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Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

Kris Camealy

The Weight of Waiting {and a book giveaway!}

October 19, 2016 By Michelle

Come Lord Jesus: The Wait of Waiting

A few years ago the phone rang on a December evening. It was Brad’s dad, calling to tell us he had been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. It was the beginning of Advent, and when I think about it today, I can still feel the bitterness, anger, and deep sorrow I experienced that holiday season. The lights, the music, the decorations, the shopping, the socializing…it all felt so garish, so offensive. I wanted everything to stop. It was all I could do not to squeeze my eyes shut and cup my palms over my ears.

That whole season was terrible, not only because my father-in-law was dying, but also because I felt forced toward a lightness and jubilance I couldn’t possibly experience. It felt like there wasn’t space for grief, like there wasn’t room for suffering and brokenness. And so we stumbled through. Our faces wore expressions appropriate to the season, but inside, our hearts were shattered.

I know God was with us that holiday season. I know he was with us in our grief and that he gently held our shattered hearts in his hands. But I couldn’t hold that tension between the joy and light of the season and the darkness and sorrow inside me. I couldn’t see that there was space in the waiting for both light and darkness, joy and grief. Amid all the festive lights and noise of the season, I couldn’t see that God makes that space for us in his son Jesus, that waiting can hold both our joy and our despair.

Come Lord Jesus: The Wait of Waiting

A few months ago my friend Kris Camealy emailed to ask if I would consider writing an endorsement for her book, Come, Lord Jesus: The Weight of Waiting, a collection of 25 daily devotions for Advent. I said yes because I love Kris and I respect and admire her writing. What I didn’t expect, though, was that her book would move me so deeply and so profoundly.

Come, Lord Jesus is the book I needed during that hard Advent, when I couldn’t find a place for suffering amid all the brightness. Kris Camealy gets it. She understands that there’s a place for that tension, the existence of both darkness and light, and she doesn’t shy away from it; she doesn’t pretend the darkness isn’t there. Kris acknowledges the grief and sorrow, the pain and suffering, and she reminds us that Jesus is Immanuel, God with us – even in, especially in, the sometimes unbearable weight of waiting.

This is a beautiful book, friends. And please don’t get me wrong – it is full of light and joy and hope. But I also so appreciate that Come, Lord Jesus does not lean so much toward the jubilance of the season that it completely disregards the fact that grief, suffering, and darkness exist. For it is only in great darkness that we are truly able to see a great Light.

Come Lord Jesus, Advent devotional

I am delighted to be able to send one reader a copy of Kris Camealy’s beautiful book Come, Lord Jesus. Enter the drawing below for a chance to win (email readers: click here and scroll down to the bottom of the post to enter the drawing).

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Filed Under: Advent, book reviews, books Tagged With: #ComeLordJesusBook, Advent devotional, Kris Camealy

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.

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

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

Working For It, A Story From A Recovering Spiritual Misfit

April 4, 2014 By Michelle

I am delighted to welcome friend and fellow writer Kris Camealy to the blog today as part of my “I am a Spiritual Misfit, I am His Beloved Misfit” series. As I’ve gotten to know her better and better over these last few months, I’ve come to realize that Kris and I have far more in common than our Catholic background. I see so much of myself in the honest words she writes here today. And if you haven’t yet read her beautiful book, Holey, Wholly, Holy: A Lenten Journey of Refinement, get yourself a copy, pronto. You will be greatly blessed by her writing and her heart.

Some of my most vivid memories are of myself, kneeling in church, staring up at a crucifix. Jesus, held there, with His mouth downturned, and His lifeless eyes in a fixed in a steady gaze. I’d stare with intent at his anguished expression, almost willing myself to feel what He must have felt. I’ve lived life keenly aware of my deserving of punishment. Guilt can be a handy thing, but I think it’s safe to say, looking back now, I lived too long under the weight of not simply guilt for my inborn sinful nature, but shame as well.

The kneelers were padded but after a few brief minutes, my knees ached and I’d catch myself slouching just enough so that my rear end could rest against the pew. Resting there for a minute, the shame was quick to convict me. Needed to ‘rest’ during this sacred prayer time was a sign of weakness–I was sure of it.

Spiritual Misfit
Looking down at my thighs, I’d shift my weight from kneecap to kneecap, eager for the liturgy to end. Then inevitably, the confession would begin, followed by the Our Father.

I told myself that kneeling was a small sacrifice to make, considering Jesus’s sacrifice. I’d guilt-trip myself through the prayers on my knees, flogging myself with shameful barbed words about how weak I was to complain about 5 minutes on my knees on a padded kneeler.

I made a habit of comparing my various discomforts during church to Christ’s suffering on the cross. I told myself, if He could endure what He did, surely I could suck it up and handle both the boring service and the painful prayer portion of the service.

In essence, I told myself I was taking one for the team–team Jesus.

I wish I could say that this method of comparing my own “suffering” to that of Christ’s ended after leaving the Catholic church. I only know it now, as an adult, but the truth is, I shamed myself over various perceived weakness for most of my entire life. Actually, it would be a great many more years before I stopped telling myself to “endure” the discomfort of kneeling during church for Christ’s sake.

I’d always felt a sort of kinship with flagellant monks. Kneeling until my knees ached felt like penance for my mounting sins. The longer I could endure it, the more likely Christ would deem me worthy of forgiveness. I wasn’t good about praying the rosary, so I hoped I could make up for my failed efforts at prayer by kneeling long without rest.

I hadn’t yet met grace. I didn’t understand that Christ loved me, rosary prayers or not, and that whether I could stand or kneel during prayer, had no impact on whether or not He heard me. Salvation was in my own hands. Surely I needed to endure something to gain His acceptance. Didn’t I needed to do something to earn a spot in heaven? Last I’d heard, space was filling up–

No.

I had never read in Jeremiah, where God says,

Thus says the Lord:
“Cursed is the man who trusts in man
and makes flesh his strength,
whose heart turns away from the Lord.” (17:5)

Jeremiah was a bullfrog. I knew a boy in my class called Jeremiah. But I did not know then, about the weeping prophet.

I grew up believing that salvation would come by way of my efforts, and through my own willingness to suffer. I believed that God’s mercy had limits, and that God helps those who help themselves. (That last one there–it’s not buried in Proverbs like I thought it must be. Nor will you find it in the book of “Hezekiah.” It’s NOT scriptural, at all).

I spent my whole young life trying to help myself because If I didn’t, who would? Not Jesus. How could He when He was fastened to a brass cross week after week? I worked fiercely to become good enough, strong enough, decent enough–just enough. You can imagine I always fell short.

Always.

I didn’t know grace, not how to give it, nor receive it. I all but shut my heart to the notion that God helps those who CAN’T help themselves, which, by the way, includes me.

It’s been a long journey from my 6 year-old self in my white first communion dress, to today. It took 20 years for me to finally see Jesus not as bound to a cross but as the risen Savior.

My current church doesn’t say prayers while kneeling. We don’t even have kneelers attached to the pews. I still gaze up at the cross when I pray but Jesus isn’t on it. He lives. He’s out and about in the world, helping us, because, Lord knows, we can’t help ourselves.

******

When Michelle asked me to guest post for her, relating my own Spiritual Misfit story, the only struggle I had was deciding which one to tell you. I think, if we’re honest, we are all spiritual misfits in some way or another. Michelle’s book is for everyone who tries to love and live Jesus and feels like they are always missing the mark by just a bit. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll see yourself in her story–but better than all of that, you’ll see Jesus in her words.

As a sequin-wearing, homeschooling mom of four, Kris is passionate about Jesus, people and words. When she’s not writing, she enjoys taking gratuitous pictures of her culinary creations on Instagram. Once upon a time, she ran 10 miles for Compassion International. She is the author of Holey, Wholly, Holy: A Lenten Journey of Refinement, and blogs at kriscamealy.com.

 

Filed Under: guest posts, Spiritual Misfit Tagged With: Kris Camealy, Spiritual Misfit

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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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