Stephanie Rische

Blogger and Writer: Capturing Stories of God's Grace

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.

Yellow Jacket Invasion, Part 1

hive

On a Sunday not long ago, I woke up with my mind buzzing, making a mental list of all the things I needed to do that day. We’d recently moved into our new home, and we were getting ready for six houseguests and a dozen or so dinner guests later that week.

This meant it was probably time to locate the floor of the guest bedroom, which had been strewn with all manner of Things I Don’t Know What to Do With since we moved.

But I had a deadline, and I was motivated. I’d vacuum, mop floors, scrub toilets, organize, unpack—nothing was going to stop me. I was pretty sure I would put Martha Stewart to shame.

The Best-Laid Plans of Critters and Women

Around 6 p.m., I was making some progress on my ambitious to-do list, if not as big of a dent as I’d hoped. That’s when I walked into the living room and heard a strange humming sound. I headed toward the corner where the noise seemed to be coming from . . . and promptly went into cardiac arrest.

The windows were covered with yellow jackets. ON THE INSIDE.

I looked up to see the tiniest hole in the ceiling where the devilish little creatures were filing into the living room, one after the other. It was like a horror movie, minus the popcorn.

At that point I did what every independent, self-sufficient modern woman does: I ran outside to find my husband.

Daniel looked at my face and immediately stopped what he was doing. “Are you okay?”

I nodded automatically. “Yes . . .”

And then it hit me: NO, I AM NOT OKAY. There are hundreds of large flying insects with stingers on them, and they are INSIDE OUR HOUSE. I will never sleep here again. On second thought, I may never sleep again, period.

Thankfully Daniel came up with a plan, because my brain couldn’t get past “GET OUT!” and “LOCK THE DOOR BEHIND YOU!”

Here was the plan: Daniel would scope out the situation in the living room and see if he could duct-tape over the yellow jackets’ Gateway to Paradise while I went online to look for the nearest beekeeper/environmentally friendly insect remover/who-am-I-kidding, someone to fumigate the entire zip code.

I made a beeline (sorry, couldn’t pass that one up) for the computer upstairs, slamming doors behind me and lying to myself that surely those flimsy slabs of wood would keep the critters out, despite the glaring fact that not even drywall could stop them.

Count Your Yellow Jackets; Name Them One by One

After about five phone calls to no avail (apparently it’s wise to schedule your bee-related emergencies for non-weekend hours), I finally got ahold of someone who was willing to leave his dinner on the table and come to our assistance. (There’s a teeny chance I sounded a little deranged by this point, so he might not have felt like he had much of a choice.)

The beekeeper arrived in his head-to-toe bee suit and confirmed our suspicions. “Yep, you’ve got yellow jackets. Probably two to three hundred in your house, and that’s a lowball.”

As I darted to the relative safety of the great outdoors, it occurred to me how quickly my priority list had been turned upside down. When my feet hit the ground that morning, my main concern had been having a sparkly-clean home for our guests, but now, suddenly, all I cared about was that it was bee-free.

Toilet scrubbing isn’t a bad thing, of course, but it can be if it becomes all-important. And I had to wonder: What else needs to shift in my priorities so I can keep the main things the main things? One thing was certain: God would go to great lengths to get my attention. And I had two hundred yellow jackets to prove it.

[Stay tuned tomorrow for the rest of the story!]

Sometimes you’re the Good Samaritan. Sometimes you’re the guy on the side of the road.

I’ve read the story of the Good Samaritan a number of times, and whenever I do, I insert myself into the story, trying to imagine what part I’d play. Would I be the religious guy, who walks right by the guy in need? Or would I be the Good Samaritan, pulling off to the side of the road to help?

What I’d never really considered before is that sometimes I’m the other guy—the beat-up one who needs medical attention and shelter.

Five days after my husband and I bought our house, we returned home from work and opened the back door to hear the kind of gushing sound typically reserved for a wave pool or, say, Niagara Falls. Not usually an auspicious sign when you’re at an indoor venue.

We opened the basement door to find that water was gushing through one of the windows, creating a pool deep enough (if not clean enough) to swim in.

Welcome to home ownership!

Since this is our first real home, we didn’t have any of the tools or accoutrements you might need to de-swimming-pool a basement. Like it or not, we were officially the guy on the side of the road.

Thankfully, God sent us Good Samaritans—several of them.

Our Good Samaritan looked like my dad, who scrapped the work he needed to do that night to come over with his extra sump pump and wade through the murky waters in our basement.

Our Good Samaritan looked like our new neighbors, who shared all manner of tools and advice. (That wasn’t exactly the way I planned to meet my neighbors: showing up like a drowned rat on their front porch, asking for help!)

Our Good Samaritan looked like my mom, who opened the front door after the rain had cleared to reveal a gorgeous sunset. “This is like your rainbow after the Flood,” she said. “God is reminding you that it’s going to be okay.”

Our Good Samaritan looked like the friend who emailed at 11:02 p.m., just after we returned from a late-night supply run to Walmart, to say that she felt prompted to pray for us and our new house.

This is the other side of grace, I think: the receiving, not just the giving; the getting bandaged, not just the care-taking.

We learn something about ourselves, and about God, when we’re in either pair of shoes (wet and squishy though those shoes may be).

“Now which of these three would you say was a neighbor to the man who was attacked by bandits?” Jesus asked.

The man replied, “The one who showed him mercy.”

Then Jesus said, “Yes, now go and do the same.”

—Luke 10:36-37

***

When have you been the Good Samaritan? When have you been the guy on the side of the road? What did these experiences show you about grace?

Nesting

doveThe day after we unloaded a U-haul with all our earthly possessions and deposited everything at our new home, my father-in-law posed this question to Daniel and me: “Hey, do you guys have a chainsaw?”

At that point I wasn’t even sure where I could find two matching shoes, but even if I’d done a better job labeling the boxes, I was pretty sure the answer was no. We’d never had our own yard before, which meant we were pretty lacking in everything power-tool related. Besides, why would we need a chainsaw?

As it turned out, Daniel’s dad had identified a knotty pine tree that was encroaching on the driveway of our new house, and he was ready to take it down. The guys went outside to scope it out, only to return soon than I’d expected.

“No need for a chainsaw now,” Daniel said.

“Really? Why not?”

“Come here. I’ll show you.”

And there, in the lowest branch of the tree, was a dove perched on her nest.

“We can’t take down a tree with a nest in it,” Daniel said.

He was right. We’d spent the past 48 hours packing and unpacking, carrying unwieldy objects up and down stairs, and generally boycotting sleep to get everything settled. We were just beginning to realize how much work is involved in making a house a home. How could we have the heart to evict our feathered tenant?

So we let her stay.

We’ve been causing quite a commotion in the dove’s neighborhood ever since we moved in—hauling in boxes, revving up a borrowed lawnmower to cut the grass, cleaning long-neglected gutters. But Mama Bird just sits on her perch—not squawking at us, but not budging either.

I greet her each evening when I get home from work, walking past her home and into mine. She and I have a lot in common, I think. We’re both feathering our nests, trying to make them comfortable and hospitable and conducive to life.

This is the first home my husband and I have bought together, and there’s something special to be said for that. He moved into the condo I’d bought before we got married, and while that was practical and logical and right for that season, it never really felt like ours.

And what I’m learning as we settle into this place together is perhaps the same thing our nesting guest intuitively knows: It’s more about the ones in the nest than how perfect the nest itself is. Our nest is a little messy (there are boxes still to unpack and items flung rather haphazardly in closets), and it certainly isn’t Pinterest worthy, with its mismatched color schemes and kitchen tile that dates to circa 1987.

But that’s okay. I want this place to be a haven—a place where everyone who lives here can recharge and soak up grace and love and get ready to go into the big world. And I want it to be a place of hospitality—a place where everyone who walks through the door feels wrapped in warmth and welcome, a place where they get a taste of grace.

I want to remember that it’s not about the nest; it’s about the ones the nest is there to protect and nurture.

So we still have a knotty pine tree in our front yard—along with one wise bird who has a lot to teach me about feathering my nest.

Home is the nicest word there is.
Laura Ingalls Wilder

Related posts:
How Do You Say Goodbye to a Place?
A Place to Call Home

A Place to Call Home

ManchesterMy husband, Daniel, and I just bought our first house together, which means I’ve been thinking a lot about home lately.

When we started the adventure of scoping out open houses and looking at realtor.com and making our list of would-likes and must-haves, it felt rather daunting. We knew a house is just a bunch of lumber and drywall, but it seemed so much weightier than that. It felt like where we lived said something about our future, our hopes and dreams, our very identity. That’s a lot of pressure for a piece of real estate.

My friend Brooke told me about this quote she heard somewhere: “Our homes are characters in our stories” (more on that here). And my apologies for the terrible pun, but that sentiment really hit home for me. We weren’t just finding a place to put our stuff or go to sleep at night; we were finding a spot that would become a key part of our story for the next undetermined number of years.

If there’s anyone who knows about longing for home, it’s Brooke. Last summer she and her family packed up their essential belongings, rented out their house, and bought a mobile home so they could embark on a yearlong, 48-state tour of the country. Her home has been on wheels for the past year, meaning that in some ways her home is always with her, and in some ways she’s never home. She knows what it’s like to have roots and to tear them up, how freedom is the other side of loneliness, and how home is both the place and the people.

I think God hardwired us to long for home—to want to put pieces of ourselves into the soil of a place, to make memories there, to let the love and the laughter soak so deeply into the walls that they are heavy with moments and days and years.

But here’s something else I’m learning: our desire for an earthly home is never going to be enough to fill the longing in our souls. Even if we manage to find the perfect paint swatches, line the walls with just the right decorations, and fix all the leaky faucets, it won’t be enough. That longing for a haven, a place to truly belong—that only comes when we make ourselves at home in Christ.

I’ve always loved this psalm, but it makes more sense to me now:

Lord, through all the generations
you have been our home!
—Psalm 90:1

It seems appropriate that this psalm was written by Moses, the wanderer. The guy who grew up with a family not his own and in a country not his own, the guy who spent forty years exiled in the desert, the guy who led his people to a Promised Land he never got to enter. I have a hunch this nomad never really had a place to put his feet up and get comfortable in.

But still, he found home. He learned the lesson we all need, whether we’re putting down roots or pulling them up: When you make your dwelling in God, you will always find home.

***

You never know where you’re going if you’re going by faith. If you’re going by faith, you’re always a stranger in this world, because your home is God.
—John Ortberg

Question for today: What’s something you wished you’d known when you moved into a new home? What’s something you learned from moving to a new place?

In honor of my recent move, I’m giving away a copy of Home Is Where My People Are by the talented and charming Sophie Hudson! It’s a wonderful book about the unexpected places and people that make up home, and what God teaches us along the way. To be eligible, tell me about your moving experience in the comment section below. I’ll give a free copy to one randomly selected commenter.

How Do You Say Goodbye to a Place?

home

I sat on the bottom step in my living room last week, looking around at my-house-that-wasn’t-really-my-house anymore. The U-haul was parked at the end of the driveway, filled with every earthly possession my husband and I own. Everything had been packed. Every surface had been cleaned. There was nothing left to do but wait for the closing.

As I sat there, memories of the past decade flashed through my mind. I knew it was time to leave my condo and move into our new home—the first place my husband and I picked out together. But a wave of nostalgia swept over me now that it was time to say good-bye to this place—this place that had played such a significant part in my story.

I longed for some way to mark the moment, for some tangible closure, but I wasn’t sure what that would even look like. How do you say good-bye to a place that had been the staging ground for so much life?

I tried to imagine handing over the keys to my home of eleven years. I didn’t know much about the buyer—only that her name was Veronica, and what her signature looked like. Then the thought came to me, out of the blue: write her a note.

I hesitated, certain she’d think I was crazy. Then again, I’d never have to see her again, right? So I pulled out a yellow pad of paper and a blue felt-tip marker—the only writing implements I could find that weren’t packed away.

Dear Veronica,

Welcome home! I bought this condo when I was twenty-five, wide-eyed and terrified by the ream of papers I was signing without really understanding all the fine print. I was doing this on my own, and I never imagined I’d buy a place by myself. But it turned out to be the perfect spot for me—home to fondue parties with friends, Easter brunches with family crammed into the living room, and slumber parties with my sister. This is where I grew brave and grew up. It’s where I learned to paint a room and cook a lasagna and plant tulip bulbs.

And then something unexpected and delightful happened—I got married, and my husband moved in, along with his three bikes, four guitars, and a dozen houseplants. It’s the place we came back to after our honeymoon, the first home we lived in together. The walls are filled with four years of laughter and words and music, with growing pains and good memories from our newlywed days.

I heard someone say once that your home is a character in your story, and I think that’s true. I don’t know how long you’ll stay here or how your story will unfold, but I pray that this home will be a wonderful character in the story of your life too.

So here’s my benediction, over you and this house: May God bless each moment you spend here, and may he bless each person who walks through these doors.

Stephanie

Then I put the yellow sheet on the counter, right under the spare set of keys, feeling relieved that she wouldn’t read this note until she moved in and I was several cities away.

What I failed to account for was that the walk-through. Meaning she read the note right before I saw her at the closing.

When I entered the huge conference room, I realized my tactical error immediately. I also realized that this was not the place for sappy notes. The room was filled with serious-faced lawyers and professional-looking loan officers and a bunch of other people who looked distinctly unsentimental.

But then I saw Veronica hanging back, motioning for me to come closer. She looked just as wide-eyed as I’d been in her shoes eleven years ago. “Thanks for the note,” she whispered. And I saw that her eyes were brimming with tears.

“Congratulations,” I whispered back.

As I learned in snippets during our paper-signing marathon, she was me—a decade ago. Twenty-five. Single. An eighth-grade teacher.

At the end of the closing, I handed her the keys, and I sensed that something inside me had settled. I couldn’t put my finger on it at first, and then it hit me: closure. This was full circle—the closing of a chapter for me as a new one started for her.

I smiled at her and then took Daniel’s hand. It was time to introduce ourselves to the new character in our story.

Happy house to you, Veronica. Happy house.

Friday Favorites for September

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It’s that time again . . . time for a few of my favorite things! Enjoy!

For anyone loyal to their home state . . .
If you’ve ever wondered how your home state would be depicted in LEGOs, this post is for you. 50 States in LEGOs

For anyone looking for an excuse to read . . .
Apparently reading helps you read people’s minds and stave off depression. Sold! 12 Health Benefits of Reading

For anyone who gets that a marriage is about more than a wedding . . .
This is a great letter from Kristen Welch to her daughters about her wedding: “I can’t think of a single pin-worthy picture from the day. . . . But I wouldn’t change a moment of it.” What I Want My Daughters to Know about My Wedding

For anyone planning a literary-themed wedding . . .
I know I just said a marriage is about more than a wedding, but you have to admit these book-themed cakes are pretty amazing. You have to check out the one inspired by The Lord of the Rings. 10 Awesome Literary-Themed Wedding Cakes

For anyone who’s a word geek . . .
Apparently this is the longest word in the English language. Dictionary.com

The Pages In Between

I was surprised to turn the page of my Bible the other day and discover that I’d jumped straight from the Old Testament to the New Testament. Since I’m reading the Chronological Bible, I didn’t have the usual clues like divider pages or those handy-dandy little thumb tabs to alert me.

According to canonical order, Malachi is the last book in the Old Testament, but scholars think Joel was actually the last of the prophets to give a message before the arrival of the Messiah. If that’s the case, then these are the final words God spoke to his people before the new covenant was ushered in. They are words full of hope and promise, grace and truth:

Judah will be filled with people forever,
and Jerusalem will endure through all generations.
I will pardon my people’s crimes,
which I have not yet pardoned;
and I, the Lord, will make my home
in Jerusalem with my people.
—Joel 3:20-21

With a simple turn of the page, I was amazed to see that promise directly fulfilled in the person of Christ:

The Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness.
—John 1:14

God’s last words in the old covenant consisted of the promise to make his home with his people. And sure enough, in the book of John, Jesus is revealed as God in human form, moving into our neighborhood.

But things weren’t so clear cut for the people living in those years between Joel’s final prophesy and the angels’ announcement of Jesus’ arrival. They couldn’t just turn to the next chapter to see the fulfillment—they had to wait. And wait. And wait.

They waited for some 400 years, in fact. Think about it—for us that would be like getting a promise in the 1600s, in the days of Galileo or Shakespeare, and not seeing the results until now. With each passing generation, it must have gotten harder for the Israelites to hold on to this promise of Immanuel, harder to feel the truth of it, harder to believe it would actually happen one day.

It had to be hard to live in those blank pages between the two testaments.

And although today we have both the BC and the AD parts of the story, we often find ourselves in a similar spot, wondering and waiting on our own blank pages between the promise and the fulfillment. We have God’s words in broad strokes—that he will save and redeem and make all things new again—but there are so many things we don’t know while we wait. What, exactly, will it look like when the promise is fulfilled? Why do we have to wait? And perhaps most of all, for how long?

I don’t want to grow weary as I wait. I don’t want to forget the promise. I don’t want my belief to fade into little more than a distant memory. I want to wait well.

Come, Lord Jesus. Make your home among us. And in the meantime, let us wait with patience and hope whenever we find ourselves on the blank pages in between.

I’ve taken the challenge of reading the Bible chronologically this year and tracing the thread of grace through it. These musings are prompted by my reading. I’d love to have you join me: One Year Bible reading plan.

Home, Gracious Home

If ever a man had a right to feel homeless, it was Moses.

After being adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter as an infant, he spent most of his childhood separated from his family, his people, his culture. Then, as a young man, Moses was exiled out of Egypt and found himself setting up camp in yet another strange land. He was, without question, “a foreigner in a foreign land” (Exodus 2:22).

After God got Moses’ attention in the form of a spontaneously combusting bush, Moses headed back to Egypt. But this was no nostalgic journey back to the homeland. Instead, he was there to do a jailbreak of sorts for his fellow Israelites, who were living as slaves under the harsh rule of the Egyptians.

Once they’d made their break from Egypt, Moses again found himself homeless. But this time he wasn’t the only one without a forwarding address. He was in charge of several thousand people who quickly expressed their displeasure at their lack of four walls. For 40 years, they wandered through the wilderness, longing for a permanent place to call home.

Perhaps that’s why the opening lines of Psalm 90 hit me so powerfully, knowing they were penned by this reluctant vagrant:

Lord, through all the generations
you have been our home!
Before the mountains were born,
before you gave birth to the earth and the world,
from beginning to end, you are God.
—Psalm 90:1-2

When I was in my early 20s I bought a place of my own, and let’s just say it fell into the “has potential” category. When I arrived on the day of the closing, I was shocked to discover that the family who lived there hadn’t packed the majority of their things yet. I wasn’t even able to get into the house until five hours after the agreed-upon time. Complicating matters, I’d closed on my old place the same day, so everything needed to be unloaded that night.

At one moment, looking around at the filthy condo, still cluttered with the previous owners’ abandoned belongings, I despaired that this place would never feel like home. I took a breath and went from room to room, trying to size up what I was up against.

My despair melted into humility and gratitude at what I saw. When I peeked into the bathroom, I noticed my aunt, her sleeves rolled up, scrubbing the upstairs toilet. Two of my friends were in the guest room, unloading box after box of books (and never once complaining about the ridiculous book-to-person ratio). My mom’s head was deep in the oven, muscling off a decade of grime and grease. My dad was carrying my fold-out couch up the stairs—the one that was so heavy he’d previously sworn he’d never move it again. My uncle was removing garbage bags full of trash left by the old owners. Another friend was on her way to get dinner for the whole crew.

In that moment, I had a revelation. Home is not found in a place; it’s found in relationship. Even if I had nowhere to lay my head that night, I had home. It was written all over the faces of these people who loved me.

At the end of his life, Moses was instructed by God to climb Mount Nebo. From there God showed him the Promised Land—the home his people had been longing for so many years. The Israelites would be able to enter, but Moses would only get to see it from afar (Deuteronomy 32:48-52).

It seems heartbreaking to me, even a touch unfair, that this servant of God who had led the people so faithfully for decades wouldn’t be able to settle into this long-awaited homeland himself.

But Moses knew better. He’d already discovered his true home.

Eventually my condo did feel like home, thanks to the people who graced me on moving day and the ensuing days thereafter.

But I hope I never forget that home, real home, is more than a mailing address.

I’ve taken the challenge of reading the Bible chronologically this year and tracing the thread of grace through it. These musings are prompted by my reading. I’d love to have you join me: One Year Bible reading plan.