Stephanie Rische

Blogger and Writer: Capturing Stories of God's Grace

How Long Is Five Years?

wedding walkingDaniel,

We have been married five years now, and all week I have been thinking about the strangeness of time. In some ways, it’s hard to believe it’s been five years already. And in other ways, it seems like we’ve been a team much longer.

As I’ve been pondering how long five years is, this is the best I’ve come up with: Five years isn’t very long. And five years is long enough.

Five years isn’t very long.

It’s not long enough to get old together, not long enough to be the adorable gray-haired couple at the restaurant next to us. They haven’t uttered a word to each other since they sat down, but I get the feeling they’ve had more conversation with their eyes than I’ve managed with all my many words in the past hour.

Five years isn’t long enough to have more years behind us than we have ahead of us, Lord willing. It’s not long enough to know what legacy we’ll leave behind. We saw your grandpa last week, surrounded by his thirteen children, many of whom are gray-bearded grandfathers themselves now. “Grandma Sheila would have loved this,” he said, shaking his head in wonder at the hundred-plus progeny surrounding him, all because he married his high school sweetheart seventy years ago.

Five years isn’t very long.

And yet five years is long enough.

It’s long enough for you to load my toothbrush 2,000 times, long enough to put 60,000 miles on our car, long enough to fall asleep partway through 200 Friday-night movies with you. It’s long enough to attend seven weddings and two funerals and a dozen family vacations together.

Five years is long enough to make ice cream together and walk to the library together and ride our bikes together (you at half your normal speed). It’s long enough to laugh until we almost lose bladder control over things that would make no sense to the general population, and long enough to cry a jar full of tears . . . some in spite of each other and some because of each other.

Five years is long enough to navigate who is going to make dinner and pay the bills and empty the dishwasher, even if it’s not the way our parents did it or the way we figured it out so neatly out on our premarital class worksheets. And it’s long enough to renegotiate when things fall apart because one of us is writing a book or adjusting to a new job.

Five years is long enough to say goodbye to the first place we lived together. It’s long enough to buy a house, and long enough to bail water out of the basement of said house while wondering what, exactly, we’d gotten ourselves into. It’s long enough to dig out a tiny garden, and long enough to eat the first tomato we planted with our own hands.

Five years is long enough to win and fail, to hope and despair, to wait and wonder, to break and heal. It’s long enough to sing and forget the words and remember them again.

Five years is long enough to know that although I loved you with my whole heart the day I said “I do,” I somehow love you more now than I did then. Something mysterious has happened along the way: I still love you with my whole heart, but it turns out loving you has broadened the borders of my heart.

Do not hesitate to love and to love deeply. . . . The more you have loved and have allowed yourself to suffer because of your love, the more you will be able to let your heart grow wider and deeper. 
Henri Nouwen

Five years isn’t very long. But it’s long enough to know that five years isn’t long enough.

Happy fifth, my love. Here’s to many more years of the Daniel and Stephanie Team.

Seven Decades of Love

g-and-g-weddingMy grandparents just celebrated their 70th anniversary. I keep trying to wrap my brain around that number, but I can’t seem to. SEVENTY YEARS. When they got married, there was no Tupperware, no credit cards, no White-Out, no barcodes, no disposable diapers.

They’ve lived through a lot in these seven decades. They rejoiced when Grandpa made it back safely from World War II, and they got married as soon as possible, on a Tuesday morning. They had twelve children in the span of fourteen years. (Remember the part about no disposable diapers?!) They built a huge bench on one side of the kitchen table to accommodate their growing family and made do with a seemingly insurmountable person-to bathroom ratio.

They witnessed the birth of the next generation (their grandchildren) and now the next (their great-grandchildren). They marveled as family reunions numbered in the hundreds . . . and reached unprecedented decibels. They persevered after Grandpa’s stroke, moving into a place that required less upkeep.

Now Grandma and Grandpa have a daily routine of simple love: eating lunch together and then taking naps side by side in their reclining chairs. Grandpa sleeps a lot now and no longer talks much, but Grandma cheerfully carries the conversation.

One of my favorite stories about Grandma and Grandpa is how they got engaged. Grandpa was flying planes in Europe while Grandma spent Thanksgiving with Grandpa’s parents and brother. After dinner, Grandpa’s brother pulled out the ring on his little brother’s behalf, having gotten specific instructions on size, style, and cut. Grandpa may not have been there physically, but his love was. Their love tethered them across an ocean, across multiple time zones, across a war.

In some ways, it’s not so different now. Grandpa is there physically, but he’s not the strong, vibrant, intellectual man he used to be. Still, their love is no less present. Even now, their love tethers them across sickness, age, loss, and change.

When I wished Grandma a happy anniversary last week, she said, “Honey, we’re so blessed. We’ve had so many more happy years than hard years. I wish you and Daniel all the years and all the love we’ve had.”

In 1943, just a few years before my grandparents got married, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, wrote a letter to a young bride and groom from his prison cell in Nazi Germany. These were his words of counsel: “It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.”

Daniel and I just celebrated our 5-year engagement anniversary. In some ways that seems so long—have we really known each other for half a decade? And then I think of Grandma and Grandpa and their seventy years, and I realize we are still so new at this. We don’t know what the future holds in the years ahead, but whatever comes, I pray for that tethering love . . . the kind that sustains through war and age and time. And I thank God because that love isn’t something we have to manufacture ourselves. It’s something that overflows from him.

Only 65 more years to go, my love! (But don’t do the math . . . )

Dreams Are Made of Bricks and Love

wedding1Four Augusts ago, I walked down a grassy aisle, my eyes never wavering from the man with the blue eyes and the big heart and the contagious laugh. My pulse pounded with joy . . . and a healthy dose of fear. I had never said yes to something big, so unknown before.

Up to that point, I’d made some fairly significant decisions in my life. I’d accepted a job offer, I’d signed a mortgage, I’d joined a church. But if things went wrong and everything fell apart, those commitments could be undone. I could sell the house, quit the job, find a new church.

But this was different. This was forever—for as long as both shall live.

I didn’t know what lay ahead for us. We’d imagined together and planned together and dreamed about the future together, but there was no way to know what twists and turns were waiting down the road.

What would the next year hold? The next decade? The next however-many years God would grant us together? I wasn’t sure, but I knew this: whatever came, I wanted to embrace it by Daniel’s side.

I do. I will.

***

I might be the writer in the family, but Daniel is definitely the songwriter. Earlier this year he wrote a song called “Take That Picture,” and this line in the chorus makes me tear up every time:

These dreams, we made them up
And now they’re true

Four years into this marriage adventure, I see those words unfolding before my eyes, and in my heart. We’re starting to see the vows we made to each other on that dew-covered August morning sprout to life. We’re beginning to see our dreams take root in the soil of us—some of which we imagined and others we didn’t dare to hope for. And still others that are yet to bloom.

But dreams, we’re discovering, don’t just appear out of thin air. As my dad says, marriage is a miracle, but it’s one you work on.

Here’s what I know now that I didn’t quite grasp on my wedding day: Dreams aren’t fluffy wisps that simply materialize. They’re forged out of bricks and sweat and tears and laughter and the hard work of love.

A friend recently asked me for advice as she was weighing the pros and cons of a particular dating relationship. “There are some things about this guy that aren’t my mental image of the ‘ideal husband,’” she said. “Which things should I make sure change about him before I agree to take the relationship to the next level?”

I understood what she was getting at, and certainly there are nonnegotiables that should be weighed before making such a big commitment. But there was something backwards about that way of looking at things.

And so, as gently as I could, I said, “My sweet friend, you’re not saying yes to a package. You’re saying yes to a person.”

Getting married isn’t sealing in a particular set of circumstances and then crossing your fingers that certain things will never change—and that others will. It’s choosing that person. And then choosing them again, day after day, year after year.

Maybe an anniversary is a chance to step back and watch as the miracle of marriage, covered as it is in sweat and elbow grease, unfolds before our eyes.

So as we celebrate four years of the Daniel and Stephanie team, I want to thank Daniel for writing the words to this song. And I want to thank God for making them come true.

Happy Birthday, Blog (Plus a Free Giveaway!)

birthdayWe are a people who mark occasions—not just on the day they happen but on subsequent years afterward. Birthdays. Death days. Anniversaries. Class reunions. Mother’s Day. Father’s Day. The commemoration of special events. The day a war started and the day it ended.

And why is that, I wonder? Why don’t we just celebrate or mourn on that day, as the occasion calls for?

There’s something significant about an anniversary, I think. It puts a stake in the ground and lets us see where we are now, and where we’ve been. And this isn’t just nostalgia; God commands us to remember:

Remember the days of long ago; think about the generations past. Ask your father, and he will inform you. Inquire of your elders, and they will tell you.
—Deuteronomy 32:7

So why do we need to remember?

I think we need cues to remember because we’re so forward-focused that we forget the milestones from last month, last year, last decade. We’re so busy forging ahead that we forget the things (the good ones and the hard ones) that made us who we are today. We need a reminder to slow down, to look in the rearview mirror, to thank God for where we are and where we’ve come from.

I think there’s another reason God instructs us to remember. It’s because the emotions of the thing we’re recalling are often too big to be absorbed in a single day. We can’t take in all the joy required when a person is born, so we spread it out and mark that day on each ensuing year. We can’t take in the enormity of a loss on the day we lose someone we love, so we come back and revisit it later. We can’t do justice to all that being a mother stands for on that one day of labor, so we set aside a day to commemorate motherhood every year.

Today marks the one-year anniversary of this website, StephanieRische.com, and it’s gotten me thinking about remembering in general and about staking the mile markers of God’s faithfulness.

I’ve been thinking about how we’re pretty good at remembering the big anniversaries, but we often overlook the less obvious but no less significant ones. I want to do a better a job remembering, savoring, taking note, saying thank you. I want to be aware of God is doing in the moment, and I want to be intentional about thanking him afterward.

I have a lot of remembering to do, but here’s a small start. This month marks five years since I’ve been praying with my Tuesday prayer buddy. Just a few weeks ago marks the day four years ago when the man of my dreams got down on one knee on the cold pavement and asked me to marry him. Last week marks the day my little niece was baptized and charmed the whole congregation with her big eyes and fluffy white gown. This February marks my college roommate’s birthday—the 18th one I’ve celebrated with her.

I don’t want to take these mini-celebrations for granted. I want to come to God in gratitude for all of them—for his faithfulness in the moment they happened and for all they mean to me now.

***

What about you? What small celebrations do you want to commemorate? I’d love to hear about them.

In honor of my blog birthday, I’m giving away two gifts to two new subscribers! Type in your email address on the right to be eligible for a $10 Starbucks gift card or a $10 Barnes & Noble gift card. I’ll choose two randomly selected commenters on Wednesday.

Three and Sixty Augusts Ago

3rd anniversary

Our third anniversary, in the park we went to on our first date

Three Augusts ago, Daniel and I stood under a tulle-covered arch, surrounded by a small cluster of family and friends (and one stray cat that made an appearance halfway through), and we said some big vows. With eyes locked on each other and hearts lodged in our throats, we strung words together one by one until they became big promises.

Looking back, I see now that we were like kids dressed in grown-up clothes, arms dangling in too-long sleeves and feet tripping over clown-like shoes. But that’s the only way to commit to something as big as “till death do us part,” I think. You put on the big promises and pray with everything in you that one day you’ll grow into them.

Just a day after our anniversary, Daniel’s grandparents celebrated sixty-one years of marriage. In six decades, they have raised a handful of children, doted on a dozen-plus grandchildren, and rejoiced over the births of several great-grandchildren.

But then, about ten years ago, Gramma Lo started forgetting things. It wasn’t long before the diagnosis came: Alzheimer’s. The disease that’s a thief, only it doesn’t take everything at once. It steals slowly—one memory, one mannerism, one life skill at a time.

In sickness and in health.

The day before Daniel and I got married, Papa Jack pulled out a small velvet bag. “I wish Gramma Lo could be here this weekend,” he said. “But I know she would have wanted to you to wear this.” He pulled out a simple, elegant string of pearls. “She wore this necklace at our wedding.”

For better or for worse.

PJ and Gramma Lo

Papa Jack and Gramma Lo at an Alzheimer’s walk

On more than one occasion Daniel and I have tried to tell Papa Jack how much we admire him for the way he loves Gramma Lo during this season . . . the way he trims her nails, reads children’s books to her, and patiently endures her insistence that he is not her husband. But he brushes off our compliments and smiles as if to say, “This is not heroic. This is just what love looks like.”

Till death do us part.

As I watch Papa Jack and Gramma Lo, I’m starting to think that maybe love isn’t so much the grand gestures, the significant milestones, the scenes captured in photos. Maybe love is those small moments of choosing to love in the healthy times and the sick times, in the good times and the worse times. And maybe those little moments get strung together one by one, like pearls on a string—beautiful, shimmering, timeless. Something that can be passed on to the next generation, and the one after that.

Daniel and I have a long way to go before we grasp the kind of love we see in Papa Jack and Gramma Lo’s marriage. But by the grace of God and the examples set before us, we will wear these big vows until we grow into them.

And so we say it this year, just as we did three Augusts ago:

We do.

For all that is now and all that is to come, we do.

The Amazing Grace House

tcw_logoI’m over at Today’s Christian Woman today, writing about what an old bed-and-breakfast taught me about the hard, beautiful work of marriage.

When my husband and I went away for the weekend to mark our second anniversary, we were looking for a place that fit in our budget and could squeeze into the boxes on the already-full calendar. What we hadn’t anticipated was that we’d meet a house with a story—a house that served as a poignant metaphor of marriage. . . .

Click here to read the rest of the story.

A True Story of Love and War and 67 Years

The year was 1946. The Nuremburg war trials had begun. Wartime price controls were being lifted in the United States. And America’s boys were slowly trickling back from the war…including the tall, dark-haired Lieutenant Voiland, having defied the odds and survived countless bombing missions on the European front.

His fiancée, Cay, had been waiting and praying anxiously, day by day, month by month, year by year, longing for her sweetheart to come home. She’d been planning their wedding while he was gone—the ultimate act of hope in the midst of a war in which half a million men who left never returned. With her trademark spunk, she refused to let the scarcity of silk prevent her from having a wedding dress, so she arranged to have a dress made from the unlikeliest of sources (I wrote about the remarkable story here).

For most of my life, I assumed Grandma and Grandpa’s February wedding date had been scheduled around Valentine’s Day. Whenever we gathered to celebrate as an extended family, we marked the occasion with red decorations and a heart-shaped cake, and I never heard anything to indicate otherwise.

It was only recently that I discovered their wedding date was determined not by Valentine’s Day but by Ash Wednesday.

“Ash Wednesday?” I asked Grandma. The dots weren’t connecting for me.

“Things were stricter back then,” Grandma said. “You couldn’t get married during Lent.”

g and g weddingOf course—Lent. The church took seriously this 40-day period of sacrifice, fasting, and repentance, and it was not the time for weddings and feasts.

Grandma winked at me. “I’d been waiting long enough,” she said. “I wasn’t about to wait until after Easter!”

And so, on a Tuesday morning, just a day before Ash Wednesday, they squeezed in a simple ceremony at the campus chapel. I’ve always been enchanted by the lone black-and-white photograph of Grandma and Grandpa on their wedding day: Grandma looking beautiful and big eyed in that one-of-a-kind gown, and Grandpa, serious and handsome as ever in his classic suit.

***

This year Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday fell one day apart from each other, just a week before my grandparents’ 67th anniversary, and I was struck by the tender intersection of these sacred occasions: Valentine’s Day. A much-anticipated wedding. Ash Wednesday. Lent. An anniversary marking almost seven decades of marriage. And it got me to wondering: maybe Ash Wednesday is the perfect backdrop for a wedding after all. Valentine’s Day offers fine sentiments, of course—an appropriate reminder for us to express our love each year. But real love may be more aptly captured by a day marked by sacrifice and surrender and the choice to lay down one’s life.

Grandma and Grandpa know this well. The war showed them the cost of love from the very beginning: the agonizing separation—both by an ocean and by endless days, when the only threads connecting them were their love and a string of handwritten letters. And just because the war ended, that didn’t mean the sacrifices did. With the ratio of one income to 12 children, they sometimes had more month than they had money.

And now, as my grandparents are in their golden years, they are dealing with the sacrifices of caring for each other’s needs as their bodies and minds aren’t quite what they used to be.G&G

But if you asked them about the cost of love, they’d likely look at you with a bewildered shrug. That’s just what love does. It’s the very nature of love to give, to sacrifice, to lay down one’s life for one’s beloved.

And that is, after all, what we celebrate during Lent. This season marks the greatest romance of all time: the Savior who sacrificed everything to show us his love. The one who fought courageous battles on our behalf. The one who laid down his life for the ones he loves.

Love and Lent. Perhaps they’re more connected than I realized. 

So happy 67th anniversary, Grandma and Grandpa.

And happy VaLENTine’s season, everyone.

***

If you’d like to read more about my grandma and grandpa’s love story, including how Grandma’s dress was passed down to two more generations, check out my aunt Annie’s story here.