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Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

small moments

When Your What’s Next Is What’s Right Now

May 22, 2019 By Michelle

“So what’s next then?” he asked me, arms crossed, standing at the threshold of the conference room where I set up my laptop, notebook and file folders twice a week. I’d just told my boss about my recent decision to leave book publishing, and his question did not come as a surprise.

It was my answer that surprised him.

“This,” I said to my boss, nodding to my laptop and my file folders on the conference room table. “What I’m doing right now is what’s next.”

I could see surprise in his raised eyebrows and hear it in the pause that yawned open in the small room. He laughed a little, not quite sure how to respond to my vague, unambitious answer, and I changed the subject so as not to prolong the awkwardness.

But my answer to my boss’s question was the truth. My “what’s next” is what’s right now.

The truth is, our culture demands that we have our “what’s next” all figured out. We are expected to follow a logical trajectory in our professional and personal lives. We are expected to have a one-year plan, a five-year plan, a ten-year plan. We are expected to have goals – to be ready with an acceptable answer when we’re asked “what’s next?”

It’s the American way, right? We strive. We have ambition. We have our “what’s next” lined up, and it typically follows an upward trajectory.

For most of my life this is exactly how I’ve operated. I had the plan, the strategy, the vision. I plotted my trajectory, methodically ticked through the necessary milestones to reach my goal. I’ve always lived with my heart, mind and soul set on the future – one foot in what’s next, and what’s next after that.

These days, though, I’m finding what I most desire is to live with both feet firmly planted in right now. I am craving small and ordinary. I am craving valuable but not necessarily publicly visible work. I am craving face-to-face connection, intimacy, smaller circles.

Admitting I don’t have my next thing worked out – that in fact, my right now is what’s next – is the antithesis of societal and cultural expectations, especially when it comes to one’s professional life. And yet, it feels right. I feel incredible freedom and contentment in doing good but largely invisible work for The Salvation Army, in stepping back from the relentless push toward platform- and brand-building, in living more intentionally in the mundane but surprisingly satisfying facets of my life.

I write fundraising copy for my part-time job. I refill the Oriole feeder with grape jelly. I shuttle one kid to tennis lessons, the other to a study session. I walk the dog and empty the dishwasher. I follow my son across a wide-open space as he takes photographs for a class project. I sit on the back patio with my husband as the evening breeze blows through the white pines and the cardinals call to one another from the honey locust trees. A painted lady butterfly lands on the lilac, and the baby squirrels skitter up the river birch.

Maybe a big “what’s next” will reveal itself in time. Or maybe not. Maybe, as Susanna Wesley once said, some of us are called “to be content to fill a small space if God be glorified.” For my right now, that feels exactly right.

Filed Under: small moments Tagged With: small moments

Weekend One Word: Small

August 29, 2015 By Michelle

Zechariah

“Do not despise these small beginnings,
for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin.”
Zechariah 4:10

This photo captures a single tiny bud in a phlox bloom. If you’ve ever seen phlox, you know that from afar, its blooms look like beautiful, full clusters, plump and lush with color. But look closely. Each blossom is comprised of dozens of individual blooms, tiny flowers all bunched tightly together to create a single explosion of color. Each flower in the cluster starts like the one in this photo – a tiny, single bud, tightly furled, waiting.

Sometimes we don’t recognize a small beginning for what it is. Sometimes, usually in fact, a small beginning doesn’t look like anything at all – it’s too small to see.

But know this: God is at work, and he is rejoicing in this small beginning, this tiny bud, the one so small you can’t even see it beginning to take shape yet.

This weekend, look closely at the small beginning God is orchestrating in your life. Get down on your knees, real close to that tightly furled bud, and snap a picture with your mind’s eye, knowing that God is rejoicing in this work, however small, however new it is.

Peace for your weekend, friends.

Filed Under: One Word, small moments Tagged With: One Word, small moments

Sometimes It’s the Littlest Things

April 30, 2015 By Michelle

Goldfinch2

It’s one of those months, friends. We’re winding down the school year here in Nebraska, which means cranking up the end-of-year school activities like orchestra performances and choir concerts and extra rehearsals at the crack o’ dawn and field trips and field day and soccer games and “Mom I need a white wig that looks like Albert Einstein’s hair for my oral report tomorrow.”

I had a speaking engagement on Tuesday night and another one coming up on Saturday, which means I’m breathing into a paper bag all the hours of the livelong day.

My parents fly into town Friday to stay with us for a week, and yesterday Brad discovered ant hills — as in the actual sandy hill homes of ants — lined up all along our basement floor. Which really does explain the proliferation of ants we’ve been experiencing in the kitchen of late.

Josie Belle, our plush Corgi-Beagle who displays the occasional Elvis snaggle-tooth sneer, has decided now is the perfect time for the Epic Shed. Every time I turn on my vacuum cleaner (which is at least once a day), it emits an odor reminiscent of a big pile of old mangy dog hair.

On the up-side, one whiff of the big pile of old mangy dog hair and my kids hightail it up to their rooms, which means I get a little peace and, albeit smelly, quiet around here (aside from the roar of the vacuum, of course).

DSC_0009(5)

So in the midst of the end-of-school-year-speaking-engagement chaos and the endless errands to the grocery store and the dry cleaner (read: Epic Shed) and the endless vacuuming (read: Epic Shed), I decided last week was the ideal time to go bird-feeder shopping. Because priorities, right?

Turns out, best decision. Ever.

After much consternation in Wild Bird Habitat, Noah and I settled on a finch feeder. For the past couple of weeks now I’ve glimpsed spectacular flashes of bright yellow at my neighbor Karna’s feeder, and I decided I needed some of that spectacularness in my own backyard.

So yeah. We stole Karna’s finches. We bought a feeder and filled it to the brim with Nyjer seed  (I think the fact that I now know what Nyjer seed is means I am officially a Bird Know-It-All), and have successfully lured Karna’s goldfinches into our backyard. And now I have the pleasure of sitting at my writing desk and watching the spectacular flashes of yellow land on my feeder and eat my Nyjer.

Goldfinch

[Okay, truth be told, the goldfinches still like Karna’s yard too. We are sharing them.]

My sweet yellow visitors have been teaching me something important this week: sometimes, even in the midst of vacuuming up ant hills in the basement and praying that will “take care of the problem,” and even in the midst of speaking engagements and choir rehearsal and white Albert Einstein wigs, you simply need to stop, step your bare feet onto the cool concrete of the patio, peer stealthily around the umbrella, and gaze, still as a statue, at the most spectacular shade of yellow you have ever seen.

This week, my sweet yellow visitors are teaching me that sometimes, it really is all about the littlest things.

** And speaking of yellow and little things (best segue ever, if I may say so myself), did you know my friend Deidra Riggs has written a book, and it’s called Every Little Thing: Making a World of Difference Right Where You Are, and it’s AVAILABLE for PRE-ORDER?! It’s going to be a good one, friends; you can take me to the bank on that.

Every-Little-Thing-by-Deidra-Riggs

Filed Under: slow, small moments Tagged With: small moments

When Easter Comes in a Thousand Unexpected Ways

April 2, 2015 By Michelle

rosebush rain

I tend to get writer’s block during the week leading up to a major Christian holiday. I feel all this pressure to say something BIG and UNIQUE and IMPORTANT, to present you with prose that does justice to the magnitude of the moment. After all, I’m a Christian writer, right? I should be able to find something lovely and profound to say about Jesus’ resurrection for heaven’s sake.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I’m not grateful or don’t appreciate the momentousness of the occasion. I get, as much as my limited human brain can comprehend it, the magnitude of Jesus’ sacrifice for me. If I allow myself to stop for a minute or two and think, really think, about what his road to Calgary must have been like, about what it might have felt like to be nailed, metal through tender flesh, to a slab of wood, about the fact that I — deeply flawed me — can live free, totally, utterly and completely free in his grace…I am stunned.

Maybe that’s part of my problem – maybe the idea of such an astonishing sacrifice is simply too much.

At any rate, I’m going to let myself off the hook. I’m not going to write a traditional Maundy Thursday, Good Friday or even Easter Sunday post. Instead, I’m going to tell you about a sliver of beauty I glimpsed yesterday, right smack in the middle of my ordinary day. Because honestly, I think this unexpected bit of beauty says something about Easter, too.

I was sitting at the local coffee shop across from my friend Deidra. Deidra and I have recently realized that writing can be a lonely, isolating business (why it took me more than two years to discover this, I don’t know, but it’s hit me hard these last couple of months), so we’ve agreed to meet for “working dates” at Meadowlark once or twice a month.

I was supposed to be writing a devotion for my chuch’s e-newsletter, but I was doing far more gazing into the middle distance than I was actual writing, and that’s when I saw this:

pencil sketch

Pinned among the detritus of advertisements and fliers — a missing cat, a search for a new roommate, an event long past — was a small pencil drawing sketched onto white-lined paper, one edge jagged from where it had been torn from a notebook, the other curled a bit, stiff from the arid indoor heat. It wasn’t a masterpiece, but it was startlingly beautiful in its own way, the woman’s languid eyes, full lips and strong brows a surprise amid the chaos of the bulletin board. I stared at the drawing for a long time, delighted by the unexpected discovery, a gem tucked among junk.

It made me happy to see that drawing, almost like it had been intended just for me. Somehow that sketch, the model’s penetrating gaze, her delicate nose, made me feel like all was right with the world. Tacked amid the world’s wants, it was, simply, an offering.

It seems to me that we are given the gift of Easter not just on one Sunday in 365 days, but in a thousand unexpected ways, in a thousand unexpected offerings, every single day.

A row of raindrops clinging to the stem of a rosebush.

A sweet compliment from the Walgreen’s clerk.

The scent of blooming magnolia wafting through an open window.

Forgiveness when we don’t deserve it.

Love when we don’t ask for it.

Beauty where we least expect to find it.

It’s true, Easter is flesh nailed to a cross and a stone rolled away from a tomb and the unearned gift of eternal life.

But look closely. You might also find Easter in a simple pencil sketch tacked to cork — unexpected beauty, unexplained gift, one of a thousand reminders of God’s abundant grace on an ordinary day.

Filed Under: Easter, gifts, grace Tagged With: Easter, gifts, small moments

Cherish the Extraordinary Ordinary

June 26, 2013 By Michelle

A few years ago, as we flew home from a five-day trip to Disney World, I remember asking the boys what their favorite part of the vacation had been. “The goldfish,” my son Noah answered without hesitating. His younger brother Rowan agreed.

I had expected them to say Big Thunder Mountain, Pirates of the Caribbean or the Haunted Mansion – one of the more dramatic, popular rides at the park.

“The goldfish? What goldfish?” I didn’t remember a goldfish-themed ride.

“You know, the goldfish at the hotel,” Noah said. “The ones we fed that night after dinner.” I vaguely recalled a fish pond outside the hotel restaurant. My husband and the boys had scattered a few handfuls of fish food across the lily pads while my parents and I had finished our dinners and paid the bill.

“Whatever you do, don’t tell Meme and Pepe your favorite part of Disney World was the goldfish pond at the hotel,” I warned the boys. My parents had spent a boatload of cash to take our whole family on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Disney World. Turns out, we could have walked to the Sunken Garden koi fish pond a mile from our house. For free.

… I’m over at the Journal Star talking about vacations and ordinary moments. Join me over there? {and if you’re a follower of my monthly column over there, you know Frankenstein, the atheist commenter. Check out his comment this month – his FIRST positive comment in almost four years of columns! Of course, it’s because I don’t mention God in this one … but I’ll take what I can get!}

Filed Under: hit the road, parenting, small moments Tagged With: Lincoln Journal Star, small moments

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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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