Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

trust

When God Says Stay

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Column

Not long ago I had dinner with two friends who are both writers and bloggers. We had a great time together that night, chatting and laughing over our soup and salad and bread sticks. At the same time, though, the whole evening we were together I kept feeling an incessant twinge. I felt it in my gut, in the pit of my stomach – a hollowness, an emptiness. I found myself envying them – their readership and platform, which is larger than mine; the number of speaking engagements they are invited to, which is more than I have; the connections they have with other “big-name” authors, which I covet.

Later that night, tucked into the corner of my couch, I wrestled with competing feelings of emptiness and fullness. On one hand I was filled with the nourishing goodness of companionship and camaraderie. On the other hand, I felt depleted by this sense of perpetual needing, longing and discontent. Truth be told, I was more than a little disgusted with myself. These feelings of emptiness and not-enoughness are not new to me. I’ve been fighting this battle for a long time.

A few days later, I read this in Genesis:

“The Lord said to Issac, ‘Do not go down to Egypt. Live in the land where I tell you to live. Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and I will bless you.”

I felt those words were meant for me. I felt those words were speaking to that place of yearning, that place of not enough. Stay here, right where I have you, I heard God saying. Be grateful for what I have already given you, I heard him say. Live in this land, and I will be with you. 

I knew those words were for me, but I didn’t like them. Frustrated with the fact that I’d felt stuck in the same land for a good long time, I was eager to move on to what I thought were bigger and better things. I was ready to do more with the gifts and tools God has given me. But he said no. God said stay. 

Last week I wrote a post about an issue I am passionate about. I wrote it, I edited it, I worked and reworked it, and then I clicked “publish,” just as I’ve done with the thousands of posts before it over the last seven years. Except this time was different. This time the post took on a life of its own. It was shared and shared and shared some more, and I watched, stunned, as the Facebook button at the bottom of the post clicked toward 700 and then 800 and then 1,000 and then beyond.

In seven years of blogging this has never happened to me. For whatever reason, my blog posts are rarely shared more than 30 or 40 times, and typically they are shared far less than that. But on an ordinary Friday in the middle of January, one blog post clicked with people, and it took off.

Long story short, I sent a brief note to a generic email address I had for Huffington Post Religion with a link to that post, and within two hours, an editor there had emailed me back, inviting me to blog for the Huffington Post Religion page. Just like that.

Except not really.

I’ve pitched the Huffington Post a number of times over the last three years, and I’ve never heard a word back. I’ve pitched HuffPost Women. I’ve pitched HuffPost Parents. I’ve pitched HuffPost Religion. To no avail. Two years ago, in one of a dozen conversations I’ve had with my agent about “growing my platform,” she suggested that what I really needed was to leverage a much larger platform, “like the Huffington Post.”

I laughed when she said that. “It’s impossible,” I told her. “It’s never going to happen.”

There’s a reason I’m telling you this story, and it’s not to brag, believe me (for all I know, the Huffington Post will have absolutely no impact on growing my readership!). The reason I’m telling you this story is because I believe that God always, always has our best interests at heart. He knows the places he has for us. He knows the time that is best for us. He knows exactly when we should stay and exactly when we should go.

I’m not the best listener when it comes to God’s direction. In fact, most of the time I’m a terrible listener. I push and pull and rail and complain. When God says no, I say yes. When God says yes, I say no. In fact, there’s a very good chance God simply shook his head and rolled his eyes this week and said, “Fine! Here’s your damn Huffington Post.” {my God swears from time to time}

Seriously, though, I believe this. I believe God knows. He knows when we aren’t ready, even when we think we are. He knows when we are ready, even when we think we aren’t. God knows.

Whatever it is you do, keep doing it, as hard and frustrating as that may be. Know that even when you cannot see it right now, God is blessing the work of your hands. Know that even when you can’t feel his presence, he is watching over your journey through the vast wilderness. Know that God is always with you, and therefore you do not lack. (Deuteronomy 2:7)

Weekend One Word: Wholehearted

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Wholeheartedly

I’ve been thinking about this verse a lot lately, wondering what it looks like to have “a different spirit” and to follow God “wholeheartedly.” I love the idea, but I suspect I haven’t quite gotten there yet.

I tend to hedge my bets with God. For example, I notice when I pray for people who are very ill, I typically ask for vague things like “peace,” “strength,” and “courage.” There’s nothing wrong with praying for these qualities, of course, but what I rarely do is ask God outright for miraculous healing. I stop short of the big ask, because while I know that God can heal, I’m afraid he won’t heal. I don’t want to be disappointed, so I don’t ask.

Not exactly “wholehearted” faith, is it?

I keep reminding myself of that verse in 2 Timothy, where Paul says, “The Lord has not given you a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love and self-discipline.” I think this might be the “different spirit” God is referring to when he talks about Caleb. Caleb acted not out of fear and timidity, but out of power, love and self-discipline — qualities that flowed from his deep trust in God.

And that’s the key to all of this, don’t you think? TRUST.

Power, love and self-discipline flow out of trust. Wholehearted faith flows out of trust. A different spirit is born out of trust.

We trust that God leads us in the right direction. We trust that he has our best interests in mind. We trust that he loves us, always and forever.

Amen.

God Doesn’t Promise Bad Things Won’t Happen

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Public speaking is not my favorite part of my job, namely because I am afraid of it. Thus, I typically prepare for an event weeks in advance, writing out my talk, practicing it out loud multiple times in the kitchen while my dog stretches out at my feet, tweaking it and then tweaking it some more.

I also make sure I have detailed directions to the event location, my books and bags packed the night before, my clothes laid out, and my water bottle filled and waiting in the fridge.

My husband Brad says I am Triple Type A, which might be a bit of an understatement.

These are the preparations I made recently for a speaking engagement in Osceola, Nebraska. What I didn’t prepare for, couldn’t possibly have prepared for, however, was the fact that Brad would undergo an emergency appendectomy in the middle of the night, six hours before I was scheduled to depart.

I also didn’t expect to have to arrange, in a flurry of late-night texts and phone calls, for friends to take my kids overnight, nor did I anticipate having to leave Brad in the hospital three hours after his surgery, or to have to explain (sheepishly) to the night nurse why I wouldn’t be there to pick up my husband when he was discharged the next afternoon.

I also never expected to give two talks on three hours of sleep.

When my alarm jolted me awake at 5:15 the morning of the event, I immediately began to worry.

I worried about Brad.

I worried the hospital staff would judge me for abandoning my husband.

I worried I wouldn’t be able to string together two coherent sentences when I stood at the podium to speak.

Still fretting an hour later when I slid behind the steering wheel, I made a conscious decision. Sitting in my driveway with the engine running, I decided to trust God with everything that lay ahead of me.

“Here you go, God,” I muttered aloud into the pre-dawn darkness. “This day is all yours.”

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You should know, I don’t like to trust God. I’d much rather trust myself, thank you very much, because trusting myself feels like control. And let’s be perfectly clear here: I like control (as is evident by my obsessive event preparation and my propensity for organizing my sock drawer).

But here’s the hard truth: we don’t get to control every aspect of our lives. We can’t plan everything to work out exactly as we desire.

No matter how much we prepare, bad things–big bad things and small bad things–happen.

The event in Osceola went well, in spite of the fact that my plan didn’t unfold exactly as I would have liked. I drank too much coffee, my heart thudded like a jack hammer, my feet sweated, and my second talk was breathless and rambling. But the ladies didn’t seem to care about or even notice my imperfections; they exuded grace and compassion. Back in Lincoln our friends rallied to our support, Brad recovered well, and if the hospital staff judged me for being a no-show, well, at least they didn’t do it to my face.

In spite of my obsessive planning, everything fell apart that weekend, but God stayed the course. The Lord goes with us; he doesn’t leave us, nor does he forsake us (Deuteronomy 31:6).

God doesn’t promise bad things won’t happen; he does promise he will be with us every step of the way.

Learning to Let Go of Outcomes

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I’ve been praying a new prayer lately. It goes like this: “God, help me be small. Help me embrace the small. Help me love and live the small. Amen.”

This is a big deal for me, because I am not ordinarily an embracer of the small. My prayers to God over the last 18 months have sounded more like this: “God, please help my book do better. Help me be more successful. Help me achieve my dreams of becoming a successful writer.”

See the trend there? Bigger, better, more. That’s who I’ve been my whole life: the achiever. The striver. The hard worker. Ambitious. Driven. Type A Times Ten. I knew that long before my StrenthsFinder results identified Discipline, Responsibility, Achiever and Focus as my top strengths. That’s who I am. I’m made that way.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with those qualities. They are strengths indeed. In fact, those qualities are quite useful; my go-get-ed-ness has helped me in more ways than I can count.

But my strengths have also hurt me because I have let them define me and dictate my life. I have let these particular strengths overshadow the whole person God has made me to be.

You might recall a post I wrote several months ago about a defining moment I experienced with God – a moment in which I heard him say, in so many unspoken words, “Trust me.” And then there was this more recent post, a simple word picture that I published a couple of months ago, inspired by this verse from Isaiah: “Only in returning to me and resting in me will you be saved.”

I’ve been repeating those two phrases to myself for months now – trust me; return to me and rest in me. I knew somehow that God intended those two messages to go hand-in-hand, but I couldn’t quite figure out what he meant by them.

For a long time I thought God was trying to tell me something about my calling as a writer and my struggles with book publishing. I thought he might be saying something like, “Trust me with this, Michelle,” and “Rest in me, Michelle; I’ve got this.” I’m a little embarrassed to admit this, but I thought those words were God’s way of reassuring me: “Don’t worry, Michelle, I will make you a successful author in due time.”

Turns out, that’s what I wanted those words to mean. What God actually meant was something quite different.

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God, it turns out, wants to save me from myself.

In the words of Emily Freeman, God has been trying to teach me how to live in the kingdom he has built for me, rather than in the kingdom I have been trying to build for myself.

I am finally listening.

There’s nothing wrong with ambition, drive, dreams and success. There’s nothing wrong with working hard toward a goal. God has work for each one of us to do, and he expectes we won’t slack off in doing it.

However he also expects us to hand over the outcomes of our work. He expects us to rest in him. He expects us to do our best at the work he has given us to do, and then hand the rest to him: the expectations, the fears, the hopes, the outcomes, and even the results of our work.

This is where I go wrong every single time. I do the work, because I’m a Hard Worker, but then I cling with a vice-grip to the outcomes. And when the outcomes don’t line up with my expectations, I cling all the harder.

This clinging wears me out. It’s exhausting and disheartening and just plain depressing. It’s the clinging to the outcomes, not the work itself, that makes me question my career and calling. It’s the clinging that makes me wonder if I’ve made a grave mistake, if maybe I shouldn’t be a writer after all.

“The subtle difference between my work feeling heavy and my work feeling light,” writes Emily Freeman, “lies 100 percent in whether I’m holding onto the outcome of my work.”

When God said, “Trust me. Return to me and rest in me,” he was referring to something much, much bigger and much more important than publishing success and career success. He was talking about my relationship with him.

God is calling me to live here, right where I am, right where he has me for a reason. In the smallness. In the now. Regardless of outcomes. Regardless of results.

The truth is, I can’t be in right relationship with God while I am holding so tightly to something else. I can’t hold on to both God and outcomes. The outcomes have to go in order for me to live in a true and right relationship with God. He knows this.

It’s why he said, “Trust me.”

It’s why he said, “Only in returning to me and resting in me will you be saved.”

God wants to save me.

Simply-Tuesday-3D2This post was inspired by Emily Freeman’s new book Simply Tuesday: Small-Moment Living in a Fast-Moving World. She didn’t ask me to write this post or talk about her book. I’m not on her launch team or anything like that. But I loved this book so much, I want to shout about it to the world. I read it through twice and took copious notes, and have been pondering and pondering her words and how God is speaking through her to me about my striving, bigger-better-more-more-more tendencies. Highly recommended, friends, especially if you happen to be a Type A Times Ten Strivey Striver like me.

The Bittersweet Truth of Palm Sunday

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After church on Sunday Rowan asked me if Palm Sunday was a happy day or a sad day. I understand his confusion. I sort of feel the same way.

On one hand, there’s a feeling of celebration and joy in the air. We wave our palm branches exuberantly over our heads; we shout “Hosanna! Hosanna!” There’s a palpable feeling of anticipation and expectance as we hear about Jesus’ triumphant entrance into Jerusalem. And of course, we, unlike the Israelites, have the benefit of knowing how the story turns out. We know Jesus’ entrance was indeed triumphant, though not in the way everyone first imagined.

That’s pretty much how I explained it to Rowan. I told him Palm Sunday is the official beginning of Holy Week, and that because we know about Jesus’ resurrection on Easter Sunday, we look forward to that day of celebration and thanksgiving with hopeful anticipation.

But I also told Rowan that sometimes we’re not much different than those ancient Israelites who draped their garments on the dirt road and shouted “Hosanna!” as Jesus rode into the city on the back of a humble donkey. Sometimes we have very clear expectations of how we think Jesus should work in our lives, and we quickly do an about-face when our expectations aren’t met exactly the way we imagined and hoped.

Like the Israelites, not only do we expect Jesus to save us, we expect him to save us in the way we think is best. 

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palm fan

I’ve been living the reality of Palm Sunday in real time these last few months. Time and time again I’ve planned out exactly how God was going to redeem my situation (A new publisher! A better book proposal! An unexpected book deal! A new job I’ll love even more than book writing!), and time and time again I’ve been left with my mouth agape and my hopes dashed when The Plan as I had envisioned it didn’t materialize.

I’m learning, though, I really am…albeit slowly. I’m learning the faith and trust to keep shouting, “Hosanna!” — “God, save me!” — even when his plan doesn’t seem to remotely resemble mine. Even when I don’t see his plan at all. I’m learning the faith and trust to keep waving my palm branch, even as my arm grows tired. I’m learning the faith and trust to keep laying my garments down in the road, even when I can’t see the way through the dust and the grit.

Maybe it’s because I have the benefit of hindsight. Maybe it’s because I can look back at the mountains and valleys and the twists and turns of my life up to this point and see with my own eyes how God has worked his good, often in the most unexpected, unanticipated ways. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen evidence, strong and clear, of the goodness of the Lord, not only in the land of the living, but in my very own land and my very own life.

Maybe it’s because I know how the Holy Week story turns out, and I believe it. Jesus was indeed crucified, died and was buried. But he also comes again.