Stephanie Rische

Blogger and Writer: Capturing Stories of God's Grace

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.

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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.

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

What’s Your One Word?

We are already 59 days into 2017. New Year’s resolutions have come and gone, diets and gym attendance are now a distant memory, and the new year has dulled like your car under its coat of winter grime.

In other words: I should have written this post several moons ago.

But have you ever had a dream or a goal or a whisper of a hope that was just too tender to put into words? It feels so delicate, and you’re afraid that if you bring it out into the harsh winds of reality, it will get blown over or stepped on unceremoniously. It seems safer to keep it inside the glass case of your own heart.

But here’s the hard truth about keeping dreams enclosed in a glass case: While they may not get trampled that way, eventually the oxygen will get squeezed out, and the dream will shrivel.

As this year approached, I searched for a word to focus on in the year ahead. The truth is, I’m terrible at resolutions, so I figured if I only had to remember one word, maybe I’d be able to hang on to it—or at least remember it come April.

After a great deal of mulling and re-mulling, one word kept haunting me: believe. I balked at first. After all, I’ve believed in God for a long time . . . for as long as I can remember, in fact, though in varying degrees.

But the implication for this year seemed more personal. We weren’t just talking about “Do I believe in God?” It hit closer to the jugular than that.

Do I believe God is who he says he is in my life?
Do I believe his promises are true for me?
Do I believe he still does miracles?
Do I believe that he is for me . . . that he loves me, personally?

And will I keep on believing in him—whether he says yes or not?

Somewhere along the way, when it came to the deepest desires of my heart, I’d started hedging my bets with God. I wasn’t sure if he’d give me the thing I longed for, so I stopped talking to him about it in a real way. When he and I did talk, I’d hit him up with platitudes along the lines of “Thy will be done,” with my emotions safely checked at the door.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that prayer—it was modeled by Jesus, after all. But I’d forgotten the first part of his prayer—the part where he cried out his desire before his Father so earnestly that his sweat came out as drops of blood.

I wasn’t being pious by holding my request in check; instead, I was showing a lack of belief. Whether God decided to grant my desire or not, I needed to be real with him about what I was asking him for, what I was believing for.

And so, as this year has launched, I’ve begun taking some baby steps toward believing. It feels vulnerable and scary, because when you put yourself and your big ask out there, you’re setting yourself up to get hurt. But there’s an important part of this puzzle I’ve been overlooking: belief isn’t really about the strength of my faith; it’s about the object of my faith.

The God I believe in is a good Father; he is infinitely tender with us. So if he doesn’t give us what we’re asking him for, I have to believe it’s because he has something better than our finite minds can conceive. Better to ask and allow him to say no (or yes) than to always wonder what might have happened if we’d had the courage to really ask.

So what does it look like to believe? I’m still young at this, but so far, this is what I’m trying:

1. Writing my big, audacious request in my journal.

I have a journal with this quote from Alice in Wonderland on the front: “I’ve believed six impossible things before breakfast.” That’s a big goal for a girl who tends to hedge her bets, but I’m giving it a shot.

2. Allowing friends to believe on my behalf.

I’ve shared my big request with some people I love and trust, and it is a gift to know they are hoping and praying for me when I don’t have it in me to muster up much belief on my own.

3. Believing on behalf of other people.

I’ve asked other people what I can believe this year for them. Somehow it feels easier to have faith for their big request than for my own, and there’s something beautiful that happens when we share our tender hopes and beliefs with each other.

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What are believing for this year? If you’re willing to share, let me know, and I’d be honored to believe with you and pray for you. And do you have any tips for holding on to belief in a tangible way?