Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

Romans

When You Make an Idol out of Success

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red tulip

Five years ago I stood in the bracing wind and watched my then-four-year-old son, Rowan, hunt for plastic eggs hidden in the grass. It was the day before Easter, and behind my sunglasses my eyes burned from crying. An hour earlier a literary agent had emailed to tell me that despite his initial interest, he’d decided not to represent my book. I remember the weight of defeat that sat heavy in the pit of my stomach all weekend, even as the organ thundered the final notes of Handel’s “Messiah” on Easter morning.

A couple weeks ago, just before we left for Easter service, I opened my laptop and clicked on Amazon.com. I typed in the title of my recently published book and scrolled down the page until I found the all-important number: the book’s rank. I saw the number had skyrocketed (the lower the number the better) since the book’s release five days earlier. Tears pricked my eyes, and my stomach clenched in defeat.

The irony is not lost on me. Five years ago, I would have relinquished a lifetime’s supply of Jelly Bellies to have my first book for sale on Amazon.com and stacked on the shelves of Barnes and Noble. Yet there I was, disappointed and discontented, a mere five days after the culmination of my dream.

I’ve always been a Triple-Type-A overachiever. As a kid I strove to earn enough badges to decorate my Girl Scout sash top to bottom, front to back. As an adult in the corporate workforce I aimed to achieve a perfect annual review and regular promotions. Ambition and the drive to succeed are stamped on my DNA.

My zest for success is not the problem though. The real issue, it turns out, is my idolatry of ambition and achievement. I’ve made an idol out of the success of my book.

My intentions for the book began honorably. One of the reasons I wrote my memoir was to offer hope to others like myself who were fumbling toward faith. Perseverance enabled me to write the book over two years while working part-time and mothering two young kids. Ambition fueled my relentless pursuit of an agent and publisher.

But along the way, my honorable ambition morphed into something else. My ambition became less and less focused on God and others, until finally, on Easter Sunday morning, I found myself in tears. They weren’t tears of joy that my book had finally been published after seven long years. They weren’t tears of gratitude for the God who saw that process through. I cried because the book wasn’t ranked to my satisfaction on Amazon.com.

I’ve been down this idolatry road before, and I admit it’s disappointing to find myself there again. Like I’ve done in the past, I turned once again to Paul’s words in his Letter to the Romans:

“Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world,” Paul advised, “but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.” (Romans 12:2)

It sounds lovely in theory, doesn’t it? In reality, though, letting God transform you by changing the way you think isn’t easy, because that kind of transformation isn’t a one-time, snap-your-fingers-and-it’s-done occurrence. It’s a life-long process of surrendering and re-surrendering; two steps forward, one step back; beginning again and again.

On Easter Sunday morning, I threw myself a pity party. On Monday morning I read Paul’s words, took a deep breath, and began the process of letting God transform me. Again.

This is a repost of the April Lincoln Journal Star column.

Last Monday was the final publication of Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday. Kelli Woodford has graciously taken the community under her wing. Please join me over there for Unforced Rhythms. 

When You Beat Yourself Up for Being a Bad Christian

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I sigh and examine my fingernails as my husband talks with the saleswoman. She is unable to answer a single question we have about the tan sofa we are considering on the showroom floor. “I’m sorry,” she stutters, “I don’t usually work in furniture. Adam, the regular sales person in this department, will be back tomorrow. Can I give you his card?” My husband thanks her. I sigh again and cross my arms over my chest.

“Why aren’t we getting the couch?” Rowan asks, flopping onto the ottoman with the dangling $500 price tag.

“Because the lady has absolutely no information, despite the fact that she is supposedly an employee of this store,” I hiss. The saleswoman’s heels click across the tile. I see her glance back at me.

“Michelle!” Brad chides. “Keep your voice down! She can hear you, you know.” My husband is appalled by my rude behavior, but I don’t care. We’ve been looking for a sofa that will fit in our renovated basement for two months. I’ve visited this particular store three times, each time leaving without the information I need. I want to blame someone, and the innocent saleswoman is the target of my frustration.

As we exit through the double doors, I feel the tendrils of regret wrap around my gut. But not for the reasons you might think. I’m suddenly afraid the saleswoman has recognized my face from the newspaper. I don’t want her to know that the woman who writes the monthly religion column is the same rude customer who disdainfully dismissed her and then stomped in a huff out of the store.

By the time Brad pulls the car into the driveway, though, my fear of being “found out” as a sorry excuse for a Christian has morphed into true remorse and shame. I’m embarrassed by my tirade, my rudeness. I regret the terrible example I’ve just presented to my kids, and I can’t even look my husband in the eye. I want to quit this whole Christian thing altogether – clearly I am a complete and utter failure, the kind of person who can’t even treat a minimum-wage, just-out-of-college sales clerk decently, for heaven’s sake. I am in full self-condemnation mode.

I berate myself for days after the furniture store incident. I simply cannot forgive myself; I cannot let it go. The power of my own sin grips me in a suffocating stranglehold, like a metal vise squeezing tight around my chest, constricting my breathing, bruising my ribs.

Until, days later, I finally remember that Jesus does not condemn me for my sin, no matter how wrong or ugly or unchristian or downright despicable I am.

“So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ,” Paul writes to the Romans. “And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death.” (Romans 8:1-2)

Look closely at what Paul says: “The power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death.” Being followers of Jesus does not free us from sin itself, but from the strangulating power of sin, the power that threatens to plunge us into the abyss of shame and self-condemnation. The power that urges us to give up, throw in the towel, quit this Christian living once and for all.

It took a few days for the truth of this verse to seep into my hard heart and head. Part of me didn’t truly believe it; truthfully, part of me still doesn’t believe it, because it really does sound too good to be true.

So I keep going back to this verse, reading and rereading it, replacing the berating refrain of “failure” with this balm, this salve, trying to allow the words to sink deep. I tell myself that I will keep on sinning, that I know for sure. But I also tell myself that when I do, I can live free in the knowledge that I am not, and will never be, condemned by Christ.

Anyone else out there experience a total Christian fail like this? How did you forgive yourself?

** So I didn’t write this post with Jennifer Lee’s book in mind, but in rereading it just now, I realized this is the perfect #PreApproved post to go along with Love Idol: Letting Go of Your Need for Approval – and Seeing Yourself through God’s Eyes. If you haven’t heard of this book, go right now to Amazon and check it out. My copy is already underlined, dog-eared, wrinkled and worn (and it’s brand-new!) – this is a powerful read, friends. **

 

Fail Better

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A couple of weeks ago I came across last year’s list of New Year’s Resolutions. Let’s just say 2013 was an epic fail, as least as far as resolutions are concerned:

Exercise: Register and run for a 10K. Fail.

Sleep: Lights off by 10 p.m.; up at 5:45 a.m. Fail.

Health: Take a multi-vitamin and calcium pill daily. Fail.

Spirituality: Dinnertime Bible reading. Fail.

Work: Off the computer between 7-9 a.m. and between 3:30 – 9 p.m. Fail times ten.

Like I said, epic fail.

The thing about failure is that it can really set you back (no kidding, right?). You can look at all the ways you missed the mark, and you can conclude you’re a loser with a capital L. A flub. A big-fat-never-going-to-get-anywhere failure. A why-should-I-even-bother-trying disaster.

Or, you can make a different choice. You can choose, as writer Dani Shapiro says, to fail better.

At first glance that doesn’t make a bit of sense, does it? Fail better? What good is that? you might ask. I don’t want merely to fail better, I want to succeed. I want to move forward. I want to overcome, excel, get ahead, reach my goal, surpass my goal.

Fail better? No thank you very much.

But the hard  truth is, success isn’t possible without failure first. To fail better, as Shapiro says, “to be willing to fail — not just once, but again and again, over the course of a lifetime” is key. Failing again and again, failing better, is a necessary part of the process.

J.K. Rowling’s manuscript for Harry Potter was rejected 12 times before it was eventually published, and even then, her editor advised her to get a day job, predicting she would never make a living writing children’s fiction.

Steve Jobs was fired from Apple, the multi-billion dollar company he’d built from the ground up. “I was a very public failure,” he noted in a 2005 commencement speech to Stanford University graduates.

Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor because, “he lacked imagination and had no good ideas.”

I don’t need to tell you how each of these people pressed on with tenacity, putting one foot in front of the other despite the fact that they undoubtedly felt like a big, fat failure at the time. And you can bet these epic failures aren’t the only ones they endured along the way. These are only the failures we know about.

Even the big-wig apostle Paul failed. He persecuted and murdered Christians for years before he met Jesus on the road to Damascus. Then, after his dramatic conversion, he continued to fail, acknowledging that even with the best intentions, he failed time and time again.

“I don’t really understand myself,” he admitted in his letter to the Romans, “for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate…I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway.” (Romans 7:15, 19)

Can’t you hear the frustration in his voice? The despair? The complete and utter disappointment in himself?

But Paul’s story doesn’t end there, in defeat. He doesn’t give up; he doesn’t let failure overcome him. Instead, he presses on, determined and faithful. “No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it,” he tells the Philippians, “but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead.” (3:13) Paul presses on. He resolves to fail better.

Rowling, Jobs, Disney and yes, even Paul, remind us that failure is not only inevitable but necessary, and not only in work, but across the spectrum: in our jobs, in parenting, in marriage, in friendship, in faith. Failure is always, always part of the recipe for success, yet we need not dwell on our shortcomings. We need not obsess over where and how many times we’ve missed the mark. Instead, we reflect, we try to learn from the missteps, we take stock, and then we press on in faith and hope.

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My 2014 Resolutions:

1. Improve microbiome health with regular probiotics.
2.  Exercise: Run 4-5 days/week.
3. No computer 7-9 a.m. and 4:30-9 p.m.
4. Daily morning Bible reading 6-6:30 a.m. &
#TheJesusProject memorization
5. Fail Better

And with Holley Gerth’s new link-up here.