Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

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Gutsy Girls: The Ten Boom Sisters and How We All Need a Betsie

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You guys, I love, love, love this children’s series Amy Sullivan is writing for girls about Christian heroines. Her first book in the Gutsy Girls series was about China missionary Gladys Aylward, and she has recently released book two about sisters Corrie and Bestsie ten Boom. The illustrations are vibrant and exciting, the story is a-mazing, and Amy is so gifted at writing for the younger audience. If you have a young woman in your life, you must get her started on this series! Scroll down to enter the drawing for a free copy of Sisters: Corrie and Betsie Ten Boom [email subscribers: click here and scroll down to the bottom of the post to enter the drawing]. And stop by Amy’s blog to say hello – she is one of the most beautiful, spirited women you’ll have the privilege to meet.

 

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Post by Amy Sullivan

Two years ago, I found myself sitting in my car, bad top forty music blared, my hands clenched the steering wheel,  and my eyes fixated on a metal, jungle gym that sat in front of me.

Hanging out in my car proved somewhat problematic as twelve people were not-so patiently waiting for me to start a meeting, a meeting I was late for, a meeting for my job, a meeting which had nothing to do with me, but a meeting I needed to start.

If I trace my steps back and try to discover how I ended up in this paralyzed state of car sitting, the trail looks something like this: working a high stress job + making no time for God + having two close friends move away + creating no time for family + experiencing five deaths in three months + inability to sleep + hormones (um, ladies, let’s commit to talk more about how wonky our hormones make us as we age, shall we?).

This toxic mix of events left me feeling as if someone tossed a wet sleeping bag over my head. My world was dark and everything was wet, and I couldn’t see the sun.

That’s when one of my forever friends called. Forever friends have that intense something-is-not-quite-right radar.

Me: I have decided I will not get out of my car and go to work. Instead, I will sit here and listen to Katy Perry sing about a dark horse.

Forever Friend: Wrong. This is what you will do: take a deep breath, wipe your eyes, turn off the radio, and go to your meeting. This is what I will do: pray for you every day and every Tuesday, I will fast for you. I will do this until you see the sun.

As my friend’s words hit my ears, I actually wanted to turn off the radio and I did, and although, I didn’t want to go to my meeting, I wiped my face and I did. My world didn’t instantly turn brighter, but having someone pray for me when I lacked the strength to pray for myself helped.

We need people. We need the kind of people who steady us and see us through darkness.

We need people like Betsie ten Boom.

The Ten Boom Sisters

Do you know the Ten Boom sisters?

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During World War II, sisters, Betsie and Corrie ten Boom (along with their elderly father) risked their lives to help underground workers and Jews escape Nazi soldiers. Although the Ten Booms served people in a variety of ways, the sisters are known for hiding people behind a fake wall in Corrie’s bedroom.

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Man crawling into the Ten Booms’ hiding place

Many people know about the life of the Ten Booms because after Corrie was released from a concentration camp, she traveled the world sharing about God’s great love and forgiveness. What is often overlooked in the Ten Booms’ story is Betsie’s role.

See, it was Corrie’s sister, Betsie who prompted thanksgiving and praise in the darkest of times, and it was Betsie who prayed for Corrie when Corrie was unable to pray for herself. It was Betsie who held her sister up in a place full of evil, and it was Betsie who reminded Corrie though thousands were experiencing unimaginable pain, God was still present.

It was Betsie who made me thankful for forever friends who hold me up, and it was Betsie who reminded me I need to do the same for my friends too.

A Picture Book Series for Our Kids

I write picture books about strong Christian women who impacted the world, and I just released a book about the Ten Boom sisters.

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It’s my desire for our kids to know the heroes who came before them, heroes who risked their lives for others, heroes who were obedient to God, and heroes who prayed for the sun to shine again.

Sisters, Corrie and Betsie ten Boom are heroes who do just that (and much more!).

Your Turn: Do you know the Ten Boom sisters? Do you have a friend or a sister who prays you through dark circumstances? Are you that friend to others?

AmyHeadshotAmy L. Sullivan doesn’t always feel brave, but her picture book series, Gutsy Girls: Strong Christian Women Who Impacted the World allows her to comb through history and steal wisdom from the great women who came before her. Amy is host of Gutsy Girls Read, an online book club for anyone interested in discovering and discussing books written for girls ages toddler to teen. Connect with Amy on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.

Enter the drawing to win a copy of Gutsy Girls: Sisters Corrie and Betsie Ten Boom [Email subscribers, click here and scroll to the end of the post to enter the drawing]:

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Why We Talk about Race, Every day

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Cara Meredith is a new friend, and I am just so glad she said yes to a guest post here today. She’s living and writing about things I’ve been thinking a lot about lately – namely race in America and how to love our neighbors better, especially those who look or live differently than we do. I appreciate her fresh, honest voice so much, and am really excited to see where God leads her next.

 

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Post by Cara Meredith

Sometimes I take for granted where we live.

I take for granted that talking about race is a part of our everyday existence, the salt and pepper of our dinner table conversations. I take for granted that my neighbors – who are black and white, Latino and Asian, lesbian and gay and straight – occupy the same space we do and aren’t afraid to talk about what others sometimes feel is the elephant in the room.

As I type these words, though, I realize this isn’t always the case. It’s not this way in many parts of America, including where I grew up, and it may not be the case where you live, too.

But I don’t think it has to be this way.

In the mostly white, suburban town I was raised in, we celebrated diversity when our teachers made us attend the once a year, all school assembly. We didn’t think about what might be like to be different, just as we didn’t think issues of race had anything to do with us.

So we just avoided the topic altogether. Talking about race was impolite and uncomfortable. It wasn’t what we were supposed to be doing or saying.

But by not talking about race, we denied some children their very identities, the individual parts that made them who they were.

We denied them their stories.

“In the end,” Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

His words haunt me. How many times have I kept silent, because I didn’t know what question I should ask, because I felt talking about a certain subject made me uncomfortable?

I guess you could say I’m on a learning journey now.

After teaching high school English for four years, I worked in a diverse environment, as a youth ministry director. As I got to know these teenagers, I learned that denying a student their ethnic culture was to deny their very being. Asking questions became my mission: Who are you? Who’s your family? What makes you so gloriously spectacular, so uniquely you?

 While none of the questions implicitly asked about race, I found that race was almost always in the answers. And the more stories I heard, the more I wanted to know and hear and engage with the world around me.

By the time I met my husband – whose skin happens to be a beautiful shade of chocolate brown – I knew that I’d never be able to avoid the topic of race again.

We knew when children came along someday that they’d experience a whole new understanding of color, solely because of their mixed-raced identities. We also knew they’d come to understand race differently because of how their grandfather broke down barriers for all Americans during the Civil Rights Movement. But mostly, we knew they’d simply be loved for who they were. And isn’t that the hope of every parent, everywhere?

As for my family, we’ll continue to talk about race around the dinner table. But then we’ll stop. And pause. And thank the good Lord for who he’s created us to be on the inside.

And we’ll give thanks for every part of our story.

Cara MeredithCara Meredith is a writer and speaker from the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a member of the Redbud Writers Guild and co-host of Shalom in the City’s monthly book club podcast. She’s also currently writing her first book about her journey into learning to see color. She holds a Masters of Theology (Fuller Seminary), and can be found on her blog, Facebook and Twitter. She and her husband, James, try to dance nightly and live life to the fullest with their two young sons.

What Your Hard Feelings Tell You about God’s Truth

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Kaylee Page is a new Internet friend — someone who reached out recently to connect, and I’m so glad she did. She writes real, raw stories about loss, disappointment and navigating everyday faith, and I so appreciate her authenticity and honesty. Be sure to stop by to visit Kaylee at her blog, www.kayleepage.com.

 

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Written by Kaylee Page

He’s driving me crazy! My friend’s voice proclaimed over the phone as I pulled into a parking lot and brought the car to park right outside the front of a 7-Eleven.

I listened to my friend explain how her first-born little girl had been so easy because she would just play by herself, but her second born was a little bit needy and would just haaaaaang on her.

My first reaction was to laugh because I knew the feeling all too well.

It’s our basic human desire to have two things, I said to my friend — to be intricately connected BUT ALSO, completely and totally free.  I think, in some weird way, the fact that you get annoyed when he is climbing all over you is simply a truth that God made your body one hundred percent whole without another little being. Your little guy wants connection. You being annoyed is just one truth. The other truth is that you do love him and you do want connection. There are two truths sitting together in the same room. So maybe you just say: I see your annoyance. Thank you for telling me I DON’T NEED another human being to complete me. Thank you for that truth – now please go take a seat somewhere else while I lean in and hug and enjoy this little moment of physical touch with my son.

…

Kaylee, you always wear your heart on your sleeve, a high school teacher once told me when I was disappointed I didn’t make the cut for an upcoming competition. I felt embarrassed and ashamed of my heart as soon as she said the words. It was then I assumed feelings were something to hide and my heart was not to be shared with anyone.

And so, years later when I heard someone say, I’m trying to live a life led by faith and not feelings it sounded noble. Like maybe that was the “right way to live.” I felt a deeper nudge to hide even further; convinced that to honor God was to hide my voice and how I felt – to just follow the rules and do what I was told.

I believed feelings were a sign of weakness.

But slowly, God has invited me to see feelings differently.  The past few years my counselor, Doc, would always ask how I felt about whatever it was we were talking about, and he always used those feelings to help me better understand who I was and what I was wanting and desiring in my relationships.

Thing is, I was never scared of the happy feelings.

I was petrified of the not-so-happy feelings.

Feelings like grief, anger, fear, annoyance – they all were feelings I tried to push aside. I was convinced Christians were always supposed to be happy, always thankful even in the losing, never angry and never annoyed.

But grief  tells us we lost something that meant something to us.

Fear tells us that something we have means a lot and we don’t want to lose it.

Anger tells us we got hurt and the reason we feel hurt is because we value ourselves.

I started to see the feelings I had run from for so many years were actually a gift; that God gives us the not-so-happy feelings to reveal deeper truths.

What would happen if we started honoring our feelings, listening to them and letting them inform and guide us? What if instead of running or hiding from them we used them as a tool to help us lean into our relationships with deeper understanding and connection?

Kaylee PageKaylee Page is author of the children’s book, Pursey’s FPIES Surprise. She is a featured blogger at the International FPIES Association (I-FPIES), where she also sits on the advisory board. She was a guest blogger at Plywood People, and her essay “Stillness in the Shadow” can be found in It’s a Good Thing Children Are a Treasure: They’ve Broken All My Other Ones. 

Post-graduation, Kaylee spent 10.5 months in AmeriCorps aiding those affected by natural disasters at the Red Cross Greater Carolinas Chapter. Upon returning to the midwest she worked as Project Manager for C2 Media Productions producing curriculums for Zondervan Publishing. She later joined the team at Pomegranate Studios working on projects such as ArtPrize and 5×5 Night. She’s currently Project Manager at Start Garden, helping to build the start-up ecosystem in the Midwest region.

Stop by to visit Kaylee at www.kayleepage.com.

How to Find Rest When Your Life is Anything but Restful

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I know I’ve welcomed Shelly Miller as a guest here before, but I can’t help myself – she’s one of my favorite writers and favorite people. And can I tell you a secret? I’m reading an advance copy of her upcoming book, Rhythms of Rest: Finding the Spirit of Sabbath in a Busy World, and you are not going to want to miss this one, friends! {Pre-order your copy here!} It’s a delight to welcome Shelly to the blog today – be sure to visit her at her blog, Redemptions Beauty, for more of her fabulous writing and gorgeous photography.

 

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Text and photo by Shelly Miller

I’m lying in bed with the phone in my hand above my head, attempting to wake up by reading the BBC morning headlines. I scroll down to the features because the writer in me is always on the hunt for a good story, even when I’m sleepy. I click on The Teenagers Who Poison Themselves by Justin Parkinson. Why? I’m not sure, yet.

The more I read, I learn that self-poisoning is on the rise among young girls in the UK and Parkinson is attempting to answer the question, “What drives them to do it?”

“It’s like my brain has two bits: the happy bit and the bad bit,” says 18-year-old Jasmine. “The bad bit keeps pushing until it takes over. You feel like you’re losing control of yourself a little bit more and a little bit more. And then it happens.

“There’s something in my brain telling me to do it. It’s sort of like having a toddler who’s demanding things of you constantly. Eventually you just get so tired and the toddler is annoying you so much that you just give in.”

Jasmine’s words haunt me for hours.

This voice? It seems obvious who it is.

She’s describing the enemy of the soul; a repetitive accusatory voice on a mission to extinguish the flame God lights inside each one of us at birth. It is a voice that preys on weakness born in difficult circumstances, when darkness threatens peace and compromises the senses. A voice that whispers, “You are unlovable,” until we choose to believe it.

After I finish the article, I click over to the daily lectionary and I’m stunned by providence when I read these verses in Proverbs.

“Hear instruction and be wise, and do not neglect it. Blessed is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors. For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord,  but he who fails to find me injures himself; all who hate me love death.” (Proverbs 8:34-36)

It’s as if God is answering the journalist’s question with simple, straight-forward language. What drives people to injure themselves?  A failure to find God.

How do we find God? Hearing, listening, watching and waiting, declares the writer of Proverbs.

Most of those who self-poison say they do it because physical illness is easier to handle than enduring emotional pain. Revelation 14:10 describes continual upheaval and a lack of rest as the ultimate separation from God. Striving and a lack of rest in body, soul and mind ultimately results in a tormented life.

I turn the screen off, lay the phone on my stomach, close my eyes, think and pray for Jasmine.

I can read her story with grief and assume she has made God absent in her inner turmoil. I can see the situational sawdust clouding her perspective and miss the log stuck in my eye.

I often struggle to believe God loves me for who I am, not what I produce. I listen to the voices of experience instead of the Truth. I numb uncertainty with a glass of wine, scrolling through social media feeds, and binge watching “Downton Abbey.” What causes me to do it?

It’s not that any of these things are bad in and of themselves, it’s that I forget the truth that is foundational in claiming a restful heart.

He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. (Psalm 103: 10-12)

Leave God out and quickly forget His love believes, hopes, endures and conquers everything. Whatever we do to numb pain and cope outside of love becomes an empty counterfeit for resurrection.

A heart at rest is a heart that knows it is loved.

As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust. (Psalm 103: 13-14)

Could your busyness and unrest be the result of a subversive message about being unlovable? How does knowing you are loved change perspective about your circumstances today?

 

MillerFamilyLondon2015-49-1Shelly Miller is a veteran ministry leader and sought-after mentor on Sabbath-keeping. She leads the Sabbath Society, an online community of people who want to make rest a priority, and her writing has been featured in multiple national publications. Her first book, Rhythms of Rest: Finding the Spirit of Sabbath in a Busy World, will release with Bethany House Publishers in the fall of 2016 with a second launching in 2017 with Lion Hudson. Find more of Shelly’s writing on her blog, Redemptions Beauty, and connect on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram where she loves to share photos of the beautiful places she visits while living as a committed immigrant in London.

Sing Your Words {Thoughts on Overcoming Your Life’s Block}

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I read a version of this post in my Facebook feed a few weeks ago and immediately emailed the author, Amanda Hill, to ask if she would guest post here, because I thought we all needed to hear what she had to say. I’m glad she said yes. Amanda is one of the bravest, most beautiful (inside and out), funniest people I have ever had the privilege to meet. She’s positive, upbeat, empathetic, tough, and able to laugh at herself and pretty much whatever life throws at her. I love this girl.

 

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Written by Amanda Hill

I sat at lunch with a group of girlfriends.  Crazy beautiful girls who are all talented writers.  We went around the table, discussing our latest projects.  One girl in particular was stuck, because mean girls exist and online can be cruel.  Basically she was feeling trapped within her own impossible standards of being good enough.

We all fall victim to the shiny stupid happy.  Family portraits where everyone is wearing shades of blue.  New books written by people we know. We are envious and sad. But why? Why do we care so much about how we rank? Because other people are so damn funny when we are just sitting around in our pajamas.  How can they always be so wise or witty when we are not? We are just average, slumping around with our half-finished manuscripts writing articles in a gardener’s magazine. Going to work at the insurance company.  Brewing average coffee.  What losers we are; everyone will tisk-tisk at our averageness.

Now that that’s out of the way, you big fat joy-sucker weirdo, snap out of it.

Write for you. Sing for you. Dream your big crazy nutzo dreams for you. And then be bold about them, because they are beautiful, and unique, and creative. You made them, the words and the strokes on the canvas and the notes that hang in the air. They are yours! The way you string them together is a beautiful thing. I am so proud of you.  So extremely proud of you for doing it anyway, even if you don’t have a family portrait shrouded in sea foam or a book deal or a re-tweeted whatever.

And please don’t write with an internal scrub brush because your mother will balk at the F-bomb. If you feel you need to use strong language to make a point, use it. If you feel it cheapens your words, find other words. But speak the truth.  About your relationships.  About God.  About how your kids never eat the black beans even though they need protein and about how you cheated on your diet. Again.

If you want to say out loud that God failed you, and are curious how He’ll make it up to you, say it. God knows what you’re thinking anyway. Get those feelings out in whatever way makes sense. Speak honestly to the creator. Speak honestly to your neighbors.  We need such truth in a world cluttered with noise.

But whatever you do, please don’t try to write or sing or dance or talk like someone else because you admire their stuff, or hope to impress them, whoever the ethereal THEM is. And don’t hate on the other people on earth who are doing their best to bring about beauty. Encourage and inspire. Smile and support. Because your heart is more precious than silver, so make what comes out shine.

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So take those demons off your shoulder and put them under a basket, the ones who say you can’t and you won’t and you are a downright moronic idiot, to be addressed another day. Then let them starve to death under that basket, shriveling to dust. They don’t own you.

You own you. You wonderful, beautiful you. So wake up tomorrow with a fresh start, with a brain brimming with ideas, with hands ready to tap on the keys like Fred Astaire on a wood floor, with steady hands to draw strong stable lines. Bow your head in thanks for such gifts, such beauty, such forgiveness when we break. Because God sews together our broken parts.  And you can go to the Gap to buy a stupid blue sweater.

Sing with your words in whatever form, so that we may all make beautiful music together upon this empty page of life. Do the thing, because it’s worth doing.

Web-Amanda_Hill-9483-EditAmanda Hill is a writer, speaker, and attorney who lives in Austin, Texas, with her two children.  She blogs at http://www.hillpen.com/