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Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

Search Results for: #MyFaithHeroine

The Lens of Transforming Love {My Faith Heroine Series}

January 30, 2015 By Michelle

I can’t think of a better way to finish out the My Faith Heroine series than with Laura Lynn Brown. She is one of the finest writers I know, and one of the kindest, most thoughtful people I’ve ever met. When you talk with Laura — either online or in person, it makes no matter — you know that she is entirely tuned into you, 100 percent. She listens, really listens – such an incredibly rare and precious gift — and then, when she does speak, it’s with wisdom, grace and gentleness. Please welcome Laura to the blog, and before you dash off to do whatever calls you today, please stop by her brand new website, Makes You Mom, for a bouquet of mom-related stories, gift ideas and reading suggestions. The gorgeous flower photos alone are worth the visit!

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Post by Laura Lynn Brown

If I could talk to Mom about this, the first thing she would do would be to assert, quietly but firmly, that she’s not a heroine.

(Actually, the first thing she’d do is listen to me carefully, and wait patiently until I got to a good stopping place. Then she’d stop and think before she spoke. And if she could look over my shoulder now, she might compliment my changing “protest” to “assert,” then wonder aloud whether there might be an even more precise verb.)

And I’d explain — both of us knowing it’s a lame  excuse — that, well, that’s the series. The assignment. “My faith heroine.”

Then she’d nod, affirming that it was, in the end, my decision. And she’d say, with that powder-dry wit that even her intimates could mistake as seriousness, that if she had to be one, she might just as well be a hero.

Laura and Mom

Mom died nearly 26 years ago, nearly half my life ago. There’s a danger of mythologizing the long gone; I think this is especially true for anyone who lost a parent too young. What I know of her is partly memory, partly what I’ve learned over the years, from my brother, our father, her best friend, and other people back home who still, when I see them, give me the gift of anecdotes I hadn’t heard before.

Some memories have been replayed many times, the images like a split screen — on one side, how it felt and seemed at the time; on the other, the more complex understanding and reframing (and, sometimes, greater unknowableness) that come with the perspectives of middle age.

I never heard Mom pray. But I know she did. She wasn’t one to announce she was praying for someone. She just did it, quietly, and I imagine fervently. Sometimes she let me know, usually gently, when she thought I was making poor choices. But she didn’t visibly fret or let her mother-worry herd me like a border collie. I believe she trusted in God’s patience, in the work of the Holy Spirit, in the loving pursuit of the hound of heaven.

I seldom saw her reading her Bible. But I know that she did. It’s worn, with a cracked and taped spine, and notes throughout in her small, neat script.

The summer I was 11, she sent me to church camp. The family hadn’t been to church in a few years — she’d had two small children, Dad worked on Sundays, we just had the one car and she didn’t drive.  So I went off for a week to the woods of western Pennsylvania, a shy kid, and had a great time, and made friends I wrote to throughout the year. I kept going back and was eventually baptized there. Then we returned to church.

I never, ever, doubted her love. My brother and I were secure in the knowledge that not only did she love us, she liked us.

When relatives were in need — the elderly, mentally challenged cousin who could no longer live in her farmhouse; the single niece with a new baby who needed a place to live for a while — she took care of them. She found the cousin assisted living a quarter mile from our house, and took in the niece.

When she was angry, she guarded her tongue.

To the friends who called her, and the people who worked with her and became her friends, she gave good counsel.

She saw the humor in things, and made people laugh. She was skilled at the loving tease, and knew when to stop.

I could go on. I could paint, in detail, some of the memories  and stories coming to mind. But what they all add up to, and boil down to, is this: She had a deep, quiet, faithful relationship with the Lord. And because of that, as much as anyone I have ever known, she saw people through that lens of transforming love.

I am so very far from being the woman she was. I’m grateful for the ways, through memory and story (and through my brother, who bears her image in so many ways), she is still with me.

If I could talk to Mom about this, I’d thank her for her quiet example. She’d accept my thanks and then probably reflect back something good she saw in me. We’d hug. And I’d tell her I love her and I like her.

LauraLynnBrownLaura Lynn Brown’s essay “Fifty Things About My Mother” was named a Notable Essay in The Best American Essays 2014. She is the author of Everything That Makes You Mom: A Bouquet of Memories, and the keeper of a new multi-author website, makesyoumom.com.

This post is part of the My Faith Heroine Series in conjunction with the release of 50 Women Every Christian Should Know: Learning from Heroines of the Faith. Click here to read other posts in the #MyFaithHeroine series. 

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Filed Under: #50Women, #MyFaithHeroine Tagged With: 50 Women Every Christian Should Know, Laura Lynn Brown, My Faith Heroine

Go Forth and Mark Up Your Bible {My Faith Heroine series}

January 23, 2015 By Michelle

Sandra Heska King has the biggest heart of just about anyone I know – how blessed I am to have spent time with her in person! But even if your path never crosses with Sandy’s face-to-face, you can see and experience the light she shines in the words she pens so beautifully on her blog (my favorite is her Still Saturday series – don’t we all need a little more stillness in our lives?). Just last week Sandy returned from the Dominican Republic, where she traveled on behalf of Compassion International, an organization that sponsors children in need world-wide. Please take a few minutes today to read about her experiences and the beautiful people she met there. And perhaps consider sponsoring a Compassion child too? I am delighted to welcome Sandy to the blog today!

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Story and Photo by Sandra Heska King

I’m sitting in the balcony of the church in Marietta, Georgia, and I’m unrolling my “homework,” my butcher paper art–the entire book of Revelation, colored pictures on a scroll. And we stretch it out and down the row, and she looks up and nods and applauds. Nine months we live in that book, and she carries me from “In the beginning” to the last “Amen.”

That’s the last year she drives weekly from Chattanooga. So we gather friends and organize a Romans study in our church. And I can’t get enough.

We’re called to move to a new home in Tampa, and I fight it. But I find DeeDee, and she’s got me leading a Precept group there. Then I’m sitting in the airport hugging Kay.

I’m in Chattanooga at the “ranch” taking notes on Philippians and memorizing the humility verses. She’s describing the crucifixion, and a storm is blowing, and it seems like the lights go out for a moment, but I can’t remember for sure. Maybe everything goes dark just before the light blazes.

The air presses in on me, and I can’t breathe.

She teaches me how to uncover treasure for myself, to test what others tell me.

Once she shook her fist in God’s face and hissed, “To hell with you God.” Now she crams colored pencils in my fist and says (basically), “Go forth, and mark up your Bible. Get to know the God who went to hell for you.”

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The words become life to me. My home and my hope are here in these pages.

She teaches me about lists and comparisons and contrasts and color-coding and verb tenses and moods and voices and how to make my own chain references and how to study from a Bible without notes–because the Holy Spirit alone can teach me.

And my Bible falls apart.

She teaches me about God’s character and His sovereignty and oh, how that’s held me through so many questions and regrets.

She teaches me how to live, how to be silver refined, how to make the bitter sweet, how to battle disappointment, about tetelestai and tiqvah.

She’s a nurse, too, so I feel an extra special bond. She calls me a co-laborer, and she assures me that nothing I do in the Lord is in vain.

Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord. ~2 Corinthians 15:58

I dream of walking with her in the Holy Land, hearing her teach from the places Jesus walked and talked and prayed and rested–and died. And I pray for the miraculous provision of finances that will let me do this while she and I both can.

Kay Arthur, co-founder of Precept Ministries International, is my faith heroine, and I thank God for her and for the love of the Word she birthed in me, for how she’s helped me learn how to know God.

And one more thing. She’s 81 years old now and looks at least 20 years younger. I want to keep drinking the same water.

 

SandraHeskaKing2Sandra Heska King (AKA Snady AKA SHK) lives in Michigan and writes from a 150-plus-year-old family farmhouse set on 60-plus acres surrounded by corn or soybeans or sometimes wheat. She’s a camera-toting, recovering doer who’s learning to just. be. still.

Sandra blogs at sandraheskaking.com and sometimes spills words in other places across the Internet. She’s a “poetry barista” (AKA social media associate) at Tweetspeak Poetry and has been a featured writer at The High Calling. You can catch up with her on Facebook and Twitter.

This post is part of the My Faith Heroine Series in conjunction with the release of 50 Women Every Christian Should Know: Learning from Heroines of the Faith. Click here to read other posts in the #MyFaithHeroine series. 

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Filed Under: #50Women, #MyFaithHeroine Tagged With: 50 Women Every Christian Should Know, Kay Arthur, My Faith Heroine, Sandra Heska King

The Person Who Points You North {My Faith Heroine Series}

January 16, 2015 By Michelle

Many of you already know Kris Camealy. Maybe you’ve already read the words she pens so brilliantly and passionately on her blog. Or you’ve read her Lent devotional book,Holey, Wholly, Holy. Or you’ve crossed paths with her on Facebook and knew immediately that she is someone special. That’s Kris. She’s been an incredible encouragement to me these last several months – a cheerleader, a prayer warrior and a good, good friend. Kris is in the Dominican Republic with Compassion this week, sharing her heart and hope, and I’d love for you to read what she’s written here and here about her experience so far. Thanks for helping me welcome Kris to the blog today – I just love this story about her Faith Heroine.

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 Post by Kris Camealy

When I met Lori, I met Jesus.

Lori is the wife of the youth pastor our church had hired, and imported to Virginia from the middle of Florida when I was 14. We loved her immediately for her spunky personality, her musical gifting, her sugar cookies which she frosted with vanilla frosting made from Columbian vanilla beans–that, and the fact that nothing we did or said shocked her.

In those days, we were full of ourselves, while Lori remained cool and calm in the face of some of the most outrageous teenage drama we could manufacture.

Drugs, promiscuity, gang activity, foul language spouted (purely for shock value), and teen pregnancy–our youth group had all of it amongst us. When we most expected to be turned away, we found instead, a haven in the home of our youth pastor and his wife Lori.

By the time I could drive, she invited me into a one-on-one discipleship relationship with her. Hungry as I was then for Jesus, I leapt at the chance to spend uninterrupted time with her.

After school I’d swing by her house to pick her up and she’d buy my value meal and feed me body and soul for 2 hours, once a week.

Together we walked slowly through the New Testament, where she introduced me to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. We talked about boys and the bible, we talked about Jesus and what it means to live and love the Son of Man.  We talked about the beatitudes while confessions tumbled out of my convicted heart.

Week after week, Lori shined a light into my angst-wrought teenage life, forever changing me.

When I dated boys who weren’t interested in my heart, she told me as much. When I struggled with faithfulness, she held my hands and encouraged me to hold on. When my friends dumped me because of my growing joy in the Lord, she comforted me and spoke the kind of wisdom and peace over me that carried me back to the foot of the cross. She prayed faithfully with and for me. It was all of these things that tethered me tight to God even as I watched many of my other friends fling themselves wild into the merciless arms of the world.

It’s only now, as a mom myself, that I see how precious this time was. She had a family of her own; children, chores, a life–but still she made space for me, without complaint or hesitation.

I call her a saint, because she is. Lori stepped into my life and pointed me north time after time. No matter how lost I felt, I knew my way to her house, where she would lead me back to God’s Word.

I can’t look at my faith story without seeing her face. She is a gift still in my life, a woman I will always admire and honor for her unrelenting passion for bringing the Word of God into the hearts and lives of youth such as I was.

Mentor, surrogate mother, sister, friend, confidant, intercessor, friend. These are all words that describe Lori to me, which is why she is my faith heroine.

KrisCamealyAs a sequin-wearing, homeschooling mother of four, Kris is passionate about Jesus, people and words. Her heart beats to share the hard, but glorious truth about life in Christ. She’s been known to take gratuitous pictures of her culinary creations, causing mouths to water all across Instagram. Once upon a time, she ran 10 miles for Compassion International, a ministry for which she serves as an advocate. Kris is the author of, Holey, Wholly, Holy: A Lenten Journey of Refinement, and the follow up, Companion Workbook. You can read more from Kris at kriscamealy.com.

This post is part of the My Faith Heroine Series in conjunction with the release of 50 Women Every Christian Should Know: Learning from Heroines of the Faith. Click here to read other posts in the #MyFaithHeroine series. 

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Filed Under: #50Women, #MyFaithHeroine Tagged With: 50 Women Every Christian Should Know, Kris Camealy, My Faith Heroine

Leaning into Fear {My Faith Heroine Series}

January 9, 2015 By Michelle

Oh how I love this woman. I first met Kimberly Coyle three years ago (or has it been four?!) when we roomed together at the She Speaks conference in North Carolina. We called it She Freaks because we were both so unhinged over the idea of pitching our book proposals to agents and editors face-to-face for the first time. Right away Kimberly and I realized that we share the same wacky sense of humor, and we’ve been online and in-real-life friends ever since. Seriously, this girl can WRITE. AND she takes beautiful pictures. Multi-talented I tell you. Please put Kimberly at the top of your must- read list. She blogs here, and you can find her on Twitter and Facebook, too.

MyFaithHeroine

Story by Kimberly Coyle

I don’t remember exactly when she stepped into my life, but when I opened the first page of her book Walking on Water, it was as if I opened the front door to my heart and she walked right in. She took a seat in the loneliest corner, and she hasn’t left me since.

I know little about her faith practices—the small ways she served God or her daily acts of faith or her prayer life. I know only what she chose to reveal through the pages of her books, but I do know this: she kept asking the hard questions around art and faith, and she learned to lean into fear when she didn’t have all the answers.

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Madeleine L’Engle came to me in a time when I needed her most, when I could not reconcile my desire to write my way through life, with my desire to serve God as well. In my mind, art and faith diverged like those two roads in Robert Frost’s yellow wood, and I couldn’t understand how to serve one without cutting off the entrance to the other.

Madeleine was the first to tell me that the creation of art is an act of faith. That in art, there is no difference between the secular and the sacred—there is only true art, and all true art is incarnational in nature. She showed me through her words and through the example of her life, how holy it is to pursue the very thing I feel created to do. Where I felt myself splitting in two between my desires, her words became the healing salve that knit the two halves of me back together.

Her fierce intelligence, her way with words, her ability to serve God and her family, and  her art pulse out to me from her books like a beacon of light. They shine in the dark when I question my ability to keep putting one word in front of the other. When I question my faith. When I question my place in this world and wonder if I will come out on the other side of all these questions with an answer. Her words flicker with hope, with a desire for excellence, and with the insistent message to lean into the fear, for it is there we find courage.

Madeleine is gone now, but her words still sit in that same corner of my heart, and I no longer feel alone. Her books continue to give light, her courage strengthens, her resilience and intelligence inspire, and her deep faith in a Creator God who also calls me to create, guides me home.

::

KimberlyCoyle3Kimberly Coyle is a writer, mother, and gypsy at heart. She tells stories of everyday life while raising a family and her faith at her blog, kimberlyanncoyle.com. She writes from the suburbs of New Jersey, where she is learning how to put down roots that stretch further than the nearest airport. Connect with her on Twitter @KimberlyACoyle or her Facebook page.

This post is part of the My Faith Heroine Series in conjunction with the release of 50 Women Every Christian Should Know: Learning from Heroines of the Faith. Click here to read other posts in the #MyFaithHeroine series. 

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Filed Under: #50Women, #MyFaithHeroine, 50 Women Every Christian Should Know Tagged With: 50 Women Every Christian Should Know, Kimberly Coyle, Madeleine L'Engle, My Faith Heroine

Keep Praying and Believing {My Faith Heroine series}

December 18, 2014 By Michelle

We call her the Internet Pastor because she loves us, lifts us up, mentors us, prays for us and encourages us, all online in various communities – from her own blog, Just Wondering, to A Deeper Church and lots of places in between. I had the privilege and pleasure of meeting Diana Trautwein a couple of times over the years, and she is even better in person. So full of life and love, her blue eyes sparkle and her face lights up every time she sees you.

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Story and Photo by Diana Trautwein

Life was hard and uncertain when she was growing up. One of four siblings, barely a year apart, with parents who both worked, a father who drank hard and gambled hard, always losing. Then there were “the aunts,” she told me. The three older cousins who never married and who loved all those kids to bits, providing protection on occasion, but most of all, bringing fun and merriment into their days.

Though their mother had grown up in the church, after she married their dad, neither of them ever darkened a church door again. But they agreed that their kids could go.

So every Sunday, they dropped all four kids at the curb and left them to fend for themselves in downtown Los Angeles at that old brownstone building. For my heroine and her sister, it stuck. For their two brothers, it took a lot longer. The sisters loved to go to that place, where they met friends their own age and were sheltered and loved by lots of adults, as well.

One of those older women saw potential in the bigger of the girls, and when she was in junior high school, almost into high school, she arranged for a scholarship to a nearby training seminar. A Christian leadership seminar. And my heroine bloomed, learning to love the Bible, church music and a wide circle of friends, many of whom remained close to one another throughout their lives.

Eventually, she married one of the church musicians, a talented pianist with a bent for mathematics, and they began to build a home and a family. A girl was born, then two years later, a boy and about ten years after that, another boy.

All during those early years, the family continued to attend the downtown church where the parents had met, and they contributed faithfully, both musically and financially. Eventually, they moved too far out into the suburbs and switched to a larger church closer to home. Within a few years, that old church was razed and a used car lot took its place.

Their new church provided wonderful activities and teaching for her children and some powerful teaching during the adult Sunday morning hour for her and her husband. Professors from a nearby seminary came and built small congregations within the larger one. Once again, this woman bloomed and grew, stretching toward the light, exercising her good mind, asking probing questions, reading widely.

The "Double Delight" rose, her faith heroine's favorite

The “Double Delight” rose, her faith heroine’s favorite

She always worried that she didn’t have a degree from college, but then, she never really needed it. Her own reading regimen (everything C.S. Lewis ever wrote, plus a lot of Paul Tillich, George Ladd, Eldon Trueblood, Peter and Catherine Marshall), her willingness to ask hard questions and her fearlessness about seeking answers provided a priceless education, as well as forming her more and more into the likeness of Jesus.

She taught eleventh grade Sunday school (girls only, in those days) for about a dozen years, providing wisdom, grace and breakfast out for every one of them sometime during the year. Each week, she worked hard on those lessons, getting up before the rest of the family to rough out ideas and read scripture. And to pray. She prayed for each student in her classes, regularly, faithfully.

By God’s grace and her own commitment to growing, both spiritually and psychologically, she overcame the difficulties of her upbringing, remaining close to her entire extended family until they each died. She is the only one left now, and that is hard — for her and for those who love her.

She dealt with a lot of insecurities and fears her whole life, but always, there was a joyful sense of humor, a warm and welcoming hospitality, and an immense reservoir of creativity. She decorated her home, her children and herself on a tight budget, and encouraged each of her children to get a good education and build a good marriage. And she loved her husband fiercely, even when he was old and frail and sometimes demanding.

This woman modeled for me what it means to follow hard after Jesus, to commit yourself to learning, asking questions, reading widely, and serving others. She wasn’t perfect — and she knew it! — but she was good. Even in her old age, she hangs onto her faith with all of her diminishing energies.

I visited her over the weekend, in the dementia unit where she now lives. She was sick, with a very sore throat and a nasty cough, all of which makes the dementia worse and exhausts her. I helped her change her clothes and sit in her recliner chair for an afternoon nap and then went across the room to bring her large, whiteboard calendar up-to-date after several months of neglect.

As I worked in the semi-darkness of her small entry way, I could hear her muttering in her chair. I thought perhaps she had drifted off to sleep and was dreaming. But then I began to pick out a few words, and my heart soared and broke, all at the same moment.

“Oh, Lord,” she said. “Please help Diana to be well, to be strong. She is such a beautiful daughter and I love her so much.”

Before I left I kissed her on the forehead and she smiled up at me and said, “The Lord’s been good. We’ll just keep praying and believing.”

“Yes, Mom,” I said. “That is exactly what we’ll do.”

 

DianaTrautweinMarried to her college sweetheart for nearly 50 years, Diana answers to Mom from their three adult kids and spouses and to Nana from their 8 grandkids, ranging in age from 4 to 23. For 17 years, after a mid-life call to ministry, she answered to Pastor Diana in two churches where she served as Associate Pastor. Since retiring at the end of 2010, she spends her time working as a spiritual director and writes on her blog, Just Wondering. For as long as she can remember, Jesus has been central to her story and the church an extension of her family.

This post is part of the My Faith Heroine Series in conjunction with the release of 50 Women Every Christian Should Know: Learning from Heroines of the Faith. Click here to read other posts in the #MyFaithHeroine series. 

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Filed Under: #50Women, #MyFaithHeroine, guest posts Tagged With: #50Women, #MyFaithHeroine, Diana Trautwein

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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.

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