Stephanie Rische

Blogger and Writer: Capturing Stories of God's Grace

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

Tulip Season

“The tulip field,” he said,
Eyes puppy-wide,
Though I almost missed them on account of my screen.
Not today, I thought,
The inbox as full as the sink as the laundry basket as my List of Very Important Things.

It was the pants that caught my eye.
An inch higher than last week, I swear. His brother’s too.
Everyone warned me this would happen, of course.
The way they shoot up, faster than a field of dandelions, without my assent.

By the time spring comes again, I wonder,
Will you be driving a car, getting a job, calling to check in on a Sunday evening?

So I trade deadlines for hastily slathered peanut butter sandwiches
And we picnic with the tulips.

For tulips bloom bright and brilliant,
But the season is short—
Like morning fog.
Like blinking.
Like last year’s pants.

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)

Buy the Land

I just packed away a piece of baby furniture. This always comes with a whiff of nostalgia—there’s not much warning when one stage ends and another begins. We take pictures of beginnings—the first step, the first bite of peas—but endings aren’t usually so ceremonious. The change happens gradually until one day we realize, Hey, when did he get too big for that bouncy chair?

But this ending felt even more nostalgic than most, because this was no ordinary bouncy seat. It was my Jeremiah-inspired bouncy seat.

The scene, two years ago: I was on the wrong side of 40 and had gone through a miscarriage after having our first son. We were coming up on a year after that loss, and I wondered if it was time to throw in the hope towel and accept that we would have only one child.

Around this time we got a recall notice for Graham’s bassinet. We could no longer get a reimbursement or a direct replacement, but they would send us another product of our choice. I tried not to think too much about the fact that BABIES HAD DIED IN THE VERY BASSINET MY SON HAD SLEPT IN and started scanning the catalog for something suitable for a toddler.

Before I placed my order, however, I was frozen in place by a passage from the book of Jeremiah.

Here’s the context: God’s people were under attack by the Babylonians, and the prophet Jeremiah was in prison. God had just given him a message that his beloved city would fall; the Israelites would be defeated and deported to enemy territory. In other words: it was the worst possible time for a real estate acquisition.

But that’s exactly what God asked him to do: buy a field in his homeland, the one that was about to be conquered.

Jeremiah said:

Though the city will be given into the hands of the Babylonians, you, Sovereign Lord, say to me, “Buy the field with silver and have the transaction witnessed.”

Jeremiah 32:25

Why would God tell Jeremiah to do such a thing? Why waste money on land that’s about to be seized by your archnemesis?

In a word: hope.

God was saying, essentially, “One day my people will return to this land. Even after the worst happens, there is still reason to hope.”

It’s one thing to give a theoretical nod to hope. It’s another to invest in it with real dollars. God might as well have been telling Jeremiah, “Put your money where your hope is.”

Meanwhile, God was whispering in my own ear: Buy the field. This wasn’t a time to be practical; it was a time to hope.

At first I fought the nudge. What if we ordered a baby item and never had occasion to use it? Wouldn’t it hurt to keep stubbing my toe (and my heart) on it every time I went to the basement?

But the whisper wouldn’t go away: Buy the field. (Or the bouncy seat. Whatever.)

And so the chair sat in the basement, along with my hope, for some time.

It was risky, to be sure. We had no guarantees that the chair would get filled. But we did have a guarantee about God’s heart. So we waited and we hoped, the best we could.

I want to be the first to acknowledge that hope doesn’t guarantee a happy ending. We don’t always get the yes we long for. But in this case, God graciously brought us back to the field we’d bought. He filled that bouncy chair with an even bouncier boy.

And we can’t help ourselves: sometimes we still call him Baby Hope.

Hope acts on the conviction that God will complete the work that he has begun even when the appearances, especially when the appearances, oppose it.

Eugene Peterson

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

Idle and Blessed

I played hooky from work yesterday. It was one of those late-spring mornings that beckoned, all blue skies and sweet lilac air. The boys were crabby and craving attention, and I wasn’t making much headway on my deadlines anyway. So we grabbed hats and sunscreen and headed out for a hike on a trail near our home.

Our destination: a modest cave that doesn’t even warrant a name. At its entrance is a faded sign that reads simply, “Cave.” But for a three-year-old, it was magic.

Graham packed his little blue backpack with a flashlight and a snack. “Mama, do you think bears like fruit snacks?”

We explored the cave, barely big enough for a grown-up person to stand up in. To Graham’s simultaneous disappointment and relief, we didn’t find any bears. But along the way, we did see butterflies and bugs, ducks and dandelions, sticks and squirrels.

As we headed home, I thought about Mary Oliver’s poem “The Summer Day”:

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver

As I looked in the rearview mirror at the boys nodding off in their car seats, it occurred to me:

Who better than a toddler to help me relearn how to pay attention?
Who better than a person under three feet to show me how to fall down into the grass?
Who better than a baby with leg rolls and a solitary cheek dimple to show me what it looks like to be idle and blessed?

Parenthood has revealed to me that everything does indeed die at last, and too soon—the baby’s propensity to giggle uproariously before the tickle even lands, the look of milk-drunk bliss on his face after he eats, the way he rests his right hand under his head when he sleeps. The toddler’s ability to create a world where Toy Story characters pretend to be lions who also happen to be fighting a fire; the way he tells Milo daily, “I love you so much, little bwother. I’m going to keep you.”

And it hits me: We will never have a summer when they’re three-and-a-half and six-months-old again. We have this one wild and precious summer. What is it we plan to do with it?

If there’s a common refrain to the parenting advice I hear, it’s this: Enjoy it, because it goes fast. I’m always left a little stymied by these words. Because when you have little people in your life, the momentum is always pulsing forward. There’s no pausing, no slowing down, no going back. How do you stop a speeding locomotive whose brakes have been disabled? How do you hold back a cascading waterfall with your bare hands?

I don’t know how to slow time down. I only know how to slow myself down.

And so this summer we will go on hikes in the woods. We will shine our flashlights into caves like the mighty bear hunters we are. We will flagrantly disregard our phones, our deadlines, our dirty toilets, our drive for productivity, our tyrannical to-do lists. We will kneel in the grass. We will collect sticks. We will look for butterflies. We will fail. And we will find the grace to try again.

So if you are looking for me on a summer day, you just may find me strolling through a field, a child in each arm.

Won’t you join me?

***

Work is not always required. . . . There is such a thing as sacred idleness, the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected.

George MacDonald