Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

50 Women Every Christian Should Know

Living Gutsy for God {and a giveaway!}

By

A year or so ago, my friend Amy Sullivan had an idea to write a series of picture books for young girls featuring strong Christian women from history. She pitched it to a few publishers, but alas, no bites. So Amy made a gutsy move: she decided to publish the series herself. I am delighted to announce that the first book in the Gutsy Girls series is now available on Amazon, and friends, it is brilliant: a fabulous, fast-moving story combined with fun, vibrant, energetic artwork. As I told Amy this week, it seems these days we parents have to work doubly hard to counteract the barrage of not-so-positive images and storylines our kids ingest from mainstream media. Sometimes, I admit, it feels like a losing battle, and that’s exactly why the Gusty Girls series is so critically important. The more tools we have, the better our chances of impacting and influencing our kids with the messages that matter.

 

GutsyGirls1

Text and Photos by Amy Sullivan:

If I think hard enough, I can remember times in my life when I acted bravely.

In sixth grade, I confronted a neighborhood bully who stole my jeans from a local Laundromat.

In ninth grade, I took on a gaggle of teens who were making fun of a student with disabilities.

When I was twenty-three, I planted myself in the middle of an isolated Navajo Reservation and loved on kids who were not my own.

When I was thirty, I hiked up a mountain with twenty-seven teenage boys. At the end of the trail, the boys and I took turns flipping off a twenty-foot cliff into the water.

When I was thirty-two, I discovered the power in praying for people I don’t know and places I’ve never been.

But if I think of right now, and I think of forty-year-old me, I can’t say my life is full of brave acts, and I am not just talking about flip-off-a-cliff-bravery. I am talking about living in obedience to God bravery. When I feel the Holy Spirit asking me to do something, I don’t want to evaluate it. I want to trust and act.

I want to live with gutsy faith, and I want my daughters to live this faith, too.

GutsyGirlss

GutsyGirls3

Confession time: my daughters have known who the Kardashians are for a long time, but they have only recently been introduced to Lillian Thrasher. They know about Miley Cyrus, but they know nothing of Elisabeth Elliot. They can recite facts about Taylor Swift’s childhood, but they aren’t sure why Mother Teresa is well-known.

I know. I can feel you shaking your head at my seemingly lax parenting, but what I’ve discovered is that despite internet filters, restrictions on TV shows, preset radio stations, and bans on all things trashy, the world is determined to tell my kids who to admire.

I pump gas while a video screen pumps footage of a scandal involving an NBA player. I stand in line at the grocery store, and another screen reports the details of a fallen starlet’s latest escapades. I go to the library, and magazines and newspapers document the beachfront mansion bought by a girl who is famous for simply being famous. The world shouts, and my daughters take it in.

My kids aren’t bombarded with real heroes. Instead, they are bombarded with the world’s heroes, and I am determined to change that.

If you combine my sincere prayer for my daughters to know what it’s like to live gutsy for God with my fierce determination to provide my girls with real heroes, you get Gutsy Girls: Strong Christian Women Who Impacted the World.

GustyGirls3

This picture book series focuses on one woman per book, and the first book highlights Gladys Aylward. Do you remember Gladys from Michelle’s 50 Women? If not, Gladys is woman number 42. Grab your book, and turn there fast.

Gladys was told she was not young enough, smart enough, or fluent enough to teach the people of China about Jesus. Determined Gladys ignored their advice, and set-out on an across-the-world adventure.

Gladys lived gutsy for God. She lived in obedience. She didn’t listen to those who  discouraged her from following the plans He had for her.

I am working hard to do the same.

Amy Sullivan HeadshotAmy L. Sullivan is the author of the picture book series Gutsy Girls: Strong Christian Women Who Impacted the World and the non-fiction book When More is Not Enough: How to Stop Giving Your Kids What They Want and Give Them What They Need. She writes for oodles of print and online publications, and she believes strong mamas raise strong girls. You can connect with Amy at her website, as well as on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Have a young girl in your life? Be sure to enter the raffle for a chance to win one of two copies of Gutsy Girls I am giving away this week [email readers: click here and scroll to the bottom of the post]:

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

No Doesn’t Necessarily Mean a Closed Door

By

Friends, before I get to today’s blog post…I just want to say a HUGE thank you to all of you who rallied behind me after Tuesday’s post. In two days, 53 new subscribers came on board – and that more than makes up for the 47 subscribers who decided to part ways after last week’s post about same-sex marriage. I am just astounded by your generosity and your encouragement. Believe me when I say this: it’s NOT about the numbers. I really feel like we have cemented a relationship and a partnership here over the last few days, and for that I am so, so grateful. And to those of you who have been reading here a long time (or even a short time) and have stayed on even though we might disagree on this issue (or others), thank you. Differences can be bridged by community. Thank you for demonstrating how it’s done. With love, Michelle

 

Grass Path Prairie edited

I’ve been snapping photographs of paths lately—paths across bridges, paths through the Nebraska tall grass, paths disappearing into the woods. I think I’m drawn to collecting these images because I’m so unsure of my own way right now. Documenting the paths I walk daily near my home is a practice that offers reassurance and comfort. These pictures remind me that my path exists, even though I can’t see it right now.

This past October my publisher turned down my proposal for my next book, a rejection that felt a lot like being fired. After I hung up the phone with my agent, who had relayed the bad news, I sat at my computer with my fingers on the keyboard. I figured being fired by my publisher was a clear sign that I should update my resume—no time like the present, right? But I couldn’t. Instead I collapsed on the living room couch and cried for two hours straight. I wore sunglasses to hide my red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes when I picked my kids up from school later that afternoon.

…I’m over at The High Calling this week, writing a post for the series “In Over Your Head.” Will you join me over there for the rest of this story? 

The Lens of Transforming Love {My Faith Heroine Series}

By

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!

MyFaithHeroine

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. 

50WomenCover

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

By

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!

MyFaithHeroine

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.”

Kay 11

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. 

50WomenCover

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

By

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.

MyFaithHeroine

 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. 

50WomenCover