Stephanie Rische

Blogger and Writer: Capturing Stories of God's Grace

A Letter to My Son: On Coming into the World Broken

Dear Milo,

Someday, precious boy, you will ask me the story of your birth. How much will I tell you, I wonder? You only recently marked one month in this world, so this kind of pondering is admittedly premature. But how will I be able to communicate to you that your arrival was pure miracle, yet simultaneously tinged with brokenness?

The short version, beloved child, is that they had to break you to get you out. Your shoulders were simply too large for my bones. But our doctor was a pro, and she sprang into action immediately when she recognized what was happening. Knowing that time was of the essence, she chose the lesser of two traumas, cracking your tiny matchstick of a humerus.

And so, in the weeks since, your dad and I have been wrapping your little arm with yards and yards of bandage and asking God to mend the bones he knit together in the first place.

“Babies are like starfish,” the orthopedic surgeon assures me as I look at the jagged bones on the X-Ray screen. You will never remember this, I know. And I’m not sure how much pain you can even register at this point. But we will remember, your dad and I. And we feel the pain like a fracture to our hearts.

As I gaze into your blue-gray eyes that seem at once innocent and wise beyond their years, I wonder if the pain we feel isn’t just about this particular injury. As hard as it is to see such a tiny body hurting—especially a vulnerable someone who is entirely dependent on us—it feels even weightier than that.

The truth is, this is merely the first of many encounters with brokenness you will face. The broken bone on the first day of your life is but a foreshadowing of fractures to come. We are frail and human, made of tender bits like bone and tendon, heart and soul. This means we have the capacity to feel deeply and love with abandon, but it also leaves us susceptible to profound wounds.

And as much as I want to protect you from injuries of all sorts—body, mind, and heart—I am aware of my own frailty as much as yours. I would take on a grizzly bear in hand-to-hand combat if the occasion arose, but despite my best efforts, I won’t be able to stop you from getting hurt. And it wouldn’t be good for you if I could.

They say a broken bone grows back stronger after it heals, and I have to think the same is true of the other parts of us too. The places where we’ve been hurt can rebuild us with more resilience, while somehow making us more tender in all the best ways too.

My prayer for you, today and as you grow, is that you will know that brokenness is not an end point. It is the beginning of your story of redemption. If we let them, the broken places can ultimately be entry points for grace.

I love you, my broken and beautiful son.
Mom

Man is born broken; he lives by mending. The grace of God is the glue.

Eugene O’Neill

Everything Sad Is Coming Untrue

Easter is over, but the story is really just beginning. And it’s the best story, with the best possible ending.white flowers

Jesus’ resurrection is God’s promise to the world that the impossible has suddenly been made possible.

The Resurrection isn’t just the promise that something good will happen someday—it’s the promise that every bad thing will be turned upside down, into something good. The Curse will be reversed. Broken things will be restored. Love will win.

The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation—this story begins and ends in joy.
—J. R. R. Tolkien

Eucatastrophe: It’s not just the opposite of catastrophe. It’s God rewriting the story, weaving in his threads of grace. It’s the heartbeat of redemption, pulsing throughout the land.

Sorrow will turn into joy.
Wounds will be healed.
Dead things will come to life.
Ugly things will be made beautiful.
Heartbreak will become hope.

In The Return of the King, after the ring is destroyed, Sam awakens and is surprised to see that Gandalf is still alive. This is what he says:

Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?

I have to imagine that’s what the Marys thought when they went to the tomb and found it empty. Everything sad is coming untrue. And I’d guess it’s what the disciples thought when they saw Jesus alive again, sitting down to eat with them. Everything sad is coming untrue.

Death is coming untrue, pain is coming untrue, sadness is coming untrue. All because he lives.

The one sitting on the throne said, “Look, I am making everything new!”
—Revelation 21:5

Whatever You Do, Don’t Cartwheel with Gum in Your Hair

Mom1When I was a kid, I didn’t so much walk down the hallway at home. Instead, I cartwheeled from one end to the other, or, if I was feeling fancy, I walked on my hands.

Mom was okay with this, under two conditions:

1) I had to look behind me before I launched into cartwheel mode. (Sorry for all the times I kicked you, Little Brother.)

2) I was not, under any circumstances, to tumble with gum in my mouth.

I cartwheeled to my heart’s content without incident for some time . . . until that fateful afternoon when I was six. I was chewing gum while turning cartwheels, and sure enough, the bright green wad fell out of my mouth and landed squarely in my bangs.

I raced to the bathroom, closing the door behind me so I could assess the damage. I tugged, I yanked, I wrestled, but to no avail. The gum would not budge.

I can’t let Mom find out! In a panic, I raced through my options until I finally hit on a stroke of genius.

Aha! I’ll cut the gum out with the nail clippers! Mom will never know.

It was a foolproof plan . . . until, that is, I opened the bathroom door. I’m sure you’ll be shocked to hear that Mom noticed immediately—whether because of the large notch of hair missing from my forehead or because of the guilt etched on my face, I’ll never know.

Mom2Mom and I had a heart-to-heart at that point about what I’d done and why the rules were there in the first place.

Then Mom gave me a hug, tussling my freshly hacked bangs. “Now what are we going to do about picture day tomorrow?”

It was only then that the magnitude of my transgression struck me. Between sobs, I managed to squeak out a dramatic pronouncement: “OH NO! I CANNOT go to school tomorrow!”

But as usual, Mom came to the rescue. Armed with authentic haircutting scissors, a curling iron, and some well-placed barrettes, she managed to make me look somewhat presentable for the school photo.

As I reflect on Mother’s Day, I’m reminded how much God’s love looks like mother-love. Like a mom, God knows precisely how we’re going to fail from the very start, despite his fair warnings. Then, after we come to him in repentance and he talks through the consequences with us, he holds us and comforts us—and even helps us fix the mess we’ve made.

And later, after our bangs have grown out and the school pictures come in, I have to believe he shares a gentle laugh with us too.

So happy Mother’s Day, Mom. Thanks for faithfully showing me what God’s love looks like.Surprised by motherhood

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In honor of Mother’s Day, do you have a story to share about how your mom or another woman in your life has shown you God’s love?

If you comment below, you’ll be eligible to win a free copy of Lisa-Jo Baker’s new book, Surprised by Motherhood.

God’s Underground Work

When I was living in my first place after college, I made the rather impulsive decision one Sunday afternoon to buy a package of daffodil bulbs. It was only after I arrived home that I realized I didn’t have anything even closely resembling a shovel. But by that point I was determined to make the bulb-planting happen. Today.

So I pulled out an old knife and thought, How hard can this be? As it turned out, digging 12 inches into the dirt might as well have been muscling to the center of the earth when you’re using a dull kitchen blade. By the time I was ready to drop the final bulb in the ground, my arms were aching and my knees and hands were caked with dirt, but I was feeling pretty satisfied.

Then I took my first real look at the brown, dead-looking thing in my palm. I’d seen plenty of daffodils in the past, and presumably they’d all started out this way, but suddenly I was assailed by doubts. How could something that looked like a rotting turnip be transformed into a sunny, yellow flower? But with a shrug I put the last bulb in the dirt and went inside to retire the now-worthless knife.

I promptly forgot about my little gardening experiment…until the next April. One day I looked out my back window, and to my surprise, a small but tenacious sprout was trying to poke its head out of the cold, unforgiving earth.

Isn’t that a picture of what God does with our lives too? To a casual observer, we look dead, ugly, hopeless. But God doesn’t give up on us. During those seasons when we’re all but buried, when it looks like Satan has won after all—that’s precisely when God does his best redemptive work. He uses those months under the cover of soil to build us up, make us strong, prepare us for who he wants us to be.

And when the first hint of spring arrives, we will stick out our heads, tentatively at first, and then with increasing boldness. As our faces open to the Son, he will transform us. From despair to hope. From death to new life.

And we, turnipy-looking things that we are, will be a tangible display of his glorious grace.

On Silk Parachutes and Wedding Gowns

My grandma and grandpa just celebrated their 66th wedding anniversary. More than six decades ago, they got married in a simple ceremony on a Tuesday morning—just as soon as they could after Grandpa returned from the war.

I’ve long admired the photograph of my grandmother, beautiful and wide-eyed in her elegant silk gown. But it wasn’t until recently that I heard the story of the dress.

Apparently, since silk was needed overseas for the war effort, it was an extremely hard to come by in the 1940s. But my grandmother, spunky woman that she is, remained undeterred as she planned her wedding. She wrote a letter to her fiancé—my grandfather—requesting that he send a used parachute from Europe so she could have it made into a dress.

Sure enough, the package of white silk arrived, and under the seamstress’s deft fingertips, the object that was once a symbol of war and tragedy was transformed into something new and beautiful.

Nothing would erase the things Grandpa experienced in the war—the deaths he felt responsible for, the buddies who didn’t make it, the missions he shouldn’t have returned from. And nothing would take away the pain of Grandma’s years of waiting as she worried and prayed over his safe return.

God didn’t magically take all that pain away. But somehow all those memories got stitched together into the fabric of the silk parachute as they began their new life together. The token of what had separated them was transformed into a resplendent dress, now a tangible sign of their love.

Isn’t that what God does too? He takes the cross—the ultimate object of sin and punishment and death—and transforms it into a symbol of hope and reconciliation and new life. He takes our tragedies and failures—the very things that once separated us from him—and transforms them into a beautiful garment for us to wear. A garment he calls grace.

Note: After my grandmother wore this dress, she handed it down to her daughter and then her granddaughter for them to wear at their own weddings. For more about this story, including photos of the dress over the next two generations, check out the write-up in the Daily Herald.

Christmas Is Coming (well, sort of…)

Okay, I know Christmas is over…I finally took down the tree and (for the most part) curbed my habit of belting out holiday tunes. I was doing pretty well until it snowed, and let’s just say I relapsed.

One of my favorite Christmas songs is Over the Rhine’s “Darlin’ (Christmas Is Coming),” and every time I see the white stuff out the window, I can’t help but sing it. The song starts out less chipper than you might expect for Christmas lyrics:

So it’s been a long year
Every new day brings one more tear
Till there’s nothing left to cry

But there’s this lovely thread of redemption that runs through the song, all the more poignant for its haunting opening:

Darlin’, the snow is falling
Falling like forgiveness from the sky

If there was ever a nature metaphor for grace, it has to be snow. One moment the world is drab and brown and lifeless, and in an instant it’s transformed—clean, pure, new. And unexpectedly beautiful. Everything is covered—from hulking buildings to the tiniest twigs.

And so it is with grace. When it falls, it covers everything—from our biggest, most glaring sins to the less obtrusive ones we try to hide.

So get ready, darlin’. Grace is falling…it’s falling like snowflakes from the sky.

Purify me from my sins, and I will be clean;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
—Psalm 51:7