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Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

True You

This is the Time to Release

December 11, 2018 By Michelle

I wrote a book about letting go. And now, here I am, on the cusp of that book’s release, and I feel it: the subtle but sure tightening of my grip.

Turns out, releasing a book about letting go smack in the middle of the busiest time of the year and amid the deafening drumbeat of the holiday season is truly a lesson in letting go — a lesson I am living out minute-by-minute in real time.

A lesson, if I’m honest, I am not living out well.

The outcome of this book is largely out of my control. I know this. This is the time to release… not only the book itself, but also my expectations of what might be.

And yet, as soon as I step into the spaciousness in which God has so generously invited me, I find myself turning back toward myself, redoubling my own efforts, trying futilely to control circumstances, manage outcomes, grip ever more tightly.

Long before the sun glints its first rays over the frozen horizon each morning, I sit in the same spot on the sofa, the same soft blanket pulled up to my chin, the same mug in my hands, and I read from the first word to the last in Chapter 8 of Paul’s letter to the Romans.

I’ve read these same words, this same chapter, for ten consecutive mornings.

I don’t know why I keep rereading this same chapter. Honestly this is quite unlike me. I don’t typically linger in Scripture. I always keep moving. And yet, God has stilled me in these pages.

Every day the same chapter, every day the same words.

“Obsession with self is a dead-end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life.” (Romans 8: 5-8).

Earlier this week I stood in the cold on the edge of the golf course and watched a young fox play. He was alone in the stillness of the late afternoon, his russet coat catching the sun’s last warmth as he picked up a honey locust seed pod in his teeth, tossed his head back and flung the seed pod into the air, leaping and then pouncing on it when it landed in the snow. He was beautiful — sleek, agile, exuberant — and watching him doing his fox thing, undoubtedly practicing his predatory skills in a field on a winter afternoon, was mesmerizing, pure magic.

It was such a simple thing, but in that instant, watching that fox cavort in the waning sunlight, time slowed. Everything but that very moment fell away as the Spirit moved, beckoning.

“You don’t owe your old do-it-all-yourself life anything,” Paul reminds us. “There’s nothing in it for you. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. The Spirit beckons.” (Romans 8:12-14)

Paul’s not talking about releasing a book, of course. And yet, I hear God, through his apostle, speaking to me, to all of us, in this place, in this moment, in our particular circumstances.

God is calling us to release whatever it is we are grasping at so desperately, whatever it is we have taken upon ourselves to try to control, manage and manipulate.

There’s nothing there for us in the do-it-all-ourselves life. There’s nothing there for us in the clutching. There’s nothing really there to hold onto.

I listen to these words from Paul every morning before the sun rises. I read and reread them, and slowly they begin to move from my mind to my soul.

The Spirit beckons. He moves across the surface of each day, leading us into the open, spacious place where a young fox plays.

::

 True You: Letting Go of Your False Self to Uncover the Person God Created, releases on New Year’s Day – a  particularly apt day for a book about the journey toward beginning to know who you are.

If you pre-order before January 1, I have some lovely free gifts for you:

– a companion journal

– a guided audio meditation

– and a series of beautifully designed Scripture cards.

You can find out about where to pre-order True You and how to receive the free gifts over HERE. 

Filed Under: transformation, True You Tagged With: True You

Receive and Be Healed

December 5, 2018 By Michelle

A couple months ago as I sat in my church’s parking lot waiting for Rowan to emerge from confirmation class, a long-lost prayer from my Catholic days rose up in my soul.

“Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.” 

I remember dutifully reciting those words during Mass when I was young. Back then I didn’t think about them; I didn’t ponder what they meant or why we prayed those words before receiving Communion. But that evening, sitting in my car as the sun set over the wide plains, those words spoke to me.

We are worthy not because of what we do or because of the things we accomplish. We are worthy simply because God deems us worthy. His word for us is Love; he calls us Beloved. And it is only when we receive this — worthiness as God’s beloved — that we are truly healed.

The trouble for some of us, of course, is that we resist the receiving.

The truth is, to receive is more difficult than it might seem at first glance. Receiving is a posture of openness — arms open, hearts open — which means it’s also a posture of vulnerability. To receive a guest in your home is to open your home and yourself to another. To receive God is to open your home — yourself — to him.

Jesus’ words to his followers in the Gospel of John ring startlingly true:

“Here I am, standing right before you, and you aren’t willing to receive from me the life you say you want.” (John 5:40, Msg.)

Why are we not willing to receive from God the life we say we want?

Because to receive is to step into vulnerability, to step into trust, to step into surrender. To receive from Christ the life we say we want is to lose the life we have right now.

It’s not easy to relinquish the scaffolding we have constructed around ourselves as both camouflage and protection over a lifetime. It’s not easy to cut away those parts of ourselves we have created and perfected to present to the world.

And yet, this cutting away, this relinquishing and releasing, is the only true way toward fully receiving.

As David Benner writes in The Gift of Being Yourself, “Paradoxically, our fulfillment lies in the death of our own agendas of fulfillment. It also lies in the crucifixion of all our ego-centered ways of living apart from complete surrender to God. It does not lie then in any of the places we would expect to find it.”

Our fulfillment does not lie in any of the places we would expect to find it. 

This goes so against the grain, which is what makes it so hard. Our culture tells us we will find fulfillment in any number of ways — in achievement, success, prestige, power, wealth, control, security. From nearly the moment we are born this is the message coming at us from all sides: be more, greater, better, bigger.

And yet, in the end, this way of the world fails us. We’ve been looking for love in all the wrong places.

Turns out, everything we have learned about fulfillment is wrong. We need to unlearn it all. We need to shed it, prune it away, as I write in True You, crucify our own agendas of fulfillment. Only then, as Benner says, can we begin to seek true fulfillment in the places we never expected to find it: in the small, in the quiet, in the unnoticed, on the margins.

I’m in my late forties. And while I am glad God is revealing this deep truth to me now, part of me frets. Am I too late? Is it too late for me to receive and live fully into this truth God is inviting me to?

Paul, however, assures me I have plenty of time. “God made the earth hospitable, with plenty of time and space for living so we could seek after God, and not just grope around in the dark but actually find him. He doesn’t play hide-and-seek with us. He’s not remote; he’s near.” (Acts 17:26, Msg.)

No matter what our age, there’s time and space for living into God’s truth. The key, of course, is how we choose to spend whatever time remains. Do we spend it scrolling, comparing, envying? Do we spend it in empty busyness and shallow distraction? Do we spend it striving to fulfill our own agendas?

Or do we spend our time seeking his presence, resting in his nearness?

God has already said the word. He has already invited us to receive him and be healed. He has already, as Paul reminds the Romans, “thrown open his door to us.” (Romans 5:3, Msg.)

God stands before us, offering us the life we say we want. We have the time and space for truly living, and nothing but our own self stands in the way.

Let us cease resisting. Let us receive and be healed.

::

If this post resonated with you, you might be interested in my forthcoming book, True You: Letting Go of Your False Self to Uncover the Person God Created, releasing January 1. In it, I dig more deeply into some of the themes in this post, like dismantling the protective scaffolding we have hiden behind over the years and coming to know ourselves as worthy of being called God’s beloved.

If you pre-order before January 1, I also have some lovely free gifts that nicely complement the book:

– a companion journal

– a guided audio meditation

– and a series of beautifully designed Scripture cards.

You can find out about where to pre-order True You and how to receive the free gifts over HERE. 

Filed Under: True You Tagged With: True You

Why It’s Critical to Separate Who You Are from What You Do

November 27, 2018 By Michelle

There’s a tree in my neighborhood I pass nearly every day on my afternoon dog walk. It grows a few feet from the curb, and it’s beautiful – tall and stately, lush and vibrant with dark green leaves, even at this time of year, and a smattering of tiny orange berries dotting the greenery.

I’ve passed this tree hundreds of times in the last several years, but it wasn’t until recently that I saw something I’d never noticed before. The leaves and berries I’d long admired weren’t actually part of the tree itself. Rather, they were part of a large and intrusive vine which, over time, had snaked its way up the trunk and out along the tree’s limbs and branches.

What at first glance looked to be a beautiful and healthy tree was, in fact, an illusion. Not only was the vine obscuring the real tree that lay underneath, it was also, apparently, slowly draining the real tree of life. 

I stood in the street and stared up at the pine and the vine for a long time that day as Josie impatiently tugged at the leash. I noted the tree’s brown, brittle needles beneath the vine’s green leaves. I saw the way the vine’s heavy root had embedded itself into the tree’s bark — so much so that I could hardly discern one from the other.

: :

“Are you prepared to be other than your image of your false self?” Richard Rohr asks. “If not, you will live in bondage to your false self.”

Turns out, the pine and the vine hit awfully close to home. The hard, uncomfortable truth is that my identity is entwined with my vocation and profession as a published author.

There is a certain prestige that goes hand-in-hand with my job. And if I am brutally honest with myself, and with you, I can admit that I like this prestige. I like the approval, admiration, recognition and respect being an author automatically earns me.

And yet, I also know that what I do is not who I am. This identity of “author” is not my true identity. Being a “published author” is not my true self. It’s not the me God created when he wrote my name on the palms of his hands. Rather, as Rohr says, being a “published author” is part of my image of my false self.

“Basing identity on an illusion has profound consequences,” observes David Benning in his book The Gift of Being Yourself. “Sensing its fundamental unreality, the false self wraps itself in experience – experiences of power, pleasure and honor. Thomas Merton describes this as ‘winding experiences around myself…in order to make myself perceptible to myself and to the world, as if I were an invisible body that could only become visible when something visible covered its surface.”

There is nothing inherently wrong with being an author. It’s as good a vocation as any, and believe me when I say I am grateful for the opportunities writing and publishing books has afforded me. There have been many beautiful, life-giving parts of this journey — not the least of which is how writing has helped me grow in my faith — and I appreciate every single one.

But I also know that if I am honest with myself, being an author is also sometimes detrimental to my emotional and spiritual wholeness. I put a lot of stake – too much stake – in achievement, recognition and success. Over time, who I am has become wrapped up not only in what I do but also in how well I do it.

I have wrapped not only the experience, as Merton would say, but also the identity of “author” around myself, like a vine wrapped around the trunk of a tree. And at times, rather than sustaining me and giving me life, my vocation has held me in bondage, ensnaring me with its tendrils of “bigger,” “better” and “more.”

As David Benning acknowledges, “Anything that is grasped is afforded value beyond actual worth, value that is ultimately stolen from God.”

Have you ever seen the way a vine grasps, unfurling to latch onto and wrap itself around whatever it can? The strength of its clutch, even in something as small and tender as a zucchini vine, is astonishing.

I grasp at achievement, recognition and success, particularly achievement, recognition and success as a published author. And that is something I need to reckon with. Benning defines calling as “a way of being that is both best for us and best for the world.” The question I’m asking myself these days is whether my vocation as an author is really best for me.

I’m not making any radical decisions just yet. Right now it seems I am in a season of discernment. And the truth is, writing True You was the genesis of this journey toward uncovering my true self, a journey that in some ways has only unearthed more questions than answers. This question, in particular, begs to be asked: would I even be asking these questions about vocation and identity had I not written this book?

On the other hand, every time I walk by that pine tree in my neighborhood, the one wound round and round with the ever-expanding vine, I can’t help but notice something that seems important, which is this: while the vine is clearly flourishing, spreading its tendrils, reaching higher and higher, clutching and grasping, the tree beneath it is slowly dying, being overcome by the invasive vine a little more each day.

: :

If this post resonated with you, you might be interested in my forthcoming book, True You: Letting Go of Your False Self to Uncover the Person God Created, releasing January 1. In it, I dig more deeply into the themes of vocation and identity.

If you pre-order before January 1, I also have some lovely free gifts that nicely complement the book:

– a companion journal

– a guided audio meditation

– and a series of beautifully designed Scripture cards.

You can find out about where to pre-order True You and how to receive the free gifts over HERE. 

Photo by David Guenther on Unsplash

Filed Under: calling, career, publishing, True You, writing Tagged With: True You, vocation

On Letting Go

November 21, 2018 By Michelle

Have you ever noticed that oak trees are always the last to lose their leaves? It’s true. Come mid-November, when all the other trees in the neighborhood stand naked and exposed, their bare branches stripped of every last leaf, the oak trees remain fully dressed in russet, their leaves scraping together in the wind like sandpaper. The oaks, it seems, have trouble letting go.

Turns out, I’m a lot like the oak tree that clings so fiercely to its leaves. In fact, I suspect a lot of us are.

We, too, clutch our camouflage — the person we present to the world, to our own selves, and even to God.

We, too, are unwilling to shed our false selves, to let go, to live vulnerably and authentically.

We are afraid of what might happen if we drop our protective cover, afraid of how we might be seen or perceived, or how we might see or perceive our own selves.

We are leery of what we might discover under all those layers.

The thing is, though, even the stubborn oaks have to let go of their leaves eventually. New growth can’t happen until the old, desiccated parts fall away. Spring only comes after winter. There is a rhythm here – relinquishing, stilling, rebirth.

The truth is, God does not wish for us to stand stubborn like the autumn oak tree, cloaked in a façade of protection, our truest, most authentic selves obscured beneath a tangled bramble of false security. Rather, he desires us to live open and free, our true essence revealed and flourishing, our true self front and center, secure and thriving.

God yearns for us to live wholeheartedly and truthfully as the unique, beautiful, beloved individuals he created us to be. Most of all, God’s deepest desire is for us to know him, to root our whole selves in him like a tree rooted by a stream, and to know his deep, abiding love for us.

God yearns for us to live in the spacious, light-filled freedom of Christ and to know ourselves in him, through him, and with him.

As we slowly begin to let go of our false selves, branch by branch, leaf by leaf, and layer by layer, as we finally begin to relinquish, open up, and allow God to prune us from the inside out, we will grow in ways we never imagined: in our relationships with loved ones; in connection with and love for our neighbors; in our vocation; in our heart, mind, and soul; and in intimacy with God himself.

Our true, essential self, the one beautifully and uniquely created by God, is there, deep inside, hidden beneath layer upon layer of leaves clinging fast. Within each of us is a spacious place, waiting to be revealed.

Letting go is the way in.

: :

This post is an edited sneak peek from the first chapter of my upcoming book, True You: Letting Go of Your False Self to Uncover the Person God Created, releasing January 1, 2019. I am thrilled to be able to offer you some lovely gifts for pre-ordering the book anytime between now and December 31:

The True You Companion Journal

Beautifully designed True You Scripture Memorization Cards

The Learning to Listen to Your Soul Guided Audio Meditation 

You can find out more and fill out the quick pre-order form to get your free gifts over on the True You book page.

While you’re there, download the free True You sample chapter and get a head start on your New Year reading!

 

Filed Under: True You Tagged With: True You

You’re Invited to Join the True You Launch Team!

November 6, 2018 By Michelle

Hey friends! I would love for you to help me launch my newest book, True You: Letting Go of Your False Self to Uncover the Person God Created. True You releases on January 1, 2019, and I can’t think of a better way to kick off the New Year than to uncork some virtual champagne (or sparkling grape juice if you prefer!) with you as we send this book out into the world!

Are you in? I hope so!

Here’s the nitty gritty: 

First things first: fill out the simple launch team application: 

Click Here to Join the True You Launch Team

The first 200 applicants will receive a paperback copy of True You. After that, anyone else who applies will receive access to the digital version of the book via NetGalley. I really wish we had an unlimited number of paperback copies, but the reality is, we do have a limit, so if you REALLY want to participate in the launch team and receive a paperback copy of the book, apply right now!

You’ll need a Facebook account to qualify as a launch team member, because all our communications will take place in a special True You Launch Team Facebook Group. 

In exchange for receiving a copy of the book, you’ll be asked to write a review on Amazon and Barnes and Noble (and Goodreads, if you use it) and to help me spread the word about the book via your social media channels and with your friends and family. 

Launch team activities will get going around November 14 and will continue through January 11. I realize this sounds like a long time, but Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s are in there, so we’ll be taking some time off to kick back and celebrate the holidays (we have to make space to savor a second slice of apple pie — priorities, right?). 

Of course, the most important thing is that I am super excited for you to read this book. I can’t wait to share with you what I’ve learned about the journey toward uncovering our true selves.

Also, I wanted to mention, if you’ve already pre-ordered True You (and if you have, THANK YOU!), I have some lovely pre-order gifts now available: 

For access to the downloadable pre-order gifts, head over to the True You webpage and fill out the quick form (you’ll need your order number from whatever online retailer you pre-ordered the book – you can find that in your “Order History” on the site you ordered from). You’ll then receive an email with the links to the downloadable Companion Journal, Scripture Cards and Guided Audio Meditation. I hope you enjoy them!

I know the next two months are a particularly busy time for most of us, so I want you to know how much I appreciate your support as we move toward book release day on January 1. Thank you for coming alongside me.

xoxo
Michelle

Filed Under: True You Tagged With: True You

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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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