Stephanie Rische

Blogger and Writer: Capturing Stories of God's Grace

A Letter to My Son: On Coming into the World Broken

Dear Milo,

Someday, precious boy, you will ask me the story of your birth. How much will I tell you, I wonder? You only recently marked one month in this world, so this kind of pondering is admittedly premature. But how will I be able to communicate to you that your arrival was pure miracle, yet simultaneously tinged with brokenness?

The short version, beloved child, is that they had to break you to get you out. Your shoulders were simply too large for my bones. But our doctor was a pro, and she sprang into action immediately when she recognized what was happening. Knowing that time was of the essence, she chose the lesser of two traumas, cracking your tiny matchstick of a humerus.

And so, in the weeks since, your dad and I have been wrapping your little arm with yards and yards of bandage and asking God to mend the bones he knit together in the first place.

“Babies are like starfish,” the orthopedic surgeon assures me as I look at the jagged bones on the X-Ray screen. You will never remember this, I know. And I’m not sure how much pain you can even register at this point. But we will remember, your dad and I. And we feel the pain like a fracture to our hearts.

As I gaze into your blue-gray eyes that seem at once innocent and wise beyond their years, I wonder if the pain we feel isn’t just about this particular injury. As hard as it is to see such a tiny body hurting—especially a vulnerable someone who is entirely dependent on us—it feels even weightier than that.

The truth is, this is merely the first of many encounters with brokenness you will face. The broken bone on the first day of your life is but a foreshadowing of fractures to come. We are frail and human, made of tender bits like bone and tendon, heart and soul. This means we have the capacity to feel deeply and love with abandon, but it also leaves us susceptible to profound wounds.

And as much as I want to protect you from injuries of all sorts—body, mind, and heart—I am aware of my own frailty as much as yours. I would take on a grizzly bear in hand-to-hand combat if the occasion arose, but despite my best efforts, I won’t be able to stop you from getting hurt. And it wouldn’t be good for you if I could.

They say a broken bone grows back stronger after it heals, and I have to think the same is true of the other parts of us too. The places where we’ve been hurt can rebuild us with more resilience, while somehow making us more tender in all the best ways too.

My prayer for you, today and as you grow, is that you will know that brokenness is not an end point. It is the beginning of your story of redemption. If we let them, the broken places can ultimately be entry points for grace.

I love you, my broken and beautiful son.
Mom

Man is born broken; he lives by mending. The grace of God is the glue.

Eugene O’Neill

The Divine Palindrome

I’ve always had a weak spot for palindromes. When I learned the word from Mrs. Strukel in fourth grade, I became a little obsessed. I’d sit at my desk daydreaming up all the palindromes I could think of (mom, dad, race car, taco cat), and I’d secretly get a little giddy whenever the digital clock hit a magical number like 12:21.

My love for these quirky words hasn’t abated much over the years. I was ridiculously excited about my 33rd birthday, because after all, palindromic birthdays come only once each decade. I made it a point to ride in my Civic and a Toyota that day, and although I didn’t add random people named Hannah or Bob to my guest list, I will admit the thought crossed my mind.

It never occurred to me until recently, however, that God was a fan of palindromes. Then I read this quote by Eugene Peterson:

The way we come to God is the same way that God comes to us. God comes to us in Jesus; we come to God in Jesus.
Eugene Peterson, The Jesus Way

Do you see the palindrome there? Us-Jesus-God. God-Jesus-us.

In the Old Testament, people longed to see God face to face. But Scripture was clear: a mortal could not look at a holy God and expect to live (Genesis 32:30). The esteemed prophet Moses saw God’s presence pass by, but even he wasn’t allowed to see God’s face (Exodus 33:20-22).

Yet in his radical grace, God didn’t leave us alone and wishing for connection with him. Instead, he sent us a divine palindrome: Jesus, who mediates between us and the Father. Jesus, who enables us to see the Father’s face and not die. Jesus, who takes on our sin so we can stand in the presence of perfection. Jesus, who intercedes on our behalf before a holy God.

We have access to a gift the ancients longed for but did not see.

I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, but they didn’t see it. And they longed to hear what you hear, but they didn’t hear it.
Matthew 13:17

So we dare not miss this rare gift—this divine palindrome that allows us to come into the presence of Love himself.

***

What’s your favorite palindrome? Please share so I can add it to my collection!

Sometimes you’re the Good Samaritan. Sometimes you’re the guy on the side of the road.

I’ve read the story of the Good Samaritan a number of times, and whenever I do, I insert myself into the story, trying to imagine what part I’d play. Would I be the religious guy, who walks right by the guy in need? Or would I be the Good Samaritan, pulling off to the side of the road to help?

What I’d never really considered before is that sometimes I’m the other guy—the beat-up one who needs medical attention and shelter.

Five days after my husband and I bought our house, we returned home from work and opened the back door to hear the kind of gushing sound typically reserved for a wave pool or, say, Niagara Falls. Not usually an auspicious sign when you’re at an indoor venue.

We opened the basement door to find that water was gushing through one of the windows, creating a pool deep enough (if not clean enough) to swim in.

Welcome to home ownership!

Since this is our first real home, we didn’t have any of the tools or accoutrements you might need to de-swimming-pool a basement. Like it or not, we were officially the guy on the side of the road.

Thankfully, God sent us Good Samaritans—several of them.

Our Good Samaritan looked like my dad, who scrapped the work he needed to do that night to come over with his extra sump pump and wade through the murky waters in our basement.

Our Good Samaritan looked like our new neighbors, who shared all manner of tools and advice. (That wasn’t exactly the way I planned to meet my neighbors: showing up like a drowned rat on their front porch, asking for help!)

Our Good Samaritan looked like my mom, who opened the front door after the rain had cleared to reveal a gorgeous sunset. “This is like your rainbow after the Flood,” she said. “God is reminding you that it’s going to be okay.”

Our Good Samaritan looked like the friend who emailed at 11:02 p.m., just after we returned from a late-night supply run to Walmart, to say that she felt prompted to pray for us and our new house.

This is the other side of grace, I think: the receiving, not just the giving; the getting bandaged, not just the care-taking.

We learn something about ourselves, and about God, when we’re in either pair of shoes (wet and squishy though those shoes may be).

“Now which of these three would you say was a neighbor to the man who was attacked by bandits?” Jesus asked.

The man replied, “The one who showed him mercy.”

Then Jesus said, “Yes, now go and do the same.”

—Luke 10:36-37

***

When have you been the Good Samaritan? When have you been the guy on the side of the road? What did these experiences show you about grace?

How Do You Say Goodbye to a Place?

home

I sat on the bottom step in my living room last week, looking around at my-house-that-wasn’t-really-my-house anymore. The U-haul was parked at the end of the driveway, filled with every earthly possession my husband and I own. Everything had been packed. Every surface had been cleaned. There was nothing left to do but wait for the closing.

As I sat there, memories of the past decade flashed through my mind. I knew it was time to leave my condo and move into our new home—the first place my husband and I picked out together. But a wave of nostalgia swept over me now that it was time to say good-bye to this place—this place that had played such a significant part in my story.

I longed for some way to mark the moment, for some tangible closure, but I wasn’t sure what that would even look like. How do you say good-bye to a place that had been the staging ground for so much life?

I tried to imagine handing over the keys to my home of eleven years. I didn’t know much about the buyer—only that her name was Veronica, and what her signature looked like. Then the thought came to me, out of the blue: write her a note.

I hesitated, certain she’d think I was crazy. Then again, I’d never have to see her again, right? So I pulled out a yellow pad of paper and a blue felt-tip marker—the only writing implements I could find that weren’t packed away.

Dear Veronica,

Welcome home! I bought this condo when I was twenty-five, wide-eyed and terrified by the ream of papers I was signing without really understanding all the fine print. I was doing this on my own, and I never imagined I’d buy a place by myself. But it turned out to be the perfect spot for me—home to fondue parties with friends, Easter brunches with family crammed into the living room, and slumber parties with my sister. This is where I grew brave and grew up. It’s where I learned to paint a room and cook a lasagna and plant tulip bulbs.

And then something unexpected and delightful happened—I got married, and my husband moved in, along with his three bikes, four guitars, and a dozen houseplants. It’s the place we came back to after our honeymoon, the first home we lived in together. The walls are filled with four years of laughter and words and music, with growing pains and good memories from our newlywed days.

I heard someone say once that your home is a character in your story, and I think that’s true. I don’t know how long you’ll stay here or how your story will unfold, but I pray that this home will be a wonderful character in the story of your life too.

So here’s my benediction, over you and this house: May God bless each moment you spend here, and may he bless each person who walks through these doors.

Stephanie

Then I put the yellow sheet on the counter, right under the spare set of keys, feeling relieved that she wouldn’t read this note until she moved in and I was several cities away.

What I failed to account for was that the walk-through. Meaning she read the note right before I saw her at the closing.

When I entered the huge conference room, I realized my tactical error immediately. I also realized that this was not the place for sappy notes. The room was filled with serious-faced lawyers and professional-looking loan officers and a bunch of other people who looked distinctly unsentimental.

But then I saw Veronica hanging back, motioning for me to come closer. She looked just as wide-eyed as I’d been in her shoes eleven years ago. “Thanks for the note,” she whispered. And I saw that her eyes were brimming with tears.

“Congratulations,” I whispered back.

As I learned in snippets during our paper-signing marathon, she was me—a decade ago. Twenty-five. Single. An eighth-grade teacher.

At the end of the closing, I handed her the keys, and I sensed that something inside me had settled. I couldn’t put my finger on it at first, and then it hit me: closure. This was full circle—the closing of a chapter for me as a new one started for her.

I smiled at her and then took Daniel’s hand. It was time to introduce ourselves to the new character in our story.

Happy house to you, Veronica. Happy house.

Grace in Under 20 Words

Mark Twain once said, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”

I can relate—it’s so much harder for me to get a point across concisely than to say it in a verbose way, using lots of decorative, superfluous adjectives (not to mention extraneous parenthetical comments that should just as well be chopped out). (Ahh! See what I just did there?)

When I was a kid, I would tell stories at the dinner table, and inevitably my dad would stop me partway through. “Hold on,” he’d say. “Can you tell me the short version?”

I’d just stare at him blankly. There is no short version! It’s either the whole story, complete with narrative arc, character development, and sensory descriptions, or there’s no story at all.

So when my writing group recently did an exercise in which the goal was to write as succinctly as possible, I found myself all but paralyzed. How can you communicate an entire message in such a short space?

I decided to dust off my old English notes and try writing a haiku. Maybe the strictly enforced parameters would help me trim my word count. Three lines, and only three lines. No wiggle room on the syllables either: five, seven, five. Every word would have to count.

Here’s what I came up with—my story of grace, in under twenty words:

Chasing down my dream
God slams the door in my face
The doorjamb of grace

***

My challenge for you today: Can you tell a story of God working in your life in twenty words or less? Or if you’re feeling ambitious, try your hand at your own haiku. I’d be honored to read it—please share it in the comments!

 

Broken Things

messy ball“What’s the one thing you can give God that he didn’t give you first?”

The words reverberated in my heart, almost more riddle than question.

What did I have to give that wasn’t an overflow of his generosity and grace? All the good things in my life—daily bread, work for my hands, people to love, even my next breath—are gifts from him.

How could I possibly have something of my own to give back?

And then came the answer: my brokenness.

Such a wonder—that the King of universe, who deserves only the finest and the loveliest and the best, would accept something as messy and humiliating as my own brokenness. The God who could not be contained within the walls of the most splendid temple—that same God stoops to receive my cracked and wounded gift. And not just accept it, but yearn for it, delight in it.

The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God.
—Psalm 51:17

Scripture confounds me with its accounts of God’s tenderness toward broken things. When Jesus came into this world, he had every right to expect the best accommodations, the best company, the best service. Yet royalty though he was, he came humbly, seeking out every broken and beloved soul he could find.

In fact, he didn’t have much time for the people who had it all together; he looked for those with broken hearts, broken lives, broken reputations. He showered his love on people from broken families, people with broken bodies, people who have broken their promises.

God loves broken things.

And in perhaps the most beautiful display of his love for the broken, he offered his own body to be broken, so that we might be whole again (Luke 22:19).

If you are feeling broken today, take heart. Jesus himself knows what it is be broken, to live broken, to embrace brokenness. But he also knows how to put broken things back together again.

Holy Week is the place where all who are broken become whole.

Our bodies are buried in brokenness, but they will be raised in glory.
—1 Corinthians 15:43

On Grace and Podcasts and Longing for Love

God centered momNot long ago I had the privilege of being interviewed by my friend Heather at God Centered Mom. We went to college together back in ye olden days of permed hair and oversized sweatshirts, and those relationships formed on our wing as we bonded over silly dress-up nights and late-night talks about God and boys and life are still some of the most precious ones in my life.

So it was especially fun to get to talk to her about my journey toward grace—how during my single years, as I asked God for a husband, he turned my world upside down with his extravagant grace instead.

The revelation of grace came to me as I was struggling with this longing for companionship and love, but I think it’s a message that hits us all, wherever we are . . . whether we’re moms or wives or daughters or sisters or friends. All of us know what it’s like to have a longing that hasn’t been fulfilled and to wonder who God is in the midst of our unanswered questions.

So wherever you are on your journey of life, I hope you’ll listen in and join our conversation. When have you experienced God’s grace in a way that knocked your proverbial socks off?

You can listen to my conversation with Heather here.

Coming Soon!

stephanie-rische-facebook-icon

Are you looking for a small but meaningful way to kick off the new year? I’m not good at big resolutions, so here’s an idea for mini one.

I wrote an ebook called 30 Days of Grace–just a month of devotions and reflections.

It will be releasing this week!

Carbonated Holiness

DesmondTutu

Last week I had the privilege of hearing Desmond Tutu speak. Having long admired him for his opposition to apartheid, his commitment to reconciliation, and his compassion for the oppressed, I was eager to hear what he had to say.

As he walked up to the podium, escorted by one of his daughters, he looked just every bit as dignified as I’d imagined the Archbishop of Cape Town would be. Dressed in a clerical robe, with professorial glasses perched on the tip of his nose, he exuded confidence and peace.

Just as I’d hoped, his words were full of wisdom, drawn from several decades of turmoil and hard-won victories in South Africa. But there was one thing I wasn’t prepared for. His laugh.

Oh, that laugh! (You can listen to it here.) The first time I heard it, I glanced around the stage to see if someone else had joined him up front. It was a high-pitched sound, full of utter glee—more of a giggle, really. Surely it couldn’t be coming from a man of such distinction—someone who had witnessed so much suffering during his lifetime. But as his talk went on, there was no denying it: that laugh was coming straight out of the mouth of Archbishop Tutu. And it was contagious: every time he let out his trademark giggle, the rest of us couldn’t help but laugh too.

As I sat there trying to commit the sound to memory, I was reminded of the quote by Anne Lamott: “Laughter is carbonated holiness.”

As a human race, we tend to take things pretty seriously. We take our jobs seriously. We take our relationships seriously. We take our faith seriously. We take the problems of the world seriously. We take ourselves seriously. And this is good . . . to a point.

But God never meant for us to trudge through life so soberly. As the book of Proverbs puts it, laughter is good medicine. Perhaps the best thing about the prescription of laughter is that it chips away at our pride; it reminds us that we are merely human.

Archbishop Tutu recounted a story of a woman who had approached him on the street while he was traveling. “Oh, I’m so happy to meet you!” she exclaimed, shaking his hand. “You’re Archbishop Mandela!”

He could have been indignant about her error. He could have enumerated his impressive credentials. Instead, he laughed. Recalling the moment, he couldn’t contain his delight. “It was as if she got two for the price of one!” And that giggle again.

I want to be more like Archbishop Tutu—treating important things with the gravity they deserve, but remembering that we’re also wired to laugh.

So this week, what will I choose?

  • Will I be humble enough to laugh at myself?
  • Will I experience the freedom of not taking myself too seriously?
  • Will I make sure pride doesn’t steal my opportunities to giggle?
  • Will I experience the healing that comes from medicinal laughter?

This week, may laughter bubble up inside all of us until we have no choice but to let it out, like so much carbonated holiness.

***

Do you think laugher can be holy? Have you ever felt the healing effects of laughter?

Gospel Story: Jennifer

My church is passionate about seeing people’s lives changed by the power of the gospel, and I’ve had the privilege of being part of the team that helps capture some of these stories—stories of how God’s grace has gotten hold of people and turned their lives upside down in the best possible way.

Here’s a preview of the latest story by Jennifer Mamminga:

Maybe you’ve been following God for a while now, doing all the right things, going through the Christian motions. But somehow it feels like there’s something missing. Where is the joy and peace your soul is longing for?

Jennifer's Gospel StoryThat’s precisely where Jennifer found herself. Her life was full of gifts and blessings, but there was something she desperately wanted to know: Is this all there is?

It was only when she surrendered everything to Jesus that she made a life-altering discovery about her true identity.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

—Romans 15:13

You can watch the video of Jennifer telling her story here.