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

by Jen Hatmaker

why being a woman among women is a gift and a treasure.

here you are. You are young and beautiful, fresh and energetic. It’s your turn to begin a new story.

You are not in competition with your peers. Be a good sister. Be brave enough to take your place and humble enough to learn and share. We are so glad you are here. We believe in you, we love you, we are thrilled to welcome you to the tribe.

You won’t find a bigger fan than me.

I am proud of you, proud to belong to you. I believe in us.

Sisterhood is lifelong.

Messy, hard, disappointing, painful, shocking, exhausting, aggravating, boring. However you want to say it, life is messy. For all of us. I’m not making this up; I’m just saying it out loud. Your mess is normal, and it is okay to admit it. Pain is not exceptional or rare.

moxie. Isn’t that a delicious, dreamy word? Moxie. It is a throwback to women with pluck, with chutzpah, with a bit of razzle dazzle. It says: I got this . . . we got this together. It evokes a twinkle in the eye, a smidge of daring and stubbornness in the face of actual, hard, real, beautiful life. Moxie reaches for laughter, for courage, for the deep and important truth that women are capable of weathering the storm. We are not victims, we are not weak, we are not a sad, defeated group of sob sisters.

most of life is pretty ordinary,

it is precisely inside the ordinary elements, the same ones found the world over—career, parenting, change, marriage, community, suffering, the rhythms of faith, disappointment, being a good neighbor, being a good human—that an extraordinary life exists.

Life is crazy gorgeous and crazy hard, and we don’t mean to fail each other but we do, which is why Anne Lamott calls earth Forgiveness School.

I think about you, I dream about you, I care about you, and my aim is to serve you until I die. If that feels dramatic, well, no one ever accused me of subtlety. Welcome. You are very loved here.

You don’t have to be who you first were. That early version of yourself, that season you were in, even the phase you are currently experiencing—it is all good or purposeful or at least useful and created a fuller, nuanced you and contributed to your life’s meaning, but you are not stuck in a category just because you were once branded that way. Just because something was does not mean it will always be.

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.”

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.

“A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”2 Change means you’re alive, my friend.

Throughout transitions, we embody permanent virtues and become deeply shaped, and as a testament to our design, we are capable of preserving the best of each season while rejecting the worst. The human heart is shockingly resilient.

It is so tempting to interpret new as an indictment against the old, but that is an incomplete story.

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.

We still retain the rights to every important thing we learned along the way; those layers count and make up the whole of who we are. We have important memories from every house—some painful, some instructive, some delightful, some necessary. But how thrilling to realize that even now God is designing a new blueprint, tailor-made, and His creativity extends to the very trajectory of our lives.

Moving creates more rooms for distinctive and specific memories

victory isn’t compromised by individual losses; it is the result of slogging it out season by season, conversation by conversation, over months and miles of sweat and blood, and the cumulative total of more wins than losses secures the role, anchors the majority, makes the history books.

You are doing an amazing job. Your children know they are loved and have felt it all these years deeply, intrinsically. If we get seven out of ten things mostly right as moms, we are winning the majority, and the majority wins the race.

a notorious goal to “win the contest.”

The contest is a race to see who is the better Christian,

We keep a close eye on each other, paying attention to who is volunteering more, sacrificing more, spending less, misbehaving less. You know we do this.

the whole notion of comparing Christian obedience, which is clearly insane, a man-made competition that pits apples against oranges, kale against cheeseburgers. It’s so silly and unregulated and impossible.

God positively told us to stay close to the brokenhearted, the hungry, the hurting; that is where He is and where some of His best work is going down.

many secular things we love are actually sacred.

there is a middle place, holy ground, where we learn to embrace the fasting and the feast, for both are God ordained.

There is also a time to open wide our arms to adventure, laughter, fulfillment, gladness. A Christian in tune with God’s whole character neither regards herself as too important or too unworthy to enjoy this life. Yes, we are part of God’s plan to heal the world, but we are also sons and daughters in the family. We are not just the distributors of God’s abundant mercies but also their recipients.

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

Isolation concentrates every struggle. The longer we keep our heartaches tucked away in the dark, the more menacing they become. Pulling them into the light among trusted people who love you is, I swear, 50 percent of the recovery process.

I’ve always believed that when Scripture describes “gifts of healing,” counselors are a part of that special group. They help us heal. They give us tools. They walk us through recovery. They remind us of our hope.

use any tool possible as we pursue healthy marriages, healthy kids, and healthy souls.

He gave honor to a bunch of folks in the right head space, like kids and widows and outsiders. He slayed at parties and dinners. Oh! And Jesus forgave His enemies while He was hanging on the cross, just to be clear about how forgiveness worked pragmatically.

Such a good plan, this gospel. The redeemed would tell this love story with their lives because they’ve been told over and over that love is supreme, the most excellent way, the language of their tribe, the way of their God. They’ll know for sure to default to love.

It is difficult for human beings to accept unearned mercy. It flies in the face of our merit-based system. We want to earn our goodwill; therefore, we want others to earn theirs. But grace is an inside job first. God’s love compels us to do likewise, but it must first win a hearing in our own souls if it has any chance at an outward expression.

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.

Which is why the law of love introduced by Jesus is the story to tell. It is the story that saves and heals, that invites and refuses to condemn. Christian, it is the right way and the best way. Jesus’s brother James told us: “If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing right.” We can stand rightly before God when love leads and compels us.

What does love look like in the ordinary connection between two human people? Usually it means prioritizing someone’s dignity, belovedness, and experience over being right or pointing out errors. We may even discover we weren’t so right after all, or at any rate, we didn’t fully understand.

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.

Some useful statements to pocket to create safe spaces for discussion: Tell me more about that. Tell me how your thoughts progressed in this. I appreciate your experience with this. I’m listening. I hear what you are saying. I would love to learn from you. I care about how you feel and your perspective here. I understand that. I identify with that. What do you think of __________? I hadn’t thought of it in that way. Thank you for that angle. Let me think about that a bit before I respond. Thanks for your transparency.

People sense that deeply; they understand when a relationship is fundamentally unsafe, precariously balanced on a scale of disapproval.

I don’t know how to explain it, but my soul knows the difference.

You can love someone with a different ideology, different religious conviction, different sexual identity, ideas, background, ethnicity, opinions, different anything. You can love someone society condemns. You can love someone the church condemns.

represent Jesus well,

leave that person feeling absurdly loved, welc...

Love makes us brave, pulls up seats to the table, defuses bigotry, and attacks injustice.

2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil Whatever veggies you have, sliced thin (my faves in this recipe: snap peas or green beans, red or green bell peppers, onions, and mushrooms, but truly, whatever) Salt to taste A few shakes of curry powder, if you have it 2 to 4 tablespoons Panang curry paste* (to taste: less = less spicy, more = muy caliente. I have a bunch of Ethiopians and Texans in my house, so we like to burn.) 1 to 2 teaspoons Kaffir lime powder* 1 tablespoon fish sauce* 3 (13- to 14-ounce) cans coconut milk 2 cups veggie or chicken stock 1 pound chicken breasts, sliced super-duper thin (or shrimp or beef or tofu or no meat) 1 tablespoon cornstarch for a thicker curry 3 tablespoons water Rice cooked to package directions, including serving size for your family (not only do I make extra for leftovers, but I put another can of coconut milk in my rice liquid, because I like to live dangerously. I recently pulled out a rice cooker I’ve had for five years and never used. So basically my life is changed). Fresh basil, if you have it Heat the olive oil in a stock pot over medium-high heat. When the oil is shimmering, add the veggies, sprinkle them with salt, and stir for 2 to 3 minutes. I add a few shakes of curry powder, too, because my mantra on spice is “more is more.” Add the curry paste and lime powder. Stir into the oil and veggies until incorporated and no longer pasty. ...

Creators create. It is one of their main characteristics, as a point of fact. Makers don’t wait for someone else to tell them they should or can. They already know they should and they can.