I’m reading this one for my book club in August. I think Jim Gaffigan is hilarious, so I’m looking forward to this.

So tell me, what have you read this summer that has you staying up way past your bedtime? 

 

Traveling the Broken Way

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The Broken Way

Faith has never come easily for me. I’ve often described my spiritual journey and faith itself as a two-steps-forward-one-step-back kind of process, with doubt rearing its ugly head from time to time, and me clamoring to smack it down like I’m playing whack-a-mole at the local carnival.

This past summer I traveled to Tuscany on a spiritual writers’ retreat expecting to uncover clarity and direction in my vocation. Instead I ended up spiraling into a dark night of the soul I never saw coming. Sitting cross-legged under a grove of trees overlooking the golden Tuscan hills, I got real with God real fast. It was the quintessential “I believe, help my unbelief!” moment, and it left me wrung out and reeling. God and I wrestled it out like never before.

Two days later, hands trembling, voice shaking, I told my traveling companions about my dark night. It was a confession of sorts, and that community of brothers and sisters — most of whom I’d met for the first time only days before — gathered around and held me close. They lamented with me. They consoled me. And most of all, they gave me hope.

When, following my sputtering confession, one of my new friends declared, “God delights in you,” I tucked that word of encouragement into my heart. Since then I’ve taken it out and reexamined it again and again.

My dark-night-of-the-soul experience in Italy and how I’ve come to understand it was a game-changer for me, a life-changer. As Ann Voskamp writes in her new book, The Broken Way, “Our God wants the most unwanted parts of us the most…Nothing pleases God more than letting Him touch the places you think don’t please Him. God is drawn to broken things — so he can draw the most beautiful things.”

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The Broken Way

The Broken Way

Cracking open wide in Tuscany allowed me to receive the understanding that just as I delight in my own children, God delights in me. He loves me like I love them, sweetly, tenderly, fiercely, but infinitely, unfathomably more. I never really understood that. I never really believed it.

Truth be told, three months later I’m still leaning hard into what it really means that God delights in me – what it looks like and feels like. I’m leaning hard into believing it. I’m allowing God to teach me, to show me what he is doing for me, to show me what I need to enter into. God is already loving, he is already delighting in, and he desires that we enter into that space. As Paul says in his letter to the Romans, “God does not respond to what we do; we respond to what God does.” (3:28, Msg.)

Ann Voskamp’s book The Broken Way has helped me move farther along in this journey. She’s put words around the unexplainable and indescribable. She has given language to the mysterious, inexplicable yet sometimes palpable presence of God.

“Belovedness is the center of being, the only real identity, God’s only name for you, the only identity he gives you,” she writes. “And you won’t ever feel like you belong anywhere until you choose to listen to your heart beating out that you do — unconditionally, irrevocably. Until you let yourself feel the truth of that – the truth your heart has always known because He who made it wrote your name right there.”

A long time ago I looked up the origin of my name, Michelle. It is derived from the Hebrew name Michael, which means, in some interpretations, “He who is closest to God,” as well as, interestingly, the question, “Who is like God?” The online site I visited noted that in Hebrew that’s a rhetorical question, because no person is like God.

I laughed when I read that bit about the rhetorical question, because honestly, it’s so like me to question my identity as one who is “like God.” Who me? Flawed, questioning, always-seemingly-on-the-cusp-of-unbelief me?  But the answer is, inexplicably and unfathomably, yes, an emphatic yes. For me and for you, too. For all of us. We are like God because we are created in his image– imago dei.  Each of us is wholly his, loved by him, beloved, called into oneness with him.

God calls us to walk toward that which we despise most about ourselves, because he knows that when we face that hard, ugly place head-on, we will finally be fully surrendered. And finally fully surrendered, we will finally fully find him.

God is in our most broken places, the parts of ourselves we least want to admit or expose to the world and perhaps especially to our own selves. For me, that’s my wrestle with doubt and unbelief. God ironically calls me to step into that very place, to acknowledge its existence, not to run and hide from it, but strangely, to offer it, my most broken place, to him. I know, it hardly makes sense. But yet it does. Because he is there, even there. Because there is no place God is not.

The Broken Way, by Ann Voskamp

I want to add, for the record, that Ann Voskamp doesn’t need me to write a review of her book. As I write this, The Broken Way, which releases today, is probably already number 1 on Amazon, and it will likely go on to become a New York Times bestseller, just like One Thousand Gifts. But here’s the deal: I wrote this blog post because I couldn’t not write this blog post. Like its predecessor, One Thousand Gifts, The Broken Way has had a lasting impact on me. Beautifully written and full of profound wisdom, this book is a life-changer, if you allow Ann’s words — God’s message, really, spoken through her — to sink in deep and change you. Powerful, prophetic, vulnerable and deeply authentic, The Broken Way is not an easy or a quick read, but it’s absolutely a must-read.

The Weight of Waiting {and a book giveaway!}

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Come Lord Jesus: The Wait of Waiting

A few years ago the phone rang on a December evening. It was Brad’s dad, calling to tell us he had been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. It was the beginning of Advent, and when I think about it today, I can still feel the bitterness, anger, and deep sorrow I experienced that holiday season. The lights, the music, the decorations, the shopping, the socializing…it all felt so garish, so offensive. I wanted everything to stop. It was all I could do not to squeeze my eyes shut and cup my palms over my ears.

That whole season was terrible, not only because my father-in-law was dying, but also because I felt forced toward a lightness and jubilance I couldn’t possibly experience. It felt like there wasn’t space for grief, like there wasn’t room for suffering and brokenness. And so we stumbled through. Our faces wore expressions appropriate to the season, but inside, our hearts were shattered.

I know God was with us that holiday season. I know he was with us in our grief and that he gently held our shattered hearts in his hands. But I couldn’t hold that tension between the joy and light of the season and the darkness and sorrow inside me. I couldn’t see that there was space in the waiting for both light and darkness, joy and grief. Amid all the festive lights and noise of the season, I couldn’t see that God makes that space for us in his son Jesus, that waiting can hold both our joy and our despair.

Come Lord Jesus: The Wait of Waiting

A few months ago my friend Kris Camealy emailed to ask if I would consider writing an endorsement for her book, Come, Lord Jesus: The Weight of Waiting, a collection of 25 daily devotions for Advent. I said yes because I love Kris and I respect and admire her writing. What I didn’t expect, though, was that her book would move me so deeply and so profoundly.

Come, Lord Jesus is the book I needed during that hard Advent, when I couldn’t find a place for suffering amid all the brightness. Kris Camealy gets it. She understands that there’s a place for that tension, the existence of both darkness and light, and she doesn’t shy away from it; she doesn’t pretend the darkness isn’t there. Kris acknowledges the grief and sorrow, the pain and suffering, and she reminds us that Jesus is Immanuel, God with us – even in, especially in, the sometimes unbearable weight of waiting.

This is a beautiful book, friends. And please don’t get me wrong – it is full of light and joy and hope. But I also so appreciate that Come, Lord Jesus does not lean so much toward the jubilance of the season that it completely disregards the fact that grief, suffering, and darkness exist. For it is only in great darkness that we are truly able to see a great Light.

Come Lord Jesus, Advent devotional

I am delighted to be able to send one reader a copy of Kris Camealy’s beautiful book Come, Lord Jesus. Enter the drawing below for a chance to win (email readers: click here and scroll down to the bottom of the post to enter the drawing).

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Why We So Badly Need Sabbath Rest {and a book giveaway!}

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dam-walk

Rest typically comes last for me. Rest comes after the chores are done and the errands are run. Rest comes after every item on my to-do is checked off. I rest once my obligations and responsibilities are accomplished.

This approach to rest, however, is not God’s way. It’s not his way for himself, and it’s not the way he desires for us. Sure, God rested on the seventh day, after he’d created light and oceans, the stars in the sky and the land beneath our feet. But the fact is, God took that day of rest in the middle of his work. God is still working. He is still creating. He took a day of rest after six days of work, and then, he took up his work again.

Somewhere along the line, I forgot about this rhythm. I forgot that God desires that our work be punctuated with rest, even when our work is not finished.

Last week I picked up Shelly Miller’s new book Rhythms of Rest: Finding the Spirit of Sabbath in a Busy World. I’d already read her book this past summer, when I received an advance copy in order to write an endorsement. I enjoyed Rhythms of Rest immensely the first time I read it, but truth be told, the reason I picked it up again last week was that I knew I was going to write this blog post to go along with a giveaway, and I wanted to refresh my memory.

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I didn’t expect to read Rhythms of Rest cover-to-cover again. I didn’t expect it to impact me so deeply. I didn’t expect it to change my weekend…and my life.

Here’s the truth: I was all in on Sabbath rest a couple of years ago. I believed in it and was committed to it. But somehow, as weeks passed into months and months passed into years, I chipped away at the edges of my Sabbath practice until finally, there was nothing left. Without even being aware of it, my Sundays became another day of chores, errands, social media and catching up on email.

These past few months, I’ve come to understand in a new and deeper way that what God desires most is relationship with us. He doesn’t care nearly as much about what we do and what we accomplish as he does about who we are, and, more specifically, about who we are in relationship with him. God wants us to know him; it’s really as simple as that.

What I’ve come to understand – and what Shelly’s book reiterated for me — is that in order to know God in the way he desires, we need to make space and time for him. And in order to make space and time for him, we have to quiet ourselves. We have to cease our constant busyness, our constant doing and accomplishing.

Practicing Sabbath rest makes time and space for us to be in relationship with God.

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Shelly puts it like this:

“How much of our faith journey is firsthand experience and not just what we know about him? Information helps us know about God, but Sabbath allows us to encounter him.”

Sabbath allows us to encounter God.

This past Sunday I intentionally practiced Sabbath rest for first time in a long, long time. I sat with my son Noah on the back patio and talked as we ate lunch. I leisurely walked the dog around a nearby lake and admired the changing leaves and the golden sunlight. I rested in my lounge chair on my back patio, Rhythms of Rest open in my lap. I kept my computer closed and my phone on my nightstand. I didn’t do a single dish for the day until 8:30 p.m.

And you know what? It was the best day I’ve had in a long, long time. It wasn’t special in any extraordinary way. But it was beautiful. It was replenishing and restful. It was Sabbath.

 

I am delighted to be able to give away TWO copies of Shelly Miller’s delightful book Rhythms of Rest. Enter the random drawing below for a chance to win {email readers: click here and scroll to the bottom of the post to enter the drawing}:

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