Stephanie Rische

Blogger and Writer: Capturing Stories of God's Grace

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.

Friday Favorites for December…

friday_favorites_header1

Here are a few of my favorite things recently. Enjoy!

For aspiring cooks . . .

This “edible cookbook” is the first cookbook you can actually read, cook, and eat. I think this might be the kind of foolproof cooking I need . . . Edible Cookbook

For my fellow grammarians . . .

If you’ve ever found yourself amused by unnecessary and often ironic quotation mark usage, you’ll get a kick out of this. The 30 Most Unnecessary Uses of Quotation Marks in History

For anyone who likes an encoded message . . .

Did you know that FedEx, Amazon, and Tour de France all have secret messages embedded in their logos? 11 Hidden Messages in Company Logos

For the word lovers . . .

Do you know what golem and claymore mean? How about taffeta and decoupage? If not, it might be because you’re the wrong gender. The 24 Words That Are Most Known Only to Men or Women

For anyone desiring true community . . .

“Vulnerability is less like a sweet golden retriever, all directness and love, and more like a cat—unpredictable, reserved.” Be Brave Enough to Make a Mess

Week 2 of Advent: Peace

frog and toadOne of the holiday traditions at my in-laws’ is the annual Rische Family Book Club. At Thanksgiving this year, inspired by our charming two-year-old nephew Colin, we all brought books we’d enjoyed as children. I remembered loving the Frog and Toad books as a kid, but I honestly couldn’t remember much about them.

So off I went to the library, feeling tall and rather foolish as I crouched beside the pint-sized bookshelves to find Frog and Toad Together. I read the first story planted right there on the carpet, instantly transported back several decades as I paged through the classic brown and green illustrations.

When I got to the end of the story, I grinned, remembering why I loved these books.

I am Toad.

The story “The List” is about a day in the life of Toad that sounds a lot like days I’ve had myself, minus the tweed jacket. When Toad wakes up in the morning, he realizes he has lots of things to do, so he decides to write everything down on a list.

On his list of things to do that day, he includes such important things as wake up, eat breakfast, get dressed, play games with frog, and go to sleep. “There,” Toad says. “Now my day is all written down.” Then he goes about his day, relishing each time he gets to cross something off his list.

When Frog and Toad are taking a walk (item #5 on his list), a strong wind suddenly whisks the list out of Toad’s hand. Frog suggests that they run after it, but poor Toad, paralyzed with disbelief, says, “I cannot do that!” After all, running after his list was not one of the things he’d written down to do that day. Frog, ever the faithful friend, chases after the runaway paper but isn’t able to catch it.

“I cannot remember any of the things that were on my list of things to do,” Toad says. “I will just have to sit here and do nothing.” So Toad sits there and does nothing, and Frog sits beside him.

***

It is the second week of Advent: the candle of peace.

Somehow it doesn’t seem coincidental that we would have a sacred reminder about peace in the midst of one of the busiest week of the year. My typical approach is to wait until everything on my list is accomplished before I embrace peace, but it never works. The list, after all, is never all crossed out. It only gets longer as the days march toward December 25.

Do you really expect me to find peace in the midst of all this? I ask God. Can’t you make things settle down and then I can rest? But as I think about that first Christmas, I’m reminded that peace didn’t come because everything was calm and quiet, with each item ticked off the list. Joseph was trying to check into a hotel. Mary was trying to remember her Lamaze. The shepherds were pulling another night shift. The wise men were lugging gold across the Sahara. Not exactly a silent night.

So maybe what God is trying to tell us about peace is that we can’t wait for everything to be in place before we seize it. We have to actively carve out space for peace right in the middle of the chaos. And sometimes that means throwing out our to-do lists (or at least forgetting about them for a while).

So today I invite you to toss aside your lists—the gift list, the grocery list, the baking list—and let them blow away in the wind. Hear your friend Jesus say to you, “Sit here with me and do nothing.”

Sit in the glow of the Christmas lights or the flicker of the candlelight, and just be.

Be at peace. Be still. Be loved. Be.

The First Week of Advent: Hope

fireplace3Right now I’m reading Lila, the brilliant novel by Marilynne Robinson, and although it’s not a Christmas book, Advent fairly drips from the pages.

When we meet Lila, she is newly with child. This turn of events is so surprising, so unforeseen, that she barely allows herself to hold on to the news, let alone speak it aloud.

I imagine her expression must have looked something like young Mary’s at the Annunciation:

How can this be?

She’s been alone for such a long time. Too long, maybe. And she’s never stayed anywhere long enough to let anyone get close to her.

How can she dare to hope that this good man loves her . . . will keep on loving her? Surely if he knew everything, he would ask her leave. Or install barbed wire around his heart.

And now . . . a baby? To think that she could be part of bringing something good into this world after dwelling in so much darkness? She can’t allow her heart to crack open even a sliver for such a hope. And so she tries to seal herself off, to make sure no hope leaks in:

She thought a thousand times about the ferociousness of things so that it might not surprise her entirely when it showed itself again.

But as the story goes on, hope wears her down, wrapped in an overcoat of unrelenting love, and she finally surrenders to it.

Let it be to me as you have said.

***

There’s a song I love that goes like this:

Hope hears the music of the future
Before it’s played
Faith is the courage
To dance to it today

The first week of Advent stands for hope, and I think it’s the hardest candle of all to keep lit. Hope asks big things of us. It requires that we let go of the ferociousness we imagine and instead cling to the promises we’ve been given.

Here’s the other thing about hope: it makes us look like fools at times. Have you ever seen someone dancing to music no one else can hear? It’s ridiculous, at best. Hope means tuning our hearts to the melody God has placed inside us, long before the notes hit the air. But hope like this is worth the price, because this kind of hope does not disappoint.

During this Advent season, may we dance to the hope of his promises, even amid the silence.

Hope is imagining God’s future into the present.
N. T. Wright

Free Thanksgiving Printable!

give thanks

As a way to say thank you to all my blog readers, I would like to share this free Thanksgiving printable with you, designed by my friend Julie Chen at Life Verse Design. She is amazingly talented, and I encourage you to go to her site to find lovely notecards, inspirational art, plaques, and personalized pieces for your home.

Go to this link to download your printable copy of the piece above.

May your heart (and belly) be full this Thanksgiving! I thank God for each one of you.

Teach Me to Savor

fallI went on my final bike ride of the season a couple weeks ago—one of those sun-kissed days when the light bounces off the red maples and the golden poplars, the sky is an impossible shade of blue, and the air is rich with the smell of earth and bonfires. Every time the breeze blew, the sky rained leaves, the yellow and red confetti falling in fistfuls as I rode.

Of course, at the time I didn’t know it would be the last ride of the year. But here in the Midwest, November is notoriously fickle, and winter has a way of sneak-attacking you.

My husband and I have ongoing discussions about the merits and demerits of fall. He is Mr. Summer, relishing the long, hot days so he can ride his bicycle to his heart’s content. I tell him the things I love about fall, but he shakes his head, unconvinced. As I tick off the highlights of the season—apple crisp, walks in the woods, s’mores over an open fire—he logically points out that you can do all those things in the summer, but with warmer weather and longer days. “Fall is just the warning that winter is coming,” he says.

It wasn’t until I was riding my bike that day that it finally hit me that that’s precisely its appeal.

The particular beauty of fall comes because you know it won’t last.

Summer, with its endless days and languorous nights, its extravagant greens and lush flowers, seems to stretch on without end. But in the fall, reminders are everywhere that this beauty is fleeting. The trees chameleon overnight. Branches shed their leaves in a single storm. The nip in the air arrives out of nowhere one morning. Without warning, it’s time to pull the sweaters out of hibernation.

Here’s what I think: Autumn is God’s reminder to savor.

It’s a wake-up call that no season, no matter how wonderful, no matter how painful, will last forever. Fall is God’s way of saying, “Each day is a gift. Don’t take it for granted—but don’t hoard it either. Just see the beauty of today and soak it in.”

If you find yourself in a season of bliss right now, don’t fear the changing seasons ahead. Savor the gifts of the right-now. And if you are going through a painful season, look for beauty amid the dying. Savor this—yes, even this.

Autumn . . . the year’s last, loveliest smile.
William Cullen Bryant

Shine Where You Are

eclipseA few weeks ago I got up early and watched the lunar eclipse, the bright ball of a moon glowing orange in the inky sky. As I stood outside in the predawn, I got to thinking about the night sky . . . a topic I can’t say I’ve pondered much before (then again, I’m not usually pondering much of anything at o-dark-thirty).

The thing about the moon is that it doesn’t have much to commend it on its own. By itself, the moon is little more than a craggy mass of rock. It’s only when the sun reflects off its surface that it is able to light up the night sky. Without the sun, we’d never see the moon at all—not its fingernail-clipping crescent or its full-orbed harvest glow.

And then there are the stars, which march out one by one to the same spot every night. They twinkle from their designated places, glowing modestly from the formations they’ve stood in for generations. Their beauty comes not so much from being the flashiest or the brightest but from where they shine in the dark sky.

When I think about this media-saturated culture we live in, sometimes I wonder if we all feel undue pressure to Dream Big and to Do Significant Things and to Refuse to Settle for Ordinary. And while yes, it’s important to chase after the visions God has planted inside of us, sometimes I think we can get hung up on flashiness instead of obedience.

What if sometimes God wants us to just shine where we are?

If one day the moon decided it no longer wanted to remain in the line of the sun, we wouldn’t benefit from its nightly glow. If a star in the Big Dipper decided it wanted more of the limelight and stepped out of formation, we’d be deprived of its unique display of light.

So maybe there’s a lesson for us in the night sky. We aren’t called to be the brightest or the best—we’re just called to show up in the ordinary moments and reflect the Light.

  • Maybe you’re called to shine as you do another load of laundry.
  • Maybe you’re called to shine in that same old job, day after day.
  • Maybe you’re called to shine as you listen, really listen, to the cashier at the grocery store.
  • Maybe you’re called to shine as you serve someone who doesn’t seem to appreciate you, to love someone who doesn’t seem to love you back.

Today, I urge to reflect his light—right where you are. Show up and shine—right where you are.

He determines the number of the stars     and calls them each by name.
Psalm 147:4

A Pre-Game Talk for Dad

dad and meToday my dad is being sworn in as a judge. He’d prefer not to have the spotlight on him, and if I tried to say something nice to his face, he would most likely crack a joke. So I’m writing down my words to him instead.

***

Dad, you have always been the one in the stands, cheering for your kids. You still have your “wall of fame” in your office, plastered with yellowed newspaper clippings you saved about our sports events and academic endeavors, along with the calendar we made for you years ago with pictures of us as kids. We’ve tried to tell you that the dates are all wrong now, but you insist on keeping it up.

You were our biggest fan, the dad who would leave work early so he could be there for every game and meet and recital. I always looked up to your spot in the bleachers, and without fail I’d find you there, giving me the secret family signal.

And now here we are in the audience as you stand at the front of the courtroom in a black judge’s robe with your hand on a Bible, so official as you get sworn in.

Before each of my basketball games, you’d give me a pre-game talk. Don’t be afraid to shoot. Be smart. This is your game. Think! The talk always ended with your trademark fist bump. And now, what words can I offer you on this day, as you prepare to discern cases and bring justice to your corner of the world?

I know that God has already given you what you need for this role. I know, because I’ve been on the receiving end of your judicial gifts my whole life. Whenever I had a decision to make, I’d ask you what to do. I was convinced you knew everything, but (to my consternation) you never told me what to do. You’d help me work through it myself and then tell me, “Now go ask your mother.” And whenever I flubbed up, you gave me that rare combination of truth and love, justice and compassion.

So all I have for you in this pre-game moment is a prayer. A prayer that you will lean into this call you’ve been given. A prayer that you will spread your wings inside that judge’s robe and find that it was made precisely to fit you. A prayer that you will have the wisdom of Solomon to get to the heart of things. A prayer that your gavel will be part of making the Kingdom come in this world.

I will be in the stands, cheering you on.

Fist bump.

Announcing the Next Book Club

What Alice ForgotThanks to everyone who participated in our discussion of Glitter and Glue, we discussed here. Congratulations to Nancy, the winner of the free book giveaway! (Nancy, I’ll send you a separate message about getting your book.)

Our next book discussion will be about What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty.

Here’s the description of the book, taken from the back cover:

Alice Love is twenty-nine, crazy about her husband, and pregnant with her first child.

So imagine Alice’s surprise when she comes to on the floor of a gym and is whisked off to the hospital where she discovers the honeymoon is truly over—she’s getting divorced, she has three kids and she’s actually 39 years old. Alice must reconstruct the events of a lost decade, and find out whether it’s possible to reconstruct her life at the same time. She has to figure out why her sister hardly talks to her, and how is it that she’s become one of those super skinny moms with really expensive clothes. Ultimately, Alice must discover whether forgetting is a blessing or a curse, and whether it’s possible to start over.

Hope you will join us!

Book Club Discussion: Glitter and Glue

Glitter and GlueKelly Corrigan says in the prologue, “If you had asked me, after I graduated from college, whose voice I would hear in my head for the rest of my life, I’d have said some combination of my dad’s and my roommate Tracy’s and Jackson Browne’s. I would have continued with ten or twenty or two hundred others before I got to my mom.” But in her early twenties, Kelly traveled halfway around the world only to discover that she was more like her mother than she ever dreamed.

Discussion #1: Are You the Glitter or the Glue?

When Kelly was in high school, her mother summarized the difference between her and Kelly’s father with these words: “Your father’s the glitter but I’m the glue.” In other words, her dad might have been the more charming, fun parent, but her mom was the one who held everything together.

In your home growing up, did you have one parent who was the glitter and one who was the glue? In your home now, are you the glitter or the glue?

Discussion #2: Appreciating Your Mother

Kelly didn’t think she was much like her mother and didn’t understand her very well until she became a nanny and found herself quoting her mom and acting just like her as she cared for the children. After a long day full of meeting the needs of people who were dependent on her, she said: “Maybe the reason my mother was so exhausted all the time wasn’t because she was doing so much, but because she was feeling so much.”

Was there a pivotal season or moment in your life when you starting appreciating or understanding your mom in a new way?

Discussion #3: Leaving Home

It took going all the way to Australia for Kelly to discover that she was her mother’s daughter. As she cared for the Tanner children, she realized she was becoming “less smitten with world travelers and their ripping yarns, and more awed by people who have thrown themselves into the one gig that really matters: parenthood.”

Do you think the author would have had the same epiphanies if she’d stayed home? Have you ever had to leave home to find out who you really are?

Rating

I would give this book four stars. Kelly is a born storyteller, and she has a knack for recounting ordinary events in a compelling way. She delves into the complex relationships between mothers and daughters in an authentic, emotive way. I recommend it—whether you’re a daughter or a mother, or both.

How many stars would you give this book?

{Remember: There will be a free book giveaway for one lucky commenter! Just enter a comment with your thoughts about the book below.}