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Stephanie Rische

Blogger and Writer: Capturing Stories of God's Grace

March 24, 2017

Like Eating a Praying Mantis

What’s the longest-term goal you’ve accomplished? Something that couldn’t be checked off after a tough afternoon of grinding it out…one that required not only enthusiasm but also marathon endurance and grit? Maybe you finished your degree after long nights of studying and papers and angst. Maybe you crossed the finish line after hours of training, gallons of sweat, and sore muscles. Maybe you paid off a debt after months (or years) of scrimping and saving and saying no to things you wanted.

There’s something about accomplishments like these that feel significant—not just because we have the thing we aspired to—the degree, the medal, the freedom—but because of what happens to us along the way. When we pursue a big, long goal like this, we are changed along the way. We aren’t the same person we were when we started; we are stronger, tougher, more disciplined. Or maybe it’s not so much that we’ve changed; maybe we had this capacity for toughness in us all along and never knew it. This goal simply allowed us to see that truth about ourselves.

Nine years ago, when my sister graduated from college, she got the biggest gift she’d ever received. I mean that literally—it was a seven-foot by seven-foot crossword puzzle. She hung it up in her bedroom after starting grad school, and I kid you not: it took up the entire wall.

Meghan and I worked on the crossword puzzle together whenever we could—both in person, when I was visiting her, and when she emailed me obscure clues to research. She came to live with me for a summer during one of her internships, and she brought along one big square of the puzzle. Every morning over coffee, we worked a few clues together. When she got a job after grad school, we continued crossowording over the phone before work, and when she became a mom and I got married, we made weekly phone dates during her kids’ naptimes and my lunch breaks.

That crossword puzzle has seen us through a lot of life in almost a decade. Between the two of us, we have experienced marriage, motherhood, new jobs, and multiple moves. We’ve lived a broad gamut of loss and love and heartache and happiness.

Not long ago I was visiting Meghan for the weekend, and we worked on the crossword puzzle over coffee, per tradition. It’s harder to do this than it used to be, so we woke up before our husbands and her kids and tried to do as much as we could before everyone else was ready for breakfast. On that Saturday morning, we found ourselves at a startling spot: I was reading her the very last clue in the puzzle (out of 28,000).

This clue represented nine years and six residences and big life changes and who knows how many hours together. And now it was coming to an end. Meghan gave me the answer, and I found myself with pen in hand, paralyzed. We had been trying to accomplish this goal for almost ten years, but now that the end was here, I didn’t want it to be over. She finally convinced me to write the final letter in the box.

After I got home, Meghan sent me this quote she’d found by someone who had reviewed the same puzzle: “I dread its completion, yet yearn to make it happen as soon as humanly possible. This must be how the male praying mantis feels.” That seemed about right.

We hadn’t just completed the mother of all crossword puzzles. We had learned a lot along the way—not necessary about vocabulary (I’m pretty sure I’ve forgotten any new words or factoids I gathered along the way), but about ourselves. We learned that we can accomplish big goals. That we can persevere. That we can take on a seven-foot by seven-foot by nine-year challenge and conquer it. And perhaps most of all, we learned that we aren’t just sisters, but friends. The crossword puzzle united us, even as the rest of our lives diverged.

No one prepares you for the sadness you feel when you accomplish your goal. You graduate, you cross the finish line, you fill in the last crossword square, and you expect the elation. You’re not prepared for the letdown afterward.

So what’s next, once you’ve finished that momentous thing? Here’s my bit of advice, from someone in the throes of finishing: Take time to celebrate. Don’t rush past your accomplishment—savor it. And then, when you feel like you’ve duly marked the occasion, find a new goal. Maybe even a wall-sized one.

Most dazzling human achievements are, in fact, the aggregate of countless individual elements, each of which is, in a sense, ordinary.
Angela Duckworth, Grit

***

What big thing have you accomplished recently? And how did you feel when it as all over?

6 Comments Filed Under: Family Tagged With: Angela Duckworth, crossword puzzle, finishing, goals, Grit, perseverance, sisters
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July 12, 2016

God’s Elbow

addie elbow3

When my niece Addie was almost two, my family headed to Washington State to visit my grandparents. The 2,000-mile trip made for a long day . . . even for those of us who weren’t toddlers. By the time we drove to the airport, changed planes, rented a car, and headed over the mountains to Grandma and Grandpa’s house, we’d spent an entire day using transportation of some kind. Add that to the two-hour time difference, and we had a pretty tired two-year-old on our hands.

Gratefully, Addie was a champion traveler and charmed the entire plane. But when we got to Grandma and Grandpa’s house, she toddled over to me, her eyes plaintive. “Eppie ebbow!” she said.

I looked at her, confused. The “Eppie” part was easy—that’s my auntie alias. But “ebbow”? What was she trying to tell me?

“Can you show me?” I asked.

She dutifully pointed to my elbow, but I was still at a loss for what that signified.

Finally I called in my sister, Addie’s mom, for some clues. “What does it mean if Addie is asking for my elbow?”

Meghan laughed. “Oh, she’s asking you to hold her in a rocking position—with her head in your elbow.”

Of course! I was only too happy to oblige.

***

Just a few months later, Addie’s world turned upside down when her parents brought home a baby brother. She had been practicing her big-sister skills with her doll (whom she called “Pink Baby”), but we weren’t sure how she’d adjust to not being the baby of the family anymore.

Most of all, how would she respond when someone else took the prime spot in her mama’s elbow?

When Meghan and Ted returned from the hospital with their precious bundle wrapped in a blue quilt, I held my breath, wondering how the introduction with the newly minted big sister would go. Would she be jealous? Would she feel bumped out of prime elbow territory?

I needn’t have worried. The first thing she said after inspecting little Grant was “Addie ebbow.” Then she sat down on the couch, ready to put her little brother in the crook of her own arm.

Here I was afraid she’d want Mama’s elbow for herself, and she was offering her elbow to her baby brother.

At two years old, Addie was living out this verse in 2 Corinthians:

God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.
2 Corinthians 1:3-4

God comforts us—he lets us rest in the cook of his arm, if you will. And in turn, he invites us to share that comfort with other hurting people.

When we know there’s no scarcity of love, we don’t have to hoard the comfort we’ve been given; we don’t have to be jealous for it. Instead, we can receive it with gratitude . . . and then extend it to someone else.

Have known the comfort of your Father’s elbow? If so, don’t keep that love to yourself. Find someone else who needs an elbow too, and share his comfort with them. And if you haven’t felt that comfort, know that his arm is ready, waiting just for you.

***

What’s your story? Has someone passed on God’s comfort to you? Or have you passed it on to someone else?

4 Comments Filed Under: Faith, Family Tagged With: aunt, family, God's love, siblings, sisters
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