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Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

work and worth

The Value of Doing Your Work Well…Even When It Goes Unnoticed

February 20, 2019 By Michelle

Last June on our family vacation to Maui, I started my days on the balcony. Each morning before the boys awoke, I slipped into one of the plush hotel robes that hung in the closet, poured a cup of coffee, slid open the glass door and settled into a patio chair, my bare feet propped on the metal railing still damp with dew. I listened to the exotic cackles and calls of unfamiliar tropical birds, luxuriated in the humid breeze on my face and let myself awaken.

I loved observing the early morning buzz of activity taking place four stories below. As the rising sun painted the palm fronds golden, I watched the attendants in their crisp polo shirts and belted shorts navigate carts towering with clean, folded towels along the resort’s pathways, stopping to distribute neat stacks beneath the canvas cabanas.

Across the way, a shop keeper raised the metal shutter of the dive store, announcing with a clatter that they were open for business.

A gardener hosed down the concrete, while another attendant dutifully lined up the lounge chairs, one after the other in undulating rows alongside the curving edge of the pool.

My first morning on the balcony, I watched a trim, older woman bend low over the shorn grass and use a small straw hand broom to whisk spent blossoms and browned, crinkled leaves into a dustpan. When she completed one small section of the garden, she pushed her wheeled barrel to the next section and began again, crouching low over the ground, whisking and sweeping, leaving the emerald carpet of grass pristine in her wake.

Every morning of our week-long stay in Maui I sat on the balcony in my hotel robe, white mug in hand, and watched the groundskeeper in her neatly pressed uniform and her wide-brimmed woven hat, cord cinched under her neck, as she methodically tidied the garden. Every morning the grass was littered anew with spent blossoms and leaves, and every morning she set to work, crouching, whisking, gathering, disposing.

She moved like a Tai Chi master – slowly and fluidly, but with absolute precision. In the six mornings I watched her, she never missed a single errant petal or leaf.

The groundskeeper’s job was not glamorous, and I don’t want to make the mistake of romanticizing her work. It was back-breaking labor, done day in and day out under the searing Maui sun, undoubtedly for little more than minimum wage, if that. Yet in observing her carefully over several days, I could see from her scrupulous care and meticulous attention to every detail that she took pride in her work. I suspect few people noticed her or recognized the impact of her labor, but that didn’t seem to matter to her. What mattered, it seemed, was the work itself and doing it well. She was committed to her work, regardless of whether anyone noticed the results of her labor or not.

Seven months after our trip to Maui, I still think about the island’s fragrant air, its unceasing tropical breezes, the tumbling Pacific waves, the sea turtle that swam so close to me when I was snorkeling, I almost could have grazed its barnacled back with my fingertips.

Strangely, though, what I think about most often is the groundskeeper in her wide-brimmed woven hat, bending low, whisking and sweeping the lush garden clean.

Filed Under: work, writing Tagged With: work and worth

When You Mistake Your Work for Your Worth

October 17, 2014 By Michelle

When I  tell her in an email that it feels like I’ve got a cinder block sitting square on my chest, that it’s felt this way since I heard The Bad News three days before, she answers back in a flash. Cinder-block-chest calls for radical self-care, she says. What are you doing to take good care of yourself right now?

I stare at my friend Sarah’s email for a good long while. Because the truth is, I don’t care for myself well, especially when the chips are down and things are not going as I had planned. No, I don’t care for myself well at all.

Instead, I plow on, nose to the grindstone. I write blog posts and I prepare for the class I’m teaching at my church and I tweet and pin and Google+ and update my Facebook status and schedule radio interviews and try to think of “something else to do,” the thing I can do that will fix everything.

gardengloves

tools

I rev the engine higher. I work harder. I push, bent on fixing what’s broken, focused on setting everything straight, determined to get it right this time.

On Monday, Columbus Day, I paint the entryway. I roll beige over teal and slap six coats of white over chocolate brown. I paint all day as the rain pounds the window panes because I cannot for the life of me sit still. I am restless and anxious and afraid, afraid of what might happen  when I stop working, when I stop pushing. So I paint the entryway on my day off.

And all the while, I can’t get those two words out of my head.

Radical self-care.

“What are you feeling good about right now?” my counselor asks, a few days later.

I’m folded into the corner of the sofa. The sun blares hot and white through the blinds, and I stare at my hands in my lap. I have no idea how to answer her question.

I’ve always had a strong work ethic (I thank my parents for that), and it’s helped me in more ways than I can count. Whenever I’ve come up against a challenge in the past, my strategy, my solution, has always been simply  to work harder, to push harder, to “make it happen,” as my dad would  say.

A strong work ethic and a drive to achieve and succeed are not inherently negative. They only become negative when they become all-consuming, when they become, as in my case, the only thing that defines you.

My work defines me. Without it, without a clear sense of direction or a project to complete, I am lost.

“I don’t feel worthy unless I’m working,” I tell my counselor.

“Worthy of what?” she asks.

I tell her maybe worthwhile is a better word choice, but truth be told, worthy is what I mean. Worthy of…anything.

gardenbootwithtext2Part of me wonders if this uncertain time, this time in the wilderness, is God’s way of making me rest. Part of me wonders if God is using this time, this uncertainty, to help me move beyond my narrow definition of worthiness toward an understanding of his.

Only just recently (like yesterday), I’ve realized that my definition of worthiness, pretty much my whole sense of my worthiness, is based on my work — on accomplishment and achievement and success. I’ve made a mistake, I’m realizing. I’ve mistaken my work — or really, my success at my work — as the only measure of my worth.

Yet I suspect God’s definition of worthiness is much broader, much wider and much deeper than that. I suspect God’s definition of worthiness is much more spacious and gracious than my own. 

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I’d love to hear your story of the woman who has most influenced your faith journey. Would you consider blogging about her and entering your story into the #MyFaithHeroine contest? Entries must be submitted by October 22, less than a week from today! Details here. 

Filed Under: wilderness, work Tagged With: when you're in the wilderness, work and worth

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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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