Stephanie Rische

Blogger and Writer: Capturing Stories of God's Grace

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)

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

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

For Those Who Keep Vigil at Night

This is a word for those who find themselves awake when the rest of the world sleeps.

  • For the one plagued by worry
  • For the one caring for someone who is ill
  • For the one haunted by insomnia
  • For the one begging for their prodigal to return home
  • For the one toiling on the night shift

And, yes, for the one trying to comfort an inconsolable infant in the wee hours.

As anyone who has stood sentry at night knows, everything seems bleaker under the blanket of darkness. Shadows grow menacing. Minutes feel like hours. Anxiety morphs into full-blown fear.

I’m not sure why this is, exactly. We have artificial light, after all, and we’ve long outgrown our fear of the dark. But something about those middle-of-the-night hours releases our monsters from their hiding.

I have a hunch that one of the reasons nighttime is so hard is because it has a way of isolating us. It makes us think we’re the only ones marking this bleak and desolate hour. In the absence of our usual defenses, we feel alone, and rather small.

If you find yourself doing battle by night, I want you to know that you do not keep this vigil alone. There is someone who sits by your bedside, someone who waits with you, someone who toils alongside you. There is someone whose love is not bound by time, someone who sticks by you even when it’s inconvenient, someone who doesn’t clock out when the sun goes down.

The psalmist puts it this way:

The one who watches over you will not slumber.
Indeed, he who watches over Israel
    never slumbers or sleeps.

Psalm 121:3-4

Even when the rest of the world is asleep, God is awake. And because of that, you can rest . . . even if you can’t sleep.

Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.

Victor Hugo

Those Twins, Hope and Fear

In the midst of Advent, we find ourselves in the space between.

Between the promise and the fulfillment.
Between the announcement and the arrival.
Between the almost and the not-yet.

There is beauty in the in-between time, as we light candles and imagine a future of fulfilled hopes. But there is also trembling, as we put our most vulnerable dreams on the line, crowded by so much uncertainty.

I’m reminded of that haunting line from “O Little Town of Bethlehem”:

The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight

O Little Town of Bethlehem

As anyone who has ever waited knows, true Advent isn’t just opening windows on a calendar, ticking off the days until Christmas. Waiting is full of hope, yes, but it’s also fraught with angst. There is so much we don’t know: When? How long? How? And what will the waiting cost?

As we count down the days until we meet our baby, we find ourselves in an Advent of our own. When will Baby arrive? How much longer will our waiting be? Will we know when it’s time? What will we find on the other side of our waiting?

There’s a poem by John Donne that includes this gem of a line:

Pregnant again with th’ old twins, Hope and Fear

John Donne

And that’s exactly what waiting feels like, what Advent feels like: hope and fear, mingled inextricably together. We can’t have one twin without the other. We have no choice but to carry the weight of both.

But from where we stand, on the other side of the Incarnation, we have a hint about how the story ends. While we will contend with both hope and fear as long as we live on this earth, one day fear will be swallowed up forever. One day hope will win.

And so we let those twins wrestle inside us as we wait, knowing that Christ’s birth ushered in an era of hope. And when he returns, all our hopes will be forever met in him.  

The Incarnation is the place, if you will, where hope contends with fear.

Kathleen Norris

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

Number Our Days

Dear Graham,

You are one year old now. Only a year . . . and already a year.

Time has become a slippery eel of a thing ever since you were born. On the one hand, I can’t believe you’ve only been with us for one revolution around the sun. I can hardly remember life before you. What filled the Graham-shaped spot in my heart for all those years?

On the other hand, how is it possible that an entire year has flown by? If I close my eyes, I can believe you are still the size of a loaf of bread, with tiny fists closed above your head as you slept. But when I go into your room in the morning, I marvel at this jabbering, smiling, squawking person you have become, the boy who toddles single-mindedly toward the potted plants.

After we brought you home from the hospital, all manner of seasoned parents echoed the same advice to us: “Enjoy this—it goes so fast!” I tried to soak in the wisdom, but it didn’t make sense to me at the time. The days stretched on, a blur of feeding and changing and wiping spit-up, eclipsed only by the even longer nights. Time didn’t seem fast—it seemed like it was standing still.

But now it’s starting to make sense. It turns out the best part of parenting is also the hardest: no season lasts forever. When one stage ends, it’s replaced by something else, something equally worthy of being cherished. Case in point: you don’t fall asleep on our chests anymore, and there’s a tote full of tiny onesies you’ll never fit into again. But now you pat us on the back of your own volition, and if we catch you at the right moment, you’ll give us the most delightful slobbery kisses.

By no choice of our own, we have traded rubies for emeralds. They are equally lovely, but we do not have the luxury of holding both at once.

Psalm 90 says, “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” What would it look like, I wonder, for your dad and me to number our days with you? Here are some of the numbers from the first year of your life:

  • 1 ER visit
  • 14 pounds gained
  • 365 times we’ve tucked you into bed at night
  • 522 books we’ve read together
  • 2,000-plus meals we’ve fed you

That’s the past year by the numbers (I’ve lost track of the number of diapers). But I’m not sure that’s what it really means to number our days. Numbers have their place, but they don’t tell the whole story. They can’t capture things like wonder and joy and delight and love.

You have taught me so much already, little one. You have taught me to slow down, to notice, to pay attention. Before you, I never realized how interesting a dandelion puff is or how delightful bubbles in the sunshine can be. Before you, I never appreciated watching a squirrel scurry across the backyard or watching the garbage truck pick up its weekly haul.

You have taught me the joy of inefficiency, of putting aside my to-do list and just being present in the moment. You don’t agonize over regrets from the past or fret about the unknown future; you are all in for the right-now—for the sweet tang of a ripe blueberry or the hilarity of your dad’s funny noises.

And so even as time is speeding by faster than I get my mind around, I want to take a lesson from you as we celebrate your first year. I want to enjoy this moment and be fully present in it, not pining for past-you or looking ahead to future-you, just savoring the boy you are right now and thanking God for the gift of curious, observant, silly, joyful, active, bananas-in-the-hair you.

Happy birthday, my boy.

Love,
Mom and Dad

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.

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.

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.