Michelle DeRusha's Blog, page 17

The Deathbed Conversation That Can Change Everything

Last year I received an email from my sister’s father-in-law, Gary, who told me his sister was dying. She’d been away from church for a long time, but as she neared the end of her life, she had expressed the desire to see a priest. The only problem was, she was afraid and ashamed. She’d made some big mistakes in her life, and now she feared it was too late. She was afraid she couldn’t possibly be forgiven.

Gary was planning to visit his sister, but he didn’t know what to say to her. “How do...

Weekend One Word: Reviving

I don’t know if you noticed, but I’d taken a hiatus from the Weekend One Word posts these last few months. Turns out, I kind of missed them. I like to make pretty word-pictures, and focusing on a single word from a single verse each week helps me read Scripture more closely. So…Weekend One Word is back! Most Saturdays I’ll post a verse-picture with a few very brief thoughts. I hope these pictures and posts bring a moment of serenity to your soul.

Based on personal experience, it seems that...

What To Do When You’re Called to Act…and You Do Nothing

I read Shannan Martin’s book Falling Free: Rescued from the Life I Always Wanted this past summer in Minnesota. My friend Deidra got an advanced copy, and I swiped it from her faster than she could say But that’s my book! That’s not true, actually. Deidra begged me to read it. She said it blew her away, and she knew it would blow me away too.

So Iread it.

In fact, I read it twice. I read a book twicewhen a) a book is so good I speed-read it because I can’t stop myself and then have to re-rea...

Why It’s Taken 46 Years for Me to Say No

My editor emailed me recently. He had a great opportunity that he’d love for me to consider, he said. I was excited when I read his email, and when I clicked on the link he included for details, my pulsequickened. It looked good, this opportunity. Really good.

Without getting into all the nitty gritty, the opportunity had to do with book marketing, strategy and branding. The expert was looking for a handful of candidates with whom to beta-test a new service. For free.

Scrolling further, I sa...

Fighting Consumerism in Kids…One Flip Phone at a Time

I chose my hill to die on last week, and that hill is called Verizon.

Saturday morning my 11-year-old son and I visited our local provider to purchase his first cell phone. It’s a rite of passage in our household: Entrance into middle school grants you the privilege of owning your own mobile phone … with one caveat:

You start with a basic, no-bells-and-whistles flip phone. Rowan’s older brother had received his own flip phone in sixth grade and graduated to a smartphone halfway through middl...

Be the You God Created

It’s good to be back, and thanks so much to all of you who emailed and left warm wishes for healing in the comment box. I couldn’t respond (one-handed typing is for the birds!), but know that I appreciated every word! The cast is off, my arm is out of the sling, and the elbow is coming along. I’m done with vigorous pruning forever and ever amen. Thanks for sticking with me, friends! To get us back in the swing of things, here’s a column I wrote last week for my local newspaper. And yeah, it m...

Hello, Unwelcome Hiatus

After I was home a week or so from Italy, my sister asked, “So, are you going to be one of those people who says, ‘Well, in Italy we did this…’ and ‘The Italians do it this way…’?” I laughed, and then I answered, “Yes, yes, I am going to be one of those people.” I was only half kidding.

Honestly, though, I know it can be really annoying to hear about “the best experience ever!” again and again, so I’m going to be cognizant of that in this space. And as fate would have it, I’m being forced to...

When You Forget that God Always Finishes What He Starts

I told a couple friends over dinner recently that for a full two weeks after I’d returned from Tuscany, I felt like I was floating. I was so completely transformed, it was like I was an entirely new person. I felt buoyant, free, and unburdened in every way, and it seemed itwould last forever.

It didn’t. Shocker, right?

What happenedis that asI came down from the high that had carried me light and free from the wheat fields of Tuscany to the corn fields of Nebraska, I began to worry.

I worrie...

Loving Our Neighbor Begins with Knowing Our Neighbor

The week Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and five Dallas police officers were shot and killed, my friend, Logan, pulled out a mixing bowl and a recipe, turned on her oven, and made a batch of blueberry lemon squares. When the squares had cooled, she cut them, arranged them on a plate, and wrote out a card.

“Dear Neighbor, we have never met, but I want you to know that for the past year I have been praying for you every time I drive by your home,” the note read in part.

Logan then gathered...

How The Happiness Dare Opened My Heart to God’s Delight

“Michelle, God delights in you.”

These words werespoken to me and over me as a blessing twiceafter I’d revealed my breakthrough (i.e. breakdown) to my traveling companions in Italy. Two beautiful women prayed two beautiful, intimate prayers over me at two different points during the trip, and though their prayers were full of wisdom, insight and God’s truth, I remember only five specific words, words both of them uttered:

Michelle, God delights in you.

Those are the words, the promise, I to...