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Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

when you're in the wilderness

For Those Times You Can’t See God Working Beneath the Surface

September 1, 2015 By Michelle

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Back in May I spotted something new sprouting in my garden. I was pretty sure it wasn’t a weed, yet I couldn’t identify it. I peered at the strange plant every couple of days, waiting for a bud to appear.

It never did. Instead, at what seemed like the height of its flourishing, the plant began to wither. Its leaves yellowed and shriveled and finally drooped to the ground, where, after a few weeks, they disintegrated entirely into the soil. Two months after the first green shoot had appeared, there was nothing left to signify the plant had ever been there at all.

I forgot about that plant until two weeks ago, when suddenly a mysterious pink bloom appeared in my garden, a delicate lily standing tall atop a single stark stalk. I spotted these lilies all over town, their cotton-candy petals blooming in gardens, fields, and even in the middle of manicured lawns. I remembered, then, that two years earlier my neighbor had offered me a handful of bulbs. I’d buried them along the picket fence in the hard clay-dirt that fall, but I hadn’t held out much hope. I’d let the bulbs sit outside too long after my neighbor had given them to me, and by the time I’d gotten them into the ground they were dry and desiccated, literally crumbling in my hands.

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It took two years, but it turns out those bulbs did grow, and this summer for the first time they bloomed. They’re called Surprise Lilies (sometimes Resurrection Lilies or Naked Ladies), and the name suits. In the heat of the summer, when the garden is starting to look a bit bedraggled, a bare stalk shoots from the dirt and blooms into a dramatic spray of lilies in just a few days. It seems at first like this flower has sprung from nothing as if by magic. But that’s not actually the case. Although our eyes couldn’t detect it, below the surface, deep in the dirt, growth had been taking place. Those leaves that withered and disintegrated into the ground back in May had been feeding the bulb and the roots of the Surprise Lily all along, sustaining it in the dark, growing it in ways not yet visible.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve experienced periods in your life and along your spiritual journey that have felt hopeless and dark; months or even years in which you’ve felt stagnant, dry, and useless. It’s easy during times like these to think that God has abandoned you, that’s he’s moved on. Because you can’t see any discernible progress, you might conclude that nothing is happening at all.

But just because we can’t see movement right this minute doesn’t mean that important work isn’t happening below the surface, in the dark, beneath the dirt and grit that’s obscuring our vision. Sometimes God uses these very places – the dark, challenging, difficult experiences – to nurture, grow, and strengthen us. Sometimes he uses those times of seeming stagnation as a period of rest, preparation for critical growth and work to come. And sometimes God strips us bare in order to create new life in us.

Two weeks ago when I spotted the Surprise Lily standing regal and stately above the rest of the tired flowers in my garden, I was reminded that God often works the same way. Beneath the surface where we cannot see him, he is creating new life that blooms from death.

This post first ran on August 26, 2015 in the Lincoln Journal Star. 

Filed Under: waiting Tagged With: when you're in the wilderness

When You Can’t See God

May 7, 2015 By Michelle

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No matter how many times I read the story of the road to Emmaus, I always get hung up on one verse: “God kept them from recognizing him.” (Luke 24:16)

It wasn’t that the two travelers simply didn’t recognize the risen Jesus come alongside them, but that God “kept them,” or prevented them from recognizing him. It was intentional.

At first glance, that intentional obscuring of the truth seems unnecessarily cruel. After all, the followers of Jesus had certainly been through enough grief and devastation at that point. They’d witnessed the arrest, torture and murder of their beloved leader. All their expectations, everything they’d believed in and hoped for, lay smashed at the bottom  of the cross. They were lost, bewildered and reeling from the shock.

Yet God kept the travelers from recognizing the risen Messiah in the moment of their deepest and most profound despair.

This, it seems to me, is the quintessential tough-love moment.

I don’t know about you, but God’s tough-love teaching is not my preferred method. I think it’s fair to say we’d all much prefer that God reveal himself to us straight up, exactly when and exactly how we need him.

But God doesn’t always work that way.

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True, it would have been easier and gentler for Jesus to reveal his identity immediately in that moment on the dusty road to Emmaus. But consider this:

Might Jesus’ immediate revelation have inhibited the opportunity for greater, deeper spiritual growth in the men? Might an immediate revelation have inhibited some of the hard internal heart work that needed to take place?

Sometimes I think God intentionally blinds us to his presence, not so he can see into our hearts (after all, as an omniscient God, he already knows our innermost thoughts), but so that we might glimpse the state of our own hearts.

After all, if God is obviously present, would we do the hard work of looking into the depths of our own hearts to uncover our weakness, our lack of trust, our unbelief?

If God is immediately and palpably present, might we skip happily along, blissfully ignorant of our spiritual deficits?

Jesus understood that Cleopas and his friend simply could not get past the obvious facts of Jesus’ crucifixion. In the telling and retelling of that story, they could not move past their shock and unbelief. They forgot what Jesus had told them again and again: that his death was not the end, that all hope was not lost.

In obscuring his identity as the risen Messiah, Jesus forced the Emmaus travelers to look hard inside their own hearts in order to face their lack of trust and faith.

Like I said, it’s tough love. Jesus doesn’t always give us the easy answer. His goal isn’t always to make us comfortable or offer us the easy way out.

Sometimes Jesus prods us to do the hard work of looking inward, digging into the detritus of our hearts and resowing our spiritual soil, so that ultimately we are able to enjoy a deeper, more authentic relationship with him.

Filed Under: Gospels, New Testament Tagged With: Road to Emmaus, when you're in the wilderness

When the Way Ahead Doesn’t Look Like You Envisioned

May 5, 2015 By Michelle

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I ran a brand-new route yesterday morning – to the lake and back instead of to the bridges and back. I’d like to tell you I made a Robert Frostian decision and intentionally chose the path less-traveled, but in reality, the choice to run a new route wasn’t a choice at all. My regular route, the one I’ve run three or four days a week for the last fourteen years, is closed for construction for the next several months. My choice was no run or new route. I begrudgingly chose the latter.

My new route is much less populated, but even the few people I did pass along the way didn’t wave or shout out a chipper greeting like the regulars I used to see on my old path. I missed the man who always waves hello, palm held out like a high-five. I missed the cackling red belly woodpecker perched in the hackberry tree; the cool dampness and the smell of rain beneath the concrete bridges; the rabbits munching clover.

The new path seemed longer, uglier, less friendly. It was definitely hillier. There was also more traffic, trash and city noise, fewer rabbits, less quiet. I didn’t like it; everything about it felt wrong. I’d prefer my old path, thank you very much.

These last eight months I’ve written on and off about my journey through the wilderness, as I’ve wrestled with and wondered about where God might be leading me next. The good news is that I am beginning to see a clearing ahead, an opening, a way through the tangle of branches and brush. The bad news is that the path that’s been revealed to me is an unfamilar one. It’s not the path I imagined for myself, and it’s probably not the one I would have chosen, had all things worked out exactly as I had planned and envisioned.

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This new path I’m on is a lot like that new running route I ran yesterday. The terrain feels unfamiliar under my feet – bumpier, uneven, unpredictable. Hills loom tall and formidable ahead of me on the horizon. I miss what I know, the landmarks and milestones that remind me that I am moving in the right direction. I’m less sure of myself, fearful of what will be revealed around the next corner. I find myself wishing for the old path, the one that’s comfortable and well-traveled.

Yesterday, at the midway point in my run, I rested for a few seconds at the top of a hill. Leaning with my hands on my knees, breathing hard, a stitch sharp in my side, I watched a bird hop amid the tall grass, yellow breast bright like a blooming dandelion. His sweet trill chimed through the damp breeze, answered by another farther off. It was a Meadowlark, one of my favorites,  a bird I never saw, not even once, in the fourteen years I ran the other route.

I watched the Meadowlark hunt for insects for a few seconds while I caught my breath. And then I turned and ran downhill, toward home, with the wind at my back.

Filed Under: wilderness Tagged With: when you're in the wilderness

No Doesn’t Necessarily Mean a Closed Door

April 16, 2015 By Michelle

Friends, before I get to today’s blog post…I just want to say a HUGE thank you to all of you who rallied behind me after Tuesday’s post. In two days, 53 new subscribers came on board – and that more than makes up for the 47 subscribers who decided to part ways after last week’s post about same-sex marriage. I am just astounded by your generosity and your encouragement. Believe me when I say this: it’s NOT about the numbers. I really feel like we have cemented a relationship and a partnership here over the last few days, and for that I am so, so grateful. And to those of you who have been reading here a long time (or even a short time) and have stayed on even though we might disagree on this issue (or others), thank you. Differences can be bridged by community. Thank you for demonstrating how it’s done. With love, Michelle

 

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I’ve been snapping photographs of paths lately—paths across bridges, paths through the Nebraska tall grass, paths disappearing into the woods. I think I’m drawn to collecting these images because I’m so unsure of my own way right now. Documenting the paths I walk daily near my home is a practice that offers reassurance and comfort. These pictures remind me that my path exists, even though I can’t see it right now.

This past October my publisher turned down my proposal for my next book, a rejection that felt a lot like being fired. After I hung up the phone with my agent, who had relayed the bad news, I sat at my computer with my fingers on the keyboard. I figured being fired by my publisher was a clear sign that I should update my resume—no time like the present, right? But I couldn’t. Instead I collapsed on the living room couch and cried for two hours straight. I wore sunglasses to hide my red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes when I picked my kids up from school later that afternoon.

…I’m over at The High Calling this week, writing a post for the series “In Over Your Head.” Will you join me over there for the rest of this story? 

Filed Under: 50 Women Every Christian Should Know, The High Calling, when God says no, wilderness Tagged With: 50 Women Every Christian Should Know, The High Calling, When God says no, when you're in the wilderness

The Bittersweet Truth of Palm Sunday

March 31, 2015 By Michelle

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After church on Sunday Rowan asked me if Palm Sunday was a happy day or a sad day. I understand his confusion. I sort of feel the same way.

On one hand, there’s a feeling of celebration and joy in the air. We wave our palm branches exuberantly over our heads; we shout “Hosanna! Hosanna!” There’s a palpable feeling of anticipation and expectance as we hear about Jesus’ triumphant entrance into Jerusalem. And of course, we, unlike the Israelites, have the benefit of knowing how the story turns out. We know Jesus’ entrance was indeed triumphant, though not in the way everyone first imagined.

That’s pretty much how I explained it to Rowan. I told him Palm Sunday is the official beginning of Holy Week, and that because we know about Jesus’ resurrection on Easter Sunday, we look forward to that day of celebration and thanksgiving with hopeful anticipation.

But I also told Rowan that sometimes we’re not much different than those ancient Israelites who draped their garments on the dirt road and shouted “Hosanna!” as Jesus rode into the city on the back of a humble donkey. Sometimes we have very clear expectations of how we think Jesus should work in our lives, and we quickly do an about-face when our expectations aren’t met exactly the way we imagined and hoped.

Like the Israelites, not only do we expect Jesus to save us, we expect him to save us in the way we think is best. 

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I’ve been living the reality of Palm Sunday in real time these last few months. Time and time again I’ve planned out exactly how God was going to redeem my situation (A new publisher! A better book proposal! An unexpected book deal! A new job I’ll love even more than book writing!), and time and time again I’ve been left with my mouth agape and my hopes dashed when The Plan as I had envisioned it didn’t materialize.

I’m learning, though, I really am…albeit slowly. I’m learning the faith and trust to keep shouting, “Hosanna!” — “God, save me!” — even when his plan doesn’t seem to remotely resemble mine. Even when I don’t see his plan at all. I’m learning the faith and trust to keep waving my palm branch, even as my arm grows tired. I’m learning the faith and trust to keep laying my garments down in the road, even when I can’t see the way through the dust and the grit.

Maybe it’s because I have the benefit of hindsight. Maybe it’s because I can look back at the mountains and valleys and the twists and turns of my life up to this point and see with my own eyes how God has worked his good, often in the most unexpected, unanticipated ways. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen evidence, strong and clear, of the goodness of the Lord, not only in the land of the living, but in my very own land and my very own life.

Maybe it’s because I know how the Holy Week story turns out, and I believe it. Jesus was indeed crucified, died and was buried. But he also comes again.

Filed Under: faith, Palm Sunday, trust, wilderness Tagged With: Palm Sunday, when you're in the wilderness

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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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