Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

the writing life

How to Know When It’s Time to Refill the Well

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I spent last weekend away from my computer. I didn’t respond to the emails stacking up in my in-box. I didn’t check Facebook and like, like, like post after post. I didn’t blog or tweet or scroll.

Instead, I laid down a drop cloth on the back lawn and spray painted a bedside table white. And then I spray painted an old-fashioned metal milk jug and a crock that I’ve thought about donating to the Goodwill. I decided to keep it; I like it white.

While those dried in the May breeze, I wiped the pollen off the patio table, swept the cement free of oak tree seedlings, refilled the oriole and finch feeders, and cut the biggest bouquet of white peonies ever known to humankind. I arranged the blooms in my mother-in-law’s vase and placed it on the dining room sideboard in front of the window. Within an hour, the whole first floor of my house was filled with the scent of peony.

I played Sorry! with Rowan on the back patio while the chickadees and nut hatches flitted in the birch tree overhead. I rode my bike with Noah to Shopko to check out a dehumidifier on sale, and then took the long way home, wending through the neighborhoods, admiring the way the cottonwood leaves swished and sizzled in the wind.

In short, I did a whole lot of nothing. I puttered in my yard, which is among my favorite things to do. I rested my brain and moved my body and let my mind wander. I reminded myself that there’s more to life, a whole lot more, than social media shares and clicking “publish.”

I published my first blog post on July 27, 2009, nearly seven years ago. Since then I’ve written here regularly, two to three times a week (when I first started I wrote five days a week – egad!). I’ve also written three books, the third of which I just finished editing, and 84 columns for the Lincoln Journal Star. Now that I’ve largely finished Katharina and Martin, I’ve been asked, more than once, “So what’s next? Do you have another book in mind?”

My honest answer is, I don’t know.

“I feel like I’ve written everything I have to say,” I heard myself say to my mom recently. I’ve been wrestling with writer’s block and creative ennui. I don’t know what’s next. I don’t know what book I might want to write. I don’t even know what blog post I want to write.

Amid all the questions with no answers, one thing is clear: It’s time for a break. My boys are out of school and on break, and we’re traveling more than usual this summer. Instead of making myself crazy, I’ve decided to let some of the writing go.

The good news is, I have a group of delightful, talented writers to introduce you to in June. These are people whose work I love and respect, and I am excited for you to get to know them, too, if you don’t already.

I’ll also continue my Spiritual Habits series on Tuesdays throughout the month of June.

But other than that, it’s time to refill the well – to clip fragrant bouquets from the garden; to pedal aimlessly in the shade of cottonwood trees; to walk barefoot across sun-warmed cement; to paint furniture and read mystery novels and slice strawberries and water the basil.

It’s time to remind myself that I do indeed have a life worth writing about. But in order to do that, I have to live it first.

P.S. One place I will still likely be during my sort-of writing/social media hiatus is Instagram. Are you on Instagram? I’d love to connect with you over there. 

Let’s Grow Something Beautiful…Together

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When I was young I was always the kid who wanted to compare test scores with my peers. You know, the annoying one who asks, “So…what’d you get on the math test?” I was competitive, and I wanted to make sure my grades were at least on par. If I came up short, I often got mad. And jealous.

Truthfully, I haven’t changed all that much, except now I’m a big kid, and my competitiveness shows up not in weekly arithmetic and spelling quizzes but in my career as a writer. My question isn’t, “What’d you get on the grammar test?” but “How many books did you sell this year?” Or “How many Facebook followers do you have?” Or “Who is endorsing your book?”

I don’t always verbalize these questions out loud, but more often than not, I’m thinking them in my head. And if I suspect I am coming up short in comparison, I often react the same way I did as a kid. I get mad. And jealous.

This, of course, is not only infantile, shallow behavior, it’s also short-sighted. When I focus on my accomplishments, or lack thereof, compared to someone else’s, I lose sight of the big picture. I supplant God’s vision of his kingdom here on earth with my own self-interested goals and desires.

God has a clear vision for what his kingdom on earth should and will look like, and he has a job for each one of us to help bring this vision to fruition. In God’s plan, the specifics of who is doing what don’t matter nearly as much as the fact that we are working collaboratively toward one common goal.

Paul put it this way to the Corinthians:

“It’s not important who does the planting and who does the watering. What’s important is that God makes the seed grow. The one who plants and the one who waters work together for the same purpose.” (1 Corinthians 3:7-8).

In other words, in my little world as a writer, what’s important isn’t how many books I sell compared to her, or how many Facebook followers I have compared to him, but that I am working together with my peers for the same purpose: to help God grow his kingdom on earth.

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I know how easy it is to get caught up in the comparison game. I know how quickly we can tumble into the pit of insecurity, resentment, and envy. But I also know that training our gaze on our own successes and failures compared to those of our peers does nothing to help further God’s kingdom.

Maybe your job is to plant or to water. Maybe it’s to till the soil, spread fertilizer, pull weeds, or harvest the bounty. Considered in and of itself, your contribution may seem small and unimportant, but remember this: God is using your work to grow his kingdom here on earth.

Only God can take the life within the seed and bring it forth into blooms and fruit, but your small piece – your planting or watering, your tilling or fertilizing – is an important and necessary part of that process.

Let’s not lose sight of our greater purpose. Together, my hand in yours, our hands in God’s, we are helping him grow something beautiful.

You’re Running a Marathon, Not a Sprint

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I ran 12 miles (well, “ran” is a bit of an overstatement – “slogged” is more accurate) this past Sunday, and all I could think as I was huffing and puffing and swearing under my breath was how that training run was the perfect metaphor for my professional life as a writer (yeah, cursing included).

Here’s the deal. Have you ever looked up your favorite author on Amazon to see what other books he or she has written? I have. And this is what I discovered:

Before the New York Times bestselling books, before the million-copies-sold and the all-star endorsements and the forewords written by the biggest and brightest, before they knocked it out of the park, there were the unknown books. Two, three, four, sometimes a half-dozen books, written and published to little fanfare, long before that person became well-known.

It’s true. In most cases, your favorite all-star author has written books you’ve not only never read, he or she has written books you and the rest of the world have largely never heard of. Those books are still out there on Amazon and BarnesandNoble.com, because they are still bought here and there by people who stumble on them and say, “I didn’t know so-and-so wrote a Bible study,” or “I didn’t know so-and-so wrote a self-help book,” or a poetry book or a book of essays.

But there they are there, buried in the online stacks, a testament to the marathon that person was running long before we ever knew her name.

Discovering those unknown books on Amazon and slogging through that 12-mile training run on Sunday reminded me that we are running (slogging) a marathon, not a sprint. Whatever you are doing — mothering, writing, corporating, non-profiting — whatever your thing is — your passion, your dream — just remember this: you are in it for the long-haul. Pursuing your goals and your dreams takes time. It takes commitment. It takes energy, sweat, training and yeah, even tears and occasional cursing.

Sure, there are instant success stories out there – writers whose first book made all the bestseller lists, entrepreneurs who made a million with their first widget, business whizzes who shot up the corporate ladder to vice president before they’d sprouted their first gray hair. But by and large those stories are the exceptions  (and that’s why we hear so much about them). Most of us are running a marathon, slow and steady, one step in front of the other, on some days making barely discernible progress.

I finished that training run on Sunday, and when I was done, I lay on the sunroom floor and mopped sweat off my brow with a paper towel. It had been a hard run, no doubt about it. Every step was a struggle, every mile a hard-won victory. I hadn’t enjoyed it one bit. It had been grueling and, frankly, downright demoralizing. Yet I knew, even as lay on the floor panting and mopping, that the training run was important, even good, in its own you’re-killing-me-here kind of way.

That training run was a testament to the marathon I’m running {okay, half marathon, but let’s just go with the metaphor here}. It wasn’t easy, and it didn’t look like anything close to success, but it was still a necessary and even integral part of the overall race. It was, as my husband likes to say, a “character-builder.” That run grew me. It made me stronger. It inevitably made me a better runner, even though it didn’t feel like it in the moment.

The same can be said about my books. They’re not bestsellers. They haven’t sold bajillions of copies. They didn’t make any lists or win any awards. They’re out there, doing their thing, unnoticed by most.

But writing those books and walking them through from the seed of an idea to the paperbacks that sit on my shelf was an important part of my growth as a writer. Creating those books grew me and strengthened me as a writer and as a person in ways I never expected.

It’s a marathon, friends, so let’s double-knot our laces, take a big swig of water and a deep breath and keep running . We are growing. We are learning. We are building character and momentum and strength. We are making progress, even if it doesn’t feel like it in the moment.

 

How to Step Out of a Spiritual Rut

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Yesterday afternoon I did something different. I’d been feeling frustrated with my work, at a loss for what to write about on the blog, uninspired by my current freelance editing project. But instead of doing what I typically do when I’m stuck — ie. scroll through Facebook and browse the Internet — I stepped outside. I donned my gardening gloves and tackled one of the raised beds I can see from my desk – the one that will bloom a fireworks display of orange, yellow, fuschia and red in a few weeks, the tulips we planted several years ago in memory of my mother-in-law. Right now, though, the tulip leaves are choked with a jumble of dead grass, desiccated oak and chestnut leaves and weeds.

The chore took me only 20 minutes or so – I wasn’t out there all day (thought I would have liked to have been) — but when the bed was clean of debris, and I’d shucked my gloves, washed my hands and sat down at my desk again, I found not only that I had something to write about (this post you’re reading now), I also felt reinvigorated and refreshed in a way I never would have, had I stayed seated, mindlessly scrolling through my frustration.

This is a good lesson for me and my writing life, but I think it can also be applied to our spiritual lives, our work lives and our lives in general as well.

The lesson here is this: when you’re stuck, change your routine. 

Lately I’ve found myself mired in a spiritual rut. My standard spiritual discipline is morning Bible reading, and it’s something I’ve done pretty regularly, ever since I found my way back to God and Christianity several years ago. Recently, though, Scripture hasn’t shimmered for me in the way it has in the past. More and more I’ve found my mind wandering, obsessing about the day’s to-do list or the emails stacking up in my in-box or the fact that I forgot to send in Rowan’s field trip permission slip. I was still going through the motions of my morning spiritual practice – the Bible was open on my lap, my eyes were reading the words — but I wasn’t benefitting from it in a real way.

So I tried something new. I purchased a used copy of Phyllis Tickle’s The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime, and I began to read the daily offices first thing in the morning with my coffee and last thing at night before I snap off the bedside lamp. I even occasionally manage to read the afternoon office, tucking the book into my purse and pulling it out while I wait in the mini-van for the school dismissal bell.

Changing up my spiritual practice in this one small way has helped. The Daily Office contains some Scripture – a couple of psalms, a reading from the Gospels — along with several prayers and recitations. I am enjoying the rhythm of it – the prayers that are repeated each day of the week, the one that opens the new day and the one that closes the day out in the evening. I find it soothing, and I appreciate the language, which differs a bit from what I’d grown accustomed to in my New Living and New International Bible translations. It’s breathed new life into a routine that had grown stagnant and dull, one that I’d stuck with out of habit and obligation.

I’m a rule-follower, which means I don’t typically have a problem with discipline. The downside to that, though, is that I resist relinquishing a particular discipline, even when it’s stopped working. I feel guilty. I feel like I’ve “failed.” And I especially feel that way because my primary spiritual discipline is Bible reading. I mean really, what kind of Christian burns out on the Bible?

But listen, if this is sounding familiar to you, too, give yourself some grace. Try something new; change up your routine. There are other ways to “read” the Bible. Experiment with The Divine Hours or The Book of Common Prayer. Download an app like Daily Bible, which will send you a verse on your phone every morning that you can either read or listen to. Listen to the Bible while you’re walking the dog. Or try something new altogether – contemplative prayer, silence, weeding. I promise, God will still love you, even if you’re not reading his Word every single day.

If you’re feeling stuck, whether in your spiritual life, your work life, or your life in general, step outside…literally and/or figuratively. I think you’ll be surprised by the postive impact even a small change in your routine can make.

When You Have to Do a Hard Thing

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I did a hard, brave thing last week. I emailed an acquaintance — a successful, well-respected author whom I’ve never met in person but know casually from online interactions — and I asked if she might be willing to “broker an introduction” between me and another successful, well-known author whom I don’t know at all and who doesn’t know me from Eve. I am hoping (read: beg-praying, wringing hands, Lamazing) that this person might be willing to read my Luther and Katharina manuscript, and, if he approves of it, might consider writing a foreword for it.

Yes, writing this email with this request to an acquiantance I admire and respect but don’t really know felt exactly as awkward and uncomfortable as it sounds.

It was little consolation that this kind of request is not unusual. In the business world it’s called networking, but here’s the thing: networking takes place not just at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, but in Christian publishing circles, too (though I’m guessing with fewer Hugo Boss suits and, I’m assuming, a more generous helping of ethics).

I do not like this part of my job. ANP (Awkward Networking Phobia) is partly why I am a writer in the first place. This is why I have chosen a job that largely consists of sitting alone in my house at my desk overlooking the finch feeder swaying from the river birch tree. This is why I am not an investment banker or a financial advisor (besides that fact that I very nearly flunked Calculus my freshman year in college, because of course it makes perfect sense that an ENGLISH major would take Calculus, right?). Nevertheless, networking — or if you prefer a more Christiany word, “connecting” — is indeed part of my job from time to time, which means on some days, I have to take a deep breath, place my fingers on the keyboard, and make the hard, brave ask.

And so I did. I wrote the awkward email to my acquaintance. And she in turn graciously made the request of her author friend. And now we wait for his response.

“It seems that so much depends on listening to the quietest whispers…And so much depends on following, even if we drag all our fears and doubts along for the wild ride,” writes Christie Purifoy in Roots and Sky. “I don’t think following Christ is like aiming at a tiny bull’s-eye on a diminishing target. We are not in constant danger of missing the one right road God has mapped out for us.”

I know it might seem like a stretch to say that writing an awkward networking email is somehow part of “following Christ.” But strangely, I do see the connection. Writing this book has been an act of obedience to God; seeing it all the way through from start to finish to the best of my ability is an act of obedience, too.

It’s highly unlikely this author will say “yes” to my request, and despite my hand wringing and Lamazing, I understand that his “yes” or “no” is not really the big-picture point. As my editor assured me after I’d sent him a hyperventilating email, there’s always a Plan B.

The point is that I did the hard thing. I was brave. I stepped into a vulnerable place, and I dragged all my fears and doubts along for the wild ride. I risked being rejected. I risked feeling small. I leapt into the unknown, the land of no guarantees.

I am doing the work, regardless of the outcome. And I am trusting that no matter what happens, no matter what the author’s answer is, there is more than one right road unfurling ahead of me.