Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

transformation

Navigating the New Landscape of You

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A few years ago I dramatically pruned the shrubbery in my backyard. For two days I went at it with the loppers, chopping off clumps of foliage, clipping dead twigs, sculpting and reshaping the remaining branches. When I was done, the landscape was transformed.

Noah, our resident Tree Lover, was not pleased – he disdainfully called me Paul Bunyan for weeks afterward – but I loved it. I could see more of the sky and the neighbor’s house across the street. Light streamed into spots that had previously been dank and dark. Though it was still the same size it had always been, the backyard suddenly felt much more spacious – open, airy and inviting.

Still, for about a week after the dramatic pruning, every time I glanced out the sunroom windows into the backyard, I did a double take. The landscape was so different, so unfamiliar – I hardly recognized it. Even though I loved the openness and was glad I’d pruned the shrubbery, my new backyard took some getting used to; I had to reacquaint myself with it.

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A few weeks ago, my friend Kimberly read my blog post about whitewashing the reality of poverty and Voxed me with an idea. It was a good, strong piece, she said, and she suggested I might want to rework it a bit and pitch it to Christianity Today. It was a timely topic, she noted – something she thought would resonate with a broader audience.

I immediately set to work researching other online articles on global poverty and mission work, reviewing Christianity Today’s submissions guidelines and considering how I would reshape the post into an article that might resonate with CT’s audience.

In the middle of that process, though, I became aware of the slightest bit of a pit in my stomach, which in turn prompted me to ask myself a question: Do I actually want to revise this blog post and pitch it as an article to Christianity Today? Do I want to do this work?

At first, in spite of the stomach pit (note to future self: the pit tells the truth!), the answer was not readily apparent, and so I held out the question – Do I want to do this work? – and examined it further. I turned the question around and around and gave myself the space for my true desire to make itself known. I allowed myself to figure out how I actually felt about pursuing this opportunity.

In the end, I realized I did not want to revise my blog post into an article to pitch to Christianity Today. I realized it was, in fact, the very last thing I wanted to do.

Turns out, striving is still my default mode. After a lifetime of pushing to make progress and striving for measurable results, it’s easy, almost mindless, for me to fall into my old habits and rhythms. Striving is familiar terrain for me (and just to be clear: striving to achieve a goal or make progress is not inherently a bad thing; in fact, it can be a very good, very positive thing. But it’s not the thing I want to do right now). On the other hand, this new place I’m now navigating – this place of writing solely for creative pleasure, of writing toward no particular outcome – is still largely unknown and unfamiliar, which makes it equal parts exhilarating and unnerving.

I am discovering that it takes intentionality to learn to live and thrive in a new landscape. I’m learning to slow down rather than steamroll ahead, to look inward at my own needs and desires rather than capitulate to what I think I should do or what I assume is expected of me. I’m learning to ask myself probing questions and then allow the time and space to listen for and hear the answers that come from my soul.

I’ve done some dramatic pruning in my life over these past several months, and while it’s been a fruitful, space-making, life-giving process, and I generally like the results, it’s also taken some getting used to. I am, in many ways, getting reacquainted with myself. I am still navigating this new landscape of me.

 

What I’ve Learned in the Six Months Since I Left Publishing

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A friend recently asked me what I’d wished I’d known before I published my first book. She may have been asking what I’d wished I’d known about the industry or the culture of publishing, but my answer went in a different direction. “I wish I’d known how deep my desire for approval and recognition was,” I told her. “I wish I’d known myself well enough to recognize that a career in publishing wouldn’t be the very best fit for me, for who I am.”

I knew I was Type A. I knew I was an overachiever with a deep desire to be successful. But I didn’t know how deep my desire was to be validated, recognized and known.

Turns out I had to learn that the hard way.

I would have much rather learned about my shadow side from a distance – who wouldn’t, right? But it doesn’t often work that way. We learn who we are not by holding ourselves – our good parts and our flawed parts – at arm’s length, but through real, lived experience, which more often than not includes struggle, pain, tumult, disappointment and failure.

My shadow side was only fully revealed when I was deep into my vocation as a publishing writer. And I was only able to recognize, acknowledge and ultimately confront this part of myself after it had fully emerged – and then only after I realized I couldn’t subdue it or overcome it through my own best efforts.

They say of all the nine Enneagram types, Enneagram Threes know themselves the least well. Apparently this is because we are so busy performing and producing, so busy trying to live up to who we think others think we are, or who we think we should be, we don’t acknowledge or even recognize who, in fact, we really are.

I can’t speak for other Enneagram Threes, but I can say, for myself, this assessment is spot on. When I page through the journal entries I wrote as I was moving toward my decision to step away from publishing, I see the same words repeated again and again. “Fragmented.” “Disintegrated.” “Fractured.”

It’s obvious to me now. Of course I felt fragmented. Of course I felt disintegrated and fractured. I’d spent so many years trying to be someone other than myself, I’d segmented myself into a million disparate pieces.

I realize this all sounds overly dramatic and more than a little psycho-babbly, but here’s the long and short of it; here’s what I have learned that I hope might be relevant for you too:

When we know ourselves, we are able to recognize and move toward the environments in which we thrive. And, at the same time, when we know ourselves, we are able to recognize and move away from the environments in which we fail to thrive.

Some of us – maybe most of us – will become better at knowing ourselves through trial and error. Some of us will learn more quickly than others where and how we thrive and where and how we fail to thrive.

Some of us will be stubborn. We will try to make ourselves fit into a space or a place that is not right. We will try to change ourselves to fit our circumstances. Ultimately we will fail at this. And ultimately, in failing, we will come closer to knowing our true selves.

Turns out, publishing was too big an arena for me. The public nature of the publishing industry fed my voracious shadow side like gasoline feeds a fire. The more I looked to the publishing world for approval and recognition and the more I pushed myself to be successful and admired and known, the more my ego demanded and the more distant I became from my true self, from the person God created me to be.

My shadow side has not vanished simply because I’ve stepped out of the publishing arena. My desires for validation, recognition and success are still there. The difference is, these desires are not being fueled in the same way and to the same degree. I’m still a Type A overachiever, and this is not inherently a flaw. I still strive to be successful in my work as a writer for The Salvation Army, and I still enjoy the validation I receive from my boss or my colleagues for work well-done. But because my work is not public in the same way, and the arena in which I am working is much, much smaller, my ego stays in check.

Over these last six months I’ve come to realize that there’s nothing I could have done that would have better equipped me to succeed as a published author while at the same time keeping my self whole and intact. I didn’t “do it wrong.” Nor is the publishing industry “bad.” Like a couple with irreconcilable differences, we – the publishing world and I – were simply not good together.

Still, I have no regrets. I haven’t for a moment regretted my decision to leave publishing, nor do I regret the fact that I entered in. The fact is, as Parker Palmer so astutely says, “There are no shortcuts to wholeness.” I learned a lot about myself through the ups and downs of that journey. I am closer to knowing who I am. And still I am learning, learning to recognize and embrace the whole of me – shadows and light, flaws and gifts. I am learning where I fit best – where I thrive and where I don’t. I am learning to live as my best self, the person God created me to be.

This is the Time to Release

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I wrote a book about letting go. And now, here I am, on the cusp of that book’s release, and I feel it: the subtle but sure tightening of my grip.

Turns out, releasing a book about letting go smack in the middle of the busiest time of the year and amid the deafening drumbeat of the holiday season is truly a lesson in letting go — a lesson I am living out minute-by-minute in real time.

A lesson, if I’m honest, I am not living out well.

The outcome of this book is largely out of my control. I know this. This is the time to release… not only the book itself, but also my expectations of what might be.

And yet, as soon as I step into the spaciousness in which God has so generously invited me, I find myself turning back toward myself, redoubling my own efforts, trying futilely to control circumstances, manage outcomes, grip ever more tightly.

Long before the sun glints its first rays over the frozen horizon each morning, I sit in the same spot on the sofa, the same soft blanket pulled up to my chin, the same mug in my hands, and I read from the first word to the last in Chapter 8 of Paul’s letter to the Romans.

I’ve read these same words, this same chapter, for ten consecutive mornings.

I don’t know why I keep rereading this same chapter. Honestly this is quite unlike me. I don’t typically linger in Scripture. I always keep moving. And yet, God has stilled me in these pages.

Every day the same chapter, every day the same words.

“Obsession with self is a dead-end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life.” (Romans 8: 5-8).

Earlier this week I stood in the cold on the edge of the golf course and watched a young fox play. He was alone in the stillness of the late afternoon, his russet coat catching the sun’s last warmth as he picked up a honey locust seed pod in his teeth, tossed his head back and flung the seed pod into the air, leaping and then pouncing on it when it landed in the snow. He was beautiful — sleek, agile, exuberant — and watching him doing his fox thing, undoubtedly practicing his predatory skills in a field on a winter afternoon, was mesmerizing, pure magic.

It was such a simple thing, but in that instant, watching that fox cavort in the waning sunlight, time slowed. Everything but that very moment fell away as the Spirit moved, beckoning.

“You don’t owe your old do-it-all-yourself life anything,” Paul reminds us. “There’s nothing in it for you. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. The Spirit beckons.” (Romans 8:12-14)

Paul’s not talking about releasing a book, of course. And yet, I hear God, through his apostle, speaking to me, to all of us, in this place, in this moment, in our particular circumstances.

God is calling us to release whatever it is we are grasping at so desperately, whatever it is we have taken upon ourselves to try to control, manage and manipulate.

There’s nothing there for us in the do-it-all-ourselves life. There’s nothing there for us in the clutching. There’s nothing really there to hold onto.

I listen to these words from Paul every morning before the sun rises. I read and reread them, and slowly they begin to move from my mind to my soul.

The Spirit beckons. He moves across the surface of each day, leading us into the open, spacious place where a young fox plays.

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 True You: Letting Go of Your False Self to Uncover the Person God Created, releases on New Year’s Day – a  particularly apt day for a book about the journey toward beginning to know who you are.

If you pre-order before January 1, I have some lovely free gifts for you:

– a companion journal

– a guided audio meditation

– and a series of beautifully designed Scripture cards.

You can find out about where to pre-order True You and how to receive the free gifts over HERE. 

Forget the Resolutions…Here’s the One New Year’s Question That Can Change Everything

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I hesitate to admit this out loud, especially because 2016 was fraught with so much tension, destruction, and heartache for so many, but 2016 was a good year for me. One of my best ever, in fact.

I say this not because of any achievements, awards, amazing book sales, or fabulous professional opportunities — none of those things happened, actually. I don’t call 2016 good because of any external accomplishments and not because of any extrinsic goals that were pursued and met, but simply because during those 365 days I was transformed deeply and wholly from the inside out.

Going into 2016, I didn’t have the faintest inkling this would happen. But coming out on the other side, I know it’s true. I am a new person on this, the fourth day of January, 2017, a different person than I was a year ago today.

I have an idea of who I am and where I am going, perhaps for the first time in my life. I have a confidence, a self-assuredness I didn’t know was inside me. And most of all, I have a peace in me I didn’t even know was possible.

This newness, this new life, is changing the way I do and think about everything.

I’ve always been a big NewYear’s resolution maker. If you’ve been reading here for a while, you might remember a post or two about that. Over the years I’ve resolved to read the Bible more, limit computer time in the evenings, go to bed earlier, get up earlier, run more regularly, be on social media less, improve my microbiome health (don’t ask) and start flossing. I’ve kept some of those resolutions (for a while at least); others I dropped before I even got started (ahem, flossing).

This year, though, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I didn’t make any hard and fast New Year’s resolutions. Instead, I thought a little bit about who I am and where I think, God willing, I’m going, and I began to put some pieces into place that might help move those plans forward.

This year, I’m less about the letter of the law and more about a gentle easing, less about forcing a stringent rubric on myself, and more about embracing the softer rhythm and pace I know is best for me.

The One New Year's Question that Will Change Everything

Don’t get me wrong. My Type A, #3-on-the-Enneagram self still loves resolutions. But for now, for this time and place, I also know they aren’t for me in 2017.

“Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that,” Paul advised the Galatians. “Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.” (6:4-5, The Message)

Who are you?

Knowing the answer to that small but powerful question is the key, the foundation, the stepping stone to everything else in Paul’s statement and beyond. If you don’t know who you yet are, you must begin there, because no number of well-crafted resolutions can determine that quintessential answer for you.

You must begin at that daunting and perhaps even frightening place —  Who am I? — and together with God uncover the answer.

I think that’s what I did in 2016…or at least what I started to do. I stepped into that small, powerful, sometimes scary question — Who am I? — and began to uncover the answer.

And it’s changed everything.

I’m not saying I have it all figured out. I suspect this will be a lifelong journey. I suspect I’ve really only just begun. But I will say with confidence that in 2016, without even really intending to (at least initially), I made a careful exploration of who I am and the work I have been given. And now, today, as I glance backward and look ahead, I am beginning to see the fruits of that deep soul work. These fruits may not ever be evident to anyone outside my most immediate circle of close friends and loved ones, but they are there nonetheless.

So that’s my advice for you, friends, as we step with hope and optimism into this new year. Make a careful exploration of who you are. Take a deep breath and ask the hard question — Who am I? Keep asking it, again and again. Pause, listen, and ask again, until you begin to hear the faintest whisper rising up from deep within your soul.

And then begin to walk with God into the answer.

Why It’s Taken 46 Years for Me to Say No

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My editor emailed me recently. He had a great opportunity that he’d love for me to consider, he said. I was excited when I read his email, and when I clicked on the link he included for details, my pulse quickened. It looked good, this opportunity. Really good.

Without getting into all the nitty gritty, the opportunity had to do with book marketing, strategy and branding. The expert was looking for a handful of candidates with whom to beta-test a new service. For free.

Scrolling further, I saw that this particular marketer had worked with a number of very successful Christian authors – people I respect and whose books I regularly read and have sitting here right on my shelves. It all looked too good to be true.

And in fact, it was too good to true. For me anyway.

You see, I noticed something as I was reading through the website. Along with my quickening pulse, I felt a sinking sensation begin to gnaw deep in my gut. It was what I refer to as The Pit. I wasn’t sure exactly why The Pit had yawned open in the bottom of my stomach, but I knew enough to pay attention to it.

I clicked off the site. I didn’t do anything else that day. I didn’t email my editor. I didn’t return again to the website, or re-read my editor’s email or the marketer’s pitch. I simply put it all aside for 24 hours. I let it rest.

The next morning I started from scratch. I re-read my editor’s kind and generous email. I re-read the marketer’s pitch. I returned to the website and re-read the content. I looked closely at the list of best-selling author clients. I read every single word, slowly and carefully.

And I felt it again: the undeniable presence of The Pit in the bottom of my gut.

The Pit was telling me No.

I’ve come to think of The Pit as the way the Holy Spirit most often makes his presence known to me. Maybe you get sweet, gentle nudges from your Holy Spirit. Mine punches me hard in the gut. I think He knows what it’s going to take to get through to me.

I didn’t want to say no to this invitation for a whole variety of reasons. First, I didn’t want to disappoint my editor, who had so graciously selected me to benefit from this opportunity. I also didn’t want him to think I am a big fat slacker. This is the editor of my next book, after all, the one that releases in just a few short months. The last thing I wanted him to think was that I am unwilling to work hard to help make that book be as successful as it can be.

I also didn’t want to say no because saying no feels like quitting to me. It feels like giving up. It feels lame and lazy and timid and weak. Saying no is antithetical to my Type A, people-pleaser, “Make It Happen” personality. I never say no.

And finally, and this was the biggest hurdle, I didn’t want to say no because I was afraid of missing out. Because the truth is, I do want to be successful. I do want to be known. And in the back of my mind, I couldn’t help but wonder “What if?”

What if this is IT? What if this is The Thing – the thing that makes the difference, the thing I’ve been waiting for, the tipping point, the cracked open door?  The thing that propels me from an unknown, barely-making-a-part-time-living writer to A Successful Author.

What if?

pathinwoods

Storm Clouds

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This past summer has been transformational for me. I’ve had a lot of time to think in a very deep way about who I am. I’ve glimpsed a truer identity for myself than the one I have fashioned for the last 46 years. I’ve felt my soul come alive in a way I have never before experienced. And I believe it’s because I have glimpsed who God is, who I am in relation to him, and who he has created me to be.

My deepest desire is to hold on to this new self, this new identity, that’s been revealed. And that desire has made me more aware than ever of dangerous ground, of the pitfalls that could trip me up and send me hurtling down the path of soul- and self-destruction.

The truth is, I had to say no because I know, once I go down that road, I won’t be able to stop my desire for success, my pursuit of more, from taking hold.

I don’t have the inner fortitude to resist the temptation. Once I give in, the drive simply takes over. Because I am driven to achieve, and because (this is hard to admit) I have so often defined my self-worth based on my achievement and success (or lack thereof), it doesn’t take much for me to fall back into my old ways of more, more, more; push, push, push; compare, compare, compare; hustle, hustle, hustle. I can go headlong into the hungry pursuit of “the next big thing” quicker than you can blink.

And I know, from a lifetime of experience, that when I do that, I lose some of my soul in the process. I lose some of my whole self.

The beautiful, pure truth I discovered this summer is simply too precious to lose. And so I said no to a great, possibly career-enhancing opportunity.  I said no to the “What if?” I said no to what might have been The Thing.

I said no to save my soul.