Stephanie Rische

Blogger and Writer: Capturing Stories of God's Grace

Watchers at a Holy Place

It could be argued that the year 2020 has needed a lot of things. At first, the lack was immediate, tangible. We needed toilet paper, bottled water, hand sanitizer. But as the pandemic has dragged on, it’s our emotional reserves that we’ve found most lacking. We paced ourselves for a sprint, then a marathon, only to find that the finish line keeps moving.

We are weary. We are divided. We are out of creative ideas. We are dreading a long winter. And perhaps what we need more than anything else is hope.

***

At the outset, it seemed like a terrifying prospect to be pregnant in a year marked by a pandemic, not to mention social unrest and political upheaval. Besides the imminent concerns of not having Daniel with me at doctor visits and wondering what delivery would look like in the era of COVID, I had other, more existential questions: What kind of world were we bringing a baby into? What kind of fractured cultural legacy were we passing on to the next generation?

But as the months have progressed with Baby Hope (as we’ve nicknamed the baby for now) growing inside me, I think this is actually the best way to weather such a fractious year. With each week that passes, I see Hope growing under my very nose. With each kick beneath my ribs, I reckon with life that marches onward. With each day that brings me closer to meeting this little person, I have no choice but to invest my heart in the future.

And I think that’s what God would want us to do, whether we’re pregnant with a child or pregnant with hope. I think he wants us to keep investing. Keep loving. Keep believing.  

The thing about babies is that, like hope, they tend to grow little by little, almost imperceptibly. We have to be intentional about seeing the hope . . . and recognizing that this place we’re standing, as tumultuous as it may be, is indeed holy ground.

In her book Showing, author and professor Agnes R. Howard writes about the common yet miraculous events that transpire when a baby grows inside the mother:

A pregnant woman is honored as audience and collaborator, a watcher at a holy place, attending God doing something new. She is present at this creation.

Agnes R. Howard

I believe God is at work all around us, unfolding new miracles every day. Even in 2020—maybe especially in 2020. The question is whether we will recognize them or not. Will we be watchers at this holy place?

The pregnant woman gets the revelation first. . . . The rest of us wait to encounter the new person for the first time. The expectant woman is not waiting in the same way. She already has encountered the new person. She already knows something.

Agnes R. Howard

And so it is for those who have heard whispers of the coming Kingdom. We are waiting for the full glory of God to be revealed, but we aren’t waiting in the same way the rest of the world is. We have already encountered the little pulses of hope. We have felt the quickening in our hearts. We already know something.

So as we mark this first week of Advent, I dare you to choose hope. See it. Seek it. Fight for it. And when the fulfillment comes, be ready to cradle it in your arms.

Toddler-Style Lament

I’m no expert in child development, but I have had a front-row seat to my share of toddler tantrums lately. Based on my unscientific analysis, I would venture to say there are two categories of tantrums: the clinging kind and the flinging kind. (Of course, in the middle of said tantrum, it feels like the categories are loud or louder; public or more public).

After the tsunami-force winds die down, I try to catch my breath and take stock of what just happened. It seems like my son goes one of two directions in the midst of his big feelings: he either launches himself away from me or glues himself to me. If it’s a flinging tantrum, he squirms out of my reach and throws himself onto the floor. If it’s a clinging tantrum, he wraps his little arms around my neck or leg—all the while sobbing as if to fill a small bathtub.

I’ve been reading the Psalms recently, and I’ve been struck anew by the chord of lament that runs through so many of them. I’ve had my own seasons of lament . . . times of waiting, times when God seemed silent, times when I had to reckon with a “no” to a deeply longed-for prayer.

In my seasons of lament, I confess that at times I’ve responded with a flinging tantrum. I have launched myself out of God’s arms. For reasons that defy logic, I choose a dirty floor over his loving arms. I refuse to bring him my tears, my confusion, my weariness.

I’m so grateful for the Psalms, because there are no verses that say “Thou shalt suck it up” or “Thou shalt get a grip.” Instead, these ancient songs encourage lament . . . when we do so in the context of holding on to our Father. 

Faithful lament, I would maintain, is akin to a clinging tantrum. It’s beating our Father’s chest with our fists and letting our tears soak his shirt. It’s grabbing him and holding on for dear life.

The other day I was comforting Graham in the midst of a clinging tantrum. I can’t remember what sparked the meltdown—perhaps all the green bowls were dirty or I insisted he wear pants or I parked the car in his imaginary friend’s spot. At any rate, as I held him, I wiped a tear from his cheek. This resulted in a fresh waterfall. “Put my tear back!” he wailed. “I wanted it there!”

So we sat on the floor of the kitchen, the two of us, as the afternoon sun streamed through the window. At last he let out a ragged sigh and rested his head on my shoulder. I silently wondered what it would be like to do the same with my heavenly Father. No more throwing myself out of his reach. No more demanding that he take away the pain. Just allowing myself to be held by him.

If I’m going to pitch a fit, it might as well be the clinging kind. I want to hold on to him until my prayer is answered . . . or until my tantrum subsides.

Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go next.

Frederick Buechner

A Tiny Seed of Hope

They lie to you about hope. They whisper in your ear that if you don’t get your hopes up, it won’t hurt if that longed-for thing doesn’t come to pass. Keep your expectations low, they say, so the fall won’t be so steep. Don’t get too attached. Muffle your dreams under layers of bubble wrap. This is the only way to venture into the future and come out unscathed.

But according to a reliable source, hope is one of only three things that remain in the end, after everything else falls away. If I’m understanding that right, it means that hope lives on into eternity, even after the thing we’re hoping for has passed away. If that’s the case, maybe I shouldn’t be too quick to brush it off.

***

“It looks like you’re miscarrying,” the doctor told me, not unkindly. It was the height of the pandemic, and we were both wearing masks. I regretted putting on mascara, but it felt like a special occasion, seeing as it was the first time I’d left the house in approximately six weeks. The doctor awkwardly handed me a tissue, trying not to make contact.

“Come back in two weeks for another ultrasound to confirm.”

Back in the car, I regretted (even more than the mascara) the fact that Daniel couldn’t be there with me. We’d initially wanted him there so he could see the baby’s tiny profile on the screen and watch the pulsing heartbeat. But now I wished he could drive me home, because they haven’t yet invented windshield wipers for the human eye.

***

I didn’t enter this corridor of hope blithely. I’ve had my share of ultrasounds that resulted in smudged mascara: one with dire conjectures about our baby’s future and one that resulted in the dreaded silence of a no-longer-beating heart.

In those two agonizing weeks between ultrasounds, I wondered how to pray, how to put one foot in front of the other, how to breathe. I wasn’t sure it was possible to hope, and if so, whether it was wise. If I cracked open the door to hope, wouldn’t it just be an invitation for my heart to get steamrolled in two weeks?

I whispered these fears to Daniel after Graham was safely tucked in bed. I know he was just as scared as I was, but he offered words of bedrock wisdom, words I clung to every day of those two eternal weeks: “We will choose hope until God gives us a reason not to.”

***

Hope, I believe, is never wasted. Every time we hope, even if the hope is just a tiny quivering thing, we are building our hope muscle. Even if the thing we’re hoping for doesn’t become reality, the very act of hoping changes something at the core of who we are.

And if the foundation of our hope is ultimately in Someone rather than something, we will never be disappointed. Whether we get the thing we’re hoping for or not.

Faith is both the dreaming and the crying. Faith is the assurance that the best and holiest dream is true after all.

Frederick Buechner

***

At my appointment two weeks later, I walked into the same ultrasound room, with the same mask on, and was greeted by the same technician. I could hardly bear to look at the screen, knowing in a matter of moments it would announce either life or death, hope or grief. I didn’t want to know, and I had to know.

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. My eyes flew open at the unmistakable sound of a tiny heart pumping at 160 beats per minute. “Is that what I think it is?” I whispered.

Sure enough, flickering on the screen was hope incarnate, hope pulsing inside my own body. I hadn’t worn mascara because I anticipated tears that day. I just hadn’t guessed that they would be tears of joy, tears of a hope fulfilled.

Now, by some undeserved miracle, Daniel, Graham, and I are waiting for our new arrival, due at the end of year. And the nickname we’ve given this little one?

Baby Hope.

I know that hope is the hardest love we carry.

Jane Hirschfield

Where Are You?

If there were a rite of passage for parenthood, I’d venture to say it’s not a baby shower or a milestone birthday or watching your child take their first step. Maybe, instead, it’s that first trip to the ER.

Our ER adventure started with the most innocuous of summer events: a bug bite. But by day two, the swelling was getting worse and the Benadryl wasn’t doing the trick. By the time our little boy woke up from his nap, both eyes were swollen completely shut. The pediatrician sent us straight to the ER—forget dinner, let alone combing your hair.

Once Graham and I were on the road (Daniel couldn’t go, per COVID regulations), I heard Graham’s little voice pipe up from the backseat, “How you feeling, Mama?” Before I could come up with a reply that was both honest and calming, he replied, “I feeling happy.” This from a boy whose eyes looked like jet-puffed marshmallows and who could no longer see out the window.

Once we were whisked into our hospital room, Graham was given a tiny gown with rocket ships on it and pumped with even more Benadryl. He let the doctor pry open his eyes and dutifully responded when asked, “Does this hurt? How about this?”

He was a champ . . . under one condition: that he knew precisely where I was. And since his visibility was at practically zero, that meant physical contact. If I took my hand off of him for even a second, he would say, “Where are you, Mama?” So I’d rub his back or put my hand on his arm while singing every hymn I could access from the cobwebs of memory.

By hour three in the ER, as we waited in vain for the Benadryl to kick in, it was well past bedtime. After dozing off in the too-big hospital bed, he’d wake up, startled. “What is you and I doing, Mama?” he asked. I’d hold his hand and remind him where we were. And then he’d breathe a sigh and lean back on the pillow again.

Thankfully, Graham’s eyes recovered (although we never did figure out the rogue bug that got him). The main thing he remembers about his hospital visit was the bed with wheels, which he thought was the coolest thing since Thomas the Tank Engine. But I can’t stop thinking about the kind of childlike faith that requires only presence, not answers.

By all counts, this year has been a year of reckoning for our nation, for our world. Everywhere we turn, there’s pain, suffering, injustice, division. Every day the news headlines bring a new reason for lament. With my jaded, grown-up faith, I ask God, “Why? How long? What are you going to do about all this?”

I want to be more like my little boy, with just one pressing question: Where are you, Papa?It may not make the pain go away. It may not change the circumstances. It may not answer all my whys.

But I’ll be reminded that he’s right here, holding my hand. Always has been, always will be. And for now, at least, maybe that’s enough.

But as for me, God’s presence is my good.
I have made the Lord God my refuge,
so I can tell about all you do.

Psalm 73:28

We Toil and Spin

As we find ourselves in month three of the world according to COVID, one of the strangest parts has been the time warp of it all. Every day we’ve been sequestered feels like Groundhog Day. Thank goodness for the emergence of daffodils and lilacs, and perhaps even the arrival of ants in my kitchen, to mark the passing of the months. But heaven help me if I know what day of the week it is, or what time it is, for that matter.

I was talking to a friend on the phone the other afternoon, and she said, “Argh! I have a feeling my people are going to expect dinner again tonight.” Come to think of it, I had no dinner plans myself—and most likely, no appropriate combination of ingredients to make said dinner.

I don’t have a problem with dinner per se; my problem is that it’s so daily. “That’s what no one tells you about adulthood,” she said. “The dark secret is that you have to provide sustenance for yourself every single night.” (And perhaps also for toddlers who declare, “That not be good,” before even taking a bite.)

I have a hunch that most of us, when pressed, don’t necessarily mind work itself. There’s a certain satisfaction in accomplishing a task, in having something to show for our efforts, in sweating over a tough assignment and earning a rest. Perhaps the part of work that drives us nearly to despair at 4 p.m. on an indistinguishable weeknight is the unending nature of it . . . the Sisyphean feeling of rolling the rock up the hill over and over, only to watch helplessly as it rolls down again.

In the third century, there was a desert father named Abba Paul. While the other monks of his day made their homes on the outskirts of cities, Abba Paul lived alone in a remote area. Unlike the other monks who could sell their baskets in town, he had no way to make a traditional living for himself.

But every day, he wove baskets, praying all the while. Without exception, he exacted a days’ labor from himself. At the beginning of the year, he collected palm fronds and filled his cave with a year’s worth of work, and each day he committed himself to the task of making baskets. Then, at the end of the year, he’d burn up all the baskets—everything he’d so carefully toiled over.

When I first heard this story, it made me want to cry. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have had the gumption to make all those baskets for no apparent purpose. But I’m almost certain I wouldn’t have had what it takes to intentionally take a match to my labor.

The more I’ve thought about this story, though, the more I wonder if my perspective on work is upside down. What if having an attitude of prayer while we work is more important than what we produce? What if the purpose of work is more because our character needs refining than because the world needs our contributions? What if God doesn’t actually require our labor, but he still delights in our efforts?

Whatever is on your to-do list today—whether it’s a sink full of dishes, a stack of papers to grade, a basement full of laundry, never-ending diapers to change, endless data to enter into a spreadsheet, or dinner to make (yet again)—know that your work is not invisible. Even if you have to start all over and do it again tomorrow, none of it is wasted. God sees the work you do in private. He notices the way you faithfully do the little things, with no accolades and no glory. He appreciates your excellence, day after Groundhog Day.

And all the while, he is using your work to transform you into the person he wants you to be. I suppose that’s better than a cave full of woven baskets.

Happy work is best done by the man who takes his long-term plans somewhat lightly and works from moment to moment “as to the Lord.” It is only our daily bread that we are encouraged to ask for. The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.

C. S. Lewis

Rough Draft Friends

We live in a world where filters reign supreme. A world where people take 29 selfies for every one they post. A world where no one sees the pictures that feature double chins or unfortunate hair days or the moments when everyone in the house is decidedly unhappy. 

In a world like this, it’s hard to feel like a perpetual rough draft. We compare our own raw edges to everyone else’s polished masterpiece. Even if there’s one area we’re gifted in, these editable platforms tempt us to think we have to be really amazing at everything. All at once.

At some level, we suspect that everyone else doesn’t really have it all together all the time. But even so, we can’t help feeling like we don’t measure up.

A while ago I read Everyone Brave Is Forgiven by Christopher Cleve. I remember liking it as a novel, but the part I can’t shake is the Author’s Note, of all places. (Yes, I read those things. And the copyright page too. Could I get any nerdier?)

Cleve explains that his book was inspired by his grandfather’s experience serving in World War II:

My grandfather died while I was writing the novel—but, as he might have remarked, it wasn’t necessarily my fault. I regret that he never saw the book. I had finished the third draft of what turned out to be five, but I had decided to wait until the novel was perfect before I gave it to him to read. What a fool I am. If you will forgive the one piece of advice a writer is qualified to give: never be afraid of showing someone you love a working draft of yourself.”

We all need people we can be our rough-draft selves with. Not that I recommend showing up as the rawest version of yourself in front of just anyone. My store clerk/bank teller/delivery guy doesn’t need to hear all my unfiltered, unprocessed ramblings. But we all need a handful of people with whom we can show up and say, “Here I am. The rough draft me.” And they can listen to us and love us and, eventually, help us become a better version of ourselves.

This is the only way I know to get unstuck.

This is the only way I know to move from a rough draft into something more beautiful.

This is the only way I know to avoid missing connection at the expense of perfection.

So here’s my challenge for you today—and for myself, too: Don’t be afraid to show someone the real you—the rough draft you.

***

We have to trust that our stories deserve to be told. We may discover that the better we tell our stories the better we will want to live them.

Maya Angelou

Maundy Thursday Reflections on Toilet Paper

If the grocery store shelves were any indication, you might assume that the best way to treat COVID-19 is with toilet paper and paper towels.

It shouldn’t be a surprise, I suppose: in a time when there’s so little we can control, we can at least have the tangible relief of knowing our cabinets are well stocked.

I confess that I’m a saver by nature, even under non-pandemic circumstances. I like to have backups, and backups for my backups. In this season of unknowns, I’ve been fighting my instinct to hoard everything from supplies to money to time to yes, toilet paper. How long will this last? What if we lose our jobs? What if there’s a global food shortage? What if . . . what if . . . what if?

Then I read the account of Jesus’ feet being anointed with oil during holy week, and it struck me in a new way in this Era of Empty Store Shelves.

A few days before he died, Jesus went to the home of his friends Lazarus, Martha, and Mary. And there, Mary enacted a gesture of extreme love and generosity.

Mary took a twelve-ounce jar of expensive perfume made from essence of nard, and she anointed Jesus’ feet with it, wiping his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance.

John 12:3

According to some scholars, this jar of perfume was likely Mary’s dowry—what would have been given to a suitor to pay the bride price. The perfume was essentially her past and her future . . . and she lavished it on Jesus in a single extravagant outpouring.

She didn’t hoard her gift. She didn’t measure it out, a little at a time. She didn’t cling to it as her security. She wasn’t consumed by a scarcity mindset.

She embraced the present moment and seized the sacred now. She poured out what she had—all of it.

And I wonder, what would it look like to pour out extravagant love and generosity in this season?

I want to keep my eyes and my hands and my heart open.
I want to love and give extravagantly.
I want to pour out what I’ve been given.

I’d like to think that if Jesus wanted my last roll of toilet paper, I’d give it to him.

Go peaceful
in gentleness
through the violence of these days.
Give freely.
Show tenderness
in all your ways.

God hold you,
enfold you,
and keep you wrapped around His heart.
May you be known by love.

Northumbria Community meditation

Prisoners of Hope

This pandemic has taken so many prisoners, and my heart is heavy for everyone who finds themselves languishing behind bars right now.

The elderly person who can’t have visitors.
The single parent who is never off the clock.
The person battling anxiety.
The person with a compromised immune system.
The person stuck at home in an abusive relationship.
The person who lives alone and feels the ache of loneliness.

Perhaps this virus isn’t responsible for our chains, but it certainly has exposed them. The truth is, we are all prisoners of something—we don’t have much choice about that. But we do have some say in what we will be enslaved to.

I came across this verse recently, and it struck me in a new way in this season of fear and quarantine:

Return to your fortress, you prisoners of hope;
    even now I announce that I will restore twice as much to you.

Zechariah 9:12

Prisoners of hope. What would it look like, I wonder, to be a prisoner of hope rather than a prisoner of fear?

I want to be chained to hope.
I want to shackle myself to it and not let go.
I want it to follow me wherever I go.

The fact that hope takes prisoners implies a battle. There’s nothing passive about it. It requires courage. It’s a fight.

Faith, as I imagine it, is tensile, and cool, and has no need of words. Hope, I know, is a fighter and a screamer.

Mary Oliver

Hope means choosing love, over and over again . . . and asking for forgiveness when we fail.
It means doing the next right thing.
It means getting up again.
It means believing there will be manna enough for today.
It means laying down our weapons, and sometimes our screens.
It means writing a note, making a phone call, baking a batch of cookies, playing another round of Scrabble.
It means listening for the birds and watching for the green daffodil shoots peeking out of the ground.

It means we keep living, one moment at a time. The battle has already been won.

Hope and despair stand always side by side, each determined to outlast the other. If we choose hope, we must join the standoff, with hearts and hands wide open, fighting the urge to fade into despair.

Catherine McNiel

Love Like a Toddler

Children, it turns out, are not programmable. Neither do they bear any semblance to a vending machine: Press button A21 and voila! Out comes a Snickers!

I have to admit there’s something compelling about a vending-machine model for children. Think of the possibilities—you could input helpful phrases like “Yes, Mama!” “Of course, Mama!” “You’re brilliant, Mama!”

At two-going-on-twelve, my little man decidedly does not operate according to preprogrammed instructions. In fact, he relishes the taste of “No!” on his lips. At various times, he has attempted to boycott any combination of the following: diapers, meat, car seats, toothbrushes, and hygiene in general. He has been known to emphasize his point by lying prone on the grocery store floor. He has, on more than one occasion, been observed streaking across the room pantless.

In short, he has a will. And he knows how to assert it.

But I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you the other side of toddlerhood. In recent months, he has also been known to pipe up from the backseat, “Hold mine hand, Mama.” And we hold hands until the light turns green. In the middle of playing with his cars, he will run over to his dad and say, “Kiss right here!” before dashing off to play again. On occasion, in the highest form of love language, he extends a sweaty palm with a goldfish cracker in it. “Here go, Mama!”  

Sometimes I look around our world and wonder why God would give us human beings free will. Maybe it’s always been this way, or maybe parenthood has made me squeamish, or maybe social media is the worst kind of magnifying glass, but it seems like we are drowning in selfishness and violence and bad choices and greed and all manner of mayhem. When I pray, I sometimes find myself asking, “Is this really your Plan A, God? Wouldn’t it have been smarter to program us to be a little nicer than we are?”

But then I hear my son’s little voice saying, “Hold mine hand,” and I can see where he’s coming from. Forced love—that’s no kind of love. Forced goodness—that’s no goodness at all. The Father doesn’t just want obedience; he wants our hearts. Even at the expense of our own willfulness.

The psalmist says, “I have calmed and quieted myself, like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk. Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me” (Psalm 131:2). There comes a point when we go to God not just because we’re utterly dependent on him for our next meal, for our very survival. He delights when we finally quiet down from our tantrum long enough to come to him by choice. Not only because we have to, but because we want to.

Just like a toddler.

***

It is not a slight thing when they, who are so fresh from God, love us.
Charles Dickens

Here’s hoping his word for the year isn’t NO…

When Your Belief Breaks

Sometimes people assume that faith is a crutch, a sign of weakness. But I would venture to say that believing in something you can’t see is actually an act of strength, courage, heroism even. Cynicism comes cheap and easy. It doesn’t require vulnerability. It doesn’t leave your heart tender and exposed. Cynicism is the easy road.

But faith? That’s another matter altogether.

When I was waiting and hoping for God to bring a baby into our family three years ago, I chose believe as my word for the year. A friend gave me a bracelet with the word etched into it, and I wore it all year. I’m not sure I ever arrived at whole-hearted belief, but wearing it felt like a promise, a down payment, something I was trying to live my way into.

After Graham was born, I passed the bracelet along to a friend who was trying to cling to belief herself. She wore it too, and God did a miracle in her life—both the internal kind and the big-answer-to-prayer kind. Then one day recently as we were praying together, she said, “I think it’s time for you to have this back.”

I blinked away tears as I fastened the familiar clasp. I’d been trying to believe again—for another miracle, another baby. But my belief felt fragile at best, and at times, nonexistent. It seemed too dangerous to put my heart out there to be hurt again. What if God said no? Could our relationship sustain that kind of disappointment? Wouldn’t it be safer not to hope, not to ask?

I found myself choking on the prayers, swallowing the words before they could make their way out. But every morning I fastened the bracelet, and that act itself felt like prayer.

Until one day when I was washing my hands, and without warning, the bracelet broke, clattering onto the cold tile floor. I’m sure there’s a rational, scientific explanation for what happened. But heaven help me, I’m a former English major, so instead my mind swirled with literary terms. Surely this was symbolism. Or foreshadowing. Or metaphor.

My belief is too flimsy.
My belief is broken.
My belief is damaged beyond repair.

But as I read the Christmas story through the lens of someone who is trying to believe, I find I’m in good company.

Zechariah said, “How can I be sure?”
Mary said, “How can this be?”
Joseph decided to divorce her quietly.
The shepherds were terrified.

It appears that God doesn’t choose those with the most rock-solid faith. He doesn’t pick the ones who are sturdy, immovable, fearless.

He chooses ordinary people—ordinary people who serve an extraordinary God. Because our faith doesn’t depend on how hard we hope or how firmly we believe; our faith is built on the One we believe in, the object of our belief. The ground doesn’t become less solid if we doubt it will hold us.

And so as we find ourselves in the season of miracles, the season of the impossible, I want to choose the vulnerable road of belief. Will you join me?

A waiting person is someone who is present to the moment, who believes that this moment is the moment.

Henri Nouwen

If there’s something you are daring to entrust to God in the year ahead, please let me know—I would be honored to believe on your behalf.

***

Postscript: Between the writing and posting of this blog, my servant-hearted husband fixed my bracelet. I have a hunch there’s a metaphor somewhere in there too . . . something about how belief is not a solo activity but a communal venture. Thank you, Daniel, and thanks to all the people who believe alongside us.