Hope In Suffering: How I got here
A captioned podcast with Tirzah at the Table
I recently had the pleasure of being on a podcast called “Tirzah at the Table” with my friend Alycia Johnson. I’ve decided to share the generated captions for you but hope you get a chance to listen for yourself!
You can find the original here and read more from the Tirzah Ministry here.
This podcast features topics of Christian faith, mental health, idolatry, and where to find hope in the midst of difficult circumstances.
Alycia Johnson 00:02
Hey everyone, and welcome to another episode of Tirzah at the Table where we talk to women who are discovering and have discovered their callings in life. Today we have Chanel, I'm super excited because she has been a part of Tirzah since the beginning, even before me. And it's been super fun because we've worked together on the board. We've written Bible studies together, we've done marketing things together. And we've just grown in life and our journeys and finding passions. And we've been talking a lot before record about struggle, and learning to navigate struggle and using the Bible as holding on to hope for making it through. So I'm really excited to talk to Chanel today. So Chanel, welcome.
Chanel Riggle 01:00
Thank you. Good to be here. I'm super excited.
Alycia Johnson 01:04
I'm really excited to have you and I would love for you to tell everyone about yourself and what it was like for you growing up.
Chanel Riggle 01:14
Sure, yeah. So my name is Chanel, Riggle, and I'm 31 years old. I feel like that always helps. Knowing people's ages blesses me. So I currently make my living as a marketing coordinator for a nonprofit called the coffee oasis. And it's kind of a dream job. So I'm super excited about that getting to help spread the word about their mission. And it's a Christ based nonprofit, which I love. I'm also a wife, a mother and a writer. I have a substack newsletter called motherhood minutes. And I started about a year and a half ago, because I find myself at the time nursing in the middle of the night. And I would have like five minutes where I just really needed to feel connected to people. And I figured I'd just start writing. See if someone was to connect with me. Yeah, so that's kind of who I am. As far as me growing up. I mostly grew up in a small town, a very small town called Perry, Ohio. And I had a pretty good childhood, I had some struggles with feeling like I wasn't fitting in, I was bullied a lot. And my parents also divorced when I was very young, which I'm fine with. I'm very blessed to have amazing step parents and half siblings. It's been awesome having a big family. But when I was growing up, I felt like I didn't really have a home. And I wasn't really sure who I was, I had a lot of identity issues, abandonment, fears kind of thing. So with that, when I was about 11, I started writing. And I haven't stopped, I just write all the time. And I also started documenting what I now know were symptoms of depression. So which I still struggle with. But I also didn't have any real knowledge of God or the gospel. I did have exposure to church. So when I visited my dad growing up in the summer, and every other Christmas break, he would take me to their Lutheran Church, and I was like, involved in vacation Bible school, and I, like loved the building of the church. You know, like, I love the familiar aspect of it. But as I got older, and I became a teenager, I started identifying as Wiccan. And I felt really isolated by Christianity and the church. And I feel a lot of shame about it now, but I remember being in Sunday service, and when everybody was saying all of these doxology and Lord's prayer, I just be silently saying the opposite things in my head. I'd be praying to goddesses, and I just I hate, I hate that. But it's so true. And I get really angry when people would assume that I was a Christian, because they'd be Oh, you're such a good goody two shoes. It's such a good head on your shoulders. We're just a really sweet Christian girl and I'm not a Christian. I am good because of me, you know? And so that's that's how I grew up. I was extremely affected by suffering in the world. And on one hand, I wanted to keep everything very rational and scientific. And on the other hand, I felt like this deep calling to help other people. But I didn't understand where the bridge was. And so now that bridge is Christ, like now, that's the bridge. But growing up and not knowing who I was on the identity and not knowing the gospel, it was just a very confusing time of my life. So yeah, a little bit about me.
Alycia Johnson 05:35
You have a really cool testimony, Chanel was sharing with me before this. And I think it's interesting, I wanted to touch on you talked a little bit about Wiccan, and I don't know that everyone knows that. For me, that was something I did know about growing up. And there's a really strong pull there for girls. Because there's this idea of feminine power, like you were saying, praying to goddesses. Like, times, we have that association with God being a male, when God is beyond all comprehension, including gender. And we get in this mindset, because I remember going through this space myself as a little girl of being like, wow, become a Wiccan. I can worship a goddess. And it's just like this way, the devil twists things and you're focused on gender. And you're Oh, my goodness, this will be so cool.
Chanel Riggle 06:33
Yeah, it was definitely a female empowerment thing. And it wasn't until I was like, literally, I don't know, three years ago that I had this realization there. Those things are, they have a reality to them. It's a lowercase truth. But it's not truth with a capital T. So like, I grew up obsessed with Greek mythology. Yeah. And then you learn about all the goddesses. I remember in eighth grade, I could just rattle off all their names and what what it was about, you know, I loved Athena, it was the goddess of wisdom. And Diana, she was virgin warrior. And I loved I love that female empowerment thing. And I got until Tarot cards tarot cards a little bit. And then I just really wanted to embrace the power of the earth. And it was really startling to me. When I would read the Bible. I remember the first time I read in the Bible, I think it was in Psalm somewhere where it talks about how we don't worship the stars in the sun. Because it was the things that God made, you know, and I started reading more about worshiping, things that he made, or things that we make with our hands, and then calling gods and so I'll tangent there, but I was definitely attracted to the female empowerment.
Alycia Johnson 07:56
I just love that you said that. Because that was exactly the verse that came to mind for me was that was the realization I had is worshiping the creation rather than the Creator. So it's like you see the beauty in his creation, but aren't recognizing that he made it. And he's the author, the painter, the finisher?
Chanel Riggle 08:18
Yeah. And I don't know where it is in the Bible. (Isaiah 44) It's saved somewhere in my Bible app, like deep in the highlights. So I'm sure I could find it for the notes later on. But there is, I don't think it's Psalms. I think it's I can't remember. But there's like this whole chapter where it talks about the example where like, God created would you like, the tree, and then man cuts down the tree. And with that wood, he styles himself all of these things. And then he carves himself in idol and he makes fire. And then he says that the wood idol that he created, made the fire. And it's, I'll have to find it for you. Because that's all it was. It was really a changing moment where I just highlighted so much of my Bible as
Alycia Johnson 09:12
that does. And I love the it was we've been talking, you just keep bringing it back to the Bible and how you discovered those things through God's word. And I do know what you're talking about too. And I just know that sounds so Old Testament, and I just can't remember where in the Old Testament and adding to that I felt like as we've been talking about the Bible, that's a great segue into how you got involved in tearsa. Because for both of us, it stemmed from the Bible is a huge part of that.
Chanel Riggle 09:46
Yeah, so I'm thinking about this, and it's, I'm gonna get to Tirzah but I feel like there has to be a little bit of a prelude. Because So, when I was 18, I graduated high school. All moved out of my small town, like done with this going to the West Coast, and I'm in Washington State now. And I moved in with my dad and his family, the church goers. And the simplest way I can put it is I suddenly felt like I hadn't. My heart was open to discussing God, capital G. So there was like this wall had just been removed. Anytime I read an accident is how there's like a hardening of a heart or a softening of a heart. That's me. My heart was so hard. I would be the kind of person who just wanted to combat like people. Well if the Bible is true than tell me about this! But as soon as I had that softening of my heart, suddenly, I was just like, learning about stuff that I feel like I hadn't heard before, because my ears were just closed. And so it got to the point where a year after that, like just asking people questions, I very suddenly felt like I needed to get baptized. Yeah. And I was not like living to become a Christian. I was just asking questions. And I think I surprised everybody when I got baptized. And so. But that call was not strong enough. At the time in my life, the call of the world was stronger. And so it was a point in my life where even though these things were happening, most of my time, I was like, pursuing romantic relationships. And I was pursuing addictions and trying to get like a college experience. I, I never really stepped out of the line in high school. So I was like, This is my time. Like, I'm not gonna waste it on Christ. That sounds horrible. But that's, that's my thinking, right? And I ended up like getting engaged. And that broke off. And I was, I moved back to Ohio. And like, in that September, and by November, I was in the hospital. I checked myself into suicide watch. Yeah. And 74 hours later, I was like, really traumatized and really tired and depressed. And I remember sitting on the couch, and my mom was sitting with me. And I just prayed to God, I never want to feel like I want to take my life ever again. Yeah, I had left my Bible in Washington at my dad's house. And so I didn't have a Bible with me. And I just remember wishing I really had one. So I asked my pastor to send me a Bible, and he sent me like this giant brick student Bible. But as an important part of my story, for a lot of reasons, but Tirzah that comes in because I didn't magically get my life together And then just magically start reading the Bible, and suddenly live a Christian life, just like I hadn't before. Yeah, because of sin, because of my nature, selfish and I'm, I want things the way I want them. And so I had no idea what it meant to be a Christian. And Yelena, had I think just started to your thought that January, like with some Christmas money. And April of that year, I found her blog, which led me to Tirzah magazine. And that was really a point where it was a turning point, because I could go somewhere and figured out like, what does it mean to be a Christian who's not a wife, who's not a mother, and who was an a young man in seminary than 2013. That's like the only Christian blogs we could find. Yeah, I feel like tears. I was huge for me. And eventually, I started submitting articles. And a couple years after that, I was leaving Bible study groups with her kind of crazy. So yeah, that was very important for me to find Tirzah. Um,
Alycia Johnson 14:05
I love that I remember like when we became a board back in the day, you talking about that and sharing your story. And it just being so cool to hear how you came get Tirzah because for me, it was a similar story of I grew up in the church, and I didn't know Jesus, but it was a really strict church, about how women interacted with Jesus and how he saw them. It was similar to yelling actually, of just roles being put in place for women, and recognizing that it's not about becoming a pastor. It's about knowing your creator for yourself, and not looking to anyone else at all. Not a spouse, not a father, but yourself and saying I can have that intimate relationship. And I can have it through like reading the Bible and praying and discovering that for me, it was a little bit different. It was like, share sharing my story and tying in Scripture. So it was like really having to apply it to my life. Yeah. And it's really cool to see how God works to even take ministries and minister in different ways. It was like teaching you scripture, it was teaching me how to apply it in the real world, like I had it there. But I did not know how to like fully apply. And it's like, that's so cool. When you think about that we talk about Feminine Empowerment and all that. But it's
Chanel Riggle 15:29
just to bring it around. That's like a completely different kind of Feminine Empowerment that I in my life could not have identified with
Alycia Johnson 15:40
before. Yes,
Chanel Riggle 15:42
exactly. Especially in the international community. I was meeting over the internet, women who were from very different cultural backgrounds. But they were Christian. And that was like this ribbon that we were both clinging on to. Yeah. And it was, yeah, very empowering.
Alycia Johnson 16:02
It's yeah, it's really cool to think about it that way. And I always like to tell people, because there's the stories of all the females in the Bible and stuff. And it's like Jesus chose women to be the first ones to witness when he rose. That's because during that time in history, women were the ones that weren't seen as credible witnesses, like when you went to court in that time, one woman's testimony was not equal to one man, it took like multiple people. So the fact that he chose them is so incredible. And it's like, it's just this reminder, it's not about having a role in life, or a title or a Bible college degree. It's about just saying, I am known and seen by the author and creator of the world. And I can speak words around that. And it doesn't matter what calling or role I have, I have that relationship. And that's what matters first.
Chanel Riggle 17:00
Chills, I'm so excited about those conversations.
Alycia Johnson 17:04
I'm really enjoying it. I feel like we're gonna go on a whole testimony thing. But like within that, and like knowing the author and creator of the universe, I felt like we talked about this in the beginning, like with your journey, and pression, and things like that. It's, you had those very real journeys, and how did God strengthen you like your relationship with him? We talk a lot about divine healing, which I am open to and believe in. And we also want to recognize, like, real struggle, being in moments of heartache and trusting God with answers when you don't have any, like, what has that journey been for you with depression? And even right now, I know you have different battles you're facing, what do you hold on to?
Chanel Riggle 18:01
Yeah, you know, I'm very well acquainted with some sort of suffering in my life. And before I was a believer, I would just do I think what's very, understandably common, a lot of people who don't believe in Christ, it's just like, why is suffering exists? Like if there was a good God, you know, and that was before I was learned that Christ loves us through His suffering. Because it didn't make sense. It doesn't it make sense, but like, in a good way, like thinking about Psalm 40, because I have, have it, read it, I wrote it out by my desk, and there's a line. I'm just gonna read it. So as I waited patiently for the Lord, he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit out of the mud and mire, set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. You put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise toward God, my name will see and fear the Lord and put their trust in Him. And so I wrote this down because it's one of the first songs I remember vividly reading as a new believer, the He lifted me out of slimy pit out of the mud, and mire that was so relatable to me because I had always described my depression as just being stuck in the mud. Like I'm walking through mud, like nothing I do. And even if I get out of the mud, it's still on me. But I was reflecting on the line, you know, he'll put a new song In My Mouth since the day so, back up. I've been having this pain. I see the remaining time. I've been having those unexplainable pins and needles pain for the past like 10 weeks. And before that, I was having like these chest pains and my heart was fine and I was in the hospital three years and they checked me So nothing's wrong with you, you're perfectly healthy, probably anxiety. That's a different resentment I'm working through. And you know, I got to a point where, in my depression, I said, God, I never want to feel like I want to kill myself. Yeah, but I still have a spin like 10 years now. I think this is year 10. Since I happened, I have been so depressed, I cannot get up off the floor. But I have never wanted to kill myself since. Yeah. And they keep asking me that. If I go to the ER, I say you're on depression medication. Are you feeling suicidal? Especially experiencing pain, I said? No. They're like, Are you sure. And I'm like, I have had days where I have not been able to get up. And I have been in tears. And I have never wanted to kill myself, since I pray to God that I never want to feel that way again. And, you know, it says many will see and fear the Lord. And when we think about the word fear, the world who doesn't know Christ, I think they hear the word fear of the Lord. And it's like what people tell us the word fear is right, like to be scared of. But that kind of fear is actually like, in reverence of, you know, and that's how I feel with as I walk through these struggles, whether it's my mental health, or these physical struggles, I don't know what to do, like, I stopped praying for the pain to go away. After about a month, and I'm now just praying, I can find peace in it. Because when I look back on all the things that he's brought me through, and all the things he's brought my family through all those, like really deep prayers I've had, he's always been faithful to take away the fear of the unknown, but he hasn't always taken away like the the symptoms of brokenness that we experience in our bodies. I don't remember what their original question was. But you're right. If we're talking about how, what the journey has looked like for me, and whatever suffering I'm going through, I think that's why it's so important for me to, you know, part of that prayer I made 10 years ago was not just to never feel suicidal again, but to also never be dishonest. Yeah. About how I'm feeling again. And that's been like a really radical way to live. And I think it's important, especially as a Christian, to be honest, because otherwise, you forget where your hope lies.
Alycia Johnson 22:53
Yeah. So I think you are tracking fine. And I agree with that. Because as I was talking, like I said, I absolutely believe in divine healing. I also believe in medication, too. I believe we each have our own journey. Yeah. And we can't limit or box how God does things. And as you were talking about depression and your journey, it was reminding me of the story of Elijah. And you see that a lot with the Prophets especially and Elijah goes into a cave. And
Chanel Riggle 23:29
he and I can't sleep. Like take a little nap. Or something that you that
Alycia Johnson 23:36
day. We, we forget those parts of the Bible.
Chanel Riggle 23:41
And I love what I love tangent again. I know we're limited. What I love about that is the fact that that happens right after like this, like mountain top moment and faith. Yes. And then Elijah was just like, you would think logically like, why are you depressed right now? Get up like, Your God is so good.
Alycia Johnson 24:02
Did you see what just happened? Yeah, I totally agree. So tying it all back to Scripture, again, it really is, is your journey, and it's your story, and there's a testimony in it. And you may find yourself completely set free, it may continue to be a lifelong journey. That's for you and God to work out. And that's the beauty of that personal relationship. I know, people can't see this besides, besides us, but we're running short on time.
Chanel Riggle 24:36
And oh, that's not to keep going.
Alycia Johnson 24:41
Back when we have longer podcasts, you
Chanel Riggle 24:44
know, I would really love you know, you had asked me to consider what advice I would have for the girl who didn't know what her calling was. Yes, I did write some things down. I'd love to share about that. You asked in your email to think how Has God led you on a journey to discover his plans for your life? He was thinking about that. And I was like, I don't know what his plans are. All I know is kind of what I've shared just now is like, I don't know how I'm going to do it. But I know it's very important for me to stay honest about the struggles I'm going through, and to use that as fuel to share gospel. And there are some pretty profound things God's taught me in the past 13 years. And the first book or letter of the Bible, I was told to me by my pastor after being in the hospital was to read Ephesians. And Ephesians talks about how Christ was predestined us for adoption, before the creation of the world. So in that time, when there was just darkness, and light breaks through with the words, let there be light, God was already in love with you. And he already knew you. And my brain can't even comprehend that truth. Because, like, I was literally thinking about this last week in the dark at like, five in the morning, just like, like, on my couch, like coffee. Um, but if you want to understand your new identity, as a Christian, and you have like no idea where to start, go read Ephesians specifically, one and two, it was just linger there for as long as possible. And in Ephesians, 2:10, it says, For we are God's handiwork, not our handiwork. So we are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared for us to do. And if you want to know what God's journey for you is, I would look here because like I emphasize, like, we're God's creation. And so our pride is not in what we are creating, and what our plans are. We're just learning how to, like, take care of ourselves in a way that honors God and trusting that God is going to put us wherever he puts us wherever he needs us. Like, if we look at Tirzah, Yelena had no idea she would reach all these people. She had no idea that I was sitting there to be real honest. She had no idea that 21 year old Chanel was sitting in her old childhood bedroom, drinking a beer and on Google typing, I'm 21. I'm having a midlife crisis. And I don't know if God is real, like that's a real moment. She had no idea that God would be placing her ministry, her blog, and in my path or any other young woman's path, you know, so if you're not sure, what God's plan for you is, I would just focus on getting as close to him as possible. And just letting whatever happens happen. Even the bad stuff.
Alycia Johnson 28:12
So I think that's and that's like the core for everyone. It's like, you can do multiple things in your life. You can do anything, but you only get Jesus at the end of life and accountable to honoring him and your relationship with him. So we have less than one minutes. I'm good ended when Thank you, everyone for joining. Thank you Chanel for thank you for gray, and you will have to come back again. I love talking to you about the Bible and your journey. You did an amazing job. Thank you. I'll talk to you later. Talk to you later.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai