• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • About
  • My Books
    • True You
    • Katharina and Martin Luther
    • 50 Women Every Christian Should Know
    • Spiritual Misfit
  • Blog
  • On My Bookshelves
  • Contact
  • Privacy & Disclosure Policy

Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

seasons

How to Live in This Season

November 14, 2018 By Michelle

Thanksgiving arrives next week, and along with roasted turkey, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie will come a cacophony of Black Friday and Cyber Monday ads, crowded malls, snarled traffic and a to-do list the length of the Magna Carta.

Truth be told, most years my home is stripped of autumnal décor and festooned in evergreen garland and sparkly white lights before the Thanksgiving dinner dishes are dry. Every year I aim to “get a jump on Christmas,” and if my holiday shopping isn’t finished by Thanksgiving Day, I consider myself “behind.”

I suspect I’m not alone in this. Our go-go-go culture insists that rather than fully experiencing the present season, we hurry on to the next one. Nowhere do we see this message play out more clearly than in retail stores. Beginning the day after Halloween, Jack-O-Lanterns, creepy costumes and bite-sized KitKats are whisked from displays, replaced with shiny tinsel, red and green wrapping paper and Elves on the Shelves. By the time dusk falls on Thanksgiving evening, the message is as loud and incessant as the carols blaring from every local radio station:

There’s no time to linger over a second slice of pie as the candles burn low.

There’s no time to stroll beneath a canopy of russet oak leaves, the November sun still warm on our shoulders.

There’s no time to relish the gifts of Thanksgiving – family and friends gathered, gratitude, good food, leftovers (and more leftovers) — when there’s a fence to drape in icicle lights, cards to sign and envelopes to address, presents to purchase and wrap and Nutcracker performances to attend.

Or is there?

This year, I’d like to suggest a different way.

Rather than succumbing to society’s relentless siren’s song compelling us toward what’s next, might we practice being present in this moment, in this day and in this season of Thanksgiving?

Rather than heeding our culture’s call to more, bigger, faster and busier, might we lean more fully into the rhythms of the present season and listen to the call of own souls?

It could be that you don’t know what fully embracing the rhythms of this season looks like. When we are in the habit of living with our hearts, minds and souls fixed on what’s next, we often struggle to recognize what brings us life right now.

If that’s the case, think about the kinds of activities that bring you satisfaction and joy and allow you to feel most like your deepest, truest self.

It might be something as simple as watching the chickadees and the cardinals at the feeder outside your window.

Or enjoying a leisurely cup of coffee and a quiet conversation with a good friend.

It could be cooking a satisfying meal for someone you love, or taking a walk, not to burn off last night’s extra-generous slice of pumpkin pie, but simply to notice and appreciate the remnants of autumn’s colors.

Our culture continually calls us to what’s next and woos us with the false idea that there is something better around the next bend. It demands that we do more, be more and buy more. It fuels our fear that who we already are and what we already have are not enough.

Our souls, on the other hand, call us to fully experience and relish in what is right now.

The many gifts of this present season are readily available to us. If we rush by in our haste to get to the next thing, we will miss them altogether.

: :

Hey friends, just a quick note to remind you that my next book, True You: Letting Go of Your False Self to Uncover the Person God Created, is available for pre-order. And to sweeten the deal, I have some really wonderful free gifts for you — a downloadable True You companion journal, a guided audio meditation and a set of beautifully designed Scripture memorization cards — if you pre-order before January 1. All the details are OVER HERE. Thank you so much for your support!

Filed Under: seasons, small moments, Thanksgiving Tagged With: living in the moment, seasons, Thanksgiving

How to Value the Season You’re In

September 13, 2017 By Michelle

My last official blog post here was June 7 – a little more than three months ago (I admit, I cheated a bit on my hiatus and posted the pieces I wrote for the Journal Star in June, July and August). It was a good and necessary break – even more necessary than I initially anticipated, as it turns out, because…

…I am writing another book…two, in fact! This past spring I signed a two-book contract with Baker Books — one for non-fiction and the second for an “Undetermined” Biography/History. I admit, before I signed my name, it made my heart nearly cease beating to realize I was committing to write my fourth and fifth books. Somehow embarking on books four and five makes the whole business of being an author feel very real. I think because my first three books weren’t knock-it-out-of-the-park best-sellers I didn’t really consider myself a legit author, which I realize is the most ridiculous thing ever, but there you go…sometimes we are our own worst enemies.

Suffice to say, I slogged through a few thousand words or so of book one this summer, and let me say, for the record, it was a S.L.O.G. I am super excited about this book. It’s something I have been thinking about and living into for at least the last two years (and I see hints of it in my journals even longer than that). This is a book of my heart. BUT…that doesn’t mean it’s always going to come easily.

Which leads me to my next point. A few nights ago I told a friend, “I failed at summer.” When she asked me what exactly I meant by that, I explained that for most of the summer, rather than accepting the different rhythms and routines (or lack thereof) of the season, I pushed hard against what I saw as summer’s limitations. I tried to force the season to be something else, something it wasn’t meant to be. For the entire eleven weeks of summer, I never stopped trying to force it. It was, in a word, exhausting.

While I knew going into it that a new part-time job and two teen/pre-teen boys and a husband home for the summer would seriously limit my capacity for the deep, creative work of book-writing, in the end, I refused to go with the flow of the season and embrace its freedom and gifts. Instead, I pushed, pushed, pushed against it with all my might. As a result, I was not only hugely unproductive, I was also constantly frustrated, resentful, and generally a giant pill to be around. I was like the Peanuts character Pig Pen, except instead of a cloud of dirt hovering around me, I emanated doomsday despair and negativity with a heaping side of grouchiness.

The funny thing is, when I finally did sit down to write actual words on the page after the boys returned to school and my husband returned to his classroom in mid-August, I found I was ready. I may not have produced much in terms of word count over the summer (which was extraordinarily frustrating at the time), but it turns out, I was still very much working on the book that whole time.

I was reading. Taking notes. Jotting down relevant quotes. Journaling. Staring into the middle distance. Ideas were percolating and gestating. By the time I sat at my desk and put my fingers to the keyboard, the book (or at least a big chunk of it) was ready to be written. Those three months of seemingly little concrete productivity had actually been an important part of the creative process. I just hadn’t recognized it as such because the outcomes were not immediately apparent or tangible.

This summer I learned the hard way about the importance of trusting and valuing the season I am in. Ecclesiastes said it best, right? “To every thing there is a season. And a time to every purpose under heaven.”

This summer was my season to tend – to nurture the scattered seeds, to water and fertilize them, to wait patiently, biding my time while the first tender seedlings rooted and sprouted. This summer was a gestational season – an important, dare I say absolutely critical time in the process of writing a book. I just wish I had recognized the necessity and value of this season and embraced the beauty and gift of it, rather than pushing it to be something else.

Trusting every season doesn’t come naturally to me. I’m great with the harvest, with seasons of obvious fruitfulness and productivity. But I’m learning that the slower seasons, the periods in which we step back, surrender, and quietly let things be, are necessary and important too. Slowly, largely through great trial and error, I am learning that there is indeed a season for every activity under the heavens. Even, or perhaps especially, when the activity of that season doesn’t look like you expect it to. Even when it’s an activity that does not produce immediately apparent results.

Filed Under: seasons, writing Tagged With: seasons, writing

Primary Sidebar

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.

Read Full Bio

Available Now — My New Book!

Blog Post Archives

Footer

Copyright © 2023 Michelle DeRusha · Site by The Willingham Enterprise· Log in