Stephanie Rische

Blogger and Writer: Capturing Stories of God's Grace

Split in Two

To be a woman, I would contend, is to feel split in two. Maybe you’re juggling home and career, or marriage and friends, or kids and calling. Whatever the scenario, we all know what it’s like to try to keep the plates spinning without breaking the ones we care about most.

There’s a famous story about a wise king who settled a dispute by offering to split a baby in two split a baby in two. As the story goes, there was one baby and two women, each claiming the child was hers. Solomon called for a sword and said, “Cut the living child in two and give half to one and half to the other.”

At this point in the story, every person with a beating heart cries, “Stop!”There are no circumstances that justify a split-in-two baby. No one wins if Baby is dead.

But what about when it’s the mom who’s split in two?

I recently returned to work after maternity leave, and it seems that wherever I am, I have to leave a piece of myself behind. When I’m at work, my heart is still tethered to the 15-pound cheeky boy who is currently doing tummy time without me and the 3-year-old I promised to build an excavator with when I get back. When I’m at home, I can’t help but wonder what emails are piling up and if my brain will ever recover from its current porridge-like state.

And it’s not just working moms who find themselves tugged in different directions. There are women who are at home full-time while trying to pursue something they feel called to. There are women sandwiched between two generations, caring for kids as well as aging parents. There are single women who are trying to figure out how to follow their passion while also covering the bills.

Some days it feels like there just isn’t enough of us to go around. Not enough energy, not enough time, not enough emotional bandwidth. We need the wisdom for Solomon for this. Is the answer to split ourselves into two (or three or four or five)? If we do, will there be enough of us to go around?

The reality is, it will never work to cut ourselves in half—no matter how sharp the sword or how accurate the slice. We’ll keep giving pieces away until there’s nothing left . . . and it still won’t be enough.

So what’s the answer?

I don’t think there’s an easy solution to this—we may have to reconcile ourselves to living in some amount of tension. But I am learning, by baby steps, that there’s peace in bringing our whole selves wherever we are. Instead of becoming fragmented—separating our work selves from our home selves, our mom selves from our professional selves, our daughter selves from our adult selves—what if we stitched our roles together so we could be all there, wherever we are?

I used to think of integrity strictly in terms of moral uprightness. But what if integrity is about being fully integrated—being the same person, no matter where we are?

I’m still figuring out what this looks like. But maybe it means bringing my editor-self to my parenting and using multi-syllabic words with my toddler. Or bringing my mother-self to my work and letting my baby crash my Zoom calls on occasion.

I wonder what this looks like for you, beautiful woman being tugged in different directions. How are you wrestling with the split-ness of being a woman? What might it look like for you to bring your whole, integrated self to each role you’ve been called to?

However we’re feeling split, may we stitch each part of ourselves together so we can fully love, fully live . . . and be fully ourselves.

The glory of God is a human fully alive.

Saint Irenaeus

Unlearning My To-Do List

It turns out that a person doesn’t necessarily need to be able to speak coherent sentences to be an effective tutor. Case in point: the pint-sized spit-up machine who is currently teaching me that sometimes being is better than doing.

I am a planner by nature. I like to make lists and, even better, cross things out. I enjoy the anticipation of thinking ahead…dreaming and scheming for tomorrow or next week or next month.

But when your schedule revolves around a twelve-pound person who can’t think about the future beyond I’m hungry, I’m sleepy, or I’m poopy, planning ceases to be very effective. You don’t know if the baby will nap (or for how long). You don’t know if he’ll wake up smiley or moody or you’d-better-hold-me-or-I-will-scream-like-a-banshee.

And so my tutor reminds me that sometimes we need to set the to-do list aside. Perhaps that’s one of the things children know that we grown-ups have forgotten: we can’t live in the future. We have only been given today. Children (and those with childlike hearts) have a way of inviting us—practically daring us—into the sacred now.

My little guy wordlessly tells me what God has been trying to say to me all along: that while there’s merit to hard work, it doesn’t define me. My worth isn’t predicated on my productivity. My identity isn’t determined by the number of things I crossed off (or didn’t cross off) my to-do list.

In the quiet hours of the night, after my little one is full and content, I sometimes hold him for an extra moment before stumbling back to bed. I marvel at the way he nestles perfectly into me, with his head tucked under my chin and his limbs curled up against me. I’m all too aware, the second time around this parenting rodeo, that he won’t fit there for long. I’ll blink and his arms and legs won’t fit on my lap. I’ll turn my head for a moment and he will be much too sophisticated to snuggle with his mama.

And so I try to soak in the moments as they come. Not every moment, because heaven knows it’s only possible to savor things one drop at a time, not when they come in a virtual tsunami. But I will try to seize the little moments—a dimpled smile, a tiny sigh, a contented gurgle—and freeze-frame them in my heart.

So maybe we don’t need to throw out the to-do list altogether. But perhaps we’d be better off if we could lose track of it for a bit. If we could look into the eyes of the person we’re with and be all there. In the sacred now.

I have calmed and quieted myself, like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk. Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me.

Psalm 131:2

The Truth about “Arriving”

The moment of disillusionment came crashing down sometime in September during my freshman year of college. I was sitting outside doing some reading for one of my classes when the revelation hit me like a Biology 101 textbook falling from the sky: I will never be the girl on the cover of the catalog!

Before that moment, I don’t think I even realized I harbored any such dreams. Starting my junior year of high school, I’d get mailing after mailing of coeds sprawled on a blanket under pines or yellow aspens (never doing any homework—just smiling perfect, gleaming smiles).

My realization that I would never be the catalog girl wasn’t about the way I looked or about the fact that my outfit didn’t come off the hanger at Gap or even that such handsome guys never sat on my red plaid blanket.

It was that I’d thought I’d somehow feel different once I arrived and became a college student.

As it turned out, I was still me.

It’s a phenomenon that has followed me my whole life. I figured that once I got engaged, I would suddenly feel glamorous and confident and perhaps even a little diva-like. And that once I got married, I’d instantly acquire all manner of wifely abilities, like, for example, being able to whip together a timely, healthy, and delicious dinner, or scrubbing the toilets on a regular basis.

But once again, I was just me, with a diamond solitaire on my finger, or just me, with a Mrs. in front of my name. It was a bit of a letdown to discover there’s no magic spell to transform you into a particular life stage. Instead, it turns out you just have to figure out how the role fits you, particularly. You don’t become someone else.

I recently discovered that the same thing is true when it comes to being an author. When I got my first copy of my book, I was elated to hold it in my hands. But to my surprise, I didn’t transform me into the persona of an author in that moment. The day I got the book, I finished my work day, as usual; commuted home amid much construction, as usual; and arrived home to discover I had no ideas for dinner, as usual. I’m quite certain that Louisa May Alcott and Agatha Christie had no such pedestrian problems.

While it’s a bit of a disappointment at first to discover that a new role doesn’t equate to becoming a new person, it’s ultimately a huge relief. It means that God doesn’t expect me to fit some mold I was never meant to fit into. I never have to step into shoes I wasn’t created to fill. He has millions of patterns of what “college student” or “wife” or “author” looks like, not some one-size-fits-all formula. And that’s ever so much more creative and freeing, for all of us.

  • It means you don’t have to be the girl in the college catalog.
  • You don’t have to be the woman at church who seems to have it all together.
  • You don’t have to be a Pinterest-perfect mom.
  • You don’t have to be your neighbor or your sister or your mom or your best friend or your online nemesis.

You just get to be you. And you get to figure out along the way what it looks like to be you as a wife, you as a mom, you as an employee, you as a leader, you as a follower of Christ.

You aren’t defined by your roles. God made you to be you, and that is a good thing.

***

I’d love to hear your story! Are there any roles in your life that have surprised you? Did you expect to feel different when you arrived at any of those anticipated life stages?

Getting a New Name

Shauna Niequist wrote a beautiful post a while back about the old stories we believe about ourselves. Even though God has been at work in us, transforming us and giving us new identities, we continue to buy into old versions of ourselves—or lies we’ve bought into for too long.

In her post “Change the Story” she says:

There are people and situations that take us back to old, old stories, and even though we’re moms now, not children, or even though we’re business owners now, not adolescents, we find ourselves acting out stories that haven’t been true for a long time, or stories that were never true to begin with.

I’ve been thinking about this lately, and I’ve been reminded of those famous words of Jesus: that the truth will set you free.

One of my friends sees herself as nonconfrontational, fearful of stepping into dangerous situations. But as I’ve watched her parent a son with severe allergies, I see how God is rewriting that story. I first witnessed this growing bravery when she discovered her son’s dairy allergy. She was miles from home and husband, but she confronted every obstacle in her way to find out what was happening to her baby and get him the help he needed. And as I watch her continue to advocate for her little guy at restaurants, at school, and on playdates, making sure he’s safe physically and not being left out, she is growing into many shades of brave.

Another friend holds on to an old version of herself—a story that she is slow to warm up with new people, that no would pursue her or connect with her without a long lead time. But over the years, I’ve seen her stepping out in her job, flourishing in her interactions with clients, stepping into new friendships, making herself rightly vulnerable in relationships new and old. And something amazing is happening: people are seeing her for the beautiful woman she is. God is rewriting her story.

For years I’ve believed that I was destined to live in fear. I worried about big things and little things, about the noise in my attic that was most likely a serial killer and about global warming and about losing the people I loved most. I decided that my condition was chronic—that I’d just have to figure out how to live with it. But somewhere along the way, God began to rewrite that script. Instead of keeping a running tally of my worries, I started to track all the ways I’d seen his faithfulness to me. And ever so subtly, I noticed that fear was no longer in the driver’s seat of my life.

One of the things I appreciate about God is that he loves us just the way we are but doesn’t leave us that way. The evidence is there all through Scripture as he discards old stories and gives people new names, new identities:

  • When God gave Abram a promise for generations to come, he told him, You are no longer Abram. From now on, you will be Abraham—the father of many nations (Genesis 17:5).
  • When Jacob had an encounter with God, God told him, You will no longer be called the deceiver. From now on, your name will be Israel—one who has struggled with God (Genesis 32:28).
  • When Jesus met Peter, he said, Your name is no longer Simon. From now on, you will be Peter, the rock (Matthew 16:18).

I hear God saying the same thing today:

  • You are no longer Timid. My daughter, your new name is Brave.
  • You are no longer Unseen. You are my daughter Beloved.
  • You are no longer Much-Afraid. You are my daughter Learning-to-Trust.

What about you? Is there a story that God has rewritten in your life—or one that he’s rewriting now? Has God given you a new name? I’d love to hear about it, I’d be honored to pray for you on this journey.

On His Hand

Not long ago I had the privilege of spending the afternoon with joy personified—joy that goes around in the form of a seventh grader named Becky.

According to doctors, Becky has an extra chromosome—Down syndrome. Although I’m not familiar with all the medical implications that go along with that diagnosis, I would agree that Becky does have something extra. But in my books, the extra that stands out most is her joy.

When my husband and I went on a walk with Becky and the rest of her family on a sunny Saturday afternoon, I suddenly saw the world through fresh eyes—eyes of wonder and pure delight.

Where I might have walked right past a swampy bog, Becky had her eyes peeled the whole time, certain that at any moment she’d see a turtle sunbathing on a rock. Where I saw a field of weeds, Becky squealed with delight and promptly gathered a dandelion bouquet for me, including some to be tucked behind each of my ears.

Skipping with happiness on the way home, she looked at me with a grin that lit up her entire face. “Can I hold your hand?” she asked.

And so I walked the rest of the way back with both hands full, one with a yellow bouquet and the other with joy herself.

Later that evening we all sang hymns together, led by Becky’s older sister, Hannah, on the piano. Hannah asked for requests, and after a few selections, Becky piped up, “Let’s do my favorite! ‘Before the Throne’!”

I was a bit chagrined to discover how rusty I am on my hymns, and I wasn’t sure I could even pull out a tune for that one. So as the song started, I just sat back and listened.

Before the throne of God above

I have a strong and perfect plea…

As I looked around the room, my gaze fell on Becky. She sat perched on her chair, her face beaming and her legs swinging to the music. To my amazement, she knew every word of the song. I listened as she belted out the next line:

My name is graven on His hand

My name is written on His heart

Just last week I came across a startling statistic: some 90 percent of women who find out in prenatal testing that their baby will have Down syndrome choose abortion. As we sang, I couldn’t help but think of the extra joy Becky’s family would have missed if she’d never been born—the joy all of us would have missed.

Can a mother forget her nursing child?

Can she feel no love for the child she has borne?

But even if that were possible,

I would not forget you!

See, I have written your name on the palms of my hands.

—Isaiah 49:15-16

As I looked at Becky’s face, I knew I wouldn’t be able to sing, even if I managed to dredge up the tune. Not with a lump the size of a small turtle in my throat.

I closed my eyes, and a vision flashed through my mind—of God’s big hand holding the hand of a smiling seventh grade girl. She gives him a bouquet of hand-picked dandelions, and as he reaches out to take them, I notice that he has a tattoo on his hand. Right there on his palm is etched the name of his beloved child. Becky.

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.

Trashed

My husband, Daniel, has the heart of an artist. By that I don’t just mean he can turn an ordinary piece of paper into something beautiful with just a brush and some paint, or that he has an eye for what will be aesthetically pleasing. (Although he’s a master at both.) No, his true artistry shines through in the way he views his creations.

I love seeing the final product of something Daniel has made, but what brings me equal enjoyment is hearing about the entire artistic process—from the conception of the idea (often in a series of drawings in his sketch book) to the rough template to the final revision, with just the right colors. I relish watching Daniel’s eyes, bright with boyish animation, as he takes me through each stage of the process. He beholds his finished creation with an almost fatherly mix of pride and tenderness.

Daniel’s job isn’t specifically art related, but he still finds occasion to put his creative skills to work there. Recently one of his projects was to design a greeting card on behalf of his company, which was a success by all counts.

Several months later, when the office was having a clean-up day, Daniel happened to walk by the trash can. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted an unmistakable color scheme, a familiar fold of paper. He could tell immediately that it was one of his cards. Who knows how it ended up discarded—if it had been damaged somehow or if it had gotten misplaced with a stack of papers—but regardless, it had somehow been thrown away.

When Daniel saw his creation trashed, his first instinct was the same as any true artist’s: he wanted to rescue it. It grieved him to see his beloved creation tossed aside, devalued. The person who originally put it there may have thought it was trash, and everyone who passed by afterward may have considered it worthless too. But not its creator. He wanted to see what he’d made being used for the purpose it was intended for. He was ready to dig into the trash can himself—to rescue the card, to smooth out its crumpled edges. To redeem it.

As I read the book of Isaiah, I’m struck by the number of times the prophet uses the word redeem. One of the most frequent names for God in the book is Redeemer, and the word redeem shows up in some form more than twenty times.

All this redemption talk makes sense, I suppose, knowing the context—that Israel was on the cusp of defeat and exile by their enemies. The Assyrians saw them as so much trash, while the other countries around them barely batted an eyelash at their demise. If ever a people needed redemption, it was the Israelites—God’s chosen people.

Though you are a lowly worm, O Jacob,
don’t be afraid, people of Israel, for I will help you.
I am the Lord, your Redeemer.
—Isaiah 41:14

Maybe right now you find yourself in the trash can, like Israel did thousands of years ago. Maybe someone said something that made you feel worthless, devalued, unloved. Or maybe it was through pure neglect that you find yourself feeling forgotten, pushed aside. And perhaps along the way no one has stopped to pull you out of the rubbish, to smooth out your creases, to get you back to what you were meant to be.

But I am here to tell you that in God’s eyes you are not trash; you have utmost value. Your Creator sees you there in the trash, and it shreds his heart. And what does he do in response? He rolls up his sleeves and digs into the trash himself. He enters our world, knowing we can’t get out of this mess ourselves.

In all their suffering he also suffered,
and he personally rescued them.
In his love and mercy he redeemed them.
He lifted them up and carried them
through all the years.
—Isaiah 63:9

Because of Christ, you don’t have to stay in the trash. Because of Christ, you can be used for the purpose we were made for.

He has personally redeemed you. All because he is your Creator, and you are his beloved masterpiece.

Writer’s Note: This blog was co-written with Daniel Rische.

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.