Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

Ann Voskamp

How to Replace a Bad Habit with a Better One

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“You complain all the time,” she said, turning around from the passenger seat to look me in the eye as I sat squashed between our two sons. “You are relentlessly negative.”

Only a sister could make such a declaration and live to tell about it.

My first reaction was defensiveness. “I am not relentlessly negative,” I shot back, emphatically shaking my head. “And I definitely do not complain all the time.”

My sister didn’t press the issue. She simply looked at me a beat too long, eyebrows raised, as if to say, “Oh really?” before turning around to face forward again.

The conversation in the car shifted to another topic. I wasn’t angry, and I didn’t hold my sister’s accusation against her. We DeRushas tend to speak forthrightly to one another – blame it on our no-nonsense Puritan sensibilities. But I also dismissed her declaration, refusing to even consider that there might be some truth in it.

Later, though, I couldn’t get Jeanine’s comments out of my head. I argued with her in my mind, continuing to defend myself. But the more I tried to insist to myself that she was wrong, the more I realized she was right.

The truth is, I do complain. A lot.

I’m cold. I have a headache. My elbow hurts. I’m tired. The kids are bugging me. My work is boring. I have ennui. I’m sick of walking the dog. Why do I always have to be the one to empty the dishwasher? Who left their dirty socks in the middle of the living room floor? How come we never do anything fun? Is this all there is to life?

I complain for a lot of reasons: to get attention; to elevate myself; to garner sympathy and compassion; to be seen and heard.

But we don’t have to dig deeply into my psyche to identify the number one reason I complain. It’s actually quite simple: I complain because it’s a habit. Half the time I don’t even realize I’m doing it. Near-constant complaining has become my mindless modus operandi.

In her book Better than Before, Gretchen Rubin advises that we should “choose habits mindfully.” Choosing mindfully, it turns out, is the key not only to establishing a good habit, but also to breaking a bad one.

On January 1, my sister’s accusation still ringing in my ears, I resolved to break my habit of mindless complaining and relentless negativity. The challenge, I knew, was that I needed to do more than simply state my good intentions. I knew, as Rubin said, that I would need to mindfully choose a good habit that would, over time, help me begin to pave a new neural pathway in my brain.

Enter the daily gratitude journal.

Or, I should say, re-enter the gratitude journal.

Eight years ago, inspired by Ann Voskamp’s bestselling book One Thousand Gifts, I bought a cheap journal, laid it open on the kitchen counter between the coffee maker and the fruit bowl, picked up a pen, and began to list the everyday, ordinary moments that brought me joy. In total my kids and I and occasionally Brad listed 1,955 gifts over a three-year period.

The first gift listed was “spring song of the chickadee.” The last was penned by Brad, evidently on our anniversary: “18 years with my love.”

That was more than four years ago. Truthfully I don’t remember why I quit the gratitude journal. I don’t even remember when I closed the cover over its wrinkled pages and tucked the notebook into a cabinet, where it still lives today.

I keep my new gratitude journal – a beautiful notebook with a richly vibrant cover, a gift from a dear friend – on my nightstand. Every night before I click off the light, I think back over my day and pen three things for which I am grateful. Sometimes I list more than my three; occasionally it’s a challenge to come up with the bare minimum.

The truth is, I inherently lean toward glass-half-empty. My default is pessimism. Because it doesn’t come naturally to me, I need to choose optimism consciously, and one of the ways I’m trying to do that is to choose gratitude every day.

As with my prior journal, the things I’ve listed so far are ordinary, even mundane – coffee with a friend; glimpse of a sleek fox trotting across the golf course; January sun after a string of gray days. And yet I know that in some ways, it’s their very ordinariness that makes these gifts special.

Today I’m taking my “everyday, ordinary life – my sleeping, eating, going-to-work and walking-around life – and placing it before God as an offering.”

Today I’m mindfully choosing praise over complaint.

Today I’m choosing a new habit mindfully and beginning to repave a well-worn habit of complaint and negativity with one of gratitude.

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So tell me, do you keep a gratitude journal? And have you ever tried to quit a bad habit by replacing it with a better one? 

Traveling the Broken Way

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The Broken Way

Faith has never come easily for me. I’ve often described my spiritual journey and faith itself as a two-steps-forward-one-step-back kind of process, with doubt rearing its ugly head from time to time, and me clamoring to smack it down like I’m playing whack-a-mole at the local carnival.

This past summer I traveled to Tuscany on a spiritual writers’ retreat expecting to uncover clarity and direction in my vocation. Instead I ended up spiraling into a dark night of the soul I never saw coming. Sitting cross-legged under a grove of trees overlooking the golden Tuscan hills, I got real with God real fast. It was the quintessential “I believe, help my unbelief!” moment, and it left me wrung out and reeling. God and I wrestled it out like never before.

Two days later, hands trembling, voice shaking, I told my traveling companions about my dark night. It was a confession of sorts, and that community of brothers and sisters — most of whom I’d met for the first time only days before — gathered around and held me close. They lamented with me. They consoled me. And most of all, they gave me hope.

When, following my sputtering confession, one of my new friends declared, “God delights in you,” I tucked that word of encouragement into my heart. Since then I’ve taken it out and reexamined it again and again.

My dark-night-of-the-soul experience in Italy and how I’ve come to understand it was a game-changer for me, a life-changer. As Ann Voskamp writes in her new book, The Broken Way, “Our God wants the most unwanted parts of us the most…Nothing pleases God more than letting Him touch the places you think don’t please Him. God is drawn to broken things — so he can draw the most beautiful things.”

sumac

pelicans

The Broken Way

The Broken Way

Cracking open wide in Tuscany allowed me to receive the understanding that just as I delight in my own children, God delights in me. He loves me like I love them, sweetly, tenderly, fiercely, but infinitely, unfathomably more. I never really understood that. I never really believed it.

Truth be told, three months later I’m still leaning hard into what it really means that God delights in me – what it looks like and feels like. I’m leaning hard into believing it. I’m allowing God to teach me, to show me what he is doing for me, to show me what I need to enter into. God is already loving, he is already delighting in, and he desires that we enter into that space. As Paul says in his letter to the Romans, “God does not respond to what we do; we respond to what God does.” (3:28, Msg.)

Ann Voskamp’s book The Broken Way has helped me move farther along in this journey. She’s put words around the unexplainable and indescribable. She has given language to the mysterious, inexplicable yet sometimes palpable presence of God.

“Belovedness is the center of being, the only real identity, God’s only name for you, the only identity he gives you,” she writes. “And you won’t ever feel like you belong anywhere until you choose to listen to your heart beating out that you do — unconditionally, irrevocably. Until you let yourself feel the truth of that – the truth your heart has always known because He who made it wrote your name right there.”

A long time ago I looked up the origin of my name, Michelle. It is derived from the Hebrew name Michael, which means, in some interpretations, “He who is closest to God,” as well as, interestingly, the question, “Who is like God?” The online site I visited noted that in Hebrew that’s a rhetorical question, because no person is like God.

I laughed when I read that bit about the rhetorical question, because honestly, it’s so like me to question my identity as one who is “like God.” Who me? Flawed, questioning, always-seemingly-on-the-cusp-of-unbelief me?  But the answer is, inexplicably and unfathomably, yes, an emphatic yes. For me and for you, too. For all of us. We are like God because we are created in his image– imago dei.  Each of us is wholly his, loved by him, beloved, called into oneness with him.

God calls us to walk toward that which we despise most about ourselves, because he knows that when we face that hard, ugly place head-on, we will finally be fully surrendered. And finally fully surrendered, we will finally fully find him.

God is in our most broken places, the parts of ourselves we least want to admit or expose to the world and perhaps especially to our own selves. For me, that’s my wrestle with doubt and unbelief. God ironically calls me to step into that very place, to acknowledge its existence, not to run and hide from it, but strangely, to offer it, my most broken place, to him. I know, it hardly makes sense. But yet it does. Because he is there, even there. Because there is no place God is not.

The Broken Way, by Ann Voskamp

I want to add, for the record, that Ann Voskamp doesn’t need me to write a review of her book. As I write this, The Broken Way, which releases today, is probably already number 1 on Amazon, and it will likely go on to become a New York Times bestseller, just like One Thousand Gifts. But here’s the deal: I wrote this blog post because I couldn’t not write this blog post. Like its predecessor, One Thousand Gifts, The Broken Way has had a lasting impact on me. Beautifully written and full of profound wisdom, this book is a life-changer, if you allow Ann’s words — God’s message, really, spoken through her — to sink in deep and change you. Powerful, prophetic, vulnerable and deeply authentic, The Broken Way is not an easy or a quick read, but it’s absolutely a must-read.

What To Do When Your Kids Don’t Believe (Right Now)

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Rowan in water

If you are popping in from the lovely Ann Voskamp’s place, welcome! I’m so glad you are visiting, and I hope you find a bit to enjoy around these parts. I am smiling at the opportunity to meet some new friends today, so feel free to say hello in the comments!

“I think I’m in a not-believing-in-God stage,” he declares, holding his fork high in the air over his dinner plate like Lady Liberty’s torch.

It’s an ordinary dinner hour.

The four of us sit around the dining room table, plates of mashed potatoes and meatloaf set before us on the polished oak.

The kid’s trying hard to sound nonchalant, but as I peer around the vase and meet his wide, unblinking eyes across the table, I can tell my son is afraid.

I lay my own fork down next to my plate.

I’m not sure I’m breathing.

The truth is, a declaration like this can stop you dead in your tracks, fork frozen mid-air…

…What I really want to do is jump up and down and shout, “I’m at Ann Voskamp’s place, I’m at Ann Voskamp’s place! ” but I will try to maintain a shred of dignity and simply invite you over to Ann Voskamp’s blog to read a guest post I am delighted to have over there today. Thanks, friends…

Now {When You Need to Focus on the Gifts, Not the Gets}

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I stoop to double knot my sneaker before I step out the door into the blistering sun. Still kneeling on the kitchen floor, I glance up, and that’s when I see the window, and beyond that, the garden gate and the goldenrod ablaze.

It stops me right there, that picture of ordinary perfection. Clean dishes stacked on the rack. Seven tomatoes ripening to red on the sill. My watch, left there when I stripped it from my wrist to do last night’s dishes. A row of Lake Superior rocks, shaped like hearts, collected over the years by my sweet-hearted son.

An ordinary scene, an ordinary kitchen, an ordinary day.

But these? These are no ordinary gifts.

It’s easy to miss it all, isn’t it? If I hadn’t stopped to tie my shoe before dashing out the door, I would have missed them, too, these ordinary extraordinary gifts, all laid out, picture-perfect, just for me.

That’s usually the case. Truth be told, I focus much more on the “gets” of the future, rather than the gifts of now.

How can I get more readers?

How can I get more people to like my posts and my Facebook page?

How will I get people to buy my books?

How can I get my kids to listen better?

How can I get that basement renovation I think I need?

How can I get, get, get?

I worry more about what’s happening tomorrow instead of appreciating what’s unfurling right now, before my very eyes.

A focus on getting blinds me to God’s giving. A focus on getting blinds me to the gifts God gives right here, right now.

The kitchen window. Those beautiful tomatoes all in a row, the red striped curtain, the garden gate and the goldenrod. This is the reminder I need right now, the reminder to be less preoccupied with getting, and more grateful for all God’s giving.

I straighten up, shoes double-knotted, hair pulled back into a ponytail. I swig twice more from the water bottle, leave it on the kitchen counter, and then step onto the driveway, hot already in the morning sun, pulling the door closed with a click.

The goldenrod, straight and proud against the picket fence, waves in the breeze behind me.

“What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving…Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.” (Matthew 6:30-34, Msg.)

 

1595 Rowan’s bowl of berries
1596 Cardinal wrestling with the piece of string
1597 Fuzzy yellow caterpillar on the running path
1598 A dad who brings the pet lizard to the emergency vet
1599 Frill the lizard feeling better
1600 Mirror note from Noah
1601 First hummingbird of the season
1602  Garden gate through the kitchen window
1603 Ripening tomatoes all in a row
1604 Goldenrod ablaze in the sun
1605 Morning light reflecting off the desk lamp

Why Gratitude Has to Become a Habit

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“If we are lucky,” writes Anne Lamott, “gratitude becomes a habit.”

I’m reading Lamott’s latest book, Help, Thanks, Wow, on the screened porch of my childhood home. It’s raining, gently, the scent of water on hot pavement wafting off the driveway.  I used to spend hours out here as a kid, my feet tucked into the vinyl floral cushion on the aluminum rocking chair, The Secret Garden or The Borrowers or Where the Red Fern Grows spread open in my lap.

In the next room, my dad sleeps under the barely revolving fan in the bedroom,  a pillow cushioning the raw incision in his chest.

“I’ve got a blog idea for you,” he’d said to me two days earlier, wincing as he pulled the table closer to the reclining chair. I had smiled at the way my dad pronounced “blog,” like “blaahg.”

He’s been through the ringer these last few months, in and out of the hospital four times. He sat pale and haggard in his hospital room, machines beeping, tubes spiraling, the tray table between us. A curtain separated him from his moaning roommate.

“It’s about this gratitude thing you’re always talking about,” he said, leaning heavily on the table and looking me straight in the eye. “I’m not sure it works.”

My dad admitted he’d been trying. Trying to focus on the positive, trying to be grateful. He said he looked at the patients around him, patients far sicker than he is, and he told himself it could be worse.

I nodded. “It’s true,” I said. “You could be on a vent or something. At least you can sit in the lobby and have a coffee and watch people come and go.” My dad took the elevator down from the sixth floor to the main entrance, pushing his IV pole ahead of him. He sat in the leather armchair near the front desk and watched drama unfold and life stream in and out of the hospital.

“It doesn’t work though,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s one thing to be grateful on a regular day, but when you’re sick? When you feel lousy and are suffering and are stuck in here?” He tipped his head toward the nurses at the station in the hallway. “It doesn’t work,” he said. “Gratitude doesn’t work in the middle of suffering.”

I sipped my coffee, looked down at my half-eaten blueberry muffin on the tray. I didn’t know what to say. Because really? I’ve never been in these shoes. I don’t know what it’s like to be tethered to a catheter and an IV pole and a beeping machine. I don’t know what it’s like to spend day after day in the ICU, poked and prodded with scalpels and needles, x-rays at 5 a.m., the blood pressure cuff three times every night. Would I be grateful, given similar circumstances?

If we are lucky, gratitude becomes a habit.

I read Anne Lamott’s words out on the screened porch. My dad is home now, sleeping in the next room. I ponder his declaration. And I wonder if maybe Anne Lamott isn’t quite right.

I wonder if maybe gratitude doesn’t become habit out of luck, but out of practice.

Maybe practicing gratitude in the everyday mundane paves the way to gratitude in the dramatic, in the wild untamed, in the out-of-control, in the fear-full times. Maybe it’s not just gratitude itself, but the practice of gratitude in the day-in and day-out that makes the difference.

Practicing gratitude until it becomes habit, second-nature — the habit of noticing, seeing, appreciating, giving thanks.

Practicing gratitude until it becomes habit, second-nature — so that when the world tips topsy-turvy, dizzyingly off-balance, we have the foundation of gratitude already in place.

Maybe making gratitude a daily habit is the way to find gratitude when the going gets tough, when our life spins out of control, when suffering descends.

Honestly? I don’t know for sure. I still don’t have any clear answers for my dad about how to find gratitude in suffering.  All I have right now is the habit of gratitude, a habit I’m hoping and praying will hold up when times get tough.

That’s why I’m going to keep listing gift after gift, these daily miracles, these small joys — practicing the habit of gratitude line after line after line on wrinkled notebook pages.

I’m going to trust that the habit of gratitude will sustain me, even when I can’t sustain myself.

With Ann Voskamp’s Monday 1,000 Gifts Community:

1575 two men chatting on the stone wall
1576 yellow leaves swirling onto the running path
1577 a gentle rain while I run
1578 iced coffee on the back patio
1579 and a husband who makes it!
1580 Angry Trout chowder
1581 British soccer coaches calling Rowan “Rowanski”
1582 Rowan’s delight at the fair
1583 petting the goats and the llama
1584 2:30 a.m. meteor excursion
1585 showdown between Brad and the gorilla