Stephanie Rische

Blogger and Writer: Capturing Stories of God's Grace

A Letter to My Second-Born Son

Dear Milo,

Over the past half a year, you have somehow both enlarged me and made my world smaller.

In those first few months, amid a pandemic/social distancing and a winter with record-breaking snowfalls, our world was mostly a cozy four-person cocoon. In the middle of the night, when I fed you by the glow of the Christmas lights we strung on your ceiling, it could have been just you and me in the universe, if not for the snack your dad left for me beside the rocking chair.

Our world was small, yes. But you have also been showing me a grander view of the world.

When I see the man at the stoplight holding a tattered sign, my usually calloused heart is pierced. He was once a baby too, I think. He once had a mother who rocked him to sleep.

When I hear you laugh—without filter or self-consciousness—I can believe in breathtaking joy, the kind that blooms out of the soil of sorrow.

When I see your sense of wonder over the little things—bubbles catching the sunlight just so, a leaf dancing in the breeze—I am reminded to slow down, to bear witness to the miraculous right under my nose.

When I see you and your brother communicating with no need for words, I can embrace a world where reconciliation is possible, where hearts can be glued back together.

You have surprised me, little man . . . and humbled me too. I’ve had a baby before, I remember thinking. Better yet, I’ve had a baby boy. I probably know how to do this. But of course I don’t. Because I’ve never had you before.

You made it clear even before you were born, when the wild rumpus ensued in my belly, that you were your own little person. Ever since, you’ve been on the move, wiggling and kicking and grinning and generally charming your way through life. You refuse to be held on my hip, preferring to be face-out so you won’t miss a single thing.

As a one-toe-in-the-water kind of person myself, I marvel at the way you cannonball straight into the deep end. I admire your moxie, the way you embrace the world and everyone you meet with open arms and a full-body grin.

Just one year—that’s all the time we get you as a baby. I’m trying to drink in the joy of it this time around, knowing it’s like juice concentrate. So much to take in with a single sip, but there’s no way to water it down.

So halfy birthday, little guy. We can’t imagine the world without you; we can’t imagine our family without you. Please keep teaching us—we have a lot more to learn.

Love,
Mom

Planting Hope

As I think back on this year, it seems like joy and grief have been holding hands.

On the one hand, I’ve received far more grace and love than I deserve, not to mention my share of sticky kisses and toddler snuggles.

On the other hand, there has been altogether too much death for one year. The deaths weren’t entirely a surprise, and I know many people have experienced much greater loss. But by my reckoning, any number of deaths feels like one too many.

This year we lost our little Mo, the baby we never got to meet. We lost my funny, kind, smart grandpa—the one we’d lost for the first time over a decade ago to dementia. And last week we lost my beloved friend and mentor, Ruth.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes it helps if I can put a label on what I’m feeling. Maybe it’s an illusion, but I feel like I can start to untangle an emotion when I can call it by name.

Bereft. I looked it up, and it sounds about right to describe the hollow place that has carved itself out just below my esophagus. “Bereft (adjective): lacking something needed, wanted, or expected.”

I still needed you, Ruth.
I wanted you, Mo.
I expected to have you for just a little longer, Grandpa.
And now I find myself lacking.

One of the problems with grief is that you can’t schedule it. It rears its messy head at awkward, inconvenient times, precisely when you don’t expect it or when you’re not wearing waterproof mascara. You go to the funeral, you attend the burial, you walk through the good-bye ceremony, and you think grief will fit in the box you’ve made for it. But it turns out you can’t plan out when you’re going to feel sad. You can’t put it on the calendar and then be done with it.

***

On a brisk November morning, just after Ruth’s funeral, I told Graham, “Okay, let’s put on our coats. We’re going outside to plant hope.” I had work to do and emails to answer and laundry to fold. But those things would have to wait.

So I grabbed a shovel and started chipping away at the stubborn November ground.

“Do you know what this is?” I asked Graham after we’d dug forty holes and unearthed approximately a dozen worms.

“Onion,” he said proudly.

A fair enough guess. The brown bulb looked much more like a shriveled-up onion than a daffodil. I’ve seen plenty of spring blooms in my lifetime, but even I found it hard to believe this little lump would burst out of the ground in golden glory four months from now.

Isn’t that the way hope is? It seems irrational—impossible, even. It doesn’t take root right away. It’s something we plant today with the wild idea that it will bloom after a long winter.

Hope, it turns out, isn’t one of those splashy flowers that gets planted in May and then disappears with the first frost. No, hope is a perennial. You plant it now, when the ground is hard and cold. And you trust that by some miracle, you will reap an eternal spring.

I don’t know what you need hope for today. But I urge you to dig in, even though there are no blooms yet. Dig in, believing that winter won’t last forever. Dig in, and bask in a little bit of tomorrow’s sunshine today.

The snow, like all other deaths, had to melt and run, leaving room for hope.

George MacDonald

Not Enough Time

Every grief, I think, is different. With each death comes unique aches, depending on who you lost or how you lost them, depending on the history you had together or the future you didn’t have together.

But in one sense, every grief is the same. The anthem for anyone who has ever lost someone is, “We didn’t have enough time.” Whether that person was one or one hundred, we are never ready. It’s always too soon.

We lost Baby Mo when he’d been inside me just nine weeks. It was too soon. We didn’t have enough time.

The book of Ecclesiastes says there’s a time for everything, a season for everything.

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die.

I’ve always given intellectual assent to the idea that there’s a time to be born and a time to die. But I never thought our baby’s time to die would come before his time to be born.

If we had our way, Mo’s time to die would come after he’d lived a long, good life. It doesn’t seem right that his time to die came before he had a chance to blow bubbles or shoot baskets with his dad or give sloppy kisses to his mama.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about God’s timing, it’s that he has his own clock, his own calendar. Sometimes he’s slower than I’d like, and I’m stuck in the agony of waiting.

And sometimes the hourglass is up before I’ve even fully embraced the season.

A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance . . .

And so even though this isn’t what we would have chosen, now is a time to weep. It’s time to weep on a Wednesday afternoon, when the delivery guy grins and says, “Congratulations!” not knowing the flowers are here to mark Mo’s too-short life. It’s time to mourn when the baby books I’d put on hold arrive at the library, only to be returned, unopened. It’s time to grieve when the doctor’s office calls, reminding of my the prenatal appointment I forgot to cancel.

But now is also a time to laugh. It’s time to laugh when Daniel sings silly songs at the dinner table. It’s time to laugh when Graham dashes out of the bathroom, stark naked, before bath time. It’s time to dance with my boys in the kitchen, even though I have no rhythm and I’m supposed to be making dinner.

So maybe the truth about seasons is that it’s not one or the other—living or dying, weeping or laughing, mourning or dancing. Maybe life is an inextricable jumble of both.

And although we don’t get to choose whether it’s a time to weep or a time to laugh, maybe we do get to choose to embrace them both at once.

***

What I want to tell you is that these times are connected. Mourning and dancing are part of the same movement of grace. Somehow, in the midst of your tears, a gift of life is given. Somehow, in the midst of your mourning, the first steps of the dance take place. The cries that well up from your losses belong to your song of praise. Those who cannot grieve cannot be joyful. 

Henri Nouwen
For Mo. Wishing we had more time.

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.

When Your Greatest Joy Collides with Your Greatest Fear

If someone managed to do an X-ray of the soul, I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that our places of deepest joy are located right beside our places of deepest sorrow. I’ve spent the larger part of a lifetime assuming life should come one emotion at a time. A season of joy, then a season of pain. Heartache followed by a dream-come-true. All compartmentalized into neat categories.

But as it turns out, life rarely unfolds that way. The good and the bad often fly at us scattershot: joy and pain in simultaneous explosions. The happiness is so woven in with the tears that we can’t separate them out without losing both.

There’s an old song I love by Rich Mullins called “We Are Not as Strong as We Think We Are”:

With these our hells and our heavens So few inches apart We must be awfully small And not as strong as we think we are

Isn’t that about right? Our hells and our heavens, mere inches away from the other.

And that’s where Daniel and I find ourselves right now—smack dab in the middle of both. Great joy intertwined with deep sorrow.

Twenty weeks ago, God fulfilled a dream I’ve held on to for years—one of the most tender desires of my heart. My body wasn’t cooperating, my biological clock was working against me, and the doctors said it was impossible. But one brisk morning in January, to our speechless delight, Daniel and I found out there was new life growing inside me.

This is our miracle, our answer to prayer, our little piece of heaven on earth.

But just inches away—and weeks away—we bumped into one of our deepest fears.

***

We went into the ultrasound rather giddy about meeting this baby of ours, naïvely thinking the biggest question would be whether to find out the gender. After much contemplation, we decided to be surprised.

We were surprised. But the gender was the least of it.

After the ultrasound was over, the doctor came in and did a second one. That’s when I felt the first niggling of trepidation. Wouldn’t a doctor be too busy to repeat what the tech just did? But I was on such a high after seeing the baby’s button nose and tiny fingers that I was caught off guard when the doctor called us into her office.

“We suspect a genetic abnormality,” she said matter-of-factly, as if she were mentioning it might rain later.

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.

I’ve heard Psalm 139 countless times, but honestly, I’ve always skipped over the “fearfully” part and moved right on to “wonderfully.” The images we saw in the ultrasound served as incontrovertible evidence of the wonderful part. Before our baby weighed a full ounce, the kidneys and liver were formed. Before this child was the size of an avocado, the heart was thrumming away at 150 beats a minute. Wonderfully made indeed.

But in that doctor’s white-walled office, fearfully took on ferocious new meaning. I am carrying a wonder inside me, yes. But inseparable from that wonder is fear. Fear about what could happen if something is amiss with just one of the 46 chromosomes. Fear about the ramifications if this baby enters the world too soon. Fear about how fragile life is for all of us, but especially for someone who is currently only about one pound.

This baby is, even now, being masterfully and tenderly knit together by the Creator himself. In the meantime, I need to know: How can I hold on to both the fear and the wonder? I don’t want to revel in the wonder alone and deny the legitimate fear. And I don’t want to let the fear eclipse the wonder altogether. So somehow I need to find a way to embrace both at once.

It’s a risk, this business of loving someone. But isn’t that part of what it means to be made in the image of the Creator who knit us together? He knows full well our frailties and weaknesses and humanness. And yet he loves his children with abandon. To love is to risk being hurt. But it’s worth the risk.

As we wait in the unknown these next four months, I wouldn’t choose any other way than the bumpy road of love. Even if it means that our hells and our heavens, our fears and our wonders, are separated by mere inches.

To love at all is to be vulnerable.
C. S. Lewis

Waiting with Joy

One year ago, exactly, I was waiting for a phone call. I was ready, bursting with anticipation, my phone glued to my hip all day and all through the night. My sister was expecting her second baby, and the plan was for Mom and me to jump in the car as soon as we got the call. We’d make the two-and-a-half hour drive so we could watch big sister Addie while her mom and dad were in the hospital.

It was an Advent like no other, waiting for this baby son to come into the world.

Oh come, Oh come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear

The call came at 2:00 a.m. in the dark quiet of a snowy morning. I leaped out of bed before the second ring. “It’s time,” my sister said. “We’re headed to the hospital.”

After all the waiting, all the expectation, all the hope, it was time. This long-awaited baby was coming.

Rejoice, Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, Oh Israel!

The arrival came with pain, to be sure. But when Baby Grant came into the world, there was indeed much rejoicing.

This Advent I found myself waiting again. But this time, instead of waiting for a birth, I was waiting for a death.

Once again I kept the phone beside me night and day, waking and sleeping. But this time my heart weighed three hundred pounds each time the phone rang.

My grandfather had lived a good life. He was a man of the greatest generation—a hard worker and a man of quiet but deep faith. He never would have abided my saying so, but he was a hero: first as a B-17 pilot over Europe during World War II and then as the faithful father to twelve children. He had been married to my grandma for almost 71 years—a lifetime in itself. His was quite a legacy: a legacy of faithfulness and wit and wisdom and love and dozens upon dozens of people who share his name.

And now he was ready to go home. I kissed his cheek last Sunday, aware that it would likely be the last time on this side of heaven.

I knew it was time—we all did. And yet somehow 94 still seemed too young. God has planted eternity in our hearts, which means that death always comes too soon. We are made for life, not death.

Oh come, Thou Dayspring, come and cheer
Thy people with Thine advent here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night
And death’s dark shadows put to flight

The call came one evening after dinner, and somehow I missed it. I must have been in the basement, throwing a load in the wash. My dad’s voice was on the message: “I have good news and bad news,” he said. “It’s bad news for us, because we’ll miss him. But it’s all good news for him.”

At Advent we celebrate the gift of Emmanuel. God with us, to comfort those who mourn in lonely exile. God with us, to disperse the gloomy clouds of night. God with us, to put death’s dark shadows to flight.

As we inhabit this weary world, we grieve and we wait and we ache. But we also rejoice, because death isn’t the end of the story. The pangs of death make way for new life—the kind of life that never ends.

Until then, we wait. And we wait with joy.

God with us. Us with God. Emmanuel.

Rejoice, Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, Oh Israel!

What a Two-Year-Old Taught Me about Running

I run on occasion, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m a runner. Truth be told, I’m probably more of a plodder. One foot in front of the other, slow and tortoise-like.Addie Norway

I’ve heard the term “runner’s high,” but so far the only high I’ve experienced comes after the run, when I eat the bowl of ice cream I promised myself as a reward.

So when I read this verse in Hebrews about running the race of faith, I have to say it doesn’t automatically instill inspiration in me:

Since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.
—Hebrews 12:1

When I think of spiritual running, I tend to conjure up images of plodding along in the life of faith, putting one foot in front of the other from now until glory-be.

I’m not usually feeling the spiritual runner’s high.

But a few weeks ago, when I went to my parents’ house for a family get-together, something changed my perspective on the kind of running God might be talking about.

As I pulled into my parents’ driveway, my almost-two-year-old niece was in the garden, “helping” pick cucumbers. The minute I got out of the car, Addie spied me and started waddle-running toward me as fast as her little legs could take her. Her arms swung haphazardly from side to side as she zigzagged across the yard.

When she was about halfway to me, she hit a dip in the grass. Bam! Down she went, toppling bum over heels. But she barely seemed to notice—she just got up and kept running.

When she got closer, I saw something that permanently melted my auntie-heart: An impish grin was spreading across Addie’s face, her trademark dimple indenting one cheek. And that smile was running toward me for a hug.

Addie wasn’t plodding. She wasn’t trudging along, forcing one foot in front the other. She was running out of sheer joy. She had her destination in mind, and nothing was going to stop her.

That’s how I want to run this race of faith. I don’t want to run out of duty or because it’s good for me. I want to run more like Addie.

I want to run with a heart that’s overflowing with joy, knowing I’m running toward someone I love, toward someone who loves me.

Even when the race is hard and the finish line seems impossibly far away, know this: God is waiting for you at the finish line, with his arms open wide.

Seek . . . to cultivate a buoyant, joyous sense of the crowded kindnesses of God in your daily life.
—Alexander Maclaren

The Third Week of Advent: Joy

fireplace3As a kid, I never understood why all the Christmas decorations were red and green except the Advent candles. Now don’t get me wrong, as a girl growing up in the 80s, I was a big fan of the pink and purple combo. But for Christmas?

Recently, though, I was doing some digging about Advent, and I discovered that each candle’s color has a specific meaning. In the liturgical calendar, purple symbolizes penitence and repentance, and it’s used for both Lent and Advent. Those three purple candles stand as tall, solemn reminders that this world is broken, that we are broken. Advent, a time of mourning.

Long lay the world
In sin and error pining . . .

But those candles in the wreath don’t remain cloaked in sadness. On Christmas Day, all the purple candles are replaced with white ones. White—the color of joy. Our mourning is over. The Messiah is here!

Joy to the world!
The Lord is come
Let earth receive her King!

So what about the one stray pink candle in the mix? According to tradition, the pink candle got its start centuries ago when monks were making Advent candles. As they mixed wax for the purple candles, it was almost as if the joy of Christmas couldn’t be contained. The white spilled over into some of the wax, creating the lone pink candle.

And isn’t that what Advent is? Mourning tinged with joy.

In my own life, there’s no doubt about it: sadness can creep into my joy. One minute everything is going great—I’m singing in the shower, dancing in the kitchen, bursting to start a new day. But the sadness can creep in so fast—with a single failure, disappointment, sharp word, or unmet expectation.

But joy? What if joy could creep in too?

Joy is stealthier than sadness, I think. It doesn’t always come with trumpets and fanfare. Sometimes joy sneaks in, more like melted wax. You may not even notice it’s there until you look down and see a rosy hue where there once was a melancholy purple.

That’s how Jesus came too—he who is Joy himself. His incarnation wasn’t brazen; it was quiet, small. But that quietness didn’t diminish the joy. Because joy has the power to seep in and permeate all the mourning, all the sadness.

No more let sins and sorrows grow
Nor thorns infest the ground
He comes to make his blessings flow
Far as the curse is found

Christmas reminds us of one of the best gifts of all: that joy can creep into our sadness too.

It’s as if the third week of Advent is telling us, “Hang on for one more week. Joy will creep in.”

Joy always finds a way to creep in.

A Reservoir of Joy

 

Addie joy

We call my niece the Pterodactyl. Don’t worry—we’ll stop when she gets old enough to find such a moniker unflattering (not to mention difficult to spell). But she’s only six months now, so I think we can get away with it for a while longer. (In case you’re wondering what a pterodactyl sounds like, click here.)

When I first heard Addie’s pterodactyl shriek, I couldn’t see her face, and I assumed she was “hangry” (hungry, angry, or some combination of the two). But then she turned her head, and I saw that she was scrunching up her nose and smiling the biggest one-toothed grin you’ve ever seen.

Whenever something delights her—the wagging tail of a dog or a spoonful of sweet potatoes or the entrance of one of her people into the room—she kicks her legs, flails her arms, and lets out a string of squawks. As her grandpa put it, she laughs with her whole body.

As you might imagine, this made for hours of entertainment when Addie was recently in town for a visit. With a six to one adult-to-baby ratio, you’d think we would have gotten a lot accomplished. But in reality, it just meant there were six grown adults hovering ceaselessly around our little bird, attempting whatever antics we could think of to evoke a squeal.

I had fleeting thoughts that we might be irrevocably spoiling her, but then I talked to a wise friend who said, “I think it’s great. She’s building up a reservoir of joy that will serve her well the rest of her life.” A reservoir of joy. Now that’s something I can work with.

My prayer buddy Marilyn tells a story about a little boy who loved watching the lightning whenever it stormed. Every time a flash lit up the night, he’d say, “Yay, God!”

After watching this happen several times, his mom finally asked him, “Why do you say, ‘Yay, God’ whenever there’s lightning?”

The boy grinned. “Mom, don’t you know that God is taking my picture?”

When do we lose that, I wonder—that sense of delighting in God and knowing we delight him? More often than not I come to him sheepishly, shamefacedly, my record of sins and shortcomings fresh in my mind. The thought that he’d hover around me, delighting in my smile, trying any antic to make me laugh, rarely crosses my mind. If the thought of God enters my mind when lightning flashes, I’m more likely to assume judgment than doting.

But take a look at this image Scripture paints of God’s character:

He will take delight in you with gladness.
With his love, he will calm all your fears.
He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.
—Zephaniah 3:17

Whether or not you ever had a gaggle of grown-ups surrounding you, may you know today that your Father delights in you. He rejoices over you. He sings over you, grinning over your every squawk and squeal. And may the knowledge of how treasured you are become a reservoir for you . . . a deep reservoir of joy.

Gospel Story: Jennifer

My church is passionate about seeing people’s lives changed by the power of the gospel, and I’ve had the privilege of being part of the team that helps capture some of these stories—stories of how God’s grace has gotten hold of people and turned their lives upside down in the best possible way.

Here’s a preview of the latest story by Jennifer Mamminga:

Maybe you’ve been following God for a while now, doing all the right things, going through the Christian motions. But somehow it feels like there’s something missing. Where is the joy and peace your soul is longing for?

Jennifer's Gospel StoryThat’s precisely where Jennifer found herself. Her life was full of gifts and blessings, but there was something she desperately wanted to know: Is this all there is?

It was only when she surrendered everything to Jesus that she made a life-altering discovery about her true identity.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

—Romans 15:13

You can watch the video of Jennifer telling her story here.