Of Mess and Moxie: Wrangling Delight Out of This Wild and Glorious Life

by Jen Hatmaker

You will become the exact person God intended all along, and you will be stronger in these fragile places than you were before it happened. This is a part of your story, not the end of it, and you will overcome. Not only that; you will thrive. If God is truly the strongest where we are the weakest, then He will win in this place.” You are far more than your worst day, your worst experience, your worst season, dear one. You are more than the sorriest decision you ever made. You are more than the darkest sorrow you’ve endured. Your name is not Ruined. It is not Helpless. It is not Victim. It is not Irresponsible. History is replete with overcomers who stood up after impossible circumstances and walked in freedom. You are not an anemic victim destined to a life of regret. Not only are you capable, you have full permission to move forward in strength and health. And if you are prepared for a new, fresh season but others refuse to let you grow into it, sister, shake the dust from your feet and move on anyway. You may need to live a new story before others are willing to bless it. Let them see you laugh again, come back to life, dream new dreams, embrace healing. It can be difficult to envision a new start but impossible to deny one. This is your work. No one can do it for you. God created us to triumph; we are made in the image of Jesus, who has overcome the world. We are

never defeated, not even when all evidence appears to the contrary. If you are still breathing, there is always tomorrow, and it can always be

new. You don’t have to be who you were. Maybe it isn’t a matter of conquering struggle but simply growing forward in new ways. Sometimes these nuanced shifts are even harder to navigate because they aren’t born of pain or loss, which are easier to quantify. Perhaps God is seeding you with new vision, new ideas, different perspectives, or even enormous adjustments. It could be that you have changed your mind or changed your position. Maybe that thing you loved has run its course. Something doesn’t have to be bad to be over. That season has possibly given you everything it has to offer; it shaped and developed you, it stretched and inspired you. You’ve deeply incorporated its lasting values, and it has been true to you and of you. But now it’s time to move forward to something new, different, surprising, or risky. You might not necessarily be leaving one thing but running toward something else. G. K. Chesterton wrote: “A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing c...

used to love my career, I used to have a happy marriage, I used to love my body, my season, my life. The days ahead can never compare with the days behind. It could be that you didn’t ask for the change you face: you didn’t sign up for your husband’s affair, getting fired, a child’s illness, infertility, mental illness. Since you didn’t initiate or want this change, it feels like a deal breaker, a joy stealer, and you’re tempted to throw in the towel. Girl, no. Just NAH. We can retain irreplaceable lessons and core values from every season. We are not entirely rebranded with each new seaso...

capable of preserving the best of each season while rejecting the worst. The human heart is shockingly resilient. By choice or by force, people grow and evolve, which can be incredibly healthy but not always met with approval. We usually like others, and sometimes even ourselves, to remain the same, treading the familiar paths, the ones we know, the ones we’re used to. Change makes us nervous in general. It is so tempting to interpret new as an indictment against the old, but that is an incomplete story. Two...

same words came out of my own mouth just two years earlier, which is incredibly un-self-aware. Human insecurity wants everyone right where we are, in the same head space at the same time. We want to progress (and digress) at a comparable rate: Everyone be into this thing I’m into! Except when I’m not. Then everyone be cool. We need to get better at permission and grace. What is right for us may not be right for everyone, and we don’t have to burn down the house simply because we’ve moved our things out. Other good folks probably still live there, and until one minute ago, we did too. We can bless the honorable parts of that house and express sincere gratitude f...

still nei...

You do not have to be who you were, who you have been. If you have a dream brewing, I hope

to throw light all over it. If you encounter a new idea or perspective, I hope you feel free enough to consider it. If you need to bury an old label, girl, here is a shovel. You can care about new things and new people and new beginnings, and until you are dead in the ground, you are not stuck. If you move with the blessing of your people, marvelous. But even if you don’t, this is your one life, and fear, approval, and self-preservation are terrible reasons to stay silent, stay put, stay sidelined.

There is no way to be a perfect mother, and a million ways to be a good one.1 — JILL CHURCHILL

EN’S GROCERY STORE DAY SUPER SANDWICH This is my go-to recipe on shopping day, because by the time I’ve put the food in the basket, put the food on the conveyer belt, put the food into the car, taken the food into the house, washed the food, put the food in the fridge/freezer/pantry, I’M OVER THE FOOD. This is not a day to make an elaborate meal, because I have angry feelings toward food. So, make the grocery deli and bakery your sous chefs: Bakery:

Ciabatta bread (one loaf for normal families, two for freakishly large families like ours) Deli Counter: Tub of pesto ¼ lb pepperoni ¼ lb salami ¼ lb ham ¼ lb mozzerella, sliced thin Tub of marinara Produce section: Container of butter lettuce (why do the other lettuces even try?) 1–2 tomatoes Fresh basil Purple onions, if they won’t incite mob violence Pineapple Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Slice your ciabatta loaf in half lengthways. Spread a thin layer of pesto on the bottom, layer up the meats, cheese, and veggies and basil, and spread a thin layer of marinara on the top half. Close ’er up, stick on a sheet pan, cover with foil, and warm through for about fifteen minutes. Slice and serve with cute little individual bowls of marinara, because the only thing better than

marinara is more marinara. Cut up a pineapple for your “side dish,” because you are still very much over all the food. This entire procedure takes five minutes to assemble. Maddeningly, your people will fall all over themselves loving this dinner while barely commenting on the two-hour Indian feast you prepared the night before. I TOASTED AND GROUND MY OWN SPICES WHILE MAKING BIRYANI AND NAAN, and they are like, Mmmmm! Store-bought pesto on bread! Delicious, Mom! You’re a great cook! When in...

Loved people love people. Forgiven people forgive people. Adored people adore people. Freed people free people. But when we are still locked in our own prisons, it is impossible to crave the liberation of others. Misery prefers company.

Love means saying to someone else’s story or pain or anger or experience: “I’m listening. Tell me more.” Love refuses to deny or dismantle another’s perspective simply because I don’t share it. At its core, love means caring more about that person’s soul than anything else. The

New Testament coined it with a lovely phrase: preferring others. It’s a super simple approach that would change the whole world.

We’re all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.1 — DR. SEUSS

It’s nonsense. Really. Rather than fantasizing about greener grass on some other side, water your own grass first, because there is no marriage, no union that doesn’t have its share of aggravations and struggles. None, I promise. There is no man or woman immune to selfishness, mediocrity, laziness, or failure. Sure, Other Guy can seem quite shiny in that other yard (as could you at first), but a permanent relocation discloses the truth: grass is pretty much grass. Add in bills, parenting, and the lame responsibilities of real adulthood, and that shine wears off lightning fast.

That grass is fake, untrampled by the wear and tear of an actual shared life. It is a lovely illusion that looks

beautiful from afar but becomes sharp and artificial to the touch, if not initially, eventually. The ensuing wr...

But I’ve learned keeping someone on the hook really only keeps me on the hook. In attempting to lock up an offender, I imprison myself, captive to anger, defensiveness, and pain, replaying a story that becomes a mental loop I cannot escape from, trapping other innocent relationships and scenarios in a toxic spiral that poisons everything. I act out of woundedness instead of freedom, which makes me paranoid and suspicious, crushing everything Christlike and

tender and creating a worse mess than I had in the first place. God called us to a forgiving path, not only for a mended community but also for mended human hearts.

“This is the God of the gospel of grace. A God who, out of love for us, sent the only Son He ever had wrapped in our skin. He learned how to walk, stumbled and fell, cried for His milk, sweated blood in the night, was lashed with a whip and showered with sp...

Jesus walked this sacred road first; we cannot claim His mercies without also claiming His practices. We mustn’t expect a resurrected life when we skip...

How to begin? Oh heavenly mercies. There isn’t a template for this work, but I can tell you my early steps to forgiveness. God was super clear: Pray for this person every day, which was the meanest thing He ever said to me. I was furious. I think I even said something petulant to God like, “The hell I will!” and He was all, “Do it, Potty Mouth.” So my prayers started rather, well, shallow: Please don’t let this person get hit by a car today. Amen. That was as far as I could go. The anger around my heart was still stretched tight. I was obedient to the letter of the law only. But as that practice went on, something started to happen. God loosened that old anger bit by bit, and the prayers gave way to deeper, more meaningful requests. Mind you, the increments were small and took more time than I wanted to give, but I started thinking of that person as the kid they once were, whose story I knew included loss and abandonment. God began showing me triggers I had ignited carelessly, tapping into lifelong wounds that set

off a disproportional reaction. Prayer awakened enough humility to own my contribution to the free fall, a difficult admission. And would you believe after staying the course long enough, I developed a tenderness toward the person who hurt us, and it was sincere. Prayer didn’t heal the relationship, but it healed me. God is still in the miracle business, and sometimes those miracles are in us. While forgiveness might feel like abandoning justice, it actually sets us free. It liberates us from the crushing responsibility to oversee the resolution, which may or may not ever come. It removes any authority another person holds over our wholeness; it steals its power. Surprisingly, it can even bring us to the point where we wish our offender well, where we desire his or her peace too. It gently takes our minds and hearts and attention and brings them back to the present, to be with the ones who are here. Forgiveness gives us back our life and gives us back to our life. It is holy and hard work that says to God: Here is this sad thing. It is all Yours to fix or mend or redeem or simply bear witness. I am prying my hands off and freeing them up for other work.

We bury what we wanted and accept what we have. But then, new life. Rising up from the grave, like tender little shoots. So small at first. So fragil...

growth, even if the other person is completely unrepentant. We can still live. We can still be vibrant. We grow and develop and find beauty again, shoots of hope pushing up through the rubble. And soon enough, when we nurture grace and release instead of anger and resentment, a bloom, an unfolding of life again. Two quick words: If the person who hurt you has a history of mainly healthy behavior, if they’ve been mostly safe, by all means, press not only into forgiveness but reconciliation. A broken relationship mended by forgiveness can be even stronger than it was before. Henri Nouwen wrote: “Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all p...

Second, forgiveness comes easier to people who regularly ask forgiveness themselves. It is mature Christian practice to own our offenses and remain humble enough to apologize when

we’ve wounded, intentionally or not. This posture makes a tender people, a safer family

with softer edges. All of us love poorly at some point, and infusing our community with ownership and repentance is contagious. Say you’re sorry. Ask forgiveness. This leads not only to stronger relationships ...

There is nothing else on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.1 — THOMAS AQUINAS

I am so convinced we reap what we sow here; sow seeds of affirmation and goodness and grace into others, and you will reap the devotion of well-loved friends. You will. You cannot love others genuinely and generously and have it return void for long.

Inversely, sow seeds of silence or uninvolvement or high-maintenance entitlement, and you will likely reap an empty inbox. I mean this tenderly, sisters. Psalms tells us that “deep calls to deep,” and similarly, grace calls to grace, joy calls to joy, laughter calls to laughter, sincerity calls to sincerity. Unfortunately in the same way, drama calls to drama, dysfunction calls to dysfunction, bitterness calls to bitterness, cynicism calls to cynicism. We get back what we put out. We have so much say-so in our own relational experience. Be the friend you’d love to have, call to the deep, and you will attract the treasured kind of friends like sunlight, like a lightning rod, like honey.

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.1 — HELEN KELLER

we are learning and unlearning and figuring out what to hold on to and what to release. Sometimes life is great and sometimes it is painful beyond recognition, and yet here we

all are: still standing. Still standing. We have breath in our lungs: still standing. We have people who love us: still standing. We have a God who spends all His hours making broken things whole again: still standing. We are smart and resilient and so very funny and capable, and the days ahead of us stretch unwritten, unsullied, untarnished: still standing. That’s our moxie. We have everything we need.