• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • About
  • My Books
    • True You
    • Katharina and Martin Luther
    • 50 Women Every Christian Should Know
    • Spiritual Misfit
  • Blog
  • On My Bookshelves
  • Contact
  • Privacy & Disclosure Policy

Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

refugees

When You Forget You’re Not the Author of the Story

December 20, 2016 By Michelle

“Well that went one hundred percent NOT like I thought it would.”

These are the words I said to Brad as we pulled out of the airport parking lot last Thursday. We had just met the Yazidi family whose arrival we’d been preparing for and anticipating over the last six weeks. During that time we’d acquired hundreds of donated items; filled our garage, basement, and living room with pots and pans, bedding, kitchen utensils, furniture, clothes, and food; shopped for them with the monetary donations we’d received; and thought about and prayed for this family of six daily.

Brad had even researched Yazidi recipes so we would know the culturally appropriate foods to purchase. I had exchanged dozens of emails and texts with the friends and strangers who were helping to furnish the apartment. We’d checked and rechecked our Google doc, worried we’d forgotten something important, fretted over whether the kids needed another set of pajamas.

The night before our family’s arrival I tossed and turned in bed, trying to imagine what it would be like to finally meet them. The day of their arrival, I was so nervous/excited, I couldn’t work. I paced around the house and checked Facebook 4,900 times instead.

Turns out, the much-anticipated meeting was, in a word, anti-climatic. [And let me stop right here and stay this had nothing to do with the family or the organization responsible for their arrival; it was all me and my own baggage. Read on.]

Lincoln is home to a close-knit and vibrant Yazidi community – the largest in the nation, in fact. This is good. It means our family has a ready-made support network – people who have been in America for a while now and will help our family make the transition. In fact, about 20 Yazidis were at the airport to welcome our family and another who arrived on the same plane. It was clear, when they walked into the terminal, that our family knew a lot of the people who had shown up at the airport to welcome them.

At the United gate, Brad and I were briefly introduced to Azzat, the dad, and I quickly snapped a photo of the family. Then, in a matter of minutes and in a jumble of confusion and chaos, both refugee families and all the Yazidi people who had arrived to welcome them disappeared, presumably to have a warm meal together and connect after such a long and painful separation.

I was quiet for a few minutes as Brad and I drove from the airport to our house, where we would meet up with the rest of our sponsorship team and begin the process of moving and setting up our family’s apartment. During the short drive I wrestled with feelings of disappointment and disillusionment.

“This is a surprise to me,” I said to Brad, laughing sheepishly. “I never knew I had a hero complex.”

The truth is, I had written the whole story before our family had even stepped foot in America. I had it all worked out in my own mind: the poignant meeting at the airport; the excitement of the kids when they saw their bedrooms, their new backpacks, the cute stuffed animals propped just so on brand-new sheets; the friendship we would forge…dinners together, laughter, conversation, pass the lamb stew!

I had written a beautiful story in my head, a perfect story, really – a fairy tale, complete with a knight(ess) in shining armor and the quintessential happy ending.

The problem was, I had forgotten one critical detail:

I’m not the author of this story. In fact, I’m not even a main character.

God is the author of this story, and long before I even knew a single detail about the Yazidi people, long before “sponsorship” and “refugee” and “resettlement” were part of my daily vocabulary, long before I was even born, in fact, he had already begun to write it.

He knew how this family of six would flee persecution in Iraq; he knew that they would land in Lincoln, Nebraska; he knew what my role would be in their lives. He had plans for each one of us in this story, plans for hope and a future. 

The problem was, my plans didn’t match his. The truth is, they rarely do.

I had forgotten, again, that God is the Planner and the Author of all good stories. I had forgotten that he had already written this story and had already written a storyline for me – a storyline that was much different, and honestly, a lot less limelighty, from the one I’d written for myself.

An hour after Brad and I left the airport, our friend Nathan backed a moving truck into our driveway. Our friends showed up, and together we all emptied the garage, basement and living room. Then we all drove to Kristen’s house to pack more into the truck, and then to Deidra’s house to carry her sofa down her front steps, up the ramp, and into the back of the truck. Then Nathan drove the truck across town to the apartment, where we all unloaded it box by box by box.

We spread sheets and comforters over mattresses; assembled bunk beds and end tables; screwed lightbulbs into lamps; stocked the fridge, pantry, cabinets and drawers; arranged fruit in a bowl; set placemats on the kitchen table; stacked extra blankets in the linen closet; laid toothbrushes on the bathroom counter, propped stuffed animals just so on freshly made beds.

When we shut off the lights and closed the door behind us four hours later that night, the apartment was a home.

This was the role God had for me in his story – to welcome this refugee family to America not by being their hero or savior or even their friend (God himself has all that covered), but to slip in like an elf behind the scenes on a cold winter night and make them a home — a home that would say, “Welcome.” A home that would say, “We’re glad you’re here.”

God writes the most beautiful stories. Our job is to help bring those stories to fruition – to be his hands and feet and heart on the ground. He is the Author, we are the “characters,” and sometimes, our role, our storyline, is small, hardly noticeable, a bit part. But that doesn’t make the story less perfect or less beautiful.

I’m over my initial disappointment, have my head back on straight, and have handed the pen back to its rightful Owner. No one but God himself knows the rest of this story. Perhaps this is merely the first chapter. Or maybe, when Brad and I left the keys on the kitchen table and closed the door behind us last Friday morning after putting the last touches on the apartment, we turned the final page.

Regardless of whether it’s the beginning or the end of our role in this particular story, I’m really grateful God wrote a part in it for me. Helping to create a home for a family I might not ever even know is one of the best experiences I’ve ever had.

Filed Under: refugees Tagged With: #WeWelcomeRefugees, Yazidi refugees

The Blessing is Outside Your Comfort Zone

December 7, 2016 By Michelle

This is my living room right now:

#WeWelcomeRefugees

This is my basement:

#WeWelcomeRefugees

It’s not pretty. In fact, it’s messy, cluttered and driving me a little bit crazy. And I haven’t even shown you the garage, which is full from front to back with used furniture.

For the past few weeks my family and a small group of our friends have been collecting furniture and household items in order to set up an apartment for a Yazidi family of six who will be arriving as refugees from Iraq on December 14.

The parents and their four young children will likely land in America with nothing more than a couple of backpacks, and although Lincoln has a large Yazidi community, this family knows only one person here, a former co-worker. We know virtually nothing about this mom and dad and their four kids, except their names, their ages, and the fact that the husband speaks a little English.

Our case coordinator Vanja told Brad and me a little bit about the Yazidi people — how warm they are, how they never shake hands but always embrace instead (which made me laugh, as Brad, the stoic Minnesotan Nord, and me, the reserved New Englander, are perhaps two of the least huggy people in the universe).

“You will be their window, their doorway into this new life,” Vanja told us, “but your lives are about to be forever changed too.”

Vanya’s statement reminded me of something I read by Henri Nouwen recently:

“The discipline of community makes us persons; that is, people who are sounding through to each other (the Latin word personare means ‘sounding through’) a truth, a beauty, and a love which is greater, fuller, and richer than we ourselves can grasp. In true community we are windows constantly offering each other new views on the mystery of God’s presence in our lives.”

I like that. It’s beautiful and lovely. On the other hand, let me be straight-up honest with you: Vanja’s statement made me a little nervous.

Being someone’s “window and doorway into this new life” sounds like a lot of responsiblity. Honestly, I don’t know if I’m up for it. I don’t know what this relationship might look like. I don’t know how to navigate it. In the same way clutter and untidiness breathe unrest into my heart and soul, scenarios like these, in which I can’t predict or control the outcome, make me uneasy too. I don’t particularly enjoy walking into new and unfamiliar situations. I don’t like social awkwardness (who does, right?). I don’t like not knowing what to say, or wondering if I’ve said the wrong thing.

This is all pretty far beyond the tidy boundaries of my nice, neat, ordinary life.

A couple of months ago I was listening to On Being during my morning run, and the woman being interviewed said something that stuck with me. She was talking about running – specifically about how sometimes, when you push yourself past your comfort zone, past the point you think you are physically able to go, you reap unexpected rewards.

“The blessing,” she said, “is outside of your comfort zone.” 

I’ve been thinking about that phrase a lot lately as we prepare for the arrival of our Yazidi family a week from today. I’ve already experienced myriad blessings – in the strangers who, seeing my request for donations on Facebook, have mailed checks to pay for groceries; in the friends and acquaintances who have texted, messaged, and called to say they have linens, a blender, a television, a dresser, snow boots, backpacks, pots and pans, beds; in the generosity of strangers and neighbors alike. It’s been beautiful, really, to see our community rally in support of people they don’t know, people who are “different,” people they will likely never meet.

I don’t know how this will all turn out. There are a lot of unknowns here, and the unknowns — that which is outside my comfort zone – are intimidating. But in the midst of all I don’t know, I am also confident that there will be blessings on the other side.

Want to do something to help the refugee crisis, but don’t know where to start? If you are in Lincoln, contact Lutheran Family Services of Nebraska – they help refugees resettle, and you can get involved in lots of different ways. Or, consider learning more about the crisis and ways you can help here at the We Welcome Refugees website.

Filed Under: refugees Tagged With: #WeWelcomeRefugees, Yazidi refugees

« Previous Page

Primary Sidebar

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a Triple Type A, “make it happen” (my dad’s favorite mantra) striver and achiever (I’m a 3 on the Enneagram, which tells you everything you need to know), but these days my striving looks more like sitting in silence on a park bench, my dog at my feet, as I slowly learn to let go of the false selves that have formed my identity for decades and lean toward uncovering who God created me to be.

Read Full Bio

Available Now — My New Book!

Blog Post Archives

Footer

Copyright © 2023 Michelle DeRusha · Site by The Willingham Enterprise· Log in