Stephanie Rische

Blogger and Writer: Capturing Stories of God's Grace

Prayer in the Margins

I once prayed in a circle of quiet—
closed door, closed eyes,
ink-scratch the only sound.

Now all I have to offer is prayer
in the margins—
nestled between dirty dishes,
laundered socks,
toddler stampedes.

No time for eloquence,
No energy either.
I’m blunter now, I suppose,
going for the divine jugular.

Please.
Thank you.
Help me.
Protect them.
What now?
Thank you anyway.
Have mercy.
Bless them.
Thank you still.

So I breathe blessings over sleep-tousled hair,
put hands on heads as we race to school,
exhale benedictions when I hear sirens
(for surely that’s someone’s son, if not my own).

I let prayers come
in what form they may,
amid the tornadic wildness
of these days.

I let the prayers come—
as breaths, as teardrops, as kisses.
As the beats of my own heart.

For Those Who Keep Vigil at Night

This is a word for those who find themselves awake when the rest of the world sleeps.

  • For the one plagued by worry
  • For the one caring for someone who is ill
  • For the one haunted by insomnia
  • For the one begging for their prodigal to return home
  • For the one toiling on the night shift

And, yes, for the one trying to comfort an inconsolable infant in the wee hours.

As anyone who has stood sentry at night knows, everything seems bleaker under the blanket of darkness. Shadows grow menacing. Minutes feel like hours. Anxiety morphs into full-blown fear.

I’m not sure why this is, exactly. We have artificial light, after all, and we’ve long outgrown our fear of the dark. But something about those middle-of-the-night hours releases our monsters from their hiding.

I have a hunch that one of the reasons nighttime is so hard is because it has a way of isolating us. It makes us think we’re the only ones marking this bleak and desolate hour. In the absence of our usual defenses, we feel alone, and rather small.

If you find yourself doing battle by night, I want you to know that you do not keep this vigil alone. There is someone who sits by your bedside, someone who waits with you, someone who toils alongside you. There is someone whose love is not bound by time, someone who sticks by you even when it’s inconvenient, someone who doesn’t clock out when the sun goes down.

The psalmist puts it this way:

The one who watches over you will not slumber.
Indeed, he who watches over Israel
    never slumbers or sleeps.

Psalm 121:3-4

Even when the rest of the world is asleep, God is awake. And because of that, you can rest . . . even if you can’t sleep.

Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.

Victor Hugo

Toddler-Style Lament

I’m no expert in child development, but I have had a front-row seat to my share of toddler tantrums lately. Based on my unscientific analysis, I would venture to say there are two categories of tantrums: the clinging kind and the flinging kind. (Of course, in the middle of said tantrum, it feels like the categories are loud or louder; public or more public).

After the tsunami-force winds die down, I try to catch my breath and take stock of what just happened. It seems like my son goes one of two directions in the midst of his big feelings: he either launches himself away from me or glues himself to me. If it’s a flinging tantrum, he squirms out of my reach and throws himself onto the floor. If it’s a clinging tantrum, he wraps his little arms around my neck or leg—all the while sobbing as if to fill a small bathtub.

I’ve been reading the Psalms recently, and I’ve been struck anew by the chord of lament that runs through so many of them. I’ve had my own seasons of lament . . . times of waiting, times when God seemed silent, times when I had to reckon with a “no” to a deeply longed-for prayer.

In my seasons of lament, I confess that at times I’ve responded with a flinging tantrum. I have launched myself out of God’s arms. For reasons that defy logic, I choose a dirty floor over his loving arms. I refuse to bring him my tears, my confusion, my weariness.

I’m so grateful for the Psalms, because there are no verses that say “Thou shalt suck it up” or “Thou shalt get a grip.” Instead, these ancient songs encourage lament . . . when we do so in the context of holding on to our Father. 

Faithful lament, I would maintain, is akin to a clinging tantrum. It’s beating our Father’s chest with our fists and letting our tears soak his shirt. It’s grabbing him and holding on for dear life.

The other day I was comforting Graham in the midst of a clinging tantrum. I can’t remember what sparked the meltdown—perhaps all the green bowls were dirty or I insisted he wear pants or I parked the car in his imaginary friend’s spot. At any rate, as I held him, I wiped a tear from his cheek. This resulted in a fresh waterfall. “Put my tear back!” he wailed. “I wanted it there!”

So we sat on the floor of the kitchen, the two of us, as the afternoon sun streamed through the window. At last he let out a ragged sigh and rested his head on my shoulder. I silently wondered what it would be like to do the same with my heavenly Father. No more throwing myself out of his reach. No more demanding that he take away the pain. Just allowing myself to be held by him.

If I’m going to pitch a fit, it might as well be the clinging kind. I want to hold on to him until my prayer is answered . . . or until my tantrum subsides.

Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go next.

Frederick Buechner

A Tiny Seed of Hope

They lie to you about hope. They whisper in your ear that if you don’t get your hopes up, it won’t hurt if that longed-for thing doesn’t come to pass. Keep your expectations low, they say, so the fall won’t be so steep. Don’t get too attached. Muffle your dreams under layers of bubble wrap. This is the only way to venture into the future and come out unscathed.

But according to a reliable source, hope is one of only three things that remain in the end, after everything else falls away. If I’m understanding that right, it means that hope lives on into eternity, even after the thing we’re hoping for has passed away. If that’s the case, maybe I shouldn’t be too quick to brush it off.

***

“It looks like you’re miscarrying,” the doctor told me, not unkindly. It was the height of the pandemic, and we were both wearing masks. I regretted putting on mascara, but it felt like a special occasion, seeing as it was the first time I’d left the house in approximately six weeks. The doctor awkwardly handed me a tissue, trying not to make contact.

“Come back in two weeks for another ultrasound to confirm.”

Back in the car, I regretted (even more than the mascara) the fact that Daniel couldn’t be there with me. We’d initially wanted him there so he could see the baby’s tiny profile on the screen and watch the pulsing heartbeat. But now I wished he could drive me home, because they haven’t yet invented windshield wipers for the human eye.

***

I didn’t enter this corridor of hope blithely. I’ve had my share of ultrasounds that resulted in smudged mascara: one with dire conjectures about our baby’s future and one that resulted in the dreaded silence of a no-longer-beating heart.

In those two agonizing weeks between ultrasounds, I wondered how to pray, how to put one foot in front of the other, how to breathe. I wasn’t sure it was possible to hope, and if so, whether it was wise. If I cracked open the door to hope, wouldn’t it just be an invitation for my heart to get steamrolled in two weeks?

I whispered these fears to Daniel after Graham was safely tucked in bed. I know he was just as scared as I was, but he offered words of bedrock wisdom, words I clung to every day of those two eternal weeks: “We will choose hope until God gives us a reason not to.”

***

Hope, I believe, is never wasted. Every time we hope, even if the hope is just a tiny quivering thing, we are building our hope muscle. Even if the thing we’re hoping for doesn’t become reality, the very act of hoping changes something at the core of who we are.

And if the foundation of our hope is ultimately in Someone rather than something, we will never be disappointed. Whether we get the thing we’re hoping for or not.

Faith is both the dreaming and the crying. Faith is the assurance that the best and holiest dream is true after all.

Frederick Buechner

***

At my appointment two weeks later, I walked into the same ultrasound room, with the same mask on, and was greeted by the same technician. I could hardly bear to look at the screen, knowing in a matter of moments it would announce either life or death, hope or grief. I didn’t want to know, and I had to know.

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. My eyes flew open at the unmistakable sound of a tiny heart pumping at 160 beats per minute. “Is that what I think it is?” I whispered.

Sure enough, flickering on the screen was hope incarnate, hope pulsing inside my own body. I hadn’t worn mascara because I anticipated tears that day. I just hadn’t guessed that they would be tears of joy, tears of a hope fulfilled.

Now, by some undeserved miracle, Daniel, Graham, and I are waiting for our new arrival, due at the end of year. And the nickname we’ve given this little one?

Baby Hope.

I know that hope is the hardest love we carry.

Jane Hirschfield

Where Are You?

If there were a rite of passage for parenthood, I’d venture to say it’s not a baby shower or a milestone birthday or watching your child take their first step. Maybe, instead, it’s that first trip to the ER.

Our ER adventure started with the most innocuous of summer events: a bug bite. But by day two, the swelling was getting worse and the Benadryl wasn’t doing the trick. By the time our little boy woke up from his nap, both eyes were swollen completely shut. The pediatrician sent us straight to the ER—forget dinner, let alone combing your hair.

Once Graham and I were on the road (Daniel couldn’t go, per COVID regulations), I heard Graham’s little voice pipe up from the backseat, “How you feeling, Mama?” Before I could come up with a reply that was both honest and calming, he replied, “I feeling happy.” This from a boy whose eyes looked like jet-puffed marshmallows and who could no longer see out the window.

Once we were whisked into our hospital room, Graham was given a tiny gown with rocket ships on it and pumped with even more Benadryl. He let the doctor pry open his eyes and dutifully responded when asked, “Does this hurt? How about this?”

He was a champ . . . under one condition: that he knew precisely where I was. And since his visibility was at practically zero, that meant physical contact. If I took my hand off of him for even a second, he would say, “Where are you, Mama?” So I’d rub his back or put my hand on his arm while singing every hymn I could access from the cobwebs of memory.

By hour three in the ER, as we waited in vain for the Benadryl to kick in, it was well past bedtime. After dozing off in the too-big hospital bed, he’d wake up, startled. “What is you and I doing, Mama?” he asked. I’d hold his hand and remind him where we were. And then he’d breathe a sigh and lean back on the pillow again.

Thankfully, Graham’s eyes recovered (although we never did figure out the rogue bug that got him). The main thing he remembers about his hospital visit was the bed with wheels, which he thought was the coolest thing since Thomas the Tank Engine. But I can’t stop thinking about the kind of childlike faith that requires only presence, not answers.

By all counts, this year has been a year of reckoning for our nation, for our world. Everywhere we turn, there’s pain, suffering, injustice, division. Every day the news headlines bring a new reason for lament. With my jaded, grown-up faith, I ask God, “Why? How long? What are you going to do about all this?”

I want to be more like my little boy, with just one pressing question: Where are you, Papa?It may not make the pain go away. It may not change the circumstances. It may not answer all my whys.

But I’ll be reminded that he’s right here, holding my hand. Always has been, always will be. And for now, at least, maybe that’s enough.

But as for me, God’s presence is my good.
I have made the Lord God my refuge,
so I can tell about all you do.

Psalm 73:28

Prisoners of Hope

This pandemic has taken so many prisoners, and my heart is heavy for everyone who finds themselves languishing behind bars right now.

The elderly person who can’t have visitors.
The single parent who is never off the clock.
The person battling anxiety.
The person with a compromised immune system.
The person stuck at home in an abusive relationship.
The person who lives alone and feels the ache of loneliness.

Perhaps this virus isn’t responsible for our chains, but it certainly has exposed them. The truth is, we are all prisoners of something—we don’t have much choice about that. But we do have some say in what we will be enslaved to.

I came across this verse recently, and it struck me in a new way in this season of fear and quarantine:

Return to your fortress, you prisoners of hope;
    even now I announce that I will restore twice as much to you.

Zechariah 9:12

Prisoners of hope. What would it look like, I wonder, to be a prisoner of hope rather than a prisoner of fear?

I want to be chained to hope.
I want to shackle myself to it and not let go.
I want it to follow me wherever I go.

The fact that hope takes prisoners implies a battle. There’s nothing passive about it. It requires courage. It’s a fight.

Faith, as I imagine it, is tensile, and cool, and has no need of words. Hope, I know, is a fighter and a screamer.

Mary Oliver

Hope means choosing love, over and over again . . . and asking for forgiveness when we fail.
It means doing the next right thing.
It means getting up again.
It means believing there will be manna enough for today.
It means laying down our weapons, and sometimes our screens.
It means writing a note, making a phone call, baking a batch of cookies, playing another round of Scrabble.
It means listening for the birds and watching for the green daffodil shoots peeking out of the ground.

It means we keep living, one moment at a time. The battle has already been won.

Hope and despair stand always side by side, each determined to outlast the other. If we choose hope, we must join the standoff, with hearts and hands wide open, fighting the urge to fade into despair.

Catherine McNiel

Don’t Do Belief Alone

There has been a small spiral-bound notebook sitting beside my comfy red chair for the past year. On the outside, it is as ordinary as any Target impulse buy. But inside? It contains all the tender hopes and beliefs of a small village.

Last year I chose the word believe as my anthem for the year. There was one thing I was specifically hoping for and believing God for in my own life, but I knew I wasn’t the only one out there with a God-sized dream. So I asked the people around me: What are you believing God for this year?

The responses cracked my heart open in all the best ways. My friends’ hopes were beautiful and vulnerable and achingly real. Some of these people had been rubbed raw from years of agonizing waiting; some were voicing their quiet hopes for the first time. But all of them were united in their bravery, in the guts it takes to bring big dreams into the light.

I didn’t take it lightly that people were entrusting me with something so precious. I wished I could wave my magic wand and give them what they longed for, but I couldn’t. So I did the only thing I could to honor those tender shoots of hope: I wrote their dreams for the year in my notebook, and in the mornings I sat in my red chair, coffee steaming my in hands, and asked God to intervene. I believed on their behalf.

I wish I could tell you that after a year of my crash course in believing, I have it all figured out. I don’t. In fact, the nature of belief may be more of a mystery to me than ever. Some of the things I believed God for were answered in miraculous ways, and other requests—just as valid, just as earnest—were met with silence.

  • I believed for a baby for four of my friends—women who were made to be moms. One had a baby before year’s end, and one is currently pregnant. But another friend miscarried, and one is still in the agony of waiting.
  • I believed on behalf of three beautiful friends who long to be married. One had a whirlwind romance and got married last fall, and one is dating a good man who treats her with the love and honor she deserves. But the third one, for reasons that are lost on me, is still waiting for her turn to come.
  • I believed on behalf of two talented writer-friends who are hoping for a home for their books. One has a book contract, while the other one continues to send out submission after submission, to no avail.

I saw miracles last year—some that unfolded slowly, like the gentle healing of a marriage, and some that happened all at once, like the long-awaited job offer. But there are other miracles that seem notably absent: the parents whose adopted children are stuck in layer upon layer of bureaucratic red tape, the daughter whose liver is failing, the loved one who continues to run from the Father-love of God.

To my surprise, it was much easier to believe for other people than for myself, and to have them believe for me. At first I felt guilty about this . . . why couldn’t I trust God with the things closest to my heart?

But as the year went on, I started to see that this is part of how God wired us. We’re not meant to do faith alone; we need each other. When we get weary, we need someone else’s hope to cover the gap for us. And when we see God at work in other people’s lives, it can give us renewed hope, a down payment of sorts to remind us of his power and goodness and love.

In the midst of the answers and non-answers from 2017, I realized that we all have a need greater than whatever it is we’re longing for. We need our God more than we need our miracle. And we need each other along the way—in the celebrations, when the answer is yes; in the heartbreaks, when the answer is no; and in the agonizing middle, when the answer is wait.

It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are . . . because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are. . . . It is important to tell our secrets too because it makes it easier for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own.
Frederick Buechner

Hope Is a Boomerang

Have you ever experienced that odd sensation of having your words boomerang back to you?

Maybe you’re a parent, and you hear your own expressions coming off the lips of your child. Maybe you’re a teacher, and you overhear a student parroting back one of your lessons. Or maybe you’re a writer, and God uses your own words to preach right back to you.

A beloved group of women threw a baby shower for me last week, and as I looked around the room, it was all I could do to keep my mascara in its rightful place. I’ve worked and prayed alongside these women for the past 14 years, which that means they’ve seen me through a lot of hopes and heartbreaks and life stages. They knew me when I was single and attended bridal shower after bridal shower, unsure if I’d ever be the one to tell my story of how God brought the right man into my life. They knew me when I was married to Daniel, longing for a baby of our own and wondering if God would grant this desire of our hearts.

As I looked around at the decorations made specifically for Baby Spark, with the tiny white lights and the banners that said “Twinkle, twinkle,” I was overwhelmed by God’s kindness. These women had hoped on my behalf when I couldn’t muster up hope for myself. That’s one of the secret weapons of community, isn’t it? Sometimes it’s easier to hope and pray for the tender places in another person’s soul when we can’t pray for our own. And it’s a privilege (albeit a humbling one) to allow them to hope for us.

I saved the cards from the shower to read when I got home, because let’s be serious, we would have had a serious mascara situation on our hands if I’d read everyone’s kind words to me and Spark right there at work. On the inside of one of the cards, I read a quote a friend had written. The words hit exactly where my heart was—grappling with hope as Daniel and I wonder about our baby’s health and count down the days until we meet this little one. The words seemed somewhat familiar, although I couldn’t quite place them:

Hope doesn’t usually make its debut in a flashy way, with trumpets and fanfare and paparazzi. It doesn’t start out as a huge bonfire or a stunning blaze; rather, it’s just a small spark, the mere flicker of a candle. But in the midst of the darkness, that lone flame is enough. It’s the promise that even though you can’t yet see what your heart is longing for, even though there’s no indication that it will happen at all, you can keep hanging on.

I was surprised by the appropriateness of the quote, and impressed that my friend had found something that mentioned spark, to boot. Then I saw my friend’s note at the bottom: “This is from the Christmas letter you sent in 2010,” she said.

Sure enough, the words were my own. They had come back to haunt me in the most beautiful and unexpected way. That was the year I met Daniel—the year so many hopes I’d cherished for years were at last fulfilled. And now I find myself on a similar precipice, but on the other side: hoping for a miracle that hasn’t happened yet.

Isn’t that the beauty of having some history with hope? When we can’t look forward, we can look back. When we don’t know what the future holds, we can remember what God has done in the past and be reminded of his character. He may not write the same story twice, but those previous chapters are evidence of the overarching themes: that he is faithful and that he loves us like crazy.

It can be scary to let people get close to those tender places of our deepest hopes. But it’s worth it. Because when we invite people in, not only can they hope on our half; they can also bring our own words of hope back to the surface. They can make sure our hope boomerangs back to us, right when we need it.

Hope is what is left when your worst fears have been realized. . . . Hope is what comes with a broken heart willing to be mended.
Patricia E. De Jong

 

What’s in a Name?

Shakespeare promised us that a name is just a name: “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” But how many hours, I wonder, did he agonize over his characters’ names? Seriously, if he’d gone with Harold and Bertha instead of Romeo and Juliet, would it have ever caught on as a classic? I have my doubts.

There’s something about a name that does more than just identify a person; it both reflects a person’s character and shapes it. It evokes any number of feelings, from sweet nostalgia to PTSD. A name says something about where we’ve come from and where we’re going.

I recently received a delightful book from a friend called Other-Wordly: Words Both Strange and Lovely from around the World. It’s filled with words from other languages that capture something we’ve all felt but perhaps haven’t been able to pin down with words. Cases in point:

Did you know there’s actually a word in Japanese that refers to the habit of buying books and not reading them . . . of letting books pile up unread on your floor or nightstand? Somehow when you can diagnose yourself with a case of tsundoku, it feels more justifiable.

And you know that certain homesickness you feel about a home you can’t return to or the nostalgia you feel for the lost places of your past? Take comfort in knowing this is a real thing. It’s called hiraeth in Welsh.

And that hesitation you experience when introducing someone because you forgot their name? It’s called tartling. You’re welcome.

There’s something satisfying about finding just the right words to name something.

Or someone.

Daniel and I are now on the countdown until we meet our baby. There was something about hearing the doctor say the phrase “third trimester” that caused a jolt of panic to run through me. Forget painting the nursery or packing a hospital bag—what we really need to get serious about is choosing a name for this little person. (As catchy as Spark is, I can’t quite see that making it on the birth certificate.)

But how do you choose a name for someone you’ve never met? How do you encapsulate all your hopes and dreams for a person in a mere string of letters?

There are so many things to consider: Do you name the baby after someone you admire, or do you let them be their own person? How can you make sure the name isn’t too trendy but also not too weird? How can you possibly think of all the ways other kids might twist the name (or the initials) to tease your child on the playground someday? And what if you name your kid something with lots of r’s and it turns out they have a lisp?

Goodness, this is a lot of pressure. Especially when you’re talking about an innocent sevenish-pound bundle who won’t be able to pose an objection for quite some time.

I’ve always loved what the book of Revelation says about how one day our heavenly Father will give his children a new name: “I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it.”

There’s something intimate implied in that new name-giving . . . that God is so well acquainted with us that he knows exactly what name will fit. He will give us a name that describes us perfectly—our unique personalities, our deepest hopes, our most cherished dreams. It will be a name that describes our unique calling, an invitation to step more and more into the identity he’s crafted for us.

And so I guess that takes some pressure off our naming duty in the here-and-now. Because even if we don’t pick the perfect name, our baby will get a new name someday . . . a name chosen by his or her heavenly Father.

Still, I hope it isn’t Bertha.

The Scene of a Miracle

Have you ever been up close to a miracle before?

Maybe you’ve been on the receiving end of a miraculous healing that only could have come as the result of divine intervention. Maybe you’ve experienced a reconciliation that would have been impossible on human terms. Or maybe you’ve witnessed something that simply couldn’t be explained by a natural phenomenon.

I’ve seen miracles before—some of them on a smaller scale, and others that played out in grand fashion. I’ve seen sunsets and majestic mountain scenes that had to have been crafted by a divine hand. I’ve seen hardened hearts transformed. I’ve seen trapped people set free. I’ve seen sick people made well.

And I’ve heard of miracles too—stories from friends and family members and strangers who have had God step in and intervene in some powerful way. I’ve heard their tales of miraculous transformation, and their faith has made mine stronger.

As intangible as faith usually is, miracles bring faith to life through our senses—God breaks through the door of heaven and allows us to see or hear him in a more concrete way than we usually do. (That said, I’m not sure I’ve smelled or tasted a miracle before, although my grandmother’s cinnamon rolls come close.)

I may have seen and heard miracles before, but I can say this for sure: I’ve never felt a miracle.

Until now.

Now, for the first time, I’m experiencing a miracle from a whole new perspective. I find that my body is the very scene of a miracle.

Somehow, some way, there is a miracle growing inside of me—moving inside of me, kicking inside of me (maybe even doing pirouettes inside of me, the best I can tell). I didn’t create this life; I’ve merely been chosen as the setting for this child to grow.

As much as I do my best to create a safe, healthy place for my baby—curbing my coffee addiction, scrupulously skipping the blue cheese, making sure I don’t lift anything heavy—ultimately I play a small role in this miracle.

God is knitting this tiny person together, and I have the privilege of not only seeing it or hearing about it but actually feeling the miracle inside my body.

This pregnancy has had its share of bumps and scares, but regardless of the outcome, I don’t want to forget that this is a miracle—a nine-months-in-the-making miracle that is getting bigger and more miraculous by the day.

And here’s something I’ve learned about miracles along the way: like the fluttering kicks of a baby, they aren’t always obvious right away. They don’t always announce themselves with dramatic fanfare. Sometimes they start small and bashful, just waiting for us to quiet our hearts to notice them. And be grateful for them.

Maybe you are looking for a miracle right now. Maybe you’ve been waiting and longing and praying for so long that you are weary, almost scared to keep hoping.

If this is you, please don’t give up. You may very well be the scene of a miracle yourself. And that miracle may be starting even now, with the smallest of flutterings within your own heart.

I have always imagined miracles to be like loud shouts. Like trumpet blasts. But they are secretive. They are more like deeply buried seeds. . . . Always, God is tugging us toward resurrection, tugging us and this whole weary, winter world toward new life. But the way is dark. The road is long. The path is quiet. It is paved with hunger.

Christie Purifoy, Roots and Sky