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Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

Spiritual Misfit

The Truth of My Shadow Side

October 6, 2015 By Michelle

adirondack chair

I had to admit I didn’t believe in God before I could begin to believe in God.

I realize that doesn’t even really make sense. But it’s the truth.

I grew up in the church but had “a hard fall from faith.” That’s usually what I tell people, even now, when I need to give a cursory overview of my spiritual journey. The reality, though, is that I didn’t believe in God for most of my adulthood, perhaps even for much of my childhood.

For a long time – decades — I didn’t admit that to anyone, most especially to myself.

I went through the motions of faith: I went to church and confession. I prayed, sort-of. But all the while I was pretending. I’d erected my fake belief as a façade, like one of those false storefronts in a ramshackle Old West town. Behind that façade was the real me, falling apart slowly, brick by brick.

…

Wild in the Hollow…Today I’m over at Amber Haines’ place. Amber has a new book out, a memoir called Wild in the Hollow, which I highly, highly recommend. It’s raw, truthful and beautifully written, and if you love spiritual memoirs like I do, this one is a definite must-read. Come on over to Amber’s place for the rest of my guest post about truth, and while you’re there, introduce yourself to Amber and learn more about her book. 

Filed Under: Spiritual Misfit, unbelief Tagged With: Spiritual Misfit, unbelief, Wild in the Hollow

Even Now, Peace Like a River

July 14, 2015 By Michelle

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A few weeks before Spiritual Misfit released to the public, I mailed out a bunch of advance copies to people – “influencers,” as they are called in publishing lingo. Some of these people I knew a little bit from the Christian blogging/writing world, some were people I didn’t have a personal connection with at all. Many who received those advance copies didn’t respond. This, I know, is par for the course. People are busy; they have their own books to promote; they have their own close writer friends to support. This is the way the system works.

But here’s the hard part: some of the people who had initially expressed interest in my book ultimately didn’t respond either. I heard nothing from them. Utter silence. No response.

I get it. I do. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. People are busy. We bite off more than we can chew. And frankly, people are allowed to not like a book. Just because you send someone a free copy of your book, even if they’ve told you they want to read it, doesn’t mean they have to like it.

But here’s where it gets ugly (You thought you’d heard all my book-related angst and ugliness, didn’t you? Yeah, no. There’s more. Pour yourself a second cup of coffee.) You know what happens when you put your story into the world and into the hands of people you admire and respect and who you want to like you and respect you back, and you hear nothing?

You assume the worst.

Not only do you assume that your writing didn’t resonate with them; you also begin to assume your story itself didn’t resonate.

And, because you wrote a memoir, a story about your own life, you begin to assume that you, as a human being, didn’t resonate.

Maybe they think my story is baloney, you wonder. Maybe they think I’m a lousy Christian, or a terrible parent or a bad person.

Maybe, you worry, they simply decided they don’t like you.

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Once you’re tumbling down this raging river, friends, let me tell you, it’s awfully hard to extricate yourself. I know, because I’ve been caught in the currents of self-doubt, insecurity and, let’s get really real here, self-loathing, for fifteen months now, ever since Spiritual Misfit released a year ago this past April. For fifteen months I haven’t been able to let it go. My brain works overtime, churning out questions, doubts, insecurities, fears. When I can’t sleep, when I’m staring at the shaft of light from the bathroom nightlight, piercing the hallway darkness, I think about those people, the ones who, for whatever reason, didn’t acknowledge my book. I know who they are — believe me, as a first-time author, you know who you send your book to, and who responds and who doesn’t. I obsess over them.

It seems God has had enough of this foolishness, because last Saturday morning, he plunked me into a chair on my back patio and he gave me a stern talking to. God used Isaiah to get right up in my grill. Isaiah is really good at that, I’ve come to realize over the years. When God wants to get all up in your grill, he uses Isaiah. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

“I am the Lord your God, who teaches you what is good for you and leads you along the paths you should follow. Oh, that you had listened to my commands. Then you would have peace flowing like a gentle river and righteousness rolling over you like waves in the sea.” (Isaiah 47: 17-18)

Did you catch that? Should follow.

That word should is important. God leads us toward the right paths, the paths we should follow, but he also gives us a choice; he allows us to choose whether or not we will follow the paths he has chosen for us. Choose the right way, the way God leads — toward him – and you will float, buoyant and free, in his peace.

Choose the other way, the wrong way – the way of idolatry — and you will be tossed and tumbled about and will ultimately sink like a river-worn rock, straight to the bottom, where you will stay, mired in the muck.

I know how this works first-hand because I’ve chosen wrong for the last fifteen months.

I’ve chosen the approval of people over the approval of God.

I have not listened to his commands, particularly his first one, his most important one.

I’ve chosen the way of not-enough, less-than, why-don’t-they-like-me, why-aren’t-I-good-enough. I haven’t looked toward him, I have looked toward them, toward the approval of my peers, and I have been tossed and tumbled and have sunk, again and again, straight to the bottom, where I’ve settled, stuck, in the muck.

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Thankfully, though, that wasn’t all God had to say to me last Saturday morning in the patio chair. He also said this:

“Yet even now, be free from your captivity!” (Isaiah 48:20)

Last Saturday morning  as the sun tipped over the top of the white pines, God spoke those words to me, right after he’d gotten all up in my grill. Yet even now, he said, even now.  God reminded me that while I may have sunk like a rock to the bottom, into the muck, I am not sunk for good. I am not stuck.

The way to peace, peace like a river, is still open to me.

Even now, after fifteen months of choosing wrong, after fifteen months of choosing the idol of approval over God, even now, it’s not too late to be free from captivity. Let it go, God said. Choose the right path, the one I’ve had for you all along, the path toward peace like a gently flowing river.

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I don’t know if you wrestle with this kind of angst like I do. I don’t know if you fight tooth and nail to keep God first in your life, instead of putting the approval of others and the need to be liked and admired — or any idol, for that matter — ahead of him. I don’t know if you have peace flowing like a gentle river, or if you are roiling in tumultuous waters, fighting to keep your head above the swirling current.

If you tend toward the latter, though, if you find yourself sinking under that weight, remember God’s words in Isaiah, spoken to you, spoken to me, right now.

Even now, no matter how many week or months or years you have struggled in that current of despair, you can be free from captivity.

Rise from the bottom, from the murky depths, God says. Rise to the surface, to peace, in me.

Filed Under: idolatry, writing Tagged With: Idolatry, Spiritual Misfit, writing

The Greater Purpose of Your Work

April 23, 2015 By Michelle

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Earlier this week I met with five ladies who recently read Spiritual Misfit together as their book club selection. We sat around a large table in the back corner of the local Perkins. They bought me a slice of warm apple pie, and we drank decaf coffee, and we laughed; we laughed a whole lot, which, the ladies told me, is something they do often. They shared their favorite parts of the book — the infamous Cheez-It story, the buying-my-first-Bible story — and asked me some questions about the writing process, and the conversation meandered here and there as they shared bits and pieces of their own stories, too. We sat around that table in the back corner of Perkins for nearly two hours, and I tell you what, I could have stayed all night.

When I got home, I flopped onto the couch, kicked off my shoes and told my husband, “I needed that. That’s the part I always forget about.”

Spiritual Misfit sold three copies on Amazon last week. Three copies. I probably don’t need to tell you that’s abyssmal from a sales perspective.

But here’s the flip side, the part of the story I always forget: that piddly little number doesn’t tell the whole story. Not by a long shot. That dot graphed onto a long, plummeting line of diminishing sales doesn’t tell the story of five ladies laughing around a table in the back corner of Perkins. That number doesn’t tell the story of Julie’s copy of Spiritual Misfit, its pages festooned with no fewer than a dozen blue and yellow tabs, or the other Julie’s book,  notes covering the inside back cover in tiny script. She’d read the book twice, she told me.

That plummeting graph on Amazon.com, that weekly sales report, is missing one critical, unplottable part of the story: the greater purpose.

I listened to an interview with the cellist Yo Yo Ma while I ran this morning, and among the many profoundly beautiful statements he made during the show was this observation, about what happens when something goes wrong logistically during a performance:

“Whatever you practice for on the engineering side that fails is all right, because we have a greater purpose. The greater purpose is that we’re communing together, and we want this moment to be really special for all of us. Because otherwise, why bother to have come at all? It’s not about how many people are in the hall. It’s not about proving anything.”

I let that statement ping around the inside of my head for a while as I plodded down the path. I thought about how Yo Yo Ma’s words  relate to my own journey, both as a writer and a human being, and here’s where I ended up:

The “engineering side” of any pursuit – the planning, the practicing, the execution, the expectations, the numbers, the sales, the success — is important, but it’s not the whole story, it’s not the greater purpose. The greater purpose of Yo Yo Ma’s music, and my little book, and the dozens of other creations both large and small each one of us offers with open hands to the universe each day is in the communing, the coming together, that happens as a result.

Most of us don’t ever get to see that part. Yo Yo Ma probably doesn’t see it from his seat under the glaring lights on the stage. I don’t see it from my seat at my desk in the corner of the sunroom. Chances are, you don’t see the greater purpose of your work and your creation either, from wherever you sit right now. But that doesn’t mean it’s not there. That doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

Tuesday night I caught a glimpse of the greater purpose of my work, and it didn’t have anything to do with numbers or with proving anything, just as Yo Yo Ma said. Rather, it had everything to do with five ladies who gather around a table twice a month in the back corner of Perkins cafe.

Filed Under: community, Spiritual Misfit, writing Tagged With: Spiritual Misfit, writing

What My Nudie Kid Taught Me about Surrender and Trust

February 24, 2015 By Michelle

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I wrote my memoir Spiritual Misfit over a period of two years when my kids were quite young. It was a time in which my spiritual life and my faith grew exponentially, and much of what I learned God taught me through my children and through the hard lessons of parenting. Today I’m sharing one of the more humorous stories from the book (although it wasn’t all that funny in real-time), about how an incident with my son Noah (who was about five at the time) taught me about surrender and trust. This excerpt is from Chapter 10: Surrendering the Fear:

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It was the kind of day in early spring that made you hold your breath in anticipation, a day just warm enough to entice with the barely plausible thought of ice cream. The kids and I sat outside Dairy Queen under the crab apple tree, contentedly licking our soft-serve cones as fragile blossoms dropped like snowflakes onto the asphalt. The air was rich with the scent of recent rain and new green, the concrete bench still so cool it seeped a wintry chill through the seat of my jeans.

Noah had finished his cone in record time and was leaping from one bench to another, while Rowan dripped rivulets of chocolate down his arm and into the crease of his elbow. I had just turned toward him with a paper napkin when Rowan burst out laughing and pointed, rainbow sprinkles falling like confetti from his fingers.

When I looked up, I saw Noah standing atop a bench with his jeans and Bob the Builder briefs wrenched down to his knees. He was waggling his penis in the direction of a mini-van parked at the drive-through, one arm arched above his head like a rodeo porn star. The husband in the driver’s seat was clueless, busy balancing a carton of Blizzards, but his wife was aghast, slack-jawed as she stared at my son.

“Noah! What are you doing?” I screeched. “Pull up your pants right now before a cop drives by and arrests you for indecent exposure!” [I admit, not my very best parental response ever] He froze for a split-second, eyes wide, before yanking his pants up.

We didn’t rehash the incident on the way home. I figured my dramatic reaction had been sufficient to convince Noah that public penis-waggling was inappropriate. A month later, though, as I hunched over the keyboard in our basement office one night, Noah appeared, standing behind me in his dinosaur pjs.

“Am I going to jail?” he blurted, his eyes filling with tears. “Am I going to jail because of Dairy Queen?”

“What in the world are you talking about?” I asked, faintly irritated that it was after nine o’clock and he was still awake and conversing with me. Turned out, of course, he was referring to, as he put it, “When I was nudie at Dairy Queen.” He had mulled over the incident and my rash words each night for a full 28 days before finally gathering the courage to voice his fears.

I explained to Noah that I had overstated the punishment — overreaction, Brad once wryly noted, is my modus operandi. I assured him that the police would not arrest a five-year-old for pulling his pants down at Dairy Queen, and then I apologized, more than once, and hugged him tight.

After he had gone back to bed, though, I couldn’t stop thinking about the incident. I felt horrible and irresponsible for terrifying him. What kind of mother was I, anyway? Wasn’t I supposed to protect my child from the evils of the world, to nurture his fragile psyche rather than single-handedly destroy it? Shivering in the chilly basement that night, I felt overwhelmed, inadequate and vastly unqualified in my role as a parent.

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Noah and Magnolia

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In that moment I realized that Noah’s fragility mirrored my own. His fear and powerlessness illustrated to me how incredibly ill-equipped we are to face on our own whatever the big, mean, scary world tosses our way. And just as Noah turned to me in a moment of desperate hopelessness and fear, I knew that I could and would have to turn to God in the same way. Noah had tried to conquer his fear himself, lying in bed each night sifting through his terror. But in the end he couldn’t do it; he had to unburden himself in the face of what to him was an insurmountable problem. Likewise, in a strange twist of events that night in the basement, I learned that I needed to do the same. When the world threatened to crush me with hopelessness and fear, I needed to turn to God and put my trust in him.

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Sitting in the dark, cold basement that night, I turned the whole ugly mess — all my fears, all my insecurities in parenting — over to God. I realized then that God loves me in spite of my blurting and blundering, in spite of my overreactions and foot-in-the-mouth moments. I realized that God forgives even my worse parenting decisions, and, if I let him, can ease even my worst fears.

Yet I also knew, even in the midst of that unburdening, that surrender and trust wouldn’t ever be easy for me. My very nature battles it. I understood that I would have to repeat this process of surrender and trust again and again, possibly throughout my entire lifetime.

But I also understood that I had a choice. The choice to trust was all mine.

Filed Under: Spiritual Misfit, surrender, trust Tagged With: Spiritual Misfit, trusting God

Got Mud? Yeah, Me Too

December 10, 2014 By Michelle

Mud Story

She calls my story a “muddy trek for sure,” and I would have to agree. My journey from unbelief to belief is a muddy story indeed, but I think that’s what makes it so real and, in a way, so appealing to others. We’ve all got some mud in our past, yes? We’ve all got some gritty stuff in our history. No one makes it through this life on earth without some bumps and scratches, without some dirt under the fingernails and grass stains on the knees. But here’s the truth, friends — God loves us, no matter what. No matter our mistakes. No matter our past. No matter our mud.

I recently had the absolute pleasure to chat with Jacque Watkins, host of the podcast series Mud Stories. Jacque knew my gritty spiritual background would be a good fit for her series, so she invited me to pull up a chair, get comfortable and chat with her about the good, the bad and the ugly of my spiritual journey.

I hope you’ll join us for this chat. Jacque and I dig into some deep issues in this conversation, but we have a lot of fun too. So pour yourself a cup of tea, cozy into the couch and listen in. I think you will be both entertained and, I hope, blessed.

Click here for a direct link to the podcast, which you can either listen to or download for later.

 

Filed Under: Spiritual Misfit Tagged With: Jacque Watkins, Mud Stories podcast, 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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