Michelle DeRusha's Blog, page 28

Be Gentle Always

I stopped short in the driveway and stood staring. It all looked so normal, so everyday—the potted impatiens she’d planted in front of the garage, the Windexed windows, the kitchen light glowing inside. No one would have known what wasgoing on behind that front door. No one would have guessedfrom the outside that there was grieving and sickness, tears and joy mingled bittersweet.

I watched the grandkids play tag, climb the river birch tree. They yelled and laughed, fallingin piles on the gra...

Weekend One (ok, two) Word: Give Up

I’m not one to give up. Giving up is anathema to me – it’s like quitting, throwing in the towel, failing. Giving up isn’t in my wheelhouse, because I’m stubborn and a strivey-striver and Triple Type A.

But I don’t know. The more I think about it, giving up, especially the way those words are used like Jesus uses them here— as in surrender, trust, hand over — kind of makes sense. Because you can’t have both, you know? You can’t have God and everything else. Youhave to choose. Your life, just...

When You’re Driving Around with Your Tank Half-Full

I had a revelation at the gas pump yesterday. I realized that the last several times I’ve leaned against the mini-van, nozzle gushing into the tank, I’ve clicked off the pump beforeitautomatically clicked off itself.

I’ve driven away with half a tank, toorushed, too busy,to allow myself the time to pump a full tank of gas.

Now granted, I drive a beast of a mini-van with an enormous twenty-five gallon tank. When she’s flatlining on empty, it takes a while for that dashboard dial to crawl all...

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

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,...

Weekend One Word: Small

“Do not despise these small beginnings,
for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin.”
Zechariah 4:10

This photo captures a single tiny bud in a phlox bloom. If you’ve ever seen phlox, you know that from afar, its blooms look like beautiful, full clusters, plump and lush with color. But look closely. Each blossom is comprised of dozens of individual blooms, tiny flowers all bunchedtightly together to create a single explosion of color. Each flower in the cluster starts like the one in this p...

God is for You — Even When Life Isn’t (and a FREE Webcast!)

I’m thrilled to welcome my good friend Emily Wierenga here today, with a post that’s so close to my own heart. Emily is the most beautiful, eloquent, lyrical writer – have you read her memoir Atlas Girl yet? If not, snap it up, and then read the sequel, Making It Home , releasing on September 8.

Post by Emily Wierenga:

“I don’t know how to tell you this, Emily, but—they said no.” I’m on the phone with my agent two weeks after giving birth to my nearly nine-pound Kasher and I’m crying before...

Learning to Let Go of Outcomes

I’ve been praying a new prayer lately. It goes like this: “God, help me be small. Help me embrace the small. Help me love and live the small. Amen.”

This is a big deal for me, because I am not ordinarily an embracer of the small. My prayers to God over the last 18 months have sounded more like this: “God, please help my book do better. Help me be more successful. Help me achieve my dreams of becoming a successful writer.”

See the trend there? Bigger, better, more. That’s who I’ve been my who...

Weekend One Word: Already

I forget this sometimes…don’t you? I forget that God already has us on the path of his making…even when we don’t quite recognize that path quite yet. It’s a beautiful thing, really. God already knows every one of our needs, from the littlest and most inconsequential to the most serious, begging prayers. He knows without our even having to ask. Of course, God likes us to ask, because that means we are in conversation with him, and he likes nothing more than to be close to us. But remember, eve...

It’s Time to Look at the Bigger Picture

Believe it or not, I’m going to talk about elephants again. Who would have thought that one hour-long program about elephantswould result in two blog poststhat really aren’t about elephants.

Katy Payne, the acoustic biologist interviewed by On Being host Krista Tippett, talked about the problem of poaching in Africa. Tens of thousands of elephants are killed every year for their prized tusks, which are extremely valuable in black market ivory trading. But she also pointed out something I did...

God Calls Us to Be in the Minority

I listened to a podcast while I was running recently about acoustic biologist Katy Payne andher work with whales and elephants. This is what I love about the show On Being. I go into it thinking, “What in the world do I care about whales and elephants?” and I come out of it thinking, “Wow, that was about SO much more than whales and elephants.”

During the interview Payne recalledan incident in which she and her crew filmed the death of a baby elephant. About 100 elephants unrelated to the ba...