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Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

parenting

When Walking is Prayer

April 18, 2018 By Michelle

Though I’ve never met her in person, I’ve admired Hilary Yancey for a long time. She’s a deep thinker and a beautiful writer, and, lucky for all of us, she’s recently released her first book, Forgiving God: A Story of Faith – a memoir about becoming a mother to a child with disabilities and the impact that experience has had on her faith and on her relationship with God. I haven’t finished the book yet, because it just arrived in the mail today, but let me simply say that I picked it up while I was sitting here at my desk, read the opening few pages, and really, truly did not want to put it down. It’s a privilege to welcome Hilary to the blog today; I know you will be touched by her words.

Post by Hilary Yancey

I remember the first time I prayed with my eyes open. It was on a drive home from high school, late in the winter of my senior year. I had just gotten my driver’s license and was nervously winding my way down the same roads I had been traveling for years. I could feel the car swing into the familiar right turns and how my foot anticipated the next stop sign. But my eyes darted from side to side, my hands sweated at “10 and 2” on the steering wheel and out of my mouth slipped a decidedly complex prayer: “Lord Jesus do not let me die on this road I JUST got my license!”

I’ve always been the kind of person who prays with her eyes closed. I found it easier to concentrate on the ideas of my prayers, to imagine how they were being sent upwards and meeting Jesus in heaven. I prayed in this way to stop being distracted by the things I saw around me, by a book I wanted to read or a pile of laundry I was supposed to do. I thought that by closing my eyes I could close out the world and so through my prayers ascend somewhere else, wherever it was I thought God was.

A few years ago, my prayer life changed. I was pregnant with my first child; we’d received a challenging medical diagnosis at our 20-week ultrasound; I’d never needed to pray more. But when I closed my eyes, it was darkness. There were no feelings of ascent, no sure footing. The world had interrupted my old patterns and it was impossible to close out the world because the world had shrunk to the space of my body expanding for my son and the world was with me everywhere I went.

By the time my son was born, I had given up praying with my eyes closed; I had almost given up the practice of praying. But I walked: to and from his crib in the NICU, to and from the family lounge where doctors met with us to share further diagnoses, treatment options, to and from my bed to the shower to the hallway again, and around the outskirts of the hospital building when I would call my friend to cry. I could not speak to God directly, except to yell, and so I walked.

And my footsteps became words, they became prayers, but open-eyed prayers, prayers of pressing into the world instead of pushing away. My footsteps took me both where I hadn’t wanted to go and where it turns out I needed to, to the place of being surrounded, immersed in the very experiences I had once prayed to avoid.

I walked my son to the doors of the OR, I walked the floorboards of our house listening to the breaths in and out of his new trach, I walked us around the lobbies of his follow up clinics and through the hospital hallways too many times to count, memorizing the turns – up one floor, left then right and around to the desk where they check your ID, down the hallway, slight right to the sink and then left and then Jack, my son, is on the right – all of this walking and I emerged with prayers carved into my feet, with prayers left on those floorboards and hallway tiles, echoes of what my mind couldn’t say but my body could.

I am still at the very beginning of learning to pray. I am still working on finding a new rhythm of conversation with God. But now, when I can’t find a way to say what I mean, when I close my eyes and feel only quiet dark, I start walking. And the footsteps become words, and the words become prayers.

I turn the corner and I am somewhere new.

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Hilary Yancey loves good words, good questions, and sunny afternoons sitting on her front porch with a strong cup of tea. She and her husband, Preston, and their two children, Jack and Junia, live in Waco, Texas, where Hilary is completing her PhD in philosophy at Baylor University. Her first book, Forgiving God: A Story of Faith was just published by FaithWords. You can read more of her writing on her website and follow her on Instagram at @hilaryyancey.

Filed Under: books, guest posts, parenting, Prayer Tagged With: Hilary Yancey, parenting, prayer

How to Forgive Yourself When You Have a Universal Meltdown

March 22, 2016 By Michelle

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I had a universal meltdown. I mean literally, a Universal meltdown.

Two weeks ago we spent spring break in Florida, with our first three days of the trip dedicated to visiting the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios in Orlando. I’ll tell you straight-up, theme parks are not in my wheelhouse. The crowds, the lines, the $29 hamburgers, the fact that despite my vat of hand sanitizer, chances are still good that I will succumb to the 21st-century version of Black Death as a result of the barrage of germs. And to say nothing of the expense! As I mentioned to my husband when we  clicked “Purchase” for the three-day park pass: “We could sponsor two and a half more Compassion kids for a year for this!” Not to put a big fat damper on the fun or anything.

That said, I was pretty psyched about the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. My boys LOVE Harry Potter. We’ve read all the books, and watched all the movies ad nauseum, and plus, I’d heard really good things about the theme park (red flag: sky-high expectations).

Which is why, on our first morning there, when Rowan announced, “I don’t think I’m going to ride any of the rides. I think I just want to walk around,” things began to fall apart. Not at first, mind you. Initially I tried, really I did, to be The Rational and Empathetic Parent. We talked about his fears. I suggested we scale back to the tamer amusement ride options and ease into the more dramatic experiences later. We rationalized and hypothesized and psychologized and psychoanalyzed. But no, Rowan would have none of it. In fact, he was quite specific about which rides he would not partake in: “the ones with the conveyor belts.”

In other words, pretty much every single amusement park ride ever known to mankind.

We had basically remortgaged our house and our favorite neighbor’s house in order to purchase tickets to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios, and my youngest child decided he preferred to “walk around” and “look at stuff,” and “maybe have some popcorn.”

People, can I just say, this is like visiting the Swiss Alps in order to drink hot chocolate in the chalet.

This is like flying from the United Emirates to the Mall of America to “window shop.”

This is like holding front-row Adele concert tickets in your hand and then deciding, “Eh, I’ll just watch one of her music videos on YouTube instead.”

Catch my drift?

Commence Universal Meltdown.

I’m making this sound funny, but believe me, it was not funny. Not Funny, in capital letters and boldface type. As Brad later described it, “We ride-shamed our kid.” There was whisper-yelling (mine). Threatening (mine). Bribing (mine). Guilting (mine). Sighing (mine). Eye-rolling (mine). Bitter retorts (mine). Shaming (mine). Pouting (mine). The Ice-Cold Shut-Down (mine). And crying (mine and Rowan’s).

In fact, at one point, as I sat on a stone wall next to Dudley Do-Right’s Ripsaw Falls water ride and cried behind my sunglasses, I actually thought to myself, “There are 15,638 mothers in this park right now, and I am the only one who is crying.”

Ultimately we salvaged the vacation. Life dramatically improved when we left Orlando and headed for the beach. And we did actually have a few good moments at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter (I captured all two of them and posted them to Instagram and Facebook, because, you know, even if we’re not having the time of our lives, it’s important that we at least look like we’re having the time of our lives, right?).

I apologized to Rowan. We made up. And as is always the case with Rowan, he was quick to forgive me and move on.

But here’s the clincher: I couldn’t forgive myself. I couldn’t move on.

A week after we’d returned from Florida, I was still inwardly berrating myself for my atrocious behavior. I prayed the exact same confession five nights in a row. “Please forgive me, Lord, for shaming my child and for being a terrible mother.” By the third night, I’m sure God was thinking, “Have we not sufficiently covered this yet?”

The thing is, God may have forgiven me the first time I confessed, but I didn’t believe it. I simply couldn’t believe my terrible-parent behavior was forgivable. I refused to trust the fact of grace.

I suspect I’m not the only one neck-deep in this struggle. I suspect I’m not the only one who has sinned and repented and yet still struggles to accept the real truth of God’s grace. In moments like these, grace simply seems too good to be true. In moments like these, grace seems possible for everyone else but ourselves.

Friends, let me remind you of what I’ve had to remind myself this past week (and Holy Week is a very good time for this reminder): Jesus Christ died for this very reason.

Think about that for a moment. A real person, a human being who is at the same time God, died a painful, humiliating, lonely death on a cross 2,000 years ago for this very reason: so that we would not have to continue to carry around our failures and our faults forever.

Jesus Christ died so that we could be free from the very weight I have insisted on clutching and carrying ever since we returned from Florida. He died so that we could be free.

Refusing to accept God’s grace, a grace that comes to us at the highest cost, defeats the whole point of Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice. Holding on to our guilt and our shame and our inability to forgive ourselves not only hurts ourselves, it also hurts God. Because Jesus died for this moment – this moment right here, the ugliest moment that feels impossibly broken, the moment that feels definitively unfixable.

When we insist on holding as tightly as we can to our guilt and shame, when we refuse to relinquish our sin and accept God’s grace, we deny the ultimate sacrifice God made for us. We deny his life. We deny his sacrifice. We deny his resurrection. We deny him.

I’m not going to lie. A big part of our spring break stunk like giant smelly deviled eggs, and it was almost entirely due to my own bad behavior. It hasn’t been easy to let that go, to forgive myself and hand every last bit of my guilt, shame and regret over to God. But that’s exactly what I am doing. I am handing it all over to him. I am allowing God to take it. And I am stepping fully and completely into his grace.

Filed Under: grace, parenting Tagged With: grace, parenting

Grace is Moving Toward

September 17, 2015 By Michelle

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During a class she taught at my church last week, my friend Deidra offered a definition of grace that settled deep into my soul.

“Grace is moving toward,” Deidra said — moving toward those we don’t necessarily want to move toward or even moving toward someone as they are, not as who we want them to be.

“Do you need to move toward a person and into their world,” Deidra asked, “intead of trying to force them to move into yours?”

When Deidra asked that question, I immediately thought of my two kids. The hard truth is, I haven’t always done a good job of embracing who they are as individuals, but instead, often find myself trying to shape one to reflect the other.

I realize this is Parenting 101. I’m ashamed to admit it’s taken me 14 years of childrearing to come to this understanding.

You see, I have two very different kids. One is quiet and introspective; the other is an effervesence extrovert. One is contemplative, the other is a man of action. One thrives in busyness, energy and excitement, the other requires a copious amount of stillness and solitude. But instead of embracing and nurturing their uniquely distinct personalities, here is where I have made my critical mistake: more often than not, I have tried to force one to fit the shape of the other. Instead of moving toward one child and toward his world, instead of embracing who he is and how God made him, I have often tried to move him toward me – or rather, toward his brother. I have tried to redefine and reshape each of my sons based on the qualities of the other or on my expectations.

Thankfully my attempts have failed abysmally. Each of my sons is still very much his own unique, quirky, individual self. Personalities are resilient and stubborn, it turns out.

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This epiphany about grace is important for me, not only as a parent but as an individual as well. Because the truth is, I often move myself toward the shape of others. Maybe you do this, too? Maybe you yearn to look like she does, or speak like she does, or be the kind of writer, or mother or wife or boss that she is.

Maybe you find yourself trying to push and pull and squeeze yourself and all that makes you beautifully, uniquely you into someone else’s box – to remake yourself into someone else.

Maybe it’s my tendency toward perfectionism, but I do this more often than I would like to admit. I try to redefine or reshape myself based on the appealing qualities of someone else. I think part of me assumes, “If only I could be like that, then it — I — would be enough,” which is a lie, of course – one of the biggest, fattest of all lies.

Deidra’s beautiful definition of grace is Truth, and we need to apply it to ourselves, too. Grace is moving more fully toward ourselves as the perfectly beautiful, unique individuals God created each one of us to be. Let’s give ourselves grace. Let’s move toward, love, and fully embrace ourselves, because who we really are is who God intended us to be.

Filed Under: grace, parenting Tagged With: grace, parenting

Autumn Is on Its Way

August 6, 2015 By Michelle

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I feel it in the early morning air. On the back patio this morning I said to Brad, “There’s a hint of autumn today.” He shook his head no. But I felt it, a wisp, suspended like gossamer threads beneath the river birch tree. Autumn…on its way.

The kids go back to school next Wednesday – Noah starts eighth grade, Rowan fifth. Don’t faint dead on the floor when I say this, but I’m not ready; I’m not ready for summer to end. I know. Unprecedented. Usually I’m in full-out count-down mode by now. Maybe it’s because I’m dreading full-time immersion into the Luther project. But I don’t think so…I don’t think that’s the whole story.

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This summer was good, really good. Maybe the best yet. We traveled a lot, explored new places together, spent a lot of time winding along new roads. We sang out loud together with B-107.3. I’m even starting to learn some of the words to the latest pop songs. But when The Police come on the radio, or U2, or Madonna, and I know all the lyrics, every last one, Rowan always asks, “Is this one of your songs? Did you sing this one when you were a kid?”

The boys stay up late now. From my bed in the dark, I can see the light from Noah’s bedside lamp, a thin line, a boundary, beneath his bedroom door. They sleep until the sun has risen high over the white pines. They cook up their own waffles in the toaster oven. This week Brad taught them how to run a load of laundry while I was at the library, and they washed and dried their sheets and comforters themselves.

They read for hours and hours at a time, sprawled on the sofa, legs flung over the arm or propped on the back, feet against a window pane. Sometimes when I walk through the room I startle, glance again. Those long legs look nearly like the legs of men.

I don’t typically live in the backward glance. I don’t bemoan what I may have missed; I don’t sit square in regret. I’m a striver, a planner, a what’s nexter. My eyes are on the future, not the past.

Lately, though, when I glimpse those long almost-man legs, when I snuggle next to Rowan and realize the length of him nearly matches mine, the pangs of nostalgia strike sharp.  A reminder, perhaps, that summer does not last forever. Autumn is on its way.

Filed Under: parenting, summer vacation Tagged With: parenting

What the Infamous “Lamp Day” Taught Me about God’s Love and Grace

March 26, 2015 By Michelle

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My younger son Rowan once asked me if he could ever do anything that would make me stop loving him.

“No, absolutely nothing,” I assured him. “Even if you did the worst thing you could think of, even if you were in jail for your whole life, I would still love you. I will love you and your brother every minute of my life, no matter what.”

Rowan paused, considering my answer.

“Even on the lamp day, when you got super mad…did you love me the same amount that day, too?” Rowan pressed. “Or did you maybe love me a little bit less?”

Ah yes, the infamous Lamp Day — the day Rowan hurled a pillow across the living room (in spite of the no-throwing-pillows rule) and broke a lamp, mere hours after my mom had bought me a new lamp to replace the other lamp Rowan had broken eight months before, also by hurling a pillow across the room.

I cringe even now as I recall the scene, me gripping the lamp base white-knuckled, shaking it over my head and raving incoherently. My mother, who was visiting for the week, stood speechless next to me, paralyzed by my bellowing outburst. I ordered the boys to their rooms while I swept up the fragments, ranting about how they’d spend the entire day behind closed doors. My mother retreated to the basement guest room as I crashed around the kitchen, slamming the box of fresh donuts into the trashcan and fuming aloud to myself while the boys howled in their bedrooms.

All in all, the Lamp Day was not my most stellar moment in parenting.

… I’m over at Good Life Moms today, writing about what the infamous Lamp Day taught me about love and grace. Join me over there for the rest of this post…

Filed Under: grace, love, parenting Tagged With: Good Life Moms, parenting

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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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