DeRusha - Spiritual misfit : a memoir of uneasy faith

Praise for
Spiritual Misfit

This book is profoundly insightful and laugh-out-loud funnythe kind of book you carry with you to the kitchen sink and to the laundry room and even to the bathroom, because you cant.stop.reading. World, meet Michelle DeRushamaster storyteller, brilliant writer, spiritual misfit. With candor and humor, Michelle picks up the pieces of her faith story (and her faithless story), then spreads them out on the pages like an offering. This book reveals a loving God who isnt surprised or repelled by our misfit tendencies, but who pulls us closer. Spiritual Misfit is for any one of us who has ever groped through the dark, which is pretty much every one of us.

Michelle DeRusha shares an honest and heartfelt personal perspective on the journey of faith. She takes us to the hard places, through the doubts, and brings us to this reassuring truth: sometimes when youre searching for a place to belong, what you really need to discover is how much youve been loved all along.

It is rare to find someone who seeks God as Michelle DeRusha doeswith an authenticity the world lacks, with the wit and candor of Anne Lamott, and with the humility of Christ himself. Spiritual Misfit is the unadulterated journey of a woman who knows what it is to struggle and what it is to overcome. Youll come away changed.

Michelle DeRushas Spiritual Misfit is a generous and honest portrait of stumbling into faith. This book is an invitation to wonder and journey, masterfully crafted by Michelles insights and humor. At once vulnerable, at once assured, this narrative offers a welcome and fresh perspective on the spiritual memoir and on the coming to terms of faith within ourselves and our communities.

This is the book weve been waiting for! Its the book we need, because there is no way we get to faith without asking a bunch of questions and fumbling around in the dark for a while. This book frees us to be ourselves with Jesus, and to let him pursue us and woo us and love us and challenge us and stretch us. Michelle tells her story with humor and heart. Its as if she knew someone needed to go first, giving the rest of us courage to exhale and say, Whew! Im not the only one!

Michelle DeRusha is a masterful writer who brings fresh insight, imagery, and wisdom to the spiritual memoir genre. Spiritual Misfit invites the reader to climb a tree and cock the head to see the world from a whole new perspective. Its funny, smart, and brimming with hopea book for those new to faith and those who long for a faith thats new. I look forward to reading everything Michelle DeRusha writes.

S PIRITUAL M ISFIT
P UBLISHED BY C ONVERGENT B OOKS

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com . Scripture quotations marked ( MSG ) are taken from The Message by Eugene H. Peterson. Copyright 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. All rights reserved.

Details in some anecdotes and stories have been changed to protect the identities of the persons involved.

Trade Paperback ISBN 978-1-60142-532-4
eBook ISBN 978-1-60142-533-1

Copyright 2014 by Michelle DeRusha

Cover design by Mark D. Ford

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published in the United States by Convergent Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, New York, a Penguin Random House Company.

C ONVERGENT B OOKS and its open book colophon are trademarks of Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
DeRusha, Michelle.
Spiritual misfit : a memoir of uneasy faith / Michelle DeRusha.First Edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-60142-532-4ISBN 978-1-60142-533-1 (electronic) 1. DeRusha, Michelle. 2. CatholicsBiography. I. Title.
BX4705.D29445A3 2014
282.092dc23
[B]

2013043791

v3.1

Contents

The Beginning of the End

Falsehood is so easy,
truth so difficult.

G EORGE E LIOT

In third grade I stole a necklace. As I labored over fractions, nibbling a rubbery pencil eraser and spitting grainy flecks onto the floor, I spied it glinting from Kims desk across the aisle. We all sat at those Formica elementary school desks, the ones that yawned wide open over our laps so our pencil cases and workbooks and glue sticks were readily accessible. The necklace sat right at the edge, within reach. It was exquisite, exotica choker with a black velvet strap and a single brilliant faux sapphire, like something Barbie would wear with a sequined halter, the red convertible top down, Ken at the wheel.

I had to have it, pined for it, battling a desire so strong it made my stomach clench. So while Mrs. Grant bent over Kims shoulder, I quickly reached behind their backs, slid my fingers into the open desk, grabbed the velvet strand, and balled it into the front pocket of my corduroys, a snake slipping into a dark hole.

Regret rushed in almost instantly. The thrilling high of the conquest crashed into gut-wrenching fear. Aware of its weight all day in my pocket, I passed up my usual penny drops on the junglegym at recess for fear the necklace would plunk into the sand as I swung by my knees. Later I dashed to the girls room and perched on the toilet with the gem balanced on my thigh. I thought seriously about flushing my loot but worried it would plug up the system. Plus I realized that wouldnt solve the real problem anyway, the whole rotting-in-hell dilemma. A simple flush would not hide my sin from the all-seeing eyes of God.

I never wore the necklace, of course. How could I? My mother would have noticed immediately and interrogated me; none of my relatives would have given me such a flashy piece of jewelrywe were more a mother-of-pearl crowd. I couldnt even tell my best friend, Andrea. I knew shed rat me out to her mother, who would then tell my mother, and Id be history.

Occasionally, with the door of my bedroom tightly closed, I held the choker up to my neck before the mirrorI never dared latch the claspto admire its sparkle and dream of how it would look with my rainbow-striped velour top, wishing I could wear it to Heathers roller-skating party. I realized it was pointless to own such a gem when I couldnt flaunt it, but it was too late to put it back.

Stealing, I knew, was a ticket straight to hell. Thou shalt not steal was, in fact, one of the more clearly defined commandments. I may not have fully grasped the nuances of Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors wife or Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor, but there wasnt much fuzziness around the seventh commandment. I could practically hear God thundering, Thou shalt not steal Michelle.