For the Love: Fighting for Grace in a World of Impossible Standards

by Jen Hatmaker

You’ll like it here. You will love better, stand taller, laugh louder.

But just in case, wear sunscreen every day, for the love.

If it isn’t also true for a poor single Christian mom in Haiti, it isn’t true.

sets God free to be God instead of the My-God-in-a-Pocket I carried for so long.

A worthy life involves loving as loved folks do, sharing the ridiculous mercy God spoiled us with first. (It really is ridiculous.) It means restoring people, in ordinary conversations and regular encounters. A worthy life means showing up when showing up is the only thing to do.

Maybe we can exit the self-imposed pressure cooker of “calling” and instead just consider our “gifts.” The former feels like a job description, but the latter is just how God wired us.

It all counts. There are no throwaway qualities. In fact, those qualities might point you in just the right direction. Nothing is wasted: not a characteristic, preference, experience, tragedy, quirk, nothing. It is all you and it is all purposed and it can all be used for great and glorious good.

Don’t believe them. Even if some observations are descriptive, they need not be prescriptive.

It was so right and simple, tears drained down my face. Just tell the truth, Jen. If you are conflicted and worry a renovation might muddy the message of 7, just say it. If you are afraid people will be disappointed in the show, admit that. If you’re scared new people won’t like you and might be mean, fess up. If you are mostly sure you made the right decision but have some doubts, concede it. It’s okay to have human feelings, even if a whole big bunch of people are watching you have them.

Just tell the truth. Whatever question comes, just tell the truth. If you don’t know the answer, admit you struggle. If you disagree with the conversation, don’t sit there acting otherwise. Stop trying to self-preserve; that is a fool’s errand.

We all are. That’s the irony of it. Why do we think others live carefree, self-assured lives while we slink around in the messy middle? Doubt is universal; read the Bible.

“Don’t try to win over the haters; you’re not the jackass whisperer.”2

May I suggest a starting place as truth receivers? It is okay for someone else to struggle. Furthermore, it is okay to not fix it/solve it/answer it/discredit it. Another believer can experience tension, say something true that makes people uncomfortable, and God will not fall off His throne. It is not our responsibility to fix every mess. If someone steps onto the scary ledge of truth, it is enough to acknowledge her courage and make this promise: I am here with you as your friend, not your Savior.

Simply speaking truth out loud is healing in and of itself.

Pulling something difficult from its dark hiding place and into the light is innately healing.

But when you drag that truth kicking and screaming into the glorious light, you can see it for what it is. It wasn’t as menacing as it pretended. It isn’t as uncommon as it claimed. It is actually sad and pathetic sitting there in the light, shriveling up and losing power over you. You said it out loud and no one dropped dead, so what can it still hold over you?

Sure, sometimes we “intentionally parent” (quotation marks in honor of my mom, who says she and her friends just raised us but people of my generation “parent”), but we also manage, discipline, intervene, boss around, implement, and even just survive sometimes. We wear many hats and they don’t all include The Precious Feels. We don’t live in an after-school special; we’re running households here.

If your inner monologue is critical, endlessly degrading, it’s time to move back to grace. Then we can breathe and assess our own parenting with the same kindness we extend to others. Only our overly critical, overly involved generation could engineer such carefully curated childhood environments and still declare ourselves failures. We are loving, capable mothers reading the room all wrong.

I declare “mostly good” a raging success.

Maybe we are entirely too precious, raising tiny narcissists who cannot function without their feet sprayed and chakras rearranged. Everything is so earnest that sometimes I think I will just die.

We should not cushion every blow. This is life. Learning to deal with struggle and to develop responsibility is crucial. A good parent prepares the child for the path, not the path for the child. We can still demonstrate gentle and attached parenting without raising children who melt on a warm day.

If our kids only expect blessings and exemptions, they will be terrible grown-ups. These are not the adults we want to launch, nor are they the Snowflakes we want our kids to marry. We cannot be the mothers-in-law for these people, oh my gosh. If grown-ups expect sandwich dolphins from their spouses, bosses, churches, friends, and children, this will all be a disaster.

God measures our entire existence by only two things: how we love Him and how we love people. If you get this right, you can get a million other things wrong.

Sure, I planned on being a Darling Lamb Wife, but I accidentally got a fiery personality and forgot to be darling. Plus, I married a man with strong opinions about every solitary thing in the entire universe, past and present. Gentle is not an adjective ever wasted on us. We learned our lessons in the trenches of compromise. All due respect to the Resurrection, but two-becoming-one might be the greatest miracle ever.

Sometimes the Venn diagram crosses perfectly and you actually both love March Madness, and sometimes you do Interested Listening Mode and fake it, because you may not love deer season but you love your man.

Lean honestly into every hard place, each tender spot, because truthfulness hurts for a minute but silence is the kill shot.

So few issues are actually worth the argument. Marriage is no place to be inordinately sensitive. We cannot prickle over every little thing.

Learn to hold the biting remark, the wounded reaction, the irritated retort.

Everything cannot be a big deal, because when the big deals actually happen, we’re to...

We should treat our husbands at least as nicely as we treat the crossing guard.

Treating your husband like a good friend will preserve your marriage forever. Just act like someone you would want to live with instead of a difficult frenemy.

grief: Your husband is who he is. His temperament and tendencies are basically set.

For the most part, you got what you married; and the sooner you accept the man who walked down that aisle, the better. Waste no energy trying to fundamentally change him. This will leave you bitter and won’t work anyway.

When a partner clearly doesn’t like who you are, it is so defeating.

Fun is so underrated. Fun is powerful glue. Fun helps us like each other, not just love each other.

Life will deliver plenty of struggles; we need not manufacture grown-up, sober moments.

Anything worth fighting for is worth fighting through, and healthy sex in your marriage is one.

Marriage is crazy work, but it is good work. Two people must regularly get over themselves and fight for love.

I choose your happiness, your health, your well-being. I choose to build you up rather than strip away. I choose you over the Fake Shiny Other who promises something better. I choose forgiveness because otherwise we are hopeless. I choose to believe in you. I choose this life we’ve built, these kids we’ve created, this legacy we’re forming. I choose God in you and me, making us more like His Son, writing a lovely story with our life together. I choose you and I would choose you all over again.

We cannot be more committed to our methods than our message.

We must shepherd their hearts, not just their hemlines.

What many of us embraced as solid and certain seems condescending and exclusive to them. Values that felt trustworthy to some of us—authority, tradition, reason, logic, absolute truth—read like easily dismantled propaganda to postmoderns. Authority—parents, church leaders, government—has failed the next generation in profound ways. Postmoderns will not swallow ideology just because someone said it tastes good. Cynicism is often their obstacle, but also it protects their hearts from further betrayal. They can sniff a sham a mile away.

The best we can do is give them Jesus. Not rules, not behaviors, not entertainment, not shame. I have no confidence in myself but every confidence in Jesus.

I decided the cooking hour should be pleasant: good music playing, a glass of wine, good company (behaving children are welcomed, fighting children are banished). Then I started gardening and watching food documentaries and giving Big Food Industry the side eye and, oh my gosh, now I have ten chickens. It became a whole thing.

Instead of waiting for community, provide it, and you’ll end up with it anyway.

I seek only friends who bleed and sweat and laugh and cry. Don’t fear your humanity; it is your best offering.

Create margin for it if necessary. Remember the theology: The love of God and people is the whole substance of life. Nothing is more important. This is sacred work and very much counts.

If a difficult relationship is permanent, grace will grease the wheels.