Stephanie Rische

Blogger and Writer: Capturing Stories of God's Grace

Laugh More!

For the past 14 years, I have chosen a word as my theme for the year. (Trust me, this is much better than a list of resolutions. For starters, there’s a much greater chance I’ll actually remember my goal for the year come March. And for a recovering perfectionist like me, this leaves a lot more room for grace. You can’t really fail a word, right?)

At any rate, my word is typically something with some meat to it—something I can study and read about and really dig into in the coming year. As 2017 came to a close, my husband cracked a joke and I quipped, “Maybe my goal for next year should be to laugh more.” Daniel looked at me, eyebrows raised, and it struck me that maybe this wasn’t just a joke.

What if my theme for the year really was to laugh more? At first glance, it sounded too easy, like I would be getting away with something. But as I thought about it more, it occurred to me that this isn’t as easy as it sounds. If I wanted to embrace a year of more laughter, it wasn’t going to happen automatically. I would have to be intentional about it.

I don’t know about you, but I find that so many reactions bubble to the surface before laughter. When something comes my way during any given typical day, I might worry, plan, stew, get a snack, or talk it over with a friend. But how often do I laugh?

Not long ago I went back to work after maternity leave, and I have found that this life stage leaves me with a lot of balls to juggle and plenty of opportunities to drop them. Only maybe balls isn’t the right metaphor, because the stakes feel a lot higher than that. Juggling torches, perhaps? At any rate, I feel like I have become pretty efficient and productive in this season of life—stashing meals in the freezer, working like a madwoman during naptime, squeezing the most out of every spare moment.

This is good . . . to some degree. But there’s a dark side to donning my super-efficiency cape, and that’s that I can become a version of myself that I don’t really like. I can check off all the things from my list but become a not-very-fun person in the process. Here’s the thing: I have been given so many beautiful, gracious gifts, and I don’t want to be so busy and productive that I don’t have time to enjoy them.

I want to be interruptible.
I want to have margin to waste time with the people I love.
I want have space to breathe, to savor, to be.
I want to laugh more.

For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. . . . A time to cry and a time to laugh.
Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4

Are you in a season of laughter right now, or are you in a season of tears? And I wonder . . . is it possible for those seasons to coexist? What if we could laugh in the midst of a crying season, and cry in the midst of a laughing season?

In The Return of the King, the hobbit Sam has this lovely exchange with Gandalf, and it brings a lump to my throat every time:

“Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?”

“A great Shadow has departed,” said Gandalf, and then he laughed and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days upon days without count.

If you haven’t heard the sound of pure merriment for days upon days without count, I would love for you to join me in this quest toward more laughter—toward holy laughter.

***

I can tell you already, I’m not going to be able to do this alone, so I would love your help. What has made you laugh recently? Are there books that make you laugh? Certain movies or shows that crack you up? Favorite jokes? If so, please share them!

Don’t Do Belief Alone

There has been a small spiral-bound notebook sitting beside my comfy red chair for the past year. On the outside, it is as ordinary as any Target impulse buy. But inside? It contains all the tender hopes and beliefs of a small village.

Last year I chose the word believe as my anthem for the year. There was one thing I was specifically hoping for and believing God for in my own life, but I knew I wasn’t the only one out there with a God-sized dream. So I asked the people around me: What are you believing God for this year?

The responses cracked my heart open in all the best ways. My friends’ hopes were beautiful and vulnerable and achingly real. Some of these people had been rubbed raw from years of agonizing waiting; some were voicing their quiet hopes for the first time. But all of them were united in their bravery, in the guts it takes to bring big dreams into the light.

I didn’t take it lightly that people were entrusting me with something so precious. I wished I could wave my magic wand and give them what they longed for, but I couldn’t. So I did the only thing I could to honor those tender shoots of hope: I wrote their dreams for the year in my notebook, and in the mornings I sat in my red chair, coffee steaming my in hands, and asked God to intervene. I believed on their behalf.

I wish I could tell you that after a year of my crash course in believing, I have it all figured out. I don’t. In fact, the nature of belief may be more of a mystery to me than ever. Some of the things I believed God for were answered in miraculous ways, and other requests—just as valid, just as earnest—were met with silence.

  • I believed for a baby for four of my friends—women who were made to be moms. One had a baby before year’s end, and one is currently pregnant. But another friend miscarried, and one is still in the agony of waiting.
  • I believed on behalf of three beautiful friends who long to be married. One had a whirlwind romance and got married last fall, and one is dating a good man who treats her with the love and honor she deserves. But the third one, for reasons that are lost on me, is still waiting for her turn to come.
  • I believed on behalf of two talented writer-friends who are hoping for a home for their books. One has a book contract, while the other one continues to send out submission after submission, to no avail.

I saw miracles last year—some that unfolded slowly, like the gentle healing of a marriage, and some that happened all at once, like the long-awaited job offer. But there are other miracles that seem notably absent: the parents whose adopted children are stuck in layer upon layer of bureaucratic red tape, the daughter whose liver is failing, the loved one who continues to run from the Father-love of God.

To my surprise, it was much easier to believe for other people than for myself, and to have them believe for me. At first I felt guilty about this . . . why couldn’t I trust God with the things closest to my heart?

But as the year went on, I started to see that this is part of how God wired us. We’re not meant to do faith alone; we need each other. When we get weary, we need someone else’s hope to cover the gap for us. And when we see God at work in other people’s lives, it can give us renewed hope, a down payment of sorts to remind us of his power and goodness and love.

In the midst of the answers and non-answers from 2017, I realized that we all have a need greater than whatever it is we’re longing for. We need our God more than we need our miracle. And we need each other along the way—in the celebrations, when the answer is yes; in the heartbreaks, when the answer is no; and in the agonizing middle, when the answer is wait.

It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are . . . because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are. . . . It is important to tell our secrets too because it makes it easier for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own.
Frederick Buechner

The Irrational Season

One year ago on Christmas Eve, I was holding my three-year-old niece in church as we sang “Silent Night.” My heart was as frozen as the sheet of ice outside. I was feeling much more “bleak midwinter” than “all is calm, all is bright.”

The candles were lit, and the magic was all around me. But no magic was making its way past my Gore-Tex heart.

Round yon virgin,
Mother and Child

Would I ever get to be a mom? I wondered. Another year had passed with no answer, no miracle. And I felt weary. Believing was too hard, too painful. Maybe it was time to concede graciously, to admit that this just wasn’t part of the plan. Maybe it was time to pick up the shreds of hope littered across the floor of my heart and move on.

That’s when my niece looked up and started staring at something near the front of the church. “What is it?” I asked. But she just kept staring, mute. Finally the spell was broken. “I saw an angel,” she told me matter-of-factly.

After the service was over, I did a full interrogation of my niece. Surely this was a misunderstanding or the product of an overactive imagination. But she wouldn’t budge from her claim. And in the quiet of my heart, I sensed God whispering, Do you believe I can still do the impossible? Do you think I’ve retired from performing miracles? You have plenty of head knowledge about me, but do you really believe? Do you believe I can work in your own life, right now, this year?

In that moment, I didn’t know. I wanted to believe, but I wasn’t sure I did.

So I did the best I could: I told God I would try. I decided my word for 2017 would be believe—not because I did, but because I wanted to learn. I hoped he could thaw my icy heart.

***

One year later, we were singing “Silent Night” again. Only this time I didn’t light my candle, because my arms were full. I was holding a baby in my arms—my own sleeping son.

Sleep in heavenly peace
Sleep in heavenly peace

As I tried to wipe away the tears before they splashed onto my baby, I saw clearly that belief isn’t something you earn. It isn’t something you can take credit for. It’s a gift, pure and simple. It’s a piece of grace given to the likes of someone like me who doesn’t deserve it.

2017 didn’t have to end the way it did. I know full well that some people believe with more fervor and faithfulness than I could muster and don’t get the answer they long for. I don’t know why. But I do know that belief is worth it. Because even if we don’t get the thing we want, belief moves us. It changes us. It softens us. It thaws us.

No matter how things turn out, belief draws us close to the heart of the God who loves us.

This is the irrational season
when love blooms bright and wild.
Had Mary been filled with reason
there’d have been no room for the child.
~Madeleine L’Engle

Whatever you are believing God for in 2018 (or trying to believe), may God give you the courage to hope again. And when you can’t hope, may you feel the warmth of his arms around you.

God in Flesh and Blood

When you picture God, what come to mind? A stately King on his throne? A grandfatherly type with a beard? A disembodied being? It’s hard to picture God—and for good reason, since no one can look at his face and live to tell.

And that is true . . . to a point. But then Christmas comes and shatters all our preconceived notions. Christmas comes, and we have to rewrite our narrative of who God is and what he is like. Christmas comes, and we no longer have a God in the abstract. Christmas comes, and we have a God whose face we can gaze into, a God in flesh and blood.

After Jesus was born, Scripture says Mary “pondered these things in her heart.” I’ve always loved the idea of Mary pondering, but now I know why she pondered. When you are sitting there nursing your newborn son in the middle of the night, when everyone else is asleep and no one is posting anything new on Instagram, there is little to do besides ponder.

Among the things Mary must have pondered: The Christmas carols have it all wrong. It was not a silent night. All was not calm. I’m pretty sure there was blood and tears and labor pains. And the bit about “no crying he makes”? My apologies to the writer of “Away in a Manger,” but I’m pretty sure the little Lord Jesus cried.

This Christmas, as I hold my own baby son in my arms, I am struck anew by the sheer scandal of the incarnation. I can understand why the old hymn writers presented a scrubbed version of the manger scene. After all, how could a holy God allow himself to be covered in spit-up? How could the God of creation pee right through his swaddling cloths?

God entered our humanity completely—not just the beautiful, put-together parts, but also the messy parts, the sad parts, the ugly parts. He knows firsthand what it’s to be awake in the middle of the night. He knows what it is to be hungry, to cry, to be human.

So why would he do it? Why give up glory and honor in favor of late-night feedings and tears and dirty diapers? In a word: love.

Though he was God,
he did not think of equality with God
as something to cling to.
Instead, he gave up his divine privileges;
he took the humble position of a slave
and was born as a human being.
~Philippians 2:6-7

May we ponder the Incarnation in a fresh way this year—the scandalous reality that God would allow himself to come to us in the flesh. Ponder it now—the God of the universe, with a body we could hold. With a voice we could hear. With a face we could kiss.

God in flesh and blood.

’Twas much that we were made like God long before, but that God should be made like us, much more.
John Donne

Laughing with God

When I was pregnant, I read all the books. My first errand after I found out the news was to go to library so I could stock up on how-tos and stories and firsthand accounts. And since Graham made his appearance two weeks late, I filled the bonus time with—you guessed it—more books. If there’s a literary equivalent to morning sickness, I had it.

After all that preemptive reading, I thought I knew the range of scenarios to expect when my baby made his big debut. Sure, we’d be surprised by the gender, and we didn’t know the status of our baby’s health. But I thought I had a pretty good idea of what might happen in the delivery room.

What no one prepared me for was my own reaction. To my great astonishment, when I first laid eyes on my son, I laughed.

***

I will spare you the gory details of my birth story, but once we arrived at the hospital, things moved along more quickly than anyone anticipated.

“Get comfortable,” our nurse told us the afternoon we were to be induced. “Chances are, nothing will start happening until tomorrow morning, so plan to eat dinner get a good night’s sleep.”

Daniel dutifully changed into his pajamas and tried to wind down, but “comfortable” didn’t seem to be on the agenda for the evening. Things started happening—and happening in rapid succession—and when Daniel pointed out that the medical staff had set up the table with all the instruments, we realized THIS WAS HAPPENING. (This was also the point he changed back into his real clothes.)

After a whirlwind of pain and puke and pushes and more bodily fluids than I can even comprehend, the doctor held up a squirming bundle, our own slimy trophy. But my glasses were off, and I couldn’t see a thing. Was our baby okay?

So I turned to Daniel, who had been holding my hand for the past several hours, never complaining while I squeezed the feeling right out of his fingers. I locked eyes with him, asking a million wordless questions.

“It’s a boy,” he whispered, his eyes brimming with tears and joy and love. So my first glimpse of Graham was not my own; it was through the eyes of his father. And in that instant, I knew. This tiny miracle, this beloved child of God—he was healthy and whole and as perfect as a baby could be. And as the tears dripped down my cheeks, I laughed.

***

God’s birth announcement to Abraham and Sarah is interlaced with laughter. When God tells Abraham he and Sarah will have a child in their old age, his response is to laugh:

Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old?”
Genesis 17:17

His wife, Sarah, laughed too:

Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, “After I am worn out and my lord is old, will I now have this pleasure?”
Genesis 18:12

But did you ever notice that only Sarah is chastened for laughing?

The Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too hard for the Lord?”
Genesis 18:13

I’m not a Bible scholar, but I have a theory about why their responses are judged differently: Sarah laughed at God. Abraham laughed with God.

Sometimes God’s plans are nothing shy of ludicrous. We’d be crazy not to laugh (and I have to believe God is laughing too). So maybe it’s okay to laugh when God whispers his big, impossible promises to us. The question is, will we laugh with cynicism or hope? Bitterness or trust?

One of the things I love about Sarah’s story is that God fulfills his promise even though she laughed at him. Isn’t it a relief that his faithfulness isn’t conditional on our ability to believe it? He knows our humanity; he knows we sometimes laugh to protect our hearts from getting hurt. And he is faithful, even when we laugh at him.

***

In that hospital room, like Sarah, I laughed. I laughed because God’s plans are audacious. I laughed because his ways are so ridiculous and so brimming with joy that my body couldn’t help but let it out.

Notably, Sarah’s story didn’t end with her laughing at God. In fact, God offers her a turn of gracious irony:

Sarah said, “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.”
Genesis 21:6

She moved from laughing at God to laughing with him. And she named her son Laughter to prove it.

Sometimes God’s ways are so outlandish and farfetched that all we can do is laugh. The question is, when God invites us into something impossible, how will we laugh? Will we laugh with him or at him?

Whatever audacious thing you are believing God for today, I invite you to join Sarah and me, and laugh.

Waiting like a Mother

It seems to me that waiting well is like walking on a train trellis. (Not that I’ve ever done that, mind you, but the visual seems apt.)

Step too far in one direction, and you’re liable to fall into the ditch of obsessing over what you’re waiting for. You become so enmeshed in that one thing that you lose sight of the people around you and essentially stop living your life.

But step too far in the other direction, and you’re bound to step into the pit of a calloused heart. You end up stuffing down that thing you so desperately desire. You numb yourself, all but forgetting that you made to long for more.

It’s just so hard to keep our feet planted in the sweet spot in the middle.

I’m waiting right now. Waiting for contractions, waiting for labor to start, waiting for go-time. I have been in seasons of waiting before, but in the past these seasons have felt less defined. I didn’t have any way of knowing when I was getting near the end of the waiting—or if I would get the thing I was waiting for at all.

But now, as I’m 11 days past my due date, I find myself in the surreal place of hitting the day I was counting down to and not knowing where to go from here. (That said, I’ve never met a permanently pregnant woman, so I’m confident this will end at some point.)

I don’t know how long I have left for this particular brand of waiting, but I don’t want to waste it. I want to enjoy the anticipation of wondering what’s ahead while also savoring the right-now.

The truth is, we’re all waiting for something. No matter what we’re waiting for in this life, we’re ultimately waiting for something we long for more deeply than anything else: to be united with Christ. We aren’t alone in this—in fact, “all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.”

We are waiting for a different world, a better world . . . a world where there’s no sorrow and no sin and no suffering. A world where we’ll be united with the one we’re waiting for.

What if I could wait for Jesus the same way I’m waiting for this baby? What if I could be ready at any moment, with my bags packed and my phone numbers ready, but at the same time living my life fully? What if I could watch for the signs of go-time with as much anticipation, knowing that although there will be pain, the joy will be so worth it in the end?

One thing I do know about both kinds of waiting: we’re one day closer than we were yesterday.

Hope can feel unbearable; when we passionately long for what we do not have and it is taking too long to come, we are restless as a farmer waiting for rain after an August without a drop. . . . Any hope, no matter how thin it gets, is better than no hope at all. . . . Still, even if having hope is one hundred percent better than not having it, living by hope can get awfully wearying.
Lewis Smedes

Hospitality Lessons

Make yourself at home.

It’s something we let slide off our lips without thinking about what it really means. If we invite someone else to be at home in our space, does it mean they can . . .

  • leave the toilet seat up?
  • say whatever they want to without filtering?
  • eat ice cream right out of the container?

There are so many reasons not to invite people into our homes—we’re busy, they’re busy; we’re insecure about our cooking/cleaning/house in general. Besides, welcoming someone into our space makes us vulnerable. It exposes not only our homes but our hearts. It puts us uncomfortably close to another person . . . and opens the possibility that we could get hurt.

So why bother? Why not just go to our own homes, close the garage door, and eat Chinese takeout while watching Netflix?

For the past several months I’ve been getting hospitality lessons from an unexpected source—one who is currently the size of a jackfruit. (Whatever that is—apparently by 40 weeks, the pregnancy books are running out of comparable produce.) This baby growing inside me may not be able to talk, but already this kid is showing me what it looks like to provide a welcoming space for another person.

I’ve been surprised over these past nine months how much a tiny person requires to make him- or herself at home. Before our child was the size of an olive, this little one had the power to wreak havoc on my entire body. How, I wondered, could someone so small make my usually efficient self ready to fall asleep at every red light?

But even with the roller-coaster hormones, stretching skin, and shrinking bladder, it has been a gift to learn hospitality from my new little tenant. Here are some of the things I’m discovering:

Hospitality isn’t always comfortable, but it brings great joy.

This little person is stretching me, physically and emotionally and spiritually. But it’s a good stretching—the kind that broadens the boundaries of my heart and makes me think beyond myself. And the love that comes out of this hospitable stretching, whether it’s for a baby or a next-door neighbor, is worth every moment of discomfort.

It doesn’t have to be perfect.

If we waited for ideal circumstances before allowing someone in—either a baby or a houseguest—we would never extend the invitation. Our presence is more important than the perfectly themed nursery or the perfect multi-course dinner, so we just have to dive in and trust that God will give us what we need, moment by moment.

Don’t wait until you have room to invite someone in.

Each month I say, “I have no idea where this baby is going to go!” But somehow, miraculously, my body expands to accommodate the growth. And I think the same is true about welcoming people into our homes and our lives: our capacity grows to fit the need.

Hospitality gives us a peek into God’s heart.

Of all the ways God could have made himself known to us, he chose an extraordinarily ordinary entrance: in the form of a baby. He made his home in us , and he gives us the privilege of inviting him in. And one day he will extend the ultimate hospitality—by inviting us into the home he’s prepared for us.

On that day when he welcomes us into our eternal home, I have to wonder if this will be one of the first things he says:

Make yourself at home.

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

Hope Is a Boomerang

Have you ever experienced that odd sensation of having your words boomerang back to you?

Maybe you’re a parent, and you hear your own expressions coming off the lips of your child. Maybe you’re a teacher, and you overhear a student parroting back one of your lessons. Or maybe you’re a writer, and God uses your own words to preach right back to you.

A beloved group of women threw a baby shower for me last week, and as I looked around the room, it was all I could do to keep my mascara in its rightful place. I’ve worked and prayed alongside these women for the past 14 years, which that means they’ve seen me through a lot of hopes and heartbreaks and life stages. They knew me when I was single and attended bridal shower after bridal shower, unsure if I’d ever be the one to tell my story of how God brought the right man into my life. They knew me when I was married to Daniel, longing for a baby of our own and wondering if God would grant this desire of our hearts.

As I looked around at the decorations made specifically for Baby Spark, with the tiny white lights and the banners that said “Twinkle, twinkle,” I was overwhelmed by God’s kindness. These women had hoped on my behalf when I couldn’t muster up hope for myself. That’s one of the secret weapons of community, isn’t it? Sometimes it’s easier to hope and pray for the tender places in another person’s soul when we can’t pray for our own. And it’s a privilege (albeit a humbling one) to allow them to hope for us.

I saved the cards from the shower to read when I got home, because let’s be serious, we would have had a serious mascara situation on our hands if I’d read everyone’s kind words to me and Spark right there at work. On the inside of one of the cards, I read a quote a friend had written. The words hit exactly where my heart was—grappling with hope as Daniel and I wonder about our baby’s health and count down the days until we meet this little one. The words seemed somewhat familiar, although I couldn’t quite place them:

Hope doesn’t usually make its debut in a flashy way, with trumpets and fanfare and paparazzi. It doesn’t start out as a huge bonfire or a stunning blaze; rather, it’s just a small spark, the mere flicker of a candle. But in the midst of the darkness, that lone flame is enough. It’s the promise that even though you can’t yet see what your heart is longing for, even though there’s no indication that it will happen at all, you can keep hanging on.

I was surprised by the appropriateness of the quote, and impressed that my friend had found something that mentioned spark, to boot. Then I saw my friend’s note at the bottom: “This is from the Christmas letter you sent in 2010,” she said.

Sure enough, the words were my own. They had come back to haunt me in the most beautiful and unexpected way. That was the year I met Daniel—the year so many hopes I’d cherished for years were at last fulfilled. And now I find myself on a similar precipice, but on the other side: hoping for a miracle that hasn’t happened yet.

Isn’t that the beauty of having some history with hope? When we can’t look forward, we can look back. When we don’t know what the future holds, we can remember what God has done in the past and be reminded of his character. He may not write the same story twice, but those previous chapters are evidence of the overarching themes: that he is faithful and that he loves us like crazy.

It can be scary to let people get close to those tender places of our deepest hopes. But it’s worth it. Because when we invite people in, not only can they hope on our half; they can also bring our own words of hope back to the surface. They can make sure our hope boomerangs back to us, right when we need it.

Hope is what is left when your worst fears have been realized. . . . Hope is what comes with a broken heart willing to be mended.
Patricia E. De Jong

 

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.