My friend, Michelle DeRusha wrote a book I would have hated in the fledgling days of faith. My opinion wouldn’t have been based on her writing, which slips easily between comedy confessional and poignant truth, a feat that is hard to do for the best of writers.
My dislike would have stemmed from my gut reaction to her own fear and doubt. Spiritual Misfit: A Memoir of Uneasy Faith
Michelle tackles the trials of a tender faith with all the grace and nuance of any spiritual misfit I’ve ever known.
My own shaky and fragile faith didn’t like questions. I had lived with so many of them for so long and when I had found the one big umbrella answer that could shield me from the hard questions, I fought hard to keep it covering me.
I believed in God. So when storms came I let them ping like ricocheted raindrops and kept myself surprisingly dry.
And that’s just what came of my faith.
A dry and brittle facade, a wasteland where wrestling with God was something a good Christian doesn’t do because doubting leads to despair. I thought you had to clobber doubt by pushing it aside. I didn’t realize you could let it unfold and hold it out to God and He could meet you in the questions.
I felt a rift in who I was and who I pretended to be. The girl with a quick answer and a pep talk, a 5 point sermon to preach at you if you ever found yourself with doubts.
And God seemed to be there in the gifts. I could speak and I could memorize scripture and I could make people listen. In those early days, I thought I’d change the world. In those early days I thought God needed me. Surely God was proud of me and what I could pull off? But really, I was trying to convince myself. Because I believed in God, I just didn’t know Him.
When the altar call minister leaned into his microphone and the crowd was asked to close eyes to the room around them, when the stillness of my breath caught in my throat, I would whisper the sinners prayer over and over and over again. I would chant it like mantra because I was sure that grace was too flimsy a thing to cover me. And every invitation for salvation I’d grasp and cling to because I was so afraid that God didn’t even know who I was. I needed a team to cheer for and a side to be against. I needed clear lines of who was in and who was out and how to prove it.
How could I stand up to receive Christ, confess my sins and be accepted when I was already leading Bible studies and others to the Lord?
So I would’ve read her book then. I would’ve picked through the pieces of another person’s story and when it began to sound a little too much like my own doubts and fears, I wouldn’t written it off. I would’ve looked for theological failings or lack of scripture. I would have googled (if the internet was around back then) Lutherans to see where they stood on key doctrines. I would have been the woman Michelle describes in her bible study with pinched lips and a hasty reply. I would’ve cautioned people about reading it because it might stumble them if they weren’t solid in their faith. What would happen to a new believer if they ever got the chance to question if God were real or good or able? They’d surely fall away and land firmly in hell. I couldn’t have that on my hands.
I wouldn’t have wanted to ask the hard questions that lived in me too. I wouldn’t have sat with her story and let the parts speak to me about who God really is. I wouldn’t have admitted that this woman who lived a life so different from mine could wrestle with the exact same doubts and uncertainties and come to the conclusion that God was big enough to handle them. I wouldn’t have been brave enough to tell the truth. But Michelle did. She just laid it all out there for us to wade into and in that we are invited to search deeper for a God who loves us with a ridiculous reckless grace.
I would’ve hated her book. I wouldn’t have wanted to admit, I was a spiritual misfit too.
Aren’t we all, in some way or another? Aren’t we all just grasping at grace and foundling faith? Aren’t we all living in the questions no matter how much we know in our minds? We all come to Christ through faith. The kind that admits we are novices and nobodies and yet we are beloved and beautiful. Grace isn’t so flimsy after all.
I’m giving away a copy of Spiritual Misfit: A Memoir of Uneasy Faith
a Rafflecopter giveaway
For US residents only, sorry.
photo credit
novice and nobodies who are beloved and beautiful? oh yes. perfect.
can’t wait to read your faith memoir someday alia. love these snippets we sometimes get. x
Ha! Yes, someday… 😉
This is an AWESOME review, Alia. Really truly. Thank you.
Thanks Michelle. I was so honored to read your thoughts and feelings and was seriously awed by how alike we were/are in our doubts about things even though our stories are so different. I loved it.
Good thoughts, Alia! I’m not on twitter so I guess I won’t be able to enter the giveaway. I’m not wanting join twitter either. thanks though!
Becky, there was an option where you can enter without twitter just by leaving a comment. I’ll enter you if you’d like.
You bare your soul and that is refreshing and courageous. It gives me hope that I too can be more authentic and write the real. Faith, struggle and doubts wage war. Faith has to win!
Thanks Teresa. You’ll love this book. Michelle is the real deal and so interesting to read. It’s always refreshing when someone else goes first. It gives us all room to admit we’re thinking or feeling or struggling with those very same things.
So beautiful. I feel like you wrote my story in a way. When I saw the title of the book earlier this week, I thought, I need to read that! Because now, I understand that I have been a spiritual misfit. Your umbrella illustration spoke volumes to me. Those were the words I was searching for. I stayed dry when it came to my faith because I didn’t want to address the questions that were rising up in me. I could go on, but I’ll leave with this: I am so thankful for your words, Alia. Every time I read them, I am encouraged and inspired. Thanking God for your gift!
I’m glad you could relate to that. In so many ways I came to faith with so many hard questions and once I became a Christian I thought that was automatically the end of doubts and to question would be sinning. So I repressed all the confusion and my faith never grew, I just put on a really good show. Thanks so much for your kind comment, Chandra. I had a heck of a day today and when I read it, I cried. It’s nice to know it speaks to someone sometimes. Especially on the days when it’s hard to get to the keyboard. 😉
Grace isn’t so flimsy after all.” Well said, Alia. And isn’t Spiritual Misfit an amazing book? I like how you shared a piece of your own journey through talking about Michelle’s. God is up to something good!
It was so good. I usually read several books at one time just because I never know what mood I’ll be in but that one I carved out time for and read slowly. I related to so much of her doubts and at the same time, knew how I would have reacted before when I was a new Christian.
This sounds like a really good book to read. Life isn’t easy and God is here for us. He said he’d never leave us nor forsake us. And he’s coming back for us, his children. Thanks for the giveaway, Alia. (I didn’t see anything but the twitter entry part when I was on post the other day) Have a blessed Easter weekend.
I’ve heard a little bit about this book and really appreciated your honesty.. it sounds like a very interesting, eye-opening or maybe simply thought-opening book.
Alia, your story is so much like my own. I have not wanted to asked the hard question or even some of the easier ones. For years I accepted what was taught to me without seeking for myself. Now that I am I find that I becoming a denomination misfit and I really am okay with it.