Stephanie Rische

Blogger and Writer: Capturing Stories of God's Grace

Wherever You Go…

When my friend Anna and I were in college, a girl in our dorm shaved her head completely bald, sparked by some kind of dare or bet. This prompted a game of sorts among the girls in our suite: “What would it take for you to buzz your head?” We’d offer various tantalizing scenarios—a new car, a lifetime supply of dark chocolate, the payoff of all college loans, a cool grand in cash. All of us were pretty willing to sell out, if reluctantly. All except Anna.

Anna is one of the least vain people I know, but she does prize her long hair—not just because it’s one of her trademark physical features, but also because she sees it as a symbol of her femininity. And so, no matter what tempting offers were placed on the table, Anna would never agree to a head shaving, even in the realm of the hypothetical.

Almost a decade ago, Anna married Mike, who was one of three boys in his family. Her mother-in-law, Barb, was happy to have another woman in the family, and she took Anna in as if she were her own daughter. Over the years, Anna and Barb bonded over their mutual love for Mike, as well as a shared faith and a common interest in taking walks and planning holidays together. And then came along three of the true delights of Barb’s life: the grandchildren Anna and Mike have given her.

Last fall Barb retired from her job, and she was looking forward to spending more time on the lake with her husband and playing with her grandkids. Around the holidays she wasn’t feeling well, and she figured it was just a virus. But as the months went on and she still didn’t feel like herself, she finally decided it was time to go to the doctor.

It wasn’t a virus.

“A tumor,” the doctor said. “The size of a cantaloupe.”

And then the word she dreaded but knew was coming: cancer. Stage 3.

* * *

I’ve always loved the little book of Ruth, tucked between books of history and law the Old Testament. As I read the Bible chronologically, this story especially comes as a breath of fresh air, falling as it does in the midst of the hopeless cycles of disobedience, violence, and despair recounted in the book of Judges.

After Ruth’s husband dies, her mother-in-law tells her that she doesn’t have to stick with her, that she should go back to her people and find another husband. But Ruth responds with a striking display of compassion and loyalty:

“Don’t ask me to leave you and turn back. Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. Wherever you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD punish me severely if I allow anything but death to separate us!”

—Ruth 1:16-17

* * *

When it was time for Barb to go to the doctor, she claimed she’d be “just fine” on her own. But Anna was resolute that she not go alone, and finally Barb allowed Anna to accompany her while she got her chemo treatments. Don’t ask me to leave you. When Barb didn’t care to have visitors after a particularly difficult treatment, it was Anna who insisted on bringing over a chicken casserole. Wherever you go, I will go. And when her hair started falling out in clumps and she decided it was time to shave it off, it was Anna who did the honors.

The word ruth isn’t commonly used in our vernacular, though its opposite (ruthless) is more familiar. According to Webster, ruth is defined as “compassion for the misery of another.”

True ruth, I would contend, is inherently an act of grace. It’s not about what’s in it for me. It’s about extending compassion to someone who’s in pain, someone who most likely can’t pay back this favor. It’s choosing to stick beside someone even at great cost to oneself.

Wherever you go, I will go.

Even if that journey involves a number 4 razor.

I’ve taken the challenge of reading the Bible chronologically this year and tracing the thread of grace through it. These musings are prompted by my reading. I’d love to have you join me: One Year Bible reading plan.

Grandma’s Prayer

“Grandma, how can we pray for you?” I asked.

For the 40 days of Lent, my husband, Daniel, and I did an experiment of sorts, and each day leading up to Easter we prayed for a different friend or family member.

I was especially curious what my grandma would request prayer for. She’s in pretty remarkable health, physically and mentally, considering she’s almost 90. But even so, she no doubt has her share of aches and pains she might want relief from. Or, I figured, she might ask for prayer for Grandpa, whose health has been gradually declining in recent years. On top of that, she has 12 children, more grandchildren than I can keep track of, and even some great-grandchildren now. There were plenty of items she could have ticked off for a prayer list.

But after a pause, she surprised me with her response. “You know,” she said, “I’ve spent most of my life petitioning God for things. But at this stage in my life, I find I have just one prayer left.”

I held my breath, waiting for some profound spiritual insight.

“I just want to say thank you.”

I knew phone etiquette compelled me to say something, but an unswallowable lump had lodged itself in my throat.

Grandma broke the silence. “God has been so faithful to us. It’s easy to forget all the beautiful things he has done,” she said. “I’ve spent so much time asking. Now it’s time to be thanking.”

The day Daniel and I chose to pray for Grandma and Grandpa fell less than a week later. That day Grandma found herself by Grandpa’s side in a hospital room. It was “just” the flu, but in his weakened condition, the doctors were concerned. He was dehydrated, and his white blood cell count was alarmingly low.

I confess that my mind was distracted as we prayed: Would Grandma change her request if she’d known what was coming? I wondered. Does she regret not asking for protection, for healing, for a physical miracle? What good is thankfulness, after all, when you’re sitting beside the hospital bed of someone you love?

But I know Grandma better than that. No doubt she was sitting by Grandpa’s side offering prayers of thanksgiving even at that moment. Thanking God for giving her this man in the first place. Thanking him for the 66 good years they’d had together. Thanking him for being God, even now.

I hope I can learn that kind of graceful praying someday. And with a model like the one I have, I hope I won’t have to wait until I’m 88.

What can you say thank you for today?

An Ice Cream for an Ice Cream

One of my earliest memories was something that happened when I was almost four years old, and it involves ice cream. Now before you conjure up an idyllic scene of childhood nostalgia, I should warn you that this isn’t, for the most part, a particularly sweet memory.

My family was on vacation, and we’d stopped for ice cream, a rare treat for us since at that point in my life, Mom had me pretty much convinced that fruit constituted dessert.

I remember standing on the porch outside the ice cream shop, licking my vanilla soft serve and lost in my own dream world. Meanwhile I must have been backing up, oblivious to the older gentleman behind me with a sundae in his hand, because before I knew it, I heard the sickening sound of ice cream hitting pavement. Then the man was yelling angry words, alternately at me and then at my parents. He had lost his ice cream, and he was demanding justice.

I’ve often had trouble reconciling the Old Testament’s portrayal of God’s justice with the picture of grace painted in the New Testament. The book of Deuteronomy captures the idea of divine retribution in this often quoted verse: “You must show no pity for the guilty! Your rule should be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot” (Deuteronomy 19:21).

It makes sense that when a wrong has been done, payment is required. Things need to be made right again. But how does that jive with Jesus’ words in the New Testament that God is a God of love, that we should turn the other cheek?

But if God is immutable, constant, unchanging, then clearly his character didn’t shift somewhere between Malachi and Matthew. Maybe what’s at issue here is my understanding of grace.

Grace, upon closer examination, isn’t so much about letting other people off the hook (or getting off the hook ourselves). It doesn’t mean justice is negated. It means that the payment for a wrong is made by someone other than the one who owes the debt.

At three and a half, I never would have been able to pay for the grumpy old man’s ice cream, even if I’d had access to all the pennies in my piggy bank. Fortunately, my dad took the man by the elbow, led him back into the shop, and bought him a replacement sundae.

In doing so, Dad managed to fulfill both the law of justice and the demand of grace. The obligation for the ice cream was paid in full: an eye for an eye, or as they case may be, an ice cream for an ice cream. And I received the grace of having a debt covered on my behalf, by my father.

That’s just what our heavenly Father has done for us through Christ: his eye for our eye, his tooth for our tooth, his hand for our hand, his foot for our foot.

Paid in full. For all eternity.

I’ve taken the challenge of reading the Bible chronologically this year and tracing the thread of grace through it. These musings are prompted by my reading. I’d love to have you join me: One Year Bible reading plan.

On Lollipops and Intercession

The other day I had the privilege of seeing Hannah, one of my favorite six-year-olds. She and her mom and I were together for a girls’ day out, and as always, Hannah delighted me with her joy for life—telling me her latest knock-knock jokes, impressing me with the new words she knew how to spell, and catching me up on all the big first grade news that had happened since I saw her last.

I’ll never forget six year ago when Hannah’s mom, one of my dear friends, called me after she got her ultrasound results. “Guess what we’re having?” she asked me with that trademark mischief in her voice.

I was confident: “A girl!”

“Yes . . .” There was an, er, pregnant pause.

“And a boy! We’re having twins!

Aside from their tow-headedness, Hannah and Josiah are as different as can be—she loves to read; he loves to build things. She likes to play princess; he likes to play engineer. But you couldn’t find a pair of siblings more loyal than these two.

We were at the store together, and Hannah’s mom let her choose a movie to buy. After carefully scanning the options, she opted for a case covered in pink glitter and hugged it to her chest. We were headed to the checkout line when Hannah paused mid-step. “Mom, I can’t get this one,” she said, her eyes wide. “I don’t think Josiah would like this one.” She promptly returned the movie to the shelf and made a more boy-friendly selection.

I raised my eyebrows and looked at my friend, impressed. Most first-grade princesses I know would rub their brother’s nose in such a victory and never look back.

“She’s always watching out for her brother,” Hannah’s mom told me. “Whenever we go to the bank and get a lollipop, she makes sure to get one for her brother too. She never wants him to miss out on something.”

Just a few days later, I read the account of Moses and his siblings in the book of Numbers. Apparently Aaron and Miriam were razzing him about his choice of a wife (Numbers 12:1-2). God was none too happy about their whining, and he struck Moses’ sister with a skin disease.

Moses’ response fascinates me: he didn’t act justified; he didn’t say, “I told you so.” Instead, he responded with the grace of intercession. He begged God on behalf of the sister who just moments earlier had been giving him grief: “Moses cried out to the LORD, ‘O God, I beg you, please heal her!’” (Numbers 12:13).

When my brothers and sisters in Christ are in trouble, what’s my response? Do I think, Well, they got what was coming to them? Or do I step in before our Father and intercede on their behalf?

In other words, will I be content with my own lollipop, or will I humble myself to beg for one on my sibling’s behalf as well?

I hope someday I’ll be a little more like Hannah.

I’ve taken the challenge of reading the Bible chronologically this year and tracing the thread of grace through it. These musings are prompted by my reading. I’d love to have you join me: One Year Bible reading plan.

The Grace of the Scar

Two years ago I sat on a lumpy ceramic chair, utterly helpless as I watched my active mom lying in pain on a hospital bed.

She’d just had her bum hip replaced, and everyone assumed it would be a textbook case. After all, Mom was in shape and otherwise healthy. But from day one post-op, we seemed to encounter one fiasco after the next. First there was the morphine, which sent Mom’s body into convulsive, hallucinatory panics every thirty minutes. Then, almost immediately after surgery, Mom sensed that something was wrong with her leg—not her hip, but her leg. She asked the doctors and nurses about it, but they all assured her this was normal pain.

A couple of days later, though, once the morphine had finally worn off, she had my dad and me take a look at the leg that was bothering her. To our horror, we saw what amounted to a partial tourniquet on her thigh. The compression socks—intended to prevent blood clots—had been put on wrong. Instead of being smooth all the way up her leg, they had gotten bunched tightly around her skin. And now, wrapping all the way around her thigh, was a gaping wound…like the worst rope burn you’ve ever seen.

Suddenly there was a flurry of activity around Mom’s hospital bed, and with it multiple rounds of blame transfer. In addition to the problem of the wound itself, the doctors were concerned about the possibility of infection. If this cut became infected, it would go directly to that susceptible new incision…and she’d be back to square one, needing to have the hip replaced all over again.

I stayed at home with Mom the week after her surgery to help her with basic tasks like putting on her shoes, going up the stairs, and getting into bed. Oh, and putting antibiotic ointment on that laceration. One day as I was doing wound duty, Mom asked me how it looked. I went through the checklist given to me by the medical team: the skin was turning a healthy pink, it was no longer oozing, and it didn’t smell necrotic. Check, check, check.

Mom let out the oxygen she’d been holding in. Things were starting to look up, I thought. Then she said, “No one’s talking about this, but there’s going to be a huge scar, isn’t there.” I inspected the ugly red mark winding its way around her left thigh. I swallowed. My mom, the synchronized swimmer with the fantastic legs, even as a grandma. “Yes,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

On my last day with Mom before I headed home, she looked up from the hospital papers she was paging through. I was startled to see her eyes brimming over with tears. “Every time I see this scar from now on…” Her throat constricted. What will she say once she finds her voice again? I wondered. Would the scar remind her of the negligence of the nurse who put on the compression socks incorrectly? Or the doctor who failed to listen when she voiced her concerns? Or would it trigger the awful days in the hospital under the influence of the body- and mind-ravaging drugs?

I was floored when these words came out of her mouth instead: “Every time I see this scar, it will remind me of the way God took care of me.”

Not so different from Jacob, I guess, who had some hip surgery of his own. After wrestling with God (Genesis 32:22-32), Jacob’s hip was wrenched, and he walked with a permanent limp from that day forward. No doubt his tweaked hip was a tangible reminder of his encounter with a God who doesn’t usually show up so palpably.

So, Mom, I want what you have. Not a new hip, per se. (I’m hoping this condition isn’t genetic, as the surgeon implied.) But I do want your perspective on scars. That it’s not so much about what happened in the first place or who inflicted the wound. It’s really about who healed it.

Until the day there is no more crying or pain, may my scars and remind me of the one who was there with me when I got hurt in the first place, the one who is still with me now.

He’s also the God who knows what it feels like. After all, on the palms of his hands, he has two jagged scars of his own.

I’ve taken the challenge of reading the Bible chronologically this year and tracing the thread of grace through it. These musings are prompted by my reading. I’d love to have you join me: One Year Bible reading plan.