Stephanie Rische

Blogger and Writer: Capturing Stories of God's Grace

The Weight of Blessing

The other day a wise friend offered me this nugget of wisdom: “Pregnancy is eight months and one year long.” And that sounds exactly right. The last eight months have absolutely sped by, but now, as I struggle to tie my shoes and navigate three-point turns when I roll over, and as I long to see our baby face-to-face, it seems like the calendar is stuck.

Last Sunday I headed to church on one of those sweltering Midwest days when the humidity is already at 90 percent by 10 a.m. I was on my third pair of shoes (after trying on two others that no longer fit), and the short walk from the car to the front of the church felt like a 5K. My whole body felt heavy, and I wished I could take off this load for a while.

When I waddled up to the door, I was greeted by a white-haired grandmotherly woman I’d never met. As she shook my hand, her entire face lit up in a smile. “Oh, my dear!” she exclaimed, taking both my hands in hers. “You are carrying a blessing!”

In an instant, my perspective changed. I wasn’t just carrying a weight. I wasn’t just hauling around the equivalent of four bags of flour in my belly. I was carrying a blessing.

It struck me that when we ask God for blessings, we’re typically envisioning something warm and fuzzy . . . something that makes our lives easier. We assume blessings come to us light and fluffy, like rainbows and fairy dust. In reality, though, the real blessings are the ones that have some weight to them.

What nobody tells you is that blessings usually require some heavy lifting.

The job you’ve been asking God for? It will mean hard work, day after day. The dream you’ve been hoping will come true? It will force you to roll up your sleeves. The relationship you’ve been longing for? It will require regular maintenance. These are blessings, all right, but they’re blessings we carry.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Mary lately, who was considered “blessed above all women.” But if you think about it, her blessing was no cakewalk. She carried the weight of the unborn Messiah all the way to Bethlehem. She carried the weight of knowing a sword would pierce her very soul. And perhaps most of all, she carried the burden of watching her beloved son die.

Loneliness, sorrow, loss—this isn’t what we imagine when we ask God to bless us.

But the truth is, the weight is a gift. It reminds us to pray, to give this blessing the credit it’s due. It reminds us not to take treat this blessing lightly.

So that weight you’re carrying today? As heavy as it is, it’s worth it. The greater the burden, the greater the blessing.

Just as you cannot understand the path of the wind or the mystery of a tiny baby growing in its mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the activity of God, who does all things.
Ecclesiastes 11:5

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.

A Father’s Tender Love

Mama Robin has been building a nest in the pine tree beside our driveway again. For weeks, Daniel and I watched as she tirelessly collected twigs and string and who-knows-what-else to line her nest. One warm evening in April, as Daniel played his guitar on the front stoop, I was delighted to see her flitting away in search of the juiciest worms to feed to the little heads peering over the edge.

It felt like spring. Like hope. Like new life.

Then one windy May afternoon, not long after another doctor’s appointment where they poked and prodded and scanned me and the little life inside me, I pulled into the driveway to a horrifying sight. One of those tiny baby robins lay on the driveway, motionless. The wind had tossed it out of the nest before it was ready to fly.

Even on a good day, a sight like this would be enough to make me teary. But in this agonizing season of waiting to find out what will happen to our own precious baby, it was almost enough to undo me. I pulled into the garage as quickly as I could and tried desperately to think of something else—anything else.

This, I might add, is the real danger of being an English major. It’s not the common warning people gave me when I was in college: that I’d never get a real job and would end up perpetually waiting tables or otherwise underemployed. As it turns out, the more pressing problem is that I see everything in my life through the lens of literary analysis. Case in point: Surely this is foreshadowing! Or at the very least, symbolism! Something dreadful is going to happen in the next chapter, and this is how I’m being prepared for it! My life might as well be a suspense novel, for all the clues and meaning I infuse into the smallest scenarios.

The next morning I went outside, dreading the prospect of seeing the tiny bird again. But to my surprise, the driveway was clear.

“Daniel . . . was that you?” I asked.

Sure enough, he knew the sight would break me into a thousand pieces, so when I was otherwise occupied, he quietly removed all traces of the little bird. I hugged him tight, grateful for his tenderness.

“This wasn’t the first time,” he admitted.

Apparently he’d found a similar scene on several other occasions and had removed the evidence so I wouldn’t have to register the trauma.

The English major in me swooned. Because in that moment I realized I wasn’t living in a suspense novel; I was living in a love story. Sure, it’s not what you’d expect in a typical romantic comedy, and it’s not always what I imagined love would look like when we said our fresh-eyed vows almost six years ago. But it’s real. Because sometimes love means scraping away a bird carcass to protect the one you love.

In that moment, I felt double love for this man—for the husband he is and the dad he’s going to be. Our child hasn’t been born yet, but already he has the tenderness of a father. And in his eyes I see a reflection of the tenderhearted love of the Father himself.

Not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it. And the very hairs on your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are more valuable to God than a whole flock of sparrows.
Matthew 10:19-31

We don’t know what life holds for this baby of ours. But I know for certain that this child is loved and protected by the love of two fathers: an earthly father and a heavenly one. And when the winds of life blow, this child will not fall without those fatherly arms stretched wide to catch him.

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

A Letter to Our Baby

Dear Baby,

Your dad nicknamed you Spark. Months ago, before our scary ultrasound, he decided it was a fitting name. I never figured out how he came up with it, but it didn’t matter. It just seemed right.

And now more ever, the name suits you perfectly.

The doctor said some scary words in that office after your ultrasound . . . words like genetic abnormality and restricted fetal growth and stillbirth and preterm. Baby Spark, we don’t know exactly what’s happening, and as much as the doctors try to pin it all down, they really don’t know the whole story either.

Your dad and I have so many dreams and hopes for you. We wonder what your personality will be like, what you’ll be passionate about, what you’ll like and dislike, what you’ll be gifted at, if you’ll have your dad’s blue eyes or your mom’s single dimple. We’ve imagined so many possibilities for your future.

Spark, we wouldn’t have chosen any of those scary doctor-words for you. We would choose words like healthy and whole and perfect for you if we could. But don’t forget this for a moment: Although we wouldn’t choose this road for you, we choose YOU. No matter what.

And this is likely the first lesson of many to come for us: that as much as we love you, as much as we’re honored that you’ve been temporarily entrusted to us, you are not ultimately ours. You are God’s child, on loan to us. And so we don’t get to map out your life or control what happens to you—we just get to love you and raise you with the wisdom God grants us.

***

That day of the ultrasound, right after we got this news we weren’t expecting, your dad and I were sitting in the lobby of the hospital. Instead of going to a celebratory lunch before we headed back to work, we found ourselves perched on blue plastic chairs, trying to process what we’d heard. I was ugly-crying, not even caring about the stream of people staring at us as they made their way through the lobby.

Your dad was holding my hand, plying me with tissues. After a while he said something I’ll never forget: “I feel like our baby is saying to us, ‘I am a child of God.’”

That moment marked a pivot for me. It was at once obvious and revolutionary. If we truly believe you are a child of God—and we do—then our dreams and hopes and plans for you come second. We choose to surrender all our ideas in favor of what God has in mind for you.

That Sunday, just two days later, your dad played this song with the worship band in church:

From my mother’s womb
You have chosen me
Love has called my name

Spark, we believe that no matter what happens, God is going to use you to shine for him. Maybe that will be because he surprises everyone and you enter this world miraculously healthy. Or maybe you will shine for him precisely because there’s something unique about you that this world would deem less than perfect.

I’m no longer a slave to fear
I am a child of God

And so, Spark, we are trying to choose love instead of fear. We believe you are God’s beloved child. And we believe he is going to use you to ignite hearts for him. You are only the size of a cantaloupe, but already you are shining. Already we love you like crazy.

Love,
Mom and Dad

If there is anywhere on earth a lover of God who is always kept safe, I know nothing of it, for it was not shown to me. But this was shown: that in falling and rising again we are always kept in that same precious love.
Julian of Norwich

When Your Greatest Joy Collides with Your Greatest Fear

If someone managed to do an X-ray of the soul, I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that our places of deepest joy are located right beside our places of deepest sorrow. I’ve spent the larger part of a lifetime assuming life should come one emotion at a time. A season of joy, then a season of pain. Heartache followed by a dream-come-true. All compartmentalized into neat categories.

But as it turns out, life rarely unfolds that way. The good and the bad often fly at us scattershot: joy and pain in simultaneous explosions. The happiness is so woven in with the tears that we can’t separate them out without losing both.

There’s an old song I love by Rich Mullins called “We Are Not as Strong as We Think We Are”:

With these our hells and our heavens So few inches apart We must be awfully small And not as strong as we think we are

Isn’t that about right? Our hells and our heavens, mere inches away from the other.

And that’s where Daniel and I find ourselves right now—smack dab in the middle of both. Great joy intertwined with deep sorrow.

Twenty weeks ago, God fulfilled a dream I’ve held on to for years—one of the most tender desires of my heart. My body wasn’t cooperating, my biological clock was working against me, and the doctors said it was impossible. But one brisk morning in January, to our speechless delight, Daniel and I found out there was new life growing inside me.

This is our miracle, our answer to prayer, our little piece of heaven on earth.

But just inches away—and weeks away—we bumped into one of our deepest fears.

***

We went into the ultrasound rather giddy about meeting this baby of ours, naïvely thinking the biggest question would be whether to find out the gender. After much contemplation, we decided to be surprised.

We were surprised. But the gender was the least of it.

After the ultrasound was over, the doctor came in and did a second one. That’s when I felt the first niggling of trepidation. Wouldn’t a doctor be too busy to repeat what the tech just did? But I was on such a high after seeing the baby’s button nose and tiny fingers that I was caught off guard when the doctor called us into her office.

“We suspect a genetic abnormality,” she said matter-of-factly, as if she were mentioning it might rain later.

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.

I’ve heard Psalm 139 countless times, but honestly, I’ve always skipped over the “fearfully” part and moved right on to “wonderfully.” The images we saw in the ultrasound served as incontrovertible evidence of the wonderful part. Before our baby weighed a full ounce, the kidneys and liver were formed. Before this child was the size of an avocado, the heart was thrumming away at 150 beats a minute. Wonderfully made indeed.

But in that doctor’s white-walled office, fearfully took on ferocious new meaning. I am carrying a wonder inside me, yes. But inseparable from that wonder is fear. Fear about what could happen if something is amiss with just one of the 46 chromosomes. Fear about the ramifications if this baby enters the world too soon. Fear about how fragile life is for all of us, but especially for someone who is currently only about one pound.

This baby is, even now, being masterfully and tenderly knit together by the Creator himself. In the meantime, I need to know: How can I hold on to both the fear and the wonder? I don’t want to revel in the wonder alone and deny the legitimate fear. And I don’t want to let the fear eclipse the wonder altogether. So somehow I need to find a way to embrace both at once.

It’s a risk, this business of loving someone. But isn’t that part of what it means to be made in the image of the Creator who knit us together? He knows full well our frailties and weaknesses and humanness. And yet he loves his children with abandon. To love is to risk being hurt. But it’s worth the risk.

As we wait in the unknown these next four months, I wouldn’t choose any other way than the bumpy road of love. Even if it means that our hells and our heavens, our fears and our wonders, are separated by mere inches.

To love at all is to be vulnerable.
C. S. Lewis

Like Eating a Praying Mantis

What’s the longest-term goal you’ve accomplished? Something that couldn’t be checked off after a tough afternoon of grinding it out…one that required not only enthusiasm but also marathon endurance and grit? Maybe you finished your degree after long nights of studying and papers and angst. Maybe you crossed the finish line after hours of training, gallons of sweat, and sore muscles. Maybe you paid off a debt after months (or years) of scrimping and saving and saying no to things you wanted.

There’s something about accomplishments like these that feel significant—not just because we have the thing we aspired to—the degree, the medal, the freedom—but because of what happens to us along the way. When we pursue a big, long goal like this, we are changed along the way. We aren’t the same person we were when we started; we are stronger, tougher, more disciplined. Or maybe it’s not so much that we’ve changed; maybe we had this capacity for toughness in us all along and never knew it. This goal simply allowed us to see that truth about ourselves.

Nine years ago, when my sister graduated from college, she got the biggest gift she’d ever received. I mean that literally—it was a seven-foot by seven-foot crossword puzzle. She hung it up in her bedroom after starting grad school, and I kid you not: it took up the entire wall.

Meghan and I worked on the crossword puzzle together whenever we could—both in person, when I was visiting her, and when she emailed me obscure clues to research. She came to live with me for a summer during one of her internships, and she brought along one big square of the puzzle. Every morning over coffee, we worked a few clues together. When she got a job after grad school, we continued crossowording over the phone before work, and when she became a mom and I got married, we made weekly phone dates during her kids’ naptimes and my lunch breaks.

That crossword puzzle has seen us through a lot of life in almost a decade. Between the two of us, we have experienced marriage, motherhood, new jobs, and multiple moves. We’ve lived a broad gamut of loss and love and heartache and happiness.

Not long ago I was visiting Meghan for the weekend, and we worked on the crossword puzzle over coffee, per tradition. It’s harder to do this than it used to be, so we woke up before our husbands and her kids and tried to do as much as we could before everyone else was ready for breakfast. On that Saturday morning, we found ourselves at a startling spot: I was reading her the very last clue in the puzzle (out of 28,000).

This clue represented nine years and six residences and big life changes and who knows how many hours together. And now it was coming to an end. Meghan gave me the answer, and I found myself with pen in hand, paralyzed. We had been trying to accomplish this goal for almost ten years, but now that the end was here, I didn’t want it to be over. She finally convinced me to write the final letter in the box.

After I got home, Meghan sent me this quote she’d found by someone who had reviewed the same puzzle: “I dread its completion, yet yearn to make it happen as soon as humanly possible. This must be how the male praying mantis feels.” That seemed about right.

We hadn’t just completed the mother of all crossword puzzles. We had learned a lot along the way—not necessary about vocabulary (I’m pretty sure I’ve forgotten any new words or factoids I gathered along the way), but about ourselves. We learned that we can accomplish big goals. That we can persevere. That we can take on a seven-foot by seven-foot by nine-year challenge and conquer it. And perhaps most of all, we learned that we aren’t just sisters, but friends. The crossword puzzle united us, even as the rest of our lives diverged.

No one prepares you for the sadness you feel when you accomplish your goal. You graduate, you cross the finish line, you fill in the last crossword square, and you expect the elation. You’re not prepared for the letdown afterward.

So what’s next, once you’ve finished that momentous thing? Here’s my bit of advice, from someone in the throes of finishing: Take time to celebrate. Don’t rush past your accomplishment—savor it. And then, when you feel like you’ve duly marked the occasion, find a new goal. Maybe even a wall-sized one.

Most dazzling human achievements are, in fact, the aggregate of countless individual elements, each of which is, in a sense, ordinary.
Angela Duckworth, Grit

***

What big thing have you accomplished recently? And how did you feel when it as all over?

Waiting with Joy

One year ago, exactly, I was waiting for a phone call. I was ready, bursting with anticipation, my phone glued to my hip all day and all through the night. My sister was expecting her second baby, and the plan was for Mom and me to jump in the car as soon as we got the call. We’d make the two-and-a-half hour drive so we could watch big sister Addie while her mom and dad were in the hospital.

It was an Advent like no other, waiting for this baby son to come into the world.

Oh come, Oh come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear

The call came at 2:00 a.m. in the dark quiet of a snowy morning. I leaped out of bed before the second ring. “It’s time,” my sister said. “We’re headed to the hospital.”

After all the waiting, all the expectation, all the hope, it was time. This long-awaited baby was coming.

Rejoice, Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, Oh Israel!

The arrival came with pain, to be sure. But when Baby Grant came into the world, there was indeed much rejoicing.

This Advent I found myself waiting again. But this time, instead of waiting for a birth, I was waiting for a death.

Once again I kept the phone beside me night and day, waking and sleeping. But this time my heart weighed three hundred pounds each time the phone rang.

My grandfather had lived a good life. He was a man of the greatest generation—a hard worker and a man of quiet but deep faith. He never would have abided my saying so, but he was a hero: first as a B-17 pilot over Europe during World War II and then as the faithful father to twelve children. He had been married to my grandma for almost 71 years—a lifetime in itself. His was quite a legacy: a legacy of faithfulness and wit and wisdom and love and dozens upon dozens of people who share his name.

And now he was ready to go home. I kissed his cheek last Sunday, aware that it would likely be the last time on this side of heaven.

I knew it was time—we all did. And yet somehow 94 still seemed too young. God has planted eternity in our hearts, which means that death always comes too soon. We are made for life, not death.

Oh come, Thou Dayspring, come and cheer
Thy people with Thine advent here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night
And death’s dark shadows put to flight

The call came one evening after dinner, and somehow I missed it. I must have been in the basement, throwing a load in the wash. My dad’s voice was on the message: “I have good news and bad news,” he said. “It’s bad news for us, because we’ll miss him. But it’s all good news for him.”

At Advent we celebrate the gift of Emmanuel. God with us, to comfort those who mourn in lonely exile. God with us, to disperse the gloomy clouds of night. God with us, to put death’s dark shadows to flight.

As we inhabit this weary world, we grieve and we wait and we ache. But we also rejoice, because death isn’t the end of the story. The pangs of death make way for new life—the kind of life that never ends.

Until then, we wait. And we wait with joy.

God with us. Us with God. Emmanuel.

Rejoice, Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, Oh Israel!

God’s Elbow

addie elbow3

When my niece Addie was almost two, my family headed to Washington State to visit my grandparents. The 2,000-mile trip made for a long day . . . even for those of us who weren’t toddlers. By the time we drove to the airport, changed planes, rented a car, and headed over the mountains to Grandma and Grandpa’s house, we’d spent an entire day using transportation of some kind. Add that to the two-hour time difference, and we had a pretty tired two-year-old on our hands.

Gratefully, Addie was a champion traveler and charmed the entire plane. But when we got to Grandma and Grandpa’s house, she toddled over to me, her eyes plaintive. “Eppie ebbow!” she said.

I looked at her, confused. The “Eppie” part was easy—that’s my auntie alias. But “ebbow”? What was she trying to tell me?

“Can you show me?” I asked.

She dutifully pointed to my elbow, but I was still at a loss for what that signified.

Finally I called in my sister, Addie’s mom, for some clues. “What does it mean if Addie is asking for my elbow?”

Meghan laughed. “Oh, she’s asking you to hold her in a rocking position—with her head in your elbow.”

Of course! I was only too happy to oblige.

***

Just a few months later, Addie’s world turned upside down when her parents brought home a baby brother. She had been practicing her big-sister skills with her doll (whom she called “Pink Baby”), but we weren’t sure how she’d adjust to not being the baby of the family anymore.

Most of all, how would she respond when someone else took the prime spot in her mama’s elbow?

When Meghan and Ted returned from the hospital with their precious bundle wrapped in a blue quilt, I held my breath, wondering how the introduction with the newly minted big sister would go. Would she be jealous? Would she feel bumped out of prime elbow territory?

I needn’t have worried. The first thing she said after inspecting little Grant was “Addie ebbow.” Then she sat down on the couch, ready to put her little brother in the crook of her own arm.

Here I was afraid she’d want Mama’s elbow for herself, and she was offering her elbow to her baby brother.

At two years old, Addie was living out this verse in 2 Corinthians:

God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.
2 Corinthians 1:3-4

God comforts us—he lets us rest in the cook of his arm, if you will. And in turn, he invites us to share that comfort with other hurting people.

When we know there’s no scarcity of love, we don’t have to hoard the comfort we’ve been given; we don’t have to be jealous for it. Instead, we can receive it with gratitude . . . and then extend it to someone else.

Have known the comfort of your Father’s elbow? If so, don’t keep that love to yourself. Find someone else who needs an elbow too, and share his comfort with them. And if you haven’t felt that comfort, know that his arm is ready, waiting just for you.

***

What’s your story? Has someone passed on God’s comfort to you? Or have you passed it on to someone else?

When the Judge Is Your Dad

dad and meFor some people, Father’s Day means cookouts and ties and cards with cheesy dad jokes. But for other people, Father’s Day is a paper cut to the heart . . . a reminder of someone who was absent or distant or harsh or unavailable.

In Scripture, one of the most prominent metaphors for God is as a Father. But if your father wasn’t someone who loved you and delighted in you and cherished you and sacrificed for you, how can you believe in a heavenly Father who shows that kind of love to his children?

I’m grateful for a dad and a mom who have faithfully reflected God’s love to me since they laid eyes on my scrunched-up, purplish face in Edward Hospital all those years ago. But recently I experienced a new angle of a father’s love . . . one that I hope will give you a glimpse of the Father-love of God, whether you had a good dad or not.

Judge Dad

My dad became a judge recently, and when the whole family was in town, he took us to the courthouse on a Saturday morning so we could see where he worked. As I sat at the elevated judge’s bench overlooking the witness stand and jury box, I felt the weight of this position—the honor of it, but also the responsibility. In this role, Dad carries the task of faithfully upholding the law, of determining the fates and futures of those who walk through the doors. The judge’s robe, it turns out, is a heavy one.

Once we’d visited the courthouse, Dad invited us to see his chambers. After going through various layers of airport-level security, we headed to the bowels of the courthouse, into his judge’s chambers. As I entered the room, I was struck by the stately mahogany desk and the shelves lined with regal-looking law books. My mind scrambled to reconcile the dad who plays backyard basketball and tells fourth-grade-boy jokes with the dad who is now referred to as “Your Honor.”

As we were about to leave his chambers to head home, a familiar combination of white and pink on Dad’s credenza caught my eye. It looks like . . . no, it can’t be. But sure enough, it was the familiar cover of my memoir. Amid all the leather-bound legal books and important case files was a copy of his daughter’s book—about blind dating, of all things. It was there on the edge of his table along with printouts of a few of my blog posts, available for perusal by anyone who entered his chambers.

As the rest of my family filed out, I stood with my feet nailed to the ground, gripped by the love of a judge with the heart of a dad.

And in that moment, awash with my father’s love, I had a vision of another Judge, another Dad.

Behind the Curtain

In the Old Testament, the Holy of Holies was the sacred place in the Temple where God dwelled. It was a place so holy that only the high priest was allowed to enter—and if he entered at the wrong time or in the wrong way, he would be struck dead.

Most of us can grasp the idea of a holy God—a powerful judge who inspires awe. And he is certainly that. But that moment in my dad’s chambers, I got a glimpse of a God who not only is holy and powerful but also has photos of his children plastered all over the walls.

Go ahead—peek behind the curtain of the Holy of Holies and look around. See on the wall there? It’s a framed picture of you, hanging there for everyone to see. And over on the refrigerator . . . there’s the picture you drew for him—the one you crumbled up and threw away but he salvaged from the trash. And the gift you gave him—the one you thought was so meager and unworthy? It’s sitting prominently on his shelf so whenever his friends come in, he can tell them all about it.

As a beloved child, you have access to the Judge. And this isn’t just a distant, holy God; he’s a Father who loves you and delights in you and is proud of you. He’s a Father who invites you into the sacred space of the Holy of Holies, into his very presence—a place you would never have the right to go without that privileged relationship.

This Father’s Day, regardless of what your earthly father is like, I want you to know that you have a Father who loves you unconditionally, sacrificially, with abandon. Even as you tremble to approach the bench, remember that the judge is also your Father. And that your picture is hanging on his wall.