Stephanie Rische

Blogger and Writer: Capturing Stories of God's Grace

A Letter to My Son on His 3rd Birthday

My precious Milo,

Alas, I am writing this message to you several weeks after the dust has settled on your birthday gifts. With your birthday the day after Christmas, December can feel like drinking celebration-concentrate, the way you might put a straw straight into the orange juice can, undiluted. Rich and sweet—and maybe tummyache-inducing after a while.  

This year we celebrated Christmas, with your birthday right on its heels, followed by a family celebration that ended with a three-generational stomach bug, with a chaser of strep throat that coincided with a blizzard and then –20 degree weather. I keep waiting for elusive aspirations like “a normal week” or “getting into a routine” or “finding our rhythm,” and I’ve decided that’s not a realistic New Year’s resolution at this stage of our life.

In a way, it seems appropriate that your birthday was marked by a flurry of intensity—full-on joy, interspersed with every other extreme. One thing we’ve learned about you in these three years is that you don’t do anything halfway. When you eat pancakes, you EAT PANCAKES—often five in a sitting. You run at only one speed: full throttle. You love your brother fiercely—anytime you get a treat, you ask for two so you can share with him. You are a bucket of joy 90 percent of the time, full of expressive gestures and impish antics, making everyone around you (including strangers at the grocery store) grin. That other 10 percent of you, the sheer grit part, results in some stubborn faceplants in the carpet now but will get you far in life one day.

You had two requests for your birthday this year: pancakes and lions. I tried to temper your expectations about the zoo, knowing that cats of any size don’t exactly have a reputation for doing what you ask. But you were adamant that you would see the lions.

Sure enough, one of the male lions was pacing right next to the viewing window, face to face with you. You were mesmerized, not at all fazed by the three-inch-long teeth or the cold rain drizzling down on us. I tried to move us along so other people could have a turn, but your nose was pressed to the glass. “More times! More times!”

As I looked at the wonder in your eyes, I admired the way you were fully present in the moment. You weren’t thinking about what happened yesterday or what will happen tomorrow. You weren’t worried about germs or schedules or to-lists or what anyone else was thinking.

I have a lot to learn from you, my full-of-life boy. You are teaching me that today is a gift—one that will never come again exactly this way. Time, I am learning, is as awe-inspiring and ferocious as a lion. It can’t be tamed, only respected. So I want to embrace all that this season has to offer—the good parts and the hard parts. Fever, and also snuggles. E-learning, and also snowmen. Exhaustion, and also joy. Antibiotics, and also unexpected time at home.

I want to embrace this year of you being three and me being the mom of a three-year-old.

So happy birthday, little man. Your dad and I love you. We’re so glad God picked us to be the ones in the front row to watch you grow up.

Love,
Mom and Dad

This day will not come again.

Thomas Merton

Serendipity

They say it is coincidence,
The way the sun bursts through the clouds,
The rainbow after the storm,
The check in the mail, like so much manna,
The hope that beats unmerited in your chest.

They say it is random,
Simple happenstance,
The way the right words come at the right time,
The answer to a prayer you’ve barely whispered.
They call it a happy accident,
The shift of the universe,
Atoms in entropy.

But I am a mother now,
I have peeked behind this part of the curtain.
Tiny notes are tucked into lunchboxes,
Scraped knees are tended,
Groceries appear in the pantry,
Feverish brows are tended,
The right gift appears for the occasion,
Lullabies are sung deep into the night.

“It’s my lucky day!” the child exclaims.
And the mother nods, smiles,
winks.

Perhaps it is only chance
For the one receiving it.
Maybe coincidence is really
A divine love note,
A kiss breaking through the barrier of heaven.

Maybe it’s just another way to say
I love you.

There is no chance thing through which God cannot speak . . . even the moments when you cannot believe there is a God who speaks at all anywhere.

Frederick Buechner

A Letter to My Son on His 6th Birthday

Dear Graham,

This summer we went on a family vacation to the Sleeping Bear Dunes—that veritable mountain range of sand. We squinted our eyes against the electric-blue sky, taking in the towering hills above us. Can we make it to the top? I wondered. It would be a steep enough climb even if we weren’t schlepping water bottles, snacks, and diapers, not to mention two small humans.

Your dad and I listened studiously as the park ranger went over safety guidelines with our group. He told us how sometimes people start the climb but aren’t able to finish, and what to do if you get tired or hot or stuck somewhere between the base and the summit.

We were nodding along, taking in all the tips, when in a surge of panic, I realized you were gone. We scanned the parking lot for your trademark green ball cap. Where could you be? Then I spotted you climbing—no, sprinting—up the dune. Somehow, in the span of minutes, you’d made it two-thirds of the way up, all by your barefooted self.

I tried to call out to you, but the lump in my throat silenced me—a lump that was one part pride, one part fear, and one part I’m not ready yet.

***

You started kindergarten last week. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise—five comes after four, six comes after five, kindergarten comes after preschool. These are linear steps, predictable chronologies. And yet I find myself standing at the bottom of this sand dune, looking up at you with a mixture of pride and fear and I’m-not-ready-yet.

When you were a baby, I heard so many times that the days are long and the years are short. I tried to soak in this advice, but I don’t know if it’s possible to be prepared for the inevitable time-slip of watching you grow up. I am no likelier to freeze-frame you at this stage than I am to preserve a dandelion puff or capture a sunset in my pocket.

You are adamant that I am Mom now, not Mama or Mommy. It’s strange how quickly you are changing while I stay the same. I look at pictures of us together, how you once fit in my arms and how your arms now wrap all the way around me. I remain the same height while you keep inching higher.

As soon as your dad and I think we’ve found a rhythm in a new season with you and your brother, things change. Your brain is growing, your heart is growing, and your soul is growing. Your questions are getting bigger along with your shoe size, and the problems you’re up against are increasing in complexity along with your math problems. And I find myself ever a step behind, racing to catch up.

But maybe I’m growing too, just less obviously than you. At the very least, my rib cage must be expanding, because how else could my heart contain all this without bursting?

And so, as you turn six and climb the mountains God has put before you, know that your dad and I love you. And when you face mountains that you have to climb all on your own, know that Jesus is with you, running to the top beside you.

We’ll be cheering you on, whether we’re ready or not.

Love,
Mom and Dad

To My Son on His 2nd Birthday

Dear Milo,

When I went downstairs to dig out the Christmas bins this year, I looked around and realized that ever so slowly, without my being aware of it, our basement has become a graveyard for baby things.

First you outgrew your swing, your legs kicking so energetically that you were becoming a topple risk. When you learned to walk, you no longer needed that exersaucer (the one you did hundreds of laps with while I made dinner). Then came the day when you began protesting your highchair, refusing to settle for anything less than a booster seat like your big brother. It wasn’t long before you started boycotting your crib too, threatening to throw yourself over the side until we finally released you.

As I look at the baby detritus around me, it’s not that I’d wish you back to babyhood. After all, we love the person you’re becoming, and it’s a delight to see your personality emerge with each passing week.

The two-year-old version of you is made of grins and grit, delight and determination, impishness and independence. You live large and love big. You adore dogs and social gatherings and cheese and somersaults and leaping off high places—and, if you have your preference, doing it all without pants on.

You have two speeds: full throttle and asleep. After a day filled with jumping on things and then hurling yourself off, and trying to keep pace with a five-year-old, you snuggle into your bed (not a crib) with a rotating cast of stuffed animals tucked under your knees. Before bed, you inevitably request the car book, pointing out who in our family drives each one (I’ve never envisioned myself as a dump truck driver, but who am I to argue?). You don’t say much, but you certainly know how to get your point across, taking us by the hand to show us precisely what you want or acting out elaborate charades.

Looking around me, I wonder if it’s the rocking chair that hurts most. There’s nothing fancy about the chair—it was handed down by a friend who got it from a friend, and it’s been recovered multiple times. You haven’t sat still long enough to be rocked for some time now, and there’s no reason to keep unused furniture in your room—it would only serve as an unnecessary obstacle to your games of chase and hide-and-seek. Besides, I don’t know how much longer my arms will even be able to hold you.

But doing this the second time around, I know how fast the sands of childhood slip through a parent’s fingers. Now I know how birthday candles accumulate faster than I’ve given them permission to. Now I know how the calendar pages keep turning, even if I’d like to stay in a particular season a while longer.

You won’t remember all the nights your dad and I rocked you in the middle of the night, singing “I Bid You Good Night.” But even after you’ve outgrown lullabies, I think those words and melodies (and the love undergirding them) weave their way into your DNA somehow. Maybe they become part of you, grounding you not only in our love but in your belovedness as God’s child.

So, happy birthday, my little boy who is literally racing your way into your third year of life. Your dad and brother and I love you so much. And please excuse me if I tuck you in more than once every night, while I still can.

I love you, but Jesus loves you the best.
And I bid you good night, good night, good night.

Photo copyright Julie Chen

Everlasting Arms

I was recently asked to share some reflections at a friend’s baby shower. Here’s a glimpse into what I talked about—and it’s a reminder not just for moms-to-be, but for anyone who feels like they’re in over their head.

My son Milo is now 20 months old, and there are two things you should know about him at this point in his life:

  1. He enjoys the sensation of freefalling.
  2. He has utter confidence that someone will catch him.

This is a rather dangerous combination. Here’s what this looks like: wherever Milo is, he finds the highest point in the room or on the playground and scampers to the top. Then he grins like he just won the baby lottery, reaches out his arms . . . and plummets off the edge.

So far Daniel and I have kept him alive for 617 days. But I have to admit my heart has gotten stuck in my throat more times than I can count.

Every time I catch my boy, I marvel at the way he squeals and grins, completely oblivious to the danger. As I try to calm my thumping heart, so many worries race through my head:

  • What if next time I’m not fast enough to catch him?
  • What if sometime I won’t see him when he’s about to jump?
  • What if one day my arms won’t be strong enough to grab him?

One of the most terrifying and trust-building parts of parenting is that from the moment you hold your tiny bundle in your arms, you are met by two overwhelming realizations: 1) you love this little human being more than you ever thought possible, and 2) you are completely out of your depth.

You instinctively know that you will do whatever it takes to protect this little one, and simultaneously that the day will come when you won’t be able to. This is true when you put him in his car seat on your way home from the hospital and when he spikes his first fever and when you drop him off for your first day at preschool. As he gets older, there will be other things that hurt him—not just his body, but his mind and his heart and his soul too.

Motherhood has proven to me just how human I am. I am not all-powerful. I am not all-seeing. I am not always-present. But then I am reminded: there is someone who is all of those things. Your baby has a heavenly Father who is all-powerful, all-seeing, always-present. And that same heavenly Father is watching over that baby’s mom and dad too.

One of my favorite Scripture passages, especially these days, is from the end of Moses’ speech to the tribes of Israel before he dies:

There is no one like the God of Israel.
    He rides across the heavens to help you,
    across the skies in majestic splendor.
The eternal God is your refuge,
    and his everlasting arms are under you.
—Deuteronomy 33:26-27

I love that image of God’s everlasting arms—arms that have no beginning and no end. They will always be long enough to help your son. They will always be strong enough to grab him. They will never fail him; they will always be under him.

So whenever you feel out of your depth, remember that it’s not all up to you. God’s arms are everlasting. He will catch your son when he’s a baby, when he’s a daredevil toddler, when he’s a teenager, and for the rest of his life. And his arms will be under you, too.

A Letter to My Son on His First Birthday

My darling boy,

I peeked in on you while you were sleeping last night, like I usually do. (This isn’t for your sake—it’s purely so I can catch a glimpse of you in a rare freeze-frame moment.) I marveled at your sprawling limbs, growing longer by the day, and the way you now take up most of your crib.

When did this happen, I wonder? It seems like we just graduated you from the bassinet. I remember the way the crib seemed like an ocean at the time, engulfing your tiny curled-up frame.

We like to read Frog and Toad together, and I can’t help but think of Toad in “The Garden.” He watches his garden minute by minute, waiting for it to grow. And then, after he falls asleep, he wakes up to find his plants have suddenly sprung up overnight.

Forever. And just one year.

When the doctor placed you in my arms one year ago, I immediately realized: this is forever. No matter what happens tomorrow or next year or decades from now, my world has been altered forever. My perspective has been altered forever. My heart has been altered forever.

What didn’t hit me right away is that while my heart is permanently changed, that’s the only thing permanent about this parenting gig. Time, which used to march along fairly consistently, now moves at warp speed. Just one year—that’s all the time we had with you as a baby.

I woke up, and suddenly you are running, arms winging wildly to the sides. You squawk like a pterodactyl at the dinner table, increasing in volume to match the crowd. You no longer bundle up under my winter jacket, with only your fuzzy hat sticking out; you are now toddling around the snow on your own two legs, begging (by way of your adamantly pointing finger) for another sled ride. You no longer fall asleep on our chest; you only have time for drive-by snuggles before dashing off to explore the dishwasher or the ungated stairway or your brother’s toys.

I wouldn’t trade it, of course. It is a delight to watch your personality unfold and to discover, day by day, the person God made you to be.

You are Mr. Personality, charming friends and strangers alike. You doggedly maintain eye contact with anyone, masked or otherwise, until they reciprocate your cheeky grin. From the moment you learned to roll over, you haven’t stopped moving, and once you’ve decided on a destination, there’s no diverting you. You are curious and independent, insisting on feeding yourself, walking by yourself, and even turning the pages of books yourself. Your gap-toothed smile lights up the whole room—and, indeed, our whole lives. I don’t know the ingredients God used to make the unique combination of you, but I have a hunch you’re two parts sunshine and one part steel.

It’s hard to believe that just over a year ago, we hardly knew anything about you. We didn’t know your gender, we didn’t know your name, we didn’t know you’d come into the world with a head full of hair and enough exuberance to rally an entire stadium.

We can’t imagine our family without you, and we can’t wait to see the way you uniquely reflect the character of God to the world.

So happy birthday, my boy. My baby for a year, my son forever.

Love,
Mom (and Dad too)

A Letter to My Son on His First Day of Preschool

Dear Graham,

I dropped you off for your first day of preschool this morning. When I caught a glimpse of your profile, with your little blue backpack perched on your shoulders and your head with its cowlicky curls (combed, for once), my stomach did one of those renegade back flips.

You’ll only be gone a couple of hours, I know. But as I watched you march toward your own adventures, apart from me, I felt like I was standing at the top of a huge sledding hill. Once we start, gravity and velocity will inevitably take hold, and there will be no turning back, no slowing down. As I waved goodbye, your future flashed before my eyes—your first overnight away from home, your first solo drive, your first day of college. And me waving from the driveway, quelling the back flips in my stomach.

In the four years I’ve been your mama, I’ve been learning something about the mysterious tether that connects me to you. When you were an infant, you were tied to me by a literal cord; you went everywhere I went. When you were a newborn, you were, in a real sense, tied to my breast. As you grew, the tether extended to the carrier I strapped you in when we went on walks and made dinner together.

These days you still like to hold my hand, but I’m all too aware that this connection may be mere blinks from extinction. Already you are straining for microfreedoms. Already you are faster than I am. Already you aspire to go places I cannot go.

I am tempted to make grand promises as you step into your world apart from me:

I will protect you.
I will keep you safe.
I will fight off any would-be bullies.
I will make sure you have someone to play with.
I will always be there for you.

But of course I can’t promise those things. I can’t always be with you—and I shouldn’t.

And then I remember there is a better promise.

“Hold out your hand,” I say to you, my brown-eyed boy. And one by one, I take your fingers, reminding you of the One who will never leave you: I. Am. Always. With. You.

I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand.

Psalm 73:23

I (thumb)
am (pointer finger)
always (middle finger)
with (ring finger)
you (pinkie)

It is a promise you can hold in your hand, even after I’m gone. A tether that can never be broken.

As I head home, my vision blurry, I carry the promise in my hand too, my own umbilical cord: I. Am. Always. With. You.

You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we’re apart . . . I’ll always be with you.

Christopher Robin to Winnie the Pooh (A. A. Milne)

A Letter to My Second-Born Son

Dear Milo,

Over the past half a year, you have somehow both enlarged me and made my world smaller.

In those first few months, amid a pandemic/social distancing and a winter with record-breaking snowfalls, our world was mostly a cozy four-person cocoon. In the middle of the night, when I fed you by the glow of the Christmas lights we strung on your ceiling, it could have been just you and me in the universe, if not for the snack your dad left for me beside the rocking chair.

Our world was small, yes. But you have also been showing me a grander view of the world.

When I see the man at the stoplight holding a tattered sign, my usually calloused heart is pierced. He was once a baby too, I think. He once had a mother who rocked him to sleep.

When I hear you laugh—without filter or self-consciousness—I can believe in breathtaking joy, the kind that blooms out of the soil of sorrow.

When I see your sense of wonder over the little things—bubbles catching the sunlight just so, a leaf dancing in the breeze—I am reminded to slow down, to bear witness to the miraculous right under my nose.

When I see you and your brother communicating with no need for words, I can embrace a world where reconciliation is possible, where hearts can be glued back together.

You have surprised me, little man . . . and humbled me too. I’ve had a baby before, I remember thinking. Better yet, I’ve had a baby boy. I probably know how to do this. But of course I don’t. Because I’ve never had you before.

You made it clear even before you were born, when the wild rumpus ensued in my belly, that you were your own little person. Ever since, you’ve been on the move, wiggling and kicking and grinning and generally charming your way through life. You refuse to be held on my hip, preferring to be face-out so you won’t miss a single thing.

As a one-toe-in-the-water kind of person myself, I marvel at the way you cannonball straight into the deep end. I admire your moxie, the way you embrace the world and everyone you meet with open arms and a full-body grin.

Just one year—that’s all the time we get you as a baby. I’m trying to drink in the joy of it this time around, knowing it’s like juice concentrate. So much to take in with a single sip, but there’s no way to water it down.

So halfy birthday, little guy. We can’t imagine the world without you; we can’t imagine our family without you. Please keep teaching us—we have a lot more to learn.

Love,
Mom

Love Like a Toddler

Children, it turns out, are not programmable. Neither do they bear any semblance to a vending machine: Press button A21 and voila! Out comes a Snickers!

I have to admit there’s something compelling about a vending-machine model for children. Think of the possibilities—you could input helpful phrases like “Yes, Mama!” “Of course, Mama!” “You’re brilliant, Mama!”

At two-going-on-twelve, my little man decidedly does not operate according to preprogrammed instructions. In fact, he relishes the taste of “No!” on his lips. At various times, he has attempted to boycott any combination of the following: diapers, meat, car seats, toothbrushes, and hygiene in general. He has been known to emphasize his point by lying prone on the grocery store floor. He has, on more than one occasion, been observed streaking across the room pantless.

In short, he has a will. And he knows how to assert it.

But I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you the other side of toddlerhood. In recent months, he has also been known to pipe up from the backseat, “Hold mine hand, Mama.” And we hold hands until the light turns green. In the middle of playing with his cars, he will run over to his dad and say, “Kiss right here!” before dashing off to play again. On occasion, in the highest form of love language, he extends a sweaty palm with a goldfish cracker in it. “Here go, Mama!”  

Sometimes I look around our world and wonder why God would give us human beings free will. Maybe it’s always been this way, or maybe parenthood has made me squeamish, or maybe social media is the worst kind of magnifying glass, but it seems like we are drowning in selfishness and violence and bad choices and greed and all manner of mayhem. When I pray, I sometimes find myself asking, “Is this really your Plan A, God? Wouldn’t it have been smarter to program us to be a little nicer than we are?”

But then I hear my son’s little voice saying, “Hold mine hand,” and I can see where he’s coming from. Forced love—that’s no kind of love. Forced goodness—that’s no goodness at all. The Father doesn’t just want obedience; he wants our hearts. Even at the expense of our own willfulness.

The psalmist says, “I have calmed and quieted myself, like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk. Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me” (Psalm 131:2). There comes a point when we go to God not just because we’re utterly dependent on him for our next meal, for our very survival. He delights when we finally quiet down from our tantrum long enough to come to him by choice. Not only because we have to, but because we want to.

Just like a toddler.

***

It is not a slight thing when they, who are so fresh from God, love us.
Charles Dickens

Here’s hoping his word for the year isn’t NO…

A Letter to Our Son on His 2nd Birthday

Dear Graham,

You have been with us for two years now. Only two years . . . and already two years. In the span of this year, you morphed before our eyes from a baby into a little boy.

Your dad and I sometimes check on you in your crib before we go to bed. We don’t need to anymore, but it’s habit now. Besides, we secretly love those quiet moments, watching your normally active little self in freeze-frame, like a hurricane on pause.

We close the door behind us and marvel at how big you are. “Didn’t those pants just fit him two days ago?” we ask. It’s not just your legs that have grown. But they’re the easiest to measure.

Last year at this time, you were taking your first tentative steps. Your babble was mostly incoherent. You needed help to eat, use a sippy cup, and go down the slide at the park.

Now you are full of opinions and words and dramatic gestures and joy and occasional food strikes. You’ve learned how to string words together and whisper in our ears and rake leaves and mix cookie dough. You’ve learned how to run on your tiptoes and kick a soccer ball and throw rocks in the creek. You’ve learned to beg for Band-Aids and sing silly songs and share your goldfish crackers (when you want to). You’ve learned that a cow says “moo” and a lion says “rawrrr” and a puppy sticks out its tongue and pants. And when I asked you recently, on a whim, what Graham says, you flashed me a sparkly smile and replied, “Happy.”

“Do you think there’s ever another year in a person’s life when they learn so much?” I asked your dad one day. Probably not, we decided. But the more I think about it, the more I realize how much we’ve learned this year, thanks to your tutelage.

This year we’ve learned . . .

  • How to extract a pea from a tiny nostril with a Q-tip
  • That locks aren’t always baby-proof, especially the ones that guard the snack cabinet
  • How to keep a straight face when you say, “No, no, puppy” just before doing something willfully defiant
  • How to find creative protein alternatives during that two-month meat boycott 
  • How to notice every rock, stick, and bug on the way to the park
  • How to read the truck book seven times in a row

Here’s what I’m learning about being a parent: in my eyes, you will forever be every age at once. In your two-year-old face I see who you are right now, with your sticky oatmeal fingers and cheeky grin and affinity for all things with wheels.

But I also see the swaddled bundle we took home from the hospital in an enormous car seat. I see the baby so tiny we were afraid we would break you but who somehow had ninja-like strength whenever it was bath time.

I see the six-month-old who belly-laughed at Daddy’s silly noises and learned to dance before you could walk. I see the one-year-old who adored garbage trucks and flowers and blueberries. I see the 18-month-old who decided one inauspicious day that he was too big for a high chair and insisted on sitting at the table instead.

And at times I see glimpses of the person you may become. In certain moments, you do something beyond your two years, like tell your own joke or give us a pat on the back or insist on wearing a romper with Hawaiian shorts and snow boots, and suddenly the future flashes before my eyes. I see you getting on the bus, going to overnight camp, sitting in the driver’s seat of the car, getting your first job, becoming a dad yourself.

These moments when time folds over on itself are at once beautiful and terrifying. My heart isn’t big enough to hold so many versions of you at once. And so when you blow out your candles, I will try to just count to two and embrace who you are right now, in this moment. And I will tuck the memory in my pocket so I can pull it out again someday.

Happy birthday, my boy. We love who you are and who you were and who you will be one day.

Mom and Dad

Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.

Dr. Seuss