Heather Riggleman

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The Tribe that Built Me

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We gather once a week. We circle up, each sharing the latest news, anecdotes about work, life, and kids. At one point, Cindy nicknamed our group The Tribe and it’s sort of stuck. If you’re part of a church you may know them by a different name, like life groups, small groups, or community groups. At first we were strangers but as we gather weekly, our stories become threads that weave into each other’s lives. These strangers are now my people. My truth tellers, my warriors, my problem solvers and middle of the night callers. This is my built in family.
This is the tribe that built me.
When I first met this group of women, I was a cynic. Past relationships with women were filled with land mines and battle scars but my life had become dry and barren. As a working mom I would have days that would go on for a life time.
I never made it out the door with matched socks and the kids were always late. It didn’t help my case when my kids would tell their teachers they were late because of my “drinking problem.” My problem is that I don’t function before at least three cups of coffee in the mornings. Try explaining that to your children’s teachers while wearing visibly mis-matched socks. I tell them, it’s still a thing.
And there’s only so much talking I could do with my kids and husband. The guy loves me but not when I try to use up all 40,000 words of things I need to say. Some of he doesn’t get. And really who can blame the guy when I want to talk about the magnitude of choosing the right paint color to create a warm home. And the kids? They didn’t understand the pressure to pick the right shade of green but rather they told me to pick the color of grass green and move on.
So when I was invited to join this group of women, I imagined tortuous moments of stale tiny sandwiches and dissecting the book of Judges which would likely put me to sleep.
But what I found was a group of women all new to each other and the conversations became battering ram revelations that began to take down the fortress around my life. We talked about love and hope, parenting and marriage, redemption and miracles.
The expectations I had about friendships began to change as I came face to face with the real kind. It turns about behind the idea of real community are real life women willing to link arms and do life together if you let them. But that’s the thing, the secret to having a friend is being a friend. The secret to being accepted is acceptance and the secret to getting past someone’s defenses is taking down your own.
This, for me, has been the challenge: to boldly welcome others into the mess that is me. The chance to find real community is to be the real me.
Why don’t we believe that? We insist to our kids they can be loved by being their beautiful selves; but then why do we tell our grown up selves in order to be liked and loved, we have to be the most interesting, the most successful, or the most beautiful? Maybe the surest way to build friendships is to take a deep breath and plunge into the mess.
These days, my tribe and I do life together, we pick each other up when life throws curve balls like the sex talk in fourth grade, when a spouse announces divorce, or when we lament at $500 bill because we hit the trash can backing out of the drive way or we’ve been so busy doing and being and living that we have no clue what it’s like to be our real selves, so we rally for a girls night out.
But that’s a risk right? It’s to risk sharing life, being real. It’s vulnerability. It’s brave.

Heather Riggleman is a child of the Mid-West and a coffee addict without a recovery plan. She is a full-time mother of three, author, and journalist. She is learning to accept the mess after chasing perfect for too many years.
heather.riggleman@kearneyhub.com
@HeatherRig

Build Bridges–Not Barriers

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I think I suffered friendship PTSD this past weekend.

At least that’s what a friend Lisa Jo Baker calls it. She recently wrote a book “Never Unfriended,” and has spent thousands of hours being held hostage to the worry of friendships.

If you’ve never experienced gut punches from careless comments and words, then you didn’t experience the terror of middle school as an awkward preteen or the attacks, rants and riots before and after the election.

Words have the power to build up and tear down. Words have the ability to initiate change, affect a community or speak truths. It’s one of the reasons why I love my word-weaving job.

Words have the ability to create hope, and they have the ability to wound someone so deeply, they may never make it back.

For this very reason, I teach my three children the wielding the tongue is not for the faint of heart. And it’s something I’m mindful of at all times, especially on social media.

Little did I realize gnashing of teeth would ensue when I posted my delight about the introduction of vouchers for private education. We have kids in both Kearney Public Schools and at Faith Christian School.

Imagine my surprise when teachers, parents, grandparents and employees sent private emails and posted snarky, rude comments. But it wasn’t just this issue, some attacked us for asking about reviews of the new box office movie “The Shack” or dismay because Disney has a gay moment in the new movie “Beauty and the Beast.” Others lashed out about being narrow-minded as a Bible-believing mother.

So here’s the thing, I’ve been seeing a lot of posts with outrage and genuine concern about the simplest things turning into a debate — whether it’s gay Disney, arguments of whether “The Shack” is biblical or new age, pro-vaccination versus anti-vax, private education vouchers, or what dishwasher you want to buy. It makes me question the motive. Is it because we want to control the outcome that we forget only God can move into the spaces and hearts our opponents?

Are we so blinded by the frustration and anger in our own lives that we forget there is a real human person on the other side of that screen?

Have we forgotten that there are real people with real lives who have experiences different than our own?

Would the words dripping with venom leave our tongues if we were sitting down to have dinner together? Are you listening to the tone of your words or how your actions are perceived? Would you approach it differently?

A friend wrote to his friends and family: “I want to challenge everyone to be careful of what we say and how we say it. We should ask, ‘Are the things I say building bridges between me and people? And therefore between people and Jesus?’”

Many times, the way that these issues are talked about on Facebook don’t build bridges, but instead build barriers.

Facebook is a wide audience for what you say and how you say it. Are you communicating your love for them? Are they experiencing grace through your words? It’s OK to hold to different opinions; in fact, it’s encouraged, but the words you speak about it matter. They can bring people life and they can further people’s pain or create tension.”

Can we be bridge builders or will we use the power of the tongue to tear another person down?

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.

It’s Ok to not be Ok

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Why I talk about depression is so maybe someone else can heal.

There’s this question doctors ask if you’ve been injured: “On a scale of one to 10, one meaning manageable and 10 the toughest pain you’ve ever encountered, how would you rate your pain?”
I’ve been asked this dozens of times, when I was in labor with my kids, when I wrapped my Suburban around an electrical pole, after several surgeries, and, thankfully, from a counselor when I was dealing with depression.
That’s the thing with pain — it’s white hot and intense. Like birthing pains, the next pang hurts worse than the last, so we avoid or escape it at all costs. We hide from it, block it with a pill, cover it up with makeup and a smile that says, “I’m fine.” We attempt to control it with personal vices.
That’s another thing about pain, it seems as if no one else can feel what you’re going through. Often, it leaves us gasping for air because we’ve been taught by our culture that it’s not OK to invite someone into your mess, your pain.
Somewhere along the way we’ve lost the ability to say, “I’m not OK,” and when we do say something, our culture has been taught to respond with:
“It will get better.”
“Just be positive”
“It’s all in your mind.”
“Don’t let your emotions control you.”
“Focus on the positive.”
“It isn’t as bad as you think.”
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself.”
“God doesn’t give you more than you can handle.”
And my personal favorite, “Happiness is a choice.”
So when a friend began treading water sinking into depression because of a failed marriage of more than 20 years, I didn’t tell her any of those things. I chose the opposite.
I stood with her at church when the blade of her pain was searing hot and I asked her what someone once asked me, “On a scale of one to 10, how would you rate your pain — one, manageable; 10, the worst pain you’ve ever experienced.”
Her tears soaked my shoulders when she whispered, “I think it’s at an eight, maybe nine.” And then I repeated the words to her what someone wisely once said me, “You’re a fighter. You can face this. You could’ve said ‘10’ but you didn’t.”
The thing is pain isn’t your enemy. It reminds you that you’re human, that you’re alive. Pain gives rich meaning to life experiences. It reminds you that you had experienced something good, amazing, joyful, but it sounds bells signaling something is not right. In my experience it forces you to places such as church, hospitals, in the arms of friends and a counselor’s office so healing can begin.
Without pain, there wouldn’t be an indication of healing to be made whole.

To read the rest of the column, click here. 

The gift is found in the unraveling

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There are six types of fear for moms:

  • Terror
  • Panic
  • We need to talk
  • Dressing rooms
  • Your mother is coming for Christmas (last minute)
  • Cleaning the house for four hours, then watching your little humans destroy it within 10 minutes and knowing this cycle will repeat for 20 years.

I can say this because I watched my offspring, their rabbit and dogs destroy the house after I had cleaned it for the last four hours. I had envisioned a warm and welcoming home filled with family and friends visiting after the Christmas service and kids’ concerts.

When I texted a friend about the shock and rage over the tinsel, Ritz crackers, peanut butter and Douglass fir needles all over the house, she texted back within seconds, “Sorry hon, get a Dyson and expect it for the next 10 years, maybe 20.”

This is the life of a mom at Christmas time. Not all is merry and bright. Sometimes we want to hide in closets with our favorite merlot and dark chocolate and question why we decided to procreate in the first place.

We look at baby Jesus in all of his manger glory, only to turn away from the scene disappointed that our Christmas cheer doesn’t match the wondrous hope of the season.

Why the heck we envision a bright and merry home at Christmas is beyond me.

I blame it on Southern Living magazine with Pinterest-perfect living rooms and tall, beautifully dressed Christmas trees where the dogs lie underneath tuckered out and happy and the kids — they’re dressed in their best and actually playing together. Personally, the “playing nice” must be the product of Photoshop.

This scene in no way has ever resembled ANY of our Christmases for the last 17 years, except maybe when Chris and I were newlyweds and ignorant teens. Our first Christmas consisted of a Charlie Brown tree, no presents except our undying love for each other and our newborn Cheyenne. It was merry and bright until she wailed into the early morning.

Each year, I assume my children have matured and things will be different. When fall turns into winter, I want to create the feeling of wonder, love, hope and peace in my home. I believe it’s going to be the best Christmas yet, completely forgetting my kids are kids.

They hit the home like a tornado, and that’s when I texted my friend, right after my home and emotions unraveled.

As I waited for the dust to settle, I looked at the mess before me and thought, maybe the greatest gift of all is in the unraveling.

Maybe the merry and bright is found in the mess.

Maybe it’s found in the after-party of dirty dishes and platters that served the bread we broke together at the table.

Maybe it’s found in the needles on the floor or on the dirty fingerprints all over the ornaments and the ones that shattered on the floor.

Maybe the merry and bright is found in the footprints of mud and snow found on my clean floors from my family.

As I looked at baby Jesus lying in the manger, a realization hit me. How his presence must’ve unraveled the lives of Mary and Joseph, and yet they embraced the hope and light of his birth. Maybe the greatest gift of all is the mess and in the unraveling.

 

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