Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

writing and faith

Welcome to the World, Spiritual Misfit!

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I’ve mentioned before that I weep every time I read the acknowledgements section in my own book. If Brad sees me looking a little misty-eyed, he’ll ask, “Hey, have you been reading your own acknowledgements again?” And then we crack up, because it is a little lame to cry over your own book.

Writing and releasing a book is a lot like pregnancy and labor – a really, really, really long pregnancy and labor in my case. And you know when you have a baby how you get all weepy with gratitude for all the people who helped you along the way? Well that’s how I feel about this book. I am weepy with gratitude for all the dozens of people who helped birth Spiritual Misfit today.

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Just keepin' it real, people!

Just keepin’ it real, people!

Thank you, Mom and Dad — Mom, for your example of unwavering faith and Dad for your partnership and companionship as we’ve wrestle-walked our way to God.

Thank you to my husband Brad, who always, always said I would find faith.

Thank you to my kids, Noah and Rowan, who show me the hand of God in everything from the call of a chickadee in the river birch tree to the gargantuan Great Plains grasshopper who scares the heck out of me.

Thank you to my late in-laws, Jon and Janice — Janice, for always knowing in your heart that this book would find a publisher; I know you are smiling down at this moment. And Jon, for rounding up every spare Barnes and Noble gift card in your house and wallet and handing them over to me so I could buy my very first Bible.

To my pastors Greg, Sara and Michael and to my church community at Southwood Lutheran Church. Thank you for helping me understand what the words “church family” mean.

To my person, Deidra Riggs, for cheering, cheering, cheering this whole long way.

And lastly, thank you to every single person who reads this blog – whether you just visited for the first time today or have been following along this journey for the last five years.

I told a group of women at a retreat this past weekend that I started blogging for one reason only: to build a platform to support a book I hoped to publish. I never expected to find such incredible gifts in this crazy blogosphere. Thank you for reading; for your encouraging comments and emails that have kept me putting fingers to keyboard all this time; for your friendship, compassion and empathy; and for showing me that God lives in the most unlikely places – even in cyberspace.

{Yeah, I’m weeping again}

If you read Spiritual Misfit and it resonates with you, please consider giving a copy to someone you think needs to read this story. I wrote the book for myself and for all those wrestling, wandering and questioning on the spiritual journey. It is my heart’s prayer that the person standing on the cusp of faith, wondering where and even how to start, will find the beginning of an answer in this book.

Giveaways

Okay, now the fun part! Let’s have a book baby shower!

I have a few sweet little gifts to offer you in celebration of Spiritual Misfit‘s birthday. If you order/purchase a book between today and next Monday, you’ll be entered into a random drawing to receive one of the five following gifts.

Simply send your online book purchase receipt or proof of purchase to [email protected] for a chance to win.

One winner will receive this super-cute bird-on-a-wire necklace, six handmade bird-on-a-wire note cards and a personalized, signed copy of Spiritual Misfit. {which means you can give your purchased copy of the book to a friend}

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Two winners will receive a selection of eight handmade note cards (made by yours truly) and a personalized, signed copy of Spiritual Misfit.

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And two winners will receive a personalized, signed copy of Spiritual Misfit.

So today is the day! Order your own copy of Spiritual Misfit at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or ChristianBook.com. If you’re local in Lincoln, it should be on the shelves soon, if not already, at Indigo Bridge Books in the Haymarket and at both Barnes and Noble locations.

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And…pop around and visit some of these lovely bloggers who have SO very graciously written reviews, conducted Q&A interviews with me and have been cheering heartily for this day for weeks now. These posts are written by the Spiritual Misfit book launch team, led by the uber-talented Lindsey Hartz, and let me tell you straight-up, I don’t think I could have made it through the promotional stage of this book launch without these folks!

Yahoo!! Thank you, thank you, thank you! Singing these words at the top of my lungs today: “This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad and be glad!” (Psalm 118)

Spiritual Misfit reviews and interviews, link up here:



When You Write the Book You Need to Read

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My dad is reading Spiritual Misfit. He called me yesterday to tell me he’s on chapter seven, and that he’s only reading one chapter a day in order to savor it. Isn’t that sweet? He said he loves it. Of course, he has to say that, right, because he’s my dad?

But my dad also told me that this is the book he needed to read several years ago, when he was lost and floundering and struggling to make sense out of the mystery of faith. Those words? They took my breath away, because I know exactly what my dad means. Spiritual Misfit is the book I needed to read seven or eight years ago, too.

When I first began the slow turn back to faith I looked long and hard for a book that would speak to my particular version of lost. I was so lost, I didn’t even know where or how to begin. I didn’t know how to know God, and I didn’t know for sure if he even existed. I didn’t know how to pray. I didn’t know how to do church. I didn’t know how to read the Bible. I didn’t even know how to purchase a Bible.

I needed a how-to book — a how-in-the-world-do-you-find-faith book — and I spent a lot of time in the Christian Inspiration section in Barnes and Noble looking for that book.

But such a book didn’t exist — or if it did, I couldn’t find it. So I wrote my own.

My husband made this birds-on-a-wire plate for me in his pottery class. #bestgiftever

It took me a while to realize that’s what I was doing. As I navigated each step of my spiritual journey, I wrote about it, and soon, I had 50 pages, and then 100 and then 200. When I finally finished the first draft after more than two years, I had written 104,594 words – 299 pages (just to give you an idea of how much that is, the final version of the book is about 67,000 words – feel free to send my editor a thank you note for that.). I titled it Graceful: A Quest for Faith, because that’s what the book was for me: a quest to know God, to believe in him, and to know I was loved by him and full of his grace. Grace-full. 

A lot of the first draft material didn’t make it into the final version, but that was okay – I needed to write every word of that original manuscript. God needed me to write every word of that original manuscript.

I found God and faith in part through writing this book; God brought me back to him through writing this book. And, as it turned out, I also wrote the book I needed to read but couldn’t find at the time.

Spiritual Misfit isn’t a how-to book. I can’t tell someone how to find faith, which is probably why I couldn’t find such a book on the shelves of Barnes and Noble eight years ago. What I can do, though, is explain how I found faith, and hope that a piece of my story sparks another person’s turn toward God.

Spiritual Misfit releases in two weeks – April 15, 2014. You can pre-order your copy at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, ChristianBook.com and Books-A-Million. Thank you, thank you, thank you! 

 Linking up with Jennifer Dukes Lee’s #TellHisStory.

The Life God has Ordained for You

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We stood side-by-side in front of the case, the lunch crowd pressing loud and boisterous behind us. My friend bent down, hands on her knees, to admire the delicate chocolate confections arranged in perfect rows behind the glass. Her hair fell in gentle waves over her shoulders. I watched the man with the white apron tied around his waist watch my friend. Her eyes, blue like the Caribbean, settled on a dark chocolate truffle. His eyes settled on her.

“You like? You want to try, for free?” the man with the apron asked, sliding a truffle from the tray. He looked like an expectant puppy as he handed my friend the chocolate, waiting for her approval, her delight. My friend’s eyes darted toward mine before she took a dainty bite. The man with the white apron didn’t offer a free chocolate to me.

…I’m writing about comparison over at Laura Rath’s place. Will you join me over there?  

On Personality Tests and Your God-Given Passion

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In high school I took one of those personality strengths tests aimed at helping you discern the best career path. When I finished filling in all the circles with my number two pencil, my dad, a guidance counselor, tallied the results. Turned out the test revealed I’d make an excellent card store manager. Not a doctor or a professor or lawyer. Not an engineer or scientist. A card store manager. I could barely contain my excitement.

Nothing against card stores or managers, of course. But at that point I wondered why I was completing dozens of college applications when it looked like I should pedal down to the local mall and apply for a job at the Hallmark outlet.

Last week I took one of those online “What Career Should You Have?” quizzes. When I was done answering questions like, “Do you prefer the New Yorker or Vogue?” and “Would you rather have Beyonce or the Dalai Lama for dinner?”  the test proclaimed I should be a corporate vice president.

While the overachiever part of me was disappointed not to get CEO, I was also a little embarrassed. Some of my friends got wholesome careers like “humanitarian” and “professor.” I mean, what kind of Christian writer is better suited for vice president as her ideal job? Aren’t I supposed to be humble and spiritual instead of eyeing my 401K?

I never set out to be a writer. I was an English major, true.  I worked a various corporate and non-profit writing jobs, crafting ad copy and annual reports and fundraising letters. But I didn’t consider myself a writer, a “real writer,” because I didn’t write anything creative. Ever.

All that changed when God got a hold of me. I found myself holed up in the basement at dawn, pecking at the keyboard, my fleece bathrobe tucked around my neck to ward off the damp chill. I was writing a memoir, but it felt more like a mystery — I couldn’t for the life of me envision the ending.

God used writing to bring me back to him, and I didn’t have any idea how the story would turn out – both on the page and in real life. What I did know, though, was that once I started writing, I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to stop. No one was more surprised than I was to discover I’d tapped into a deep passion, one that had lain dormant for more than three decades.

Personality tests and the Strengths-Finder and even silly online quizzes have a place and a purpose. They can offer useful insights and information; they can help you rule out certain paths and guide you toward others; and sometimes they’re just plain fun. But they can’t always illuminate your passion, your God-given dream. Sometimes that passion reveals itself through experimentation, trial and error. But sometimes it blossoms out of nowhere, right when you least expect it, like a brilliant bloom in the midst of February gray.

 

In Which I Officially Announce My Book, Spiritual Misfit {even though you’ve already heard about it a billion times}

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It feels like I’ve been yammering about this book for six years straight. I promise, it’ll stop eventually, just as soon as we get this puppy onto the book store shelves and sell a few thousand copies. {wry smile}

Seriously, though, can I say thank you, thank you, thank you for sticking with me, encouraging me, supporting me and pulling me up and out of the ditch of despair over the course of this long and winding road? I quite literally could not have done it without each and every one of you, and I cannot possibly express how grateful I am to you for that.

So Spiritual Misfit: A Memoir of Uneasy Faith  is officially available for pre-order on Amazon! *she throws confetti and turns cartwheels across the living room*

The doorbell rang yesterday, and when I saw the cardboard carton on the front step, I couldn’t imagine what it contained. That’s just about how every step of this publishing process has been all along – one surprise after another. I slit the box open with the kitchen scissors and was shocked to see a whole stack of books — real books, like you find in Barnes and Noble and your public library! — with my name on the cover.

When the kids got home from school they celebrated with me for 6.5 seconds and then went to play MineCraft. We have our priorities in order around here, you know.

It’s been my prayer from the start that this book will be a beacon of hope for the ones, like me, who feel a little lost. For the ones who don’t know about this God business or can’t really see themselves believing or can’t make heads or tails out of the whole faith thing. And so, in light of that, I would humbly ask that if you know someone in that camp – a wanderer, a skeptic, a questioner, an outright unbeliever – perhaps, if the Spirit moves you, you might consider sharing this book with her or him?  Because I know for a fact that God goes after that one lost sheep, even when he has a full pasture of ninety-nine. And you never know what will trigger someone to turn toward God.

Thank you, friends. Thank you.

Oh, and by the way, I feel compelled to tell you that I felt like a complete and utter buffoon taking these pictures of my own book yesterday. At one point Brad walked into the sun room while I was on my knees, camera in my lap, struggling to get the paperback book to stand upright on the blue table by itself. {I finally put a vase behind it} He didn’t say anything, but I knew what he was thinking: “Okay. This has officially gotten out of hand.”

#SpiritualMisfit