Heather Riggleman

Living Bold Truths through Raw Faith.

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When life is bitter say thank you and grow

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When life is sweet, say thank you and celebrate. When life is bitter, say thank you and grow.” That’s what my favorite author, Shauna Niequist, has been known to say. Her words brought what I was trying to make sense of to life after a weekend at the lake.

The sun glistened off the water of Big Mac and loons dived underneath our Jet Ski’s waves. My girls laughed and shouted for me to go faster and faster, despite the butterflies in their stomachs. We crashed over waves and briefly took flight before splashing back into the water.

The girls’ faces were all smiles and their hearts were free because they trusted their captain. They knew I would keep them safe. I was in control, their trust was completely in me.

Undaunted by the rough waters, they took in the wonder of the great expanse. They shouted, “Best day ever,” with their hands reaching for the sky, free and safe.

It was a different story when it was my son’s turn on the Jet Ski.

Elijah’s faith in me wavered as we headed for open water. He clung to me and begged for the shore. I felt disappointed and bewildered about my boy as I turned around.

But then I stopped. I thought that maybe, if he was in control, it would change his mind. We stopped in the middle of the lake and I pulled him to the front of the Jet Ski. I moved to the passenger seat. Speaking in hushed tones, I put his hand on the gas and showed him how to steer. We slowly floated over the waves before he got up the nerve to squeeze the throttle.

He steered for the shore, where he thought he wanted to be, and I took the girls out for another ride.

He watched us on the water for hours, walking up and down the beach, skipping rocks and fishing off the dock. As the sun set, the waves grew larger and tossed our Jet Ski like a toddler’s boat in the bathtub. Cautiously he asked for a ride. His eyes met mine and I pulled him on board. His head rested on my back as we sliced through the waves.

When life is sweet, we breathe deeply the trust of our Captain. But when the waves crash over our heads, life feels uncertain, too fast and painfully out of control. We plead with the Captain, sometimes paralyzed and frozen. We beg for the shore, scrambling for a safe place to land.

Here’s what I’m learning, pain and fear and the mess are part of the waves we sail through. The part that gets us into trouble is when we take our eyes off the Captain, swallowing gallons of salty bitterness. We can’t head for safety on shore every time the waters swamp our boat. Like my son, I white knuckle life, too afraid to put myself in the Captain’s hands. Afraid, I bring him my very best and destroy myself for my failings, instead of finding a way to grow.

I pray, “I’m sorry I did this, I’m sorry I made this mistake, I’m sorry I chose not to trust.”

Like my son I’m relearning to trust God, the Captain. But here’s the thing, He’s a gentleman calling to me from the boat as the waves splash against my legs. It’s up to me to climb in and thank Him as He takes the wheel.

Jagged and unrefined

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I feel it most when sand runs through my fingers and the water rushes to the shore only to run back out again. I breathe deep and let the words run through me to form sentences which frame stories. It untethers my word-weaving-soul.

I open my eyes and think how God must’ve felt the same way as he formed our world from nothing.

This is my gift—to write little things and big things, like the sun sinking into the earth, community, God and hurts alike.

Lately sentences have been hard to form. Stories—empty. Pages—blank. Ink—dry. Mainly because I can’t see myself, I’ve lost my purpose and can’t see how He is shaping me. 

At least until a friend dragged me to the dump one weekend. Standing in 88 degree heat with  baseball cap on my head and a hot latte in my hand—I stood in the midst of her story unfolding.

 She spends her afternoons rummaging through tall piles of abandoned pieces of wood. Pallets, old barn wood and construction boxes.

To her, a pile of wood standing two stories high isn’t junk. She sees what I can’t see.

An old barn panel waiting to be dressed in paint and stain of a red dressed girl swinging into the sunset. An old pallet waiting to be Pottery Barn table. She sees the future for jagged pieces of decaying wood, dead and lifeless to become a canvas for arrows, flowers, and bold words.

I’m her adopted sister and sacarcasm runs deep as she sweats in the sun making fun of my latte. I banter back about sunburns and better things to do than being at the freakin’ dump, and the fact she loves the smell of the garbage baking in the sun.

To her—it’s a treasure trove of things waiting for new life.

She crawled around the pile until her trained eye spotted a piece ready to be refined. She found old barn wood, jagged and full of splinters. A discarded pallet. 

“Now this is worth the trip,” she quips as she grabs her crow bar and hammer; eager to pull rusty nails from it’s flesh. Sweat trickles down my back as I question her sanity and the value of wood I think is perfect for a bonfire.

Then it hits me. I hear Him whisper, “This is the process, daughter. To be plucked from the mess, refined in my Word and sanded into the future I have for you.” You haven’t lost your way, you haven’t lost your gift–you’re being refined.”

We like to think we’ve already arrived but reality tells us differently. Pride pushes up splinters when He offers to sand it down. Insecurity splits us pieces when God says, “I can mend it.”

As I watched Cindy pry nails and boards apart to be shaped into something new, I wondered how many of us are willing to be laid bare on His table?

Are we willing to go through the process as he puts on His gloves and gets to work, cutting off pieces of our lives that no longer fit. He nails us into place all the while leaving His fingerprints all over His creation. 

I see it in every one of Cindy’s pieces of art. But the question is this: Are you willing to be refined? Are you willing to wade through the process to see what His tomorrow brings?

 

Sometimes the best gifts come in the worst packaging

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Sometimes the best gifts come in the worst packages.
At least, that was the message a woman who I had never met whispered into my ear as I snot-nosed cried into her jean jacket.
She had to turn off her mic so the crowd couldn’t hear me bawl.

And I was embarrassed.

My outfit, manicured nails, and poise—all of it gone, drenched in tears and snot.

What woman doesn’t want to completely lose it in front of her church crowd?

I came to the retreat purely because Kim (the Pastor’s wife) asked if I would help greet. 

And really who says, “No,” to the Pastor’s wife, right?
But this woman invited to speak–her message was mine; only I didn’t know it until she began to unpack every detail and weave her past into my present.

She had delivered a message about the night her world changed when her husband became paralyzed; but with a twist, her worst nightmare became the gift she never expected.

My circumstances were much less dramatic but left me feeling sucker-punched as I gasped for air standing in the aftermath.

In less than a month my world had been tossed, shaken, and sifted much like Dorothy’s house in the Wizard of Oz. By the time the dust settled every inch of my life had changed.
I would be putting my house on the market—the home I brought my newborn babies to.
I would be saying goodbye to a career I adored.
I would be finding a new school for my son.
I would be finding additional help for my daughter.
I would be learning how to rebuild my marriage and trust my husband.

I would be fighting a cancer scare with a total hysterectomy. 

But this is what happens when you say “Anything,” to God. This is what happens when you look at your life and ask if this is all there really is—build a good career, buy the dream home, have the kids, and marry the guy.

This is what happens when you focus on all the wrong things – instead of what really matters. 

Several months ago, I woke up one morning, burned out, feeling as though this life wasn’t all it was supposed to be.

I was feeling empty and hollow. I started making careless mistakes and missing appointments. The dream was a dreadful empty machine. 

 I was using all of my gifts, all of my abilities, dreaming, living, creating, doing. I breathed my career and I lived for my kids, going to bed at 2 a.m. and waking at 6 a.m. just to do it all over again.
Burn Out.
There had to be more.
That’s when I prayed, “Lord, something needs to change, I want to change, use me.”

Here’s the thing, we grow up dreaming of the white picket fence, prince charming and cute kids all the while saying “Jesus, yes, of course, I love you more than anything but please don’t touch this area of my life. In fact bless it this way…”

But then he smiles while thinking, “Many are the plans in the mind of man, but my purpose will prevail.”

And then He says, “Are you sure? Because I have something much better for you.”

And he whispers:
“Do you love me enough to go where I send you? Do you love me enough to give me your dreams while I give you a new purpose?”

And that’s how I found myself sobbing in front more than one hundred women when the speaker cupped my face, wiped my tears and said,
“There’s no shame in what you’re doing. There’s no shame in going where you’re called.”

It turns out BURN OUT is one of such gifts. And it’s like that for most gifts wrapped in ugly packaging.

Loneliness—a chance to seek Him.
Labor—a child.
Mistakes—a chance to grow.
Burn Out—a chance to start fresh.
The Manager, The Cross, and The Tomb—Jesus and Salvation.
Yes…sometimes even the ugliest of circumstances, the ugliest of packages has something beautiful within.

I don’t know what path you’re walking but I want to take you in my arms, cup your face and tell you “Face it with fresh eyes, His eyes. Chances are—you just might find the gift within.”

Red Sea Road

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She sat with tears in her eyes, holding my attention and apologizing for something that happened eight years ago.
Gratitude poured forth from my soul, soothing a wound I didn’t know was there as we talked about the hard roads she and I had traversed alone—something I often call Red Sea Roads.
These are the paths that are tough, rocky and lonely. These are the roads we walk with saturating grace of each step and it carries the good and the hard and the mess and the chaos.
Often when my kids are faced with a struggle, I tell them they have some walking to do but their God is with them.
They can visualize their Creator dividing the red sea in half and the Israelites putting one faithful step in front of the other. I’ve walked many of my own red sea roads, this friendship was one of them.
Eight years ago, my friend and I exchanged awkward smiles. Newly married, she moved to Kearney and our paths crossed on hot summer days at the playgrounds, church and MOPS.
We both learned we had the exact same due date for her third child and my fourth.
But then she got the word I had lost my baby as her pregnancy continued to flourish. I reached out for tentative play dates but the calls went unanswered. Recently, we met for a news story and then bonded on common grounds of a healthier lifestyles and marriage.
“I wish we had become better friends sooner,” I said around a mouthful of chicken and avocado salad. She winced, “Me too. I think I owe you an apology. When I heard you had lost Alex, I didn’t know what to say. But now that I’ve experienced the same kind of loss, I wished I hadn’t let the awkwardness of what I felt get in the way. It was safer to stay on middle ground.”
And there it was, tears in her eyes, her hardest truth spilling over a bread bowl of tomato bisque.
It can be hard to share what’s real but feeling alone is even harder on either road.
The middle ground is where we like to be. It’s safe, the path is wide open, steady and stable—because the alternative is un-chartered territory, walking where we never expected.
But that’s the power of friendship. That’s the power of women, if we can’t find common ground, we make our own path to each other. And in this middle place of working through something, of traversing along this road—in the space between moving courageously and waiting to reach the destination, you’ll get there, even if it’s eight years later.

Craving the Much Need Silence

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The days in the Caribbean were amazing. The ocean glittered at sunset. There was sand between my toes and the food lit up every taste bud in my mouth. After the kids were sacked out from a fun day docked on shore, they were lulled to by the gentle rocking of the ship and the hum of the engine.

Late at night, I would sneak out onto the veranda to soak up the midnight blue sky backdropping millions of stars — more stars than I had ever seen in a lifetime.

That week on the ocean has like a fast for my mind. I felt strong, whole, healthy and vibrant in the silence and after the rest. I didn’t realize how much I craved the silence and the rest. I woke up each day ready for rest, self-care and family time.

But it didn’t feel that way at first. It felt as if a piece of me was missing when I discovered my phone wouldn’t work for the rest of our vacation unless I wanted to purchase a rather spendy Wi-Fi package, and even then, connecting to the web was akin to the dinosaur beginnings of Internet dialup. It meant our phones were rendered useless.

My teenager was also panicking about the lack of connection. I began to love the freedom from the cyber connection in favor of soul connections on sandy beaches. Of course, taking a mental break is easy when you’re someplace exotic.

I adored the quiet and the moment of being fully at rest. Gone was the humming of doing, hustling, phone calls, blog posts, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, writing stories, grocery lists, folding laundry and schedules. Instead, there was only time to be fully in the moment, and pieces of those moments slowly built me back to feeling whole.

During our family vacation, I realized I was starving my mind and soul for complete rest. As a recovering over-achieving perfectionist, I have a difficult time hearing myself think. I’d wake up at a frenzied pace, frustrated because no matter how hard I try, I’m already a mile behind and an hour late, never able to find time to re-calibrate.

I’d question whether the demands I placed on my life were priorities. I’d fret that something wasn’t done as well as it could have been or that I could have done better and then worry that there just wasn’t enough time in the day to accomplish all that I wanted or needed to do. All of this takes away from breathing deeply and creating joyful moments.

Now that I’m back home, my phone gets docked on my nightstand and when the world starts to feel noisy and my mind feels full, I retreat to the swing in our backyard.

I close my eyes remembering the beach and the ocean waves, then I begin to pray, thanking God for each and every thing I have to do, for my list, for my kids and even for the laundry.

Here’s the thing I’m learning: Peace isn’t found when I check out of reality on the web or check someone else’s status. It’s found in the quiet.

When the world is noisy and feels as if it’s emptying us, God meets us in the quiet and slowly fills us back up.
This column originally appeared on the Kearney Hub Newspaper. You can read it here.

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