The Top Ten Reasons I Love Jen Hatmaker

The Top Ten Reasons I Love Jen Hatmaker

 

Over the past several days, I have experienced something that is difficult for me to process.  Apparently there are people in my life, people in my circle of love, people who I hold close to my heart, people who I trust with my children, people who… do not know Jen Hatmaker.  “Who is Jen Hatmaker?” these people ask me at meetings and teacher appreciation luncheons and on Facebook. 

I do not know whether I should hug these people or rush them to a care facility or sit them down in front of the computer for several hours of Jen Hatmaker therapy.  It is just too much for my brain and heart and soul and eardrums to make meaning out of.

And so now I feel like this may be something I must share with America and other with countries.  We all need Jen Hatmaker, people.  Because this lady will make you laugh.  A lot.  And also teach you important things about being a good human and a “Jesus With Skin On.”

Here are the Top Ten Reasons I Love Jen Hatmaker. 

10) Worst End of School Year Mom Ever

May 30, 2015.  The day I read the first thing I ever read written by JH.  This is the day, the moment in time when I said to myself, “I really like this hysterical lady.  She is my new best friend I have never met in real life.” 

I will share her first paragraph with you for free.  Then you have to click on the link to read the rest.  And you should totally do that.

You know the Beginning of School Enthusiasm? When the pencils are fresh and the notebooks are new and the kids’ backpacks don’t look like they lined the den of a pack of filthy hyenas? Moms, remember how you packed innovative and nutritional lunches and laid clothes out the night before and labeled shelves for each child’s work and school correspondence and completed homework in a timely manner?

I am exactly still like that at the end of school, except the opposite.

http://jenhatmaker.com/blog/2013/05/30/worst-end-of-school-year-mom-ever

9) Her definition of justice.    

This quote, from her Love Wins speech on Tuesday, May 5, 2015:

“What is my definition of justice?  Justice is when we take what we have been given, and we work to set things right.  We must push and press and insist on justice.  This is the way to live, being generous and helping other.  ALL CHILDREN ARE OUR CHILDREN.  ALL MOTHERS ARE OUR SISTERS.”

8) Chapter 4: Fashion Concerns

I know, I know.  I haven’t blogged about For the Love, Chapter 3 yet.  I am skipping ahead.  In her new, not yet released book that I got because my friend Heather Adams is so good to me, she has a whole chapter dedicated to fashion concerns.  It is everything that you are dreaming it will be and more, I promise.   I will share the following paragraph with you for educational purposes related to my love of Jen Hatmaker.  Her fashion concerns are the same as mine and yours and I LOVE THIS CHAPTER. 

“Leggings-As-Pants (LAP) is permissible if the following rule is obeyed: Your privates are covered by a shirt, sweater, or dress.  Privates are heretofore understood as areas north of upper thighs and south of muffin top.  I don’t want to see your hinterlands.”

You will need to purchase the book when it is released.  I’m serious about this.

7) Jen Hatmaker is on Facebook.

When you love her like I do, you will decide to become her friend on Facebook.  And then you will read her posts.  Sometimes she shares recipes.  Sometimes she shares the gospel.  Other times she posts things like this, from May 6, 2015:

That thing where your kid with a lot of words is telling a story and it is taking one hundred thousand years because every extra, tiny, superfluous, additional, extraneous detail is being included and it takes a superhuman effort to not give the "speed it up" gesture with your hand and so you sit there with a smile plastered on your face thinking you might ACTUALLY DIE before this story is over.

That thing.

6)  She’s A Mommy.

You do not have to be a mommy to love Jen Hatmaker.  However, if you are a mother, you need to get to know Jen Hatmaker.  She has FIVE children.  FIVE.  She does not pretend to be perfect.  Instead, she creates a wonderful community for real women with real problems who are really trying to be the best they can be.  

5) Jen Hatmaker loves people.

She really does.  I’m not making that up just.  This is what she says about herself:

I love people. The messier, the wonkier, the further out from the bullseye...the better. I understand God best through people; their gifts and strengths, their love and compassion, their character and courage. I sincerely believe we were made in God's image, and when I evaluate the goodness of people, I love God more. I crave a world of justice where people are safe, loved, empowered. I plan to use whatever influence I've been given on behalf of edged-out people for all my days. If I loved well, I will consider my entire life a success.

Right? I know.  She said, “wonkier.” Let’s high five each other about her through the internet.

4) She smells like baby angels and fields of happy.

 

I know this because I met her once.  And I gave her a hug.  She is as lovely in real life as she is on the world wide web. 

3) Seven.  Interrupted.  For the Love.

These are a few of her books.  She has more.  I cannot copy and paste from all of these books.  But I can tell you to read them.  And you should.  Because they will change your life.

2) She had a dream to write and she did and she does. 

It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to write.  Maybe you want to learn to sew or open a flower shop or a restaurant or go back to school or change the world?  I do not know the specifics, but I know that everyone who is reading this has a dream.  She recently wrote a blog about what it takes to become a good writer.  I think this applies to your dreams too:

“Of course my kids wish I would devote every spare second to maintain their place in the center of the universe, but writers write and writing is work and work takes time. And it is good work. It means something. It is noble and important. It always has been. I remember crying a river when my mom went back to college when we were in elementary, middle, and high school because she was less available to cater to our every whim, but it very soon became a source of great pride for me, because I watched my mom do meaningful, hard work that mattered. She went for it, right in the middle of living life. As it turned out, I needed a mom who mothered, dreamed, worked, and achieved. We all did.”

The last part, “…I needed a mom who mothered, dreamed, worked, and achieved.”  Process that.

1) She loves Jesus.  And she drinks wine.

 

Good Shell Hunting and Turning Forty

How appropriate that my best friend Jen Hatmaker would include a chapter titled, On Turning Forty in her new book, For the Love.  Because guess what people?  I’m turning forty on August 5, 2015. 

And guess what else?  I’m not dreading my fortieth birthday.  How have I avoided the birthday blues, you may wonder?  Two reasons: 1) My BFF Jen Hatmaker dropped some awesome words on me in her new book. 2) I went hunting for shells.

I’ll start with the shells.

In January my parents took our family to Sanibel, FL for a week of rest and relaxation.  It was just about one of the best weeks of my whole entire life.  If you know anything about Sanibel, you know that it is the shell hunting capital of the world.  Visitors and locals rise before the sun wakes up with buckets and flashlights, following the tide and searching the shore for tiny treasures from the sea.   Hunting for shells is a competitive sport in Sanibel, and I totally jumped on the shell quest bandwagon during our vacation.

 

Shell hunters have specific criteria for what makes a “good” shell.  I noticed immediately the way serious hunters would lean down, select a shell, and then spend several seconds inspecting it before deciding whether or not to place it in their buckets, or throw in back onto the shore.  They were searching for the perfect shell.  A shiny casing.  No cracks or chips allowed.  The bigger, the better.

I started to imagine myself as a shell on the Sanibel beach.  What would I look like after washing up on shore?  After many days of searching, I found my shell-self.  Here I am.

 

 

My thirty nine (almost forty!) years have been a cake walk compared to most people.  I have two parents who have loved and cared for me since the moment I was born.  My husband is devoted and patient and loves me without condition.  I have friends that I do not deserve.  I have never gone to bed hungry.  I have a roof over my head and shoes on my feet.  And don’t even get me started on my three little girls. 

Despite my blessed life, I’m not a shiny, perfect shell.  I’m damaged.  I’ve been tossed around the ocean, lost underwater at times.  Jen reflects on life in her twenties, “I lost much time in jealousy, judgment, and imitation.  I just couldn’t find my own song.  I struggled to celebrate others’ achievements because they felt like indictments on my uncertainty.”

All those things she just said, well those are the same things that have damaged my shell self. 

And I have tiny holes from tiny hurts.  We all have them.  They are a part of living life with humans who make mistakes.  I know I’m responsible for some tiny holes in other shells. 

There is a crack from the loss of our first baby.  I can’t fix that crack, even with glue.  It’s not going anywhere.  I can only hope at some point it stabilizes and stops getting bigger.

There are other breaks and chips: the sadness of saying goodbye to special friends with each move, infertility, personal sins that I have not forgiven, disagreements with friends and loved ones, all the tough stuff.

What does this have to do with my best friend Jen Hatmaker and turning forty?

She says, “(When you are forty) You get a decent handle on who you are, what you are good at, what you love, what you value, and how you want to live.” 

I may not be there quite yet, but I learned a lot from those chips and breaks.  It’s time for me to spend more time doing what I love with the people that I love. 

Finally, JH sums up my hopes and dreams about entering my fourth decade, “I no longer tiptoe through my own life, doubting my gifts and my place, too scared to go for it, seize it, pray for it, dream it.  When you’re forty, you no longer wait for permission to live.”  That.  I want THAT.

I don’t mind being one of the imperfect shells that wash ashore.  Or a hermit crab, sometimes.