Awake: A Memoir

by Jen Hatmaker

We are frozen in our metal folding chairs. I have barely even kissed a boy. I feel wildly embarrassed but can’t figure out why. All of a sudden, I am hyperaware of my body and burning with shame; did that first kiss with Gary Whipple in seventh grade cost me a petal?? I glance nervously at the other girls, wondering if they knew we were such a problem. This was news to me.

cheeks are flushed with humiliation. “… until all you have to offer your husband on your wedding night is this…” At this point the pastor holds up the barren, dead stick plucked of its petals, a pauper’s gift if I ever saw one. This is as confusing as it is denigrating. According to the indictment, didn’t boys pluck those petals off? Were they also some sort of flower gradually losing their bloom? Or is sexual purity just the girls’ responsibility and requirement? I scan the room with insider knowledge of high school behavior; some petals here have definitely been plucked, and frankly, I’d like to lose a few if I’m being honest. But apparently there is no coming back from being a slutty, stripped rose. Good luck finding a man who wants to marry a ruined stick.

The community that raised me placed little premium on healthy young evolution.

The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? —Jeremiah 17:9 I am taught this baseline at church from the time I can remember. It isn’t contextualized or qualified. It

is presented simply as a stark fact undermining absolutely any instinct, desire, sense of self, dream, feeling, perception, ambition, or inner truth. If you feel something at all… red flag. No to intuition. No to what your body knows. No to what your gut is telling you. No to what you want. No to any hunger. No to what feels right. No to what feels wrong. No to your deceitful, incurable heart.

Church people are urged to trust only God, and according to the lying-heart narrative, he wants whatever the opposite of our desires suggests. Since God’s feelings about any given thing are a real damn mystery, the shortcut is to go inward, feel around for any impulse, then assume he wants the opposite. If it feels right, it is wrong. If it feels bad, it is probably godly. If you experience intense cognitive dissonance, let your mind suffer.

But it isn’t with my parents at my childhood home. It is with myself. This is instantly the most true thing I have ever known. I physically run my hands gently up and down my arms. I hold my face between my fingers. I wrap my arms around myself and say out loud: “I am my own best friend. I am safe with me. I am home.”

I glance sideways and see girl after girl being flagged and sent back to her cabin. Every one of them, truly, the picture of modesty. Prepared to encounter God, we are instead singled out and shamed, as if our motive was to seduce every male away from his rightful spiritual experience with our slightly-above-the-knee flesh (or shoulders). We are brazen. We are thirsty. We have no discernment or decency. The boys walk in with impunity.

God, I’m so sorry for disappointing you again. Help me try harder! God, I want to bring you joy! Show me how to make you happy! I am a child begging for mercy from an abusive parent who can’t be pleased. I contort my normal desires around a tyrannical gatekeeper in charge of my eternity. My prevailing hope is to become less, because my largeness threatens the enterprise. After all, God called us to holiness, not happiness. I know the system.

Either way, they are all forced into hiding, now afraid of their own desires, their own bodies, their belonging, the adults, and God. Sex is vilified before they’ve even thought about experiencing it.

Bodies won’t be tricked out of mourning. They know too much.

The premise of ending codependency is simple: Each person is responsible for him- or herself plus all the consequences.

She is a lightning rod for self-righteous fundamentalists.

Simple is an opiate for the mind, but it is a real shit show for the heart. And if you live long enough and pay attention at all, your heart refuses to stay silent after a while. The mind can be an uncomplicated mechanism but the heart has eyes.

How do I reject the systems without disparaging the people I love?

Experiencing a high day doesn’t mean the pain is over. Experiencing a low day doesn’t mean the recovery is doomed.

Susan sends me a Starbucks gift card every single Monday for six months. Much is made about what to do when a friend is in crisis. What to say. What not to say. What to offer. What to send. What to text. The Monday Starbucks Ministry suggests it is not so much the thing as the love. The “I am still here” and “I care about your broken heart” and “I am thinking about you because weekends are full but Mondays are lonely.”

She labored and endured and worked and rallied and fought and held everyone else as long as she could, but bodies aren’t meant to run on adrenaline that long, and she finally dropped from fatigue.

The church that raised me bears almost no resemblance to the one dehumanizing refugees, defending white supremacy, and aligning with a morally bankrupt autocrat. To put it succinctly: Organized religion, once my happy place, truly confuses me.

Church right now feels like my best friends, my porch swing, my children and parents and siblings. It feels like meditation and all these leaves on my twelve pecan trees. It feels like Ben Rector on repeat. It feels like my kitchen, and my table, and my cozy reading nook. It feels like Jesus who never asked me to meet him anywhere but in my heart.

But at some point, those responses are no longer “what someone else did that I am stuck with.” I am making those choices and they are my responsibility. What I do with my pain belongs to me alone.

The lack of courtesy is merely disappointing with a smidge of sadness. I work to rightsize the whole situation. “Figure out what you need to do to take care of yourself. Make your decisions based on reality, and make them from a peaceful state. You are not responsible for making other people ‘see the light,’ and you do not need to ‘set them straight.’ You are responsible for helping yourself see the light and for setting yourself straight.”

The rage I feel watching leaders who assured us we were the problem now repeal our autonomy while giving men in power a free pass. Male pastors embroiled in sexual abuse? We’ll handle this in-house; no need to alert the authorities for family business, she is probably lying anyway. Women who cross state lines for a medical abortion? Put her in jail. Men who grab women by the pussy without their consent? Put him in the White House. It was all a sham.

I am finished listening to what a single person in these subcultures tells me about my body. I don’t want to hear what they think of sex, agency, reproductive rights, body image, sexual identity, any of it. It has turned out to be a self-serving, power-protecting, women-subjugating enterprise with an opt-out for men, and the whole rotten ship can sink.

As Dr. McBride teaches us, our bodies are not an “it” but a “she” and “her” because they are not simply the container; our bodies are who we are. She experiences desires and perceptions and trustworthy instincts, and these are to be heeded, not hated. We are walking around in a homing device, a lie detector, a lookout on the highest point of the ship.

The one who will never lie to me is me. The one who will always love me is me. The one who will always protect me is me. The one who will always choose me is me. I will never again outsource my life.