Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

grace

Weekend One Word: Witness

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I admit, as a writer, I don’t much love this verse. As a writer, I tend to put a lot of weight on words. And I hope that my words will make an impact on the spiritual lives of others. I want my words to bear witness.

But God’s got me thinking hard about this. I think Jesus is actually saying two important things here:

One: Our words — what we say about God — are not the most important thing.

And two, perhaps even more critical: our actions — what we do as the result of our faith — are not the most important thing either.

Which is a little unexpected, don’t you think? When I consider what makes a “good Christian” and what’s indicative of a “good Christian life,” I think of service: what am I doing to help others? What am I doing to live out my faith? And while I do believe service is an important element of faith, I also think it’s critical that we not miss what Jesus is really saying here.

This verse reminds me that a cleansed and grateful life is not something I do. It’s something I receive. A cleansed and grateful life is, in essence, grace, which is not something we earn or deserve, but something we receive and accept as a gift from God.

A cleansed and grateful life is a transformed life, and transformation is not something we initiate or even live out ourselves, but something that is initiated by God and received by us.

This doesn’t let us off the hook, of course. We are still called by God to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with him. But we would be wise to remember that our every act of mercy, justice, and humility has its roots in the transformed life that is first and foremost the gift of God’s grace.

God always does the doing. And in our grateful receiving, we bear witness to what he has done.

The Deathbed Conversation That Can Change Everything

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Why It's Never Too late to Return to God

Last year I received an email from my sister’s father-in-law, Gary, who told me his sister was dying. She’d been away from church for a long time, but as she neared the end of her life, she had expressed the desire to see a priest. The only problem was, she was afraid and ashamed. She’d made some big mistakes in her life, and now she feared it was too late. She was afraid she couldn’t possibly be forgiven.

Gary was planning to visit his sister, but he didn’t know what to say to her. “How do I convince her that it’s not too late?” he asked me in his email.

Gary’s question scared me. It felt too big, too important. His sister was literally on her deathbed, expressing regret for some of the choices she’d made in her life. She felt ashamed and hopeless, too afraid to confess to a priest. What could I possibly say that would make a difference?

I flipped through my Bible, hoping my eyes would land on the perfect verse. When that failed, I Googled, “What to say to a person on their deathbed,” but none of the search results seemed suitable for this particular situation.

And then I remembered the prodigal son.

The parable tells the story of the younger of two sons, who took his share of the family inheritance early, left home, and then squandered the money on reckless living. Desperate and destitute, the son finally decided to return home to beg his father’s forgiveness. During the long journey home the son rehearsed his confession.

However, when he finally arrived in his neighborhood, but before he made it even halfway up the driveway, his father ran out to greet him with a kiss and an embrace. The rebellious son had his prepared confession ready to go, but before he could utter even a single word, his father welcome him with open arms.

The son was not required to list his sins and make a proper repentance before being allowed back into the fold. Instead, he was instantly received with love, no strings attached. In fact, when the son finally did recite his prepared confession, his father didn’t even acknowledge it. Instead, he commanded his servant to put a ring on his son’s finger, dress him in the finest robe and shoes, and prepare the fattest calf for a welcome-home party.

His beloved son had returned. He had been lost and found, and in the end, that was all that mattered.

In my email to Gary, I urged him to remind his sister about the story of the prodigal son. “Better yet,” I told him, “read the parable aloud to her. The story itself says everything she needs to know about God.” I emphasized to Gary that the verbal confession was actually the least important part of the story. It was the son’s turning around, his return, that led to the father’s rejoicing.

Several months after I sent the email about the prodigal son to Gary, he told me he’d had the opportunity to talk with his sister, and that she had agreed to meet with a priest. “She was frail and scared to death,” Gary said, but she spoke with the priest for over an hour, and at the end of her confession, the priest anointed her and told her she was in a state of grace. Less than one week later, she died a peaceful death at home.

The truth is, none of us is any different from Gary’s sister; we are all prodigal sons and daughters. We make mistakes large and small; we carry regret, shame, and fear; we wonder how God could love us, flawed as we are.

It took Gary’s sister her entire life to return to her father. She made a lot of poor choices and a lot of mistakes along the way. But her past didn’t matter one iota to God. He patiently waited for her all that time; he never gave up on her. And when, in the very last days of her life, she finally turned back to him, he met her, accepted her, and received her with nothing but the deepest love and the most compassionate grace.

Being in relationship with us is God’s deepest joy and desire. That’s what matters most to him. He waits for us with arms wide open, and he rejoices when we fall into his loving embrace, found again.

Let’s Choose to Offer Peace

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Last week, as I was driving my son Rowan to soccer practice, I inched up behind a car that was making a left hand turn at the light. As the light turned yellow the car ahead of me turned left, and I followed, accelerating quickly. By the time I made the full turn, however, the light was red, and traffic in the opposite direction had to wait for me. I grimaced, knowing I had miscalculated.

It was a warm day. My window was rolled down, and as I made the turn, I saw a man in a pickup truck lean out his open window as he waited in the backed-up traffic. “What the hell is the matter with you?” he yelled, shaking his head in disgust. He was fuming, and I shrank from his angry glare as I drove past.

“Why is that man so mad at you?” Rowan asked.

I told my son the truth. “I did something wrong,” I admitted. “I ran the light when I should have waited my turn. That man is angry with me because he had to wait for me. And because he thinks I’m intentionally trying to take advantage of him.”

I’m not blaming the man in the pick-up truck. I made a mistake; I was wrong. And honestly, there have been plenty of times I’ve reacted the same way. I’ve snapped at people I didn’t know for their misjudgments. I’ve pointed out their mistakes. I’ve assumed others were intentionally trying to take advantage of me.

We do this, don’t we? Our default is to mistrust and to blame, to assume the rest of humanity is against us. We operate in self-protection mode, poised to retaliate against a world we’ve already concluded is bent on harming us.

But there is another way.

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On the third day after his crucifixion, the risen Jesus appeared to ten of his disciples. They were hiding, locked behind closed doors, afraid of meeting the same fate Jesus had. Suddenly Jesus materialized out of nowhere and greeted them. “Peace be with you,” he said, showing his disciples the nail wounds in his hands and the abrasions in his side.

Just three days before, Jesus’ most loyal followers had betrayed him. His closest friends had run in the opposite direction when Jesus was arrested; they had looked the other way when Jesus was mocked and beaten. Most (with the exception of John) abandoned him at the foot of the cross. And now, the first words out of Jesus’ mouth to the men who had wronged him so grievously were, “Peace be with you.”

Not, “Why did you leave me?” Not, “What is the matter with you?” Not, “How could you have betrayed me and left me to suffer and die like that?” But, “Peace be with you.”

In spite of their mistakes, Jesus didn’t condemn his disciples, but instead gave them the benefit of the doubt. He didn’t point out their failures. He didn’t require that his disciples first confess their wrongdoing or ask him for forgiveness before he offered his peace.

Jesus simply gave them grace, no questions asked.

You and I are offered the same choice countless times a day. We can choose to accuse and to assume the worst about those who slight us. We can point our fingers in blame and conclude that everyone is intentionally aiming to harm us.

Or we can do as Jesus did. We can offer others the benefit of the doubt, even when we’ve been wronged. We can choose, like Jesus, to offer grace, love, and peace.

This post also ran today in the Lincoln Journal Star. 

How to Forgive Yourself When You Have a Universal Meltdown

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I had a universal meltdown. I mean literally, a Universal meltdown.

Two weeks ago we spent spring break in Florida, with our first three days of the trip dedicated to visiting the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios in Orlando. I’ll tell you straight-up, theme parks are not in my wheelhouse. The crowds, the lines, the $29 hamburgers, the fact that despite my vat of hand sanitizer, chances are still good that I will succumb to the 21st-century version of Black Death as a result of the barrage of germs. And to say nothing of the expense! As I mentioned to my husband when we  clicked “Purchase” for the three-day park pass: “We could sponsor two and a half more Compassion kids for a year for this!” Not to put a big fat damper on the fun or anything.

That said, I was pretty psyched about the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. My boys LOVE Harry Potter. We’ve read all the books, and watched all the movies ad nauseum, and plus, I’d heard really good things about the theme park (red flag: sky-high expectations).

Which is why, on our first morning there, when Rowan announced, “I don’t think I’m going to ride any of the rides. I think I just want to walk around,” things began to fall apart. Not at first, mind you. Initially I tried, really I did, to be The Rational and Empathetic Parent. We talked about his fears. I suggested we scale back to the tamer amusement ride options and ease into the more dramatic experiences later. We rationalized and hypothesized and psychologized and psychoanalyzed. But no, Rowan would have none of it. In fact, he was quite specific about which rides he would not partake in: “the ones with the conveyor belts.”

In other words, pretty much every single amusement park ride ever known to mankind.

We had basically remortgaged our house and our favorite neighbor’s house in order to purchase tickets to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios, and my youngest child decided he preferred to “walk around” and “look at stuff,” and “maybe have some popcorn.”

People, can I just say, this is like visiting the Swiss Alps in order to drink hot chocolate in the chalet.

This is like flying from the United Emirates to the Mall of America to “window shop.”

This is like holding front-row Adele concert tickets in your hand and then deciding, “Eh, I’ll just watch one of her music videos on YouTube instead.”

Catch my drift?

Commence Universal Meltdown.

I’m making this sound funny, but believe me, it was not funny. Not Funny, in capital letters and boldface type. As Brad later described it, “We ride-shamed our kid.” There was whisper-yelling (mine). Threatening (mine). Bribing (mine). Guilting (mine). Sighing (mine). Eye-rolling (mine). Bitter retorts (mine). Shaming (mine). Pouting (mine). The Ice-Cold Shut-Down (mine). And crying (mine and Rowan’s).

In fact, at one point, as I sat on a stone wall next to Dudley Do-Right’s Ripsaw Falls water ride and cried behind my sunglasses, I actually thought to myself, “There are 15,638 mothers in this park right now, and I am the only one who is crying.”

Ultimately we salvaged the vacation. Life dramatically improved when we left Orlando and headed for the beach. And we did actually have a few good moments at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter (I captured all two of them and posted them to Instagram and Facebook, because, you know, even if we’re not having the time of our lives, it’s important that we at least look like we’re having the time of our lives, right?).

I apologized to Rowan. We made up. And as is always the case with Rowan, he was quick to forgive me and move on.

But here’s the clincher: I couldn’t forgive myself. I couldn’t move on.

A week after we’d returned from Florida, I was still inwardly berrating myself for my atrocious behavior. I prayed the exact same confession five nights in a row. “Please forgive me, Lord, for shaming my child and for being a terrible mother.” By the third night, I’m sure God was thinking, “Have we not sufficiently covered this yet?”

The thing is, God may have forgiven me the first time I confessed, but I didn’t believe it. I simply couldn’t believe my terrible-parent behavior was forgivable. I refused to trust the fact of grace.

I suspect I’m not the only one neck-deep in this struggle. I suspect I’m not the only one who has sinned and repented and yet still struggles to accept the real truth of God’s grace. In moments like these, grace simply seems too good to be true. In moments like these, grace seems possible for everyone else but ourselves.

Friends, let me remind you of what I’ve had to remind myself this past week (and Holy Week is a very good time for this reminder): Jesus Christ died for this very reason.

Think about that for a moment. A real person, a human being who is at the same time God, died a painful, humiliating, lonely death on a cross 2,000 years ago for this very reason: so that we would not have to continue to carry around our failures and our faults forever.

Jesus Christ died so that we could be free from the very weight I have insisted on clutching and carrying ever since we returned from Florida. He died so that we could be free.

Refusing to accept God’s grace, a grace that comes to us at the highest cost, defeats the whole point of Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice. Holding on to our guilt and our shame and our inability to forgive ourselves not only hurts ourselves, it also hurts God. Because Jesus died for this moment – this moment right here, the ugliest moment that feels impossibly broken, the moment that feels definitively unfixable.

When we insist on holding as tightly as we can to our guilt and shame, when we refuse to relinquish our sin and accept God’s grace, we deny the ultimate sacrifice God made for us. We deny his life. We deny his sacrifice. We deny his resurrection. We deny him.

I’m not going to lie. A big part of our spring break stunk like giant smelly deviled eggs, and it was almost entirely due to my own bad behavior. It hasn’t been easy to let that go, to forgive myself and hand every last bit of my guilt, shame and regret over to God. But that’s exactly what I am doing. I am handing it all over to him. I am allowing God to take it. And I am stepping fully and completely into his grace.

Why the More Things Change, the More They Really Don’t Stay the Same

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Soccer season has started up again, which means I’m back to walking Josie every Monday and Wednesday around the same loop that borders the practice fields. Last night as we walked, Josie sniffing, me tugging the leash impatiently, I thought about that age-old expression: the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I thought about it while Josie sniffed the trunk of the maple tree, the same tree I’d snapped with my phone camera last October, flaming leaves set against a sharp blue sky. Its branches are bare now, a barely discernible bud on the end of each twig, waiting for the right moment to unfurl. But I know by September it will begin to flame again.

I thought about it when I walked past the fields – the middle school football team running the same plays, the lacrosse players swatting the same netted sticks, the tennis courts full again, thwap of yellow balls against racquets, the playground the same buzzing hive of small sliding, swinging, jumping bodies.

Another season, another six months passed, and here we all are, back where we were. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Look closely, though.

The boys on the field are taller, leggier. I can tell because some of them need new shorts, knobby knees and pale thighs extending below too-short hems. I suspect I wasn’t the only mother who gasped, pulling her boy’s shorts from beneath piles of long sleeves and jeans, holding them up by the waistband, knowing even before he tried them on that they’d be too small.

When we arrived home from Florida on Saturday, the first thing we all noticed were the daffodils. The day we left they’d offered the barest hint of yellow wrapped tightly within tissue-paper skin. A mere seven days later, bright heads bobbed in full bloom along the picket fence, perky faces trumpeting their early arrival. Next to them, lined up like wedding boutonnieres along the curb, crocus flowered lilac, white and sunflower yellow. Even the hyacinth was prepared to push its purple head up between green stalks.

Everything was new in just seven days’ time.

I admired my neighbor Karna’s pussy willow later that evening and asked to cut a couple of the branches beaded with soft fur. “You better do it soon, though,” she warned. “They’re already turning to seed.” When I looked more closely, I saw that it was true. In a day or two every furry bud will be covered with soft pollen-laden spikes, waving like tiny anemone in the breeze.

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I worried aloud to Noah as we walked Josie through the neighborhood. The buds were unfurling too soon. Glancing up at the oak and maple trees, pointing at the delicate leaves decorating the lilac bush, I fretted:  “One cold snap and they’ll all be dead. It’s too early, too soon.”

“It’s okay,” Noah reassured me. Most trees have the ability to produce several rounds of buds in a single spring season, he explained, usually two or three cycles. The silver maple can produce up to six bud cycles, so if its early, tender leaves are harmed by frost, it will push out another round of buds, and, if necessary, another and another, until the timing and the circumstances are right for the leaves to flourish.

It seems to me there is a divine metaphor in those tenuous silver maple buds. They remind me a little bit of the grace God lavishes on us – the chance after chance we are offered to bud again and again. Like the silver maple, we are given the opportunity to be replenished and reborn, to try once more and then once more again, perhaps when timing and circumstances are right to be born anew.

Those silver maple buds remind me, too, that the old adage really isn’t true. Things do change, but they don’t ever stay exactly the same, even when it seems on the surface that they do.

The daffodils are blooming in the same spot as always, but they are much earlier this year. The boys are playing soccer on the same field, but they are taller. And although we can’t know for sure, the silver maple trees may have already budded once or twice this spring, and quite possibly are being offered yet another chance to bud again.