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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Jen Hatmaker
Read between
July 11 - August 19, 2019
This life is not a race or a contest, there is enough abundance to go around, your seat at the table is secure, and you have incredible gifts to offer.
You are not in competition with your peers.
We will endure discouragement, heartbreak, failure, and suffering. All of us.
We already have what we need. It is all inside, so waiting around for our circumstances to deliver our expected life is a waste of energy.
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.
The second journey begins when we know we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the morning program.1 — BRENNAN MANNING
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.
Something doesn’t have to be bad to be over.
We are not entirely rebranded with each new season; we simply build the next layer.
What is right for us may not be right for everyone,
You can care about new things and new people and new beginnings, and until you are dead in the ground, you are not stuck.
this is your one life, and fear, approval, and self-preservation are terrible reasons to stay silent, stay put, stay sidelined.
Some of us were raised afraid and learned to view the world through the lens of dread.
God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7).
The longer we keep our heartaches tucked away in the dark, the more menacing they become.
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.
We need not fear that He will say, “You loved too greatly, too liberally, too generously, too shockingly.”
People may hate us because of Jesus, but they should never hate Jesus because of us.
The way we treat others should lead them to only one conclusion: “If this is how Jesus loves, then I’m in.”
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.
It is not my responsibility to change other people, nor them me. It just isn’t. It never was.
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. You have no other responsibility than to represent Jesus well, which should leave that person feeling absurdly loved, welcomed, cherished.
I sincerely believe we are created by a Creator to be creative.
everyone wants to be famous or important but fewer want to work on their craft.
Worry less about getting recognized and more about becoming good at what you do.
Don’t be intimidated by successful makers; be inspired by them.
As it turns out, the applause isn’t as fulfilling as the work.
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.
Henri Nouwen wrote: “Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.”
The cost of forgiveness is high but the payoff is higher: health, peace, wholeheartedness, grace. It goes on: resilience, maturity, compassion, depth.
Fangirl Jesus, and fangirl your friends.
if you don’t love Jesus, you just don’t know Him.
Fangirl the people who never get fangirled. You know the ones: the underdog, the quiet hero, the little guy. They are shy or behind the scenes or difficult or loners.
But the earth is jam-packed with amazing, extraordinary people who color outside the narrow lines society deems noteworthy, and they deserve applause too.
sow seeds of silence or uninvolvement or high-maintenance entitlement, and you will likely reap an empty inbox.
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.
despite her easy breezy lively persona, she actually had no real friends, because the vulnerability was too risky.
Grown don’t mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? In my heart it don’t mean a thing.1 — TONI MORRISON
Am I just a bit part in the greater story of God’s glory? Or am I truly a loved daughter?
If someone or something sewed threads of suffering in your life, even if that someone was you, God’s sovereignty says: I’m bigger than that, stronger than that, more powerful than that. I can make this beautiful again and use it to heal you and make you sturdier and, while we’re at it, other people too.
