Jen Hatmaker Awake Quotes

The trauma someone else created is not your fault, but dealing with it is your responsibility.

for a medical abortion? Put her in jail. Men who grab women by the pussy without their consent? Put him in the White House. It was all a sham.

The very next day after the county fair, Mom brought me to the optometrist to get contact lenses, because sad moms get real permissive.

My forever looks different than I expected, but sometimes beautiful things do.

All the Women” i hope when you come home to yourself there are flowers lining the front porch that were left from all the women you were before ~MAIA, When the Waves Come

most of what I was taught as gospel standards turned out to be optional values abandoned for power, greed, or lies. The church that raised me bears almost no resemblance to the one dehumanizing refugees, defending white supremacy, and aligning with a morally bankrupt autocrat. To put it succinctly: Organized religion, once my happy place, truly confuses me. I am adrift inside it for the first time in my life.

Thank you, Daylight Savings Time, for making people wax on about the wonder of an extra hour of sleep, only to serve as an especially depressing reminder to parents that kids don’t care about farmers and harvests and extra hours of daylight. I enjoy my kids standing at my bedside at 4:30 a.m. like creepy, wide-awake Children of the Corn. Naptimes are also jacked, so there’s that. With all due respect-ish, A Tired Mom.

When God shook Israel awake from her violent slumber, He said, “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy” (Ezekiel 16:49, emphasis added).

an accomplished master gardener, told me: You can’t tug on spring shoots of new plants. You have to wait. They are setting deep roots. You can’t grow a crop by pulling on leaves and stalks. You just create the right conditions… and you wait.

Forgiveness is not foolishness. Foolishness would include no boundaries, no responsibility, no honesty. Foolishness would bypass accountability for pretending. A fool would diminish the consequences to protect the offender’s conscience. Foolishness would open a door that should remain firmly shut.

The rage I feel watching leaders who assured us we were the problem now repeal our autonomy while giving men in power a free pass. Male pastors embroiled in sexual abuse? We’ll handle this in-house; no need to alert the authorities for family business, she is probably lying anyway. Women who cross state lines

What if Mary Oliver is right and this is our one wild and precious life? What if we really don’t get any days back, and this whole life is ours to either grind our way through or throw our arms open for delight, for wonder, for joy and beauty and connection? What if we keep putting off happiness until later and later never comes? What if we hang doggedly on to 'surely this thing will eventually get better' but it doesn’t? Are we really just helpless recipients of stalled, drained, broken things, or do we have some agency? What if a life exists so full we would barely recognize it against our hustle and exhaustion and emptiness? Have we settled when we don’t have to? What if there is a different path, a different pace, a different peace? Apparently people can choose the life they want.

Thank you, Daylight Savings Time, for making people wax on about the wonder of an extra hour of sleep, only to serve as an especially depressing reminder to parents that kids don’t care about farmers and harvests and extra hours of daylight. I enjoy my kids standing at my bedside at 4:30 a.m. like creepy, wide-awake Children of the Corn. Naptimes are also jacked, so there’s that. With all due respect-ish, A Tired Mom. Thank you, Obvious

The problem is that "simple" wouldn't hold up. That isn't how life is or how people are. Simple is an opiate for the mind, but it is a real shit show for the heart. And if you live long enough and pay attention at all, your heart refuses to stay silent after a while. The mind can be an uncomplicated mechanism but the heart has eyes.

But my body seems to know something my mind cannot grasp yet. It is like she is saying gently: “Follow me.” What if I can choose the shore? What if I am able to stay on solid ground with my beloveds in safety? What if I have the capacity to bury my feet in that warm sand, wrap that blanket around my tired shoulders, feel the safety… and live? I decide to trust my body for the first time in my living life.

I’ve lost my institutional memory partner, and that loss cannot be quantified. No one else will ever remember the fake pothole. They weren’t there.

my heart woke me crying last night how can i help i begged my heart said write the book —Rupi Kaur, Prologue from Milk and Honey

Codependent No More by Melody Beattie and consider it my Bible.

lot. You don’t realize you aren’t walking on eggshells anymore until you can’t hear them crunching under your feet.

limited agency for women,

The High Cost of Popular Evangelical Jen Hatmaker’s Gay Marriage Comments” (The Washington Post) “This Evangelical Leader Denounced Trump. Then the Death Threats Started” (Politico) “Jen Hatmaker on White Christian Women and Politics” (The Atlantic) “Hatmaker Heresy” (The American Conservative) “Jen Hatmaker Affirms Gay Marriage – Proves She Has No Idea Who God Is” (Pulpit & Pen) “The Theological Mess in the Moxie of Jen Hatmaker” (Christian Research Institute) “Pastors, It’s Time to Audit What Your Women Are Studying” (Berean Research)

People ultimately do what they want to do. They feel how they want to feel (or how they are feeling); they think what they want to think; they do the things they believe they need to do, and they will change only when they are ready to change. It doesn’t matter if they’re wrong and we’re right.

No one else will ever remember the fake pothole. They weren’t

currently find myself unable to attend church and unable to reject it, and I worry about this unresolved leadership, and then I remember, dear reader, that I am not your leader; I am your sister, and this is not a handbook. You are a grown-up and make your own choices. You get to look for the Spirit however you want, and you will find her. I bless the search for divine love, a journey with a million routes. That leaves me in charge of me only, like Jesus and my mom and Melody Beattie have been trying to tell me. Worry about yourself and all that. I am still finding God. Just not where I used to think he lived.

It has been one day since I found out my life is not true...

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Mrs. Palmer pauses. We are glued to her, transfixed by these wise, good, wild, grave men who don’t want to die. And in front of our eyes, our teacher wipes a tear and, in a shaky voice, reads the last verse: “And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” I am flattened. I can’t breathe. Like I left my body and just returned to it, I feel tears dripping off my chin. I didn’t even know I was crying. I have to cover my mouth with my hand to stifle sobs. I am there with Mrs. Palmer at her father’s bedside. I am urging him to fight for his life with her. I can see him fading and see her begging, and I want so desperately for him to rage against the dying of the light.

1990. I’ve gone somewhere new. I will never unknow this. Mrs. Palmer has changed my life in under ten minutes; I don’t quite get how but I know she has. Leaving class a few minutes later, I act against every teenage instinct: I stop by Mrs. Palmer’s desk and throw my arms around her. I can’t say anything. I can’t even let go. I’ve lost all propriety. She of course saw me wiping my face earlier, pretending not to be coming undone in the middle of second period. She holds my face gently between her hands and says: “Jennifer, words have always mattered. You have a gift for them. Use it.” Exactly three years later, I am married.

After a long pause, Mrs. Palmer says: “Poetry has always meant so much to me. My dad was my favorite person. When he got really sick, I couldn’t bear living in this world without him. I read a poem to him on his deathbed. I think… I’ll read it to you now.” Holy shit. The room goes silent. We are well beyond verse or form or critique. Even Matt is awake. I am sitting in the far right row three desks back. The air-conditioning is the only sound in the room. No one is moving a muscle. It feels like a full minute passes in silence before Mrs. Palmer takes a deep breath and begins: “ ‘Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night’ by Dylan Thomas. Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

From a wider lens culturally and politically, most of what I was

I Am Not Your Cup of Tea” I am not your cup of tea because I am made too strong and frankly, too hot for you to enjoy maybe you can tolerate me in tiny sips but I don’t want to be tolerated. I want to be devoured by those who value all I am and who do not wish I was in any way watered down to meet your tepid tastes. ~David Gate, A Rebellion of Care

I wake up to a long text from my dad: I had difficulty driving home after seeing you. My eyes were burning. My heart ached. Emotions are getting the better of me now. The worst feeling is to see one of your children struggling to the point it affects her well-being physically and mentally. When the next day doesn’t get any better. Only seems to get worse. And as much as a parent has an overpowering desire to intervene with the answer and fix things, make all the hurt go away, we can’t and carry a sense of failure and regret. The hard case of reality sets in and crushes that desire to make everything right again, like when you were a little girl and Dad could fix most of the disappointments. Not anymore. I cried going home. I’m close to bawling now. Grieving over how fragile you appeared to be. Wanting so desperately to make the sun shine again for you. Make the hurt, the desperation, the loneliness of single parenting and the pressures of earning a living all go away. There can’t be anything more heart wrenching than not being able to make things right. The promise that just popped into my mind is that we are overcomers. Whatever is born of God overcomes the world. Our Heavenly Father is the real fixer. I was only the temporary stand in. We’ll get through this.

The connective tissue of love and like is gone, and rebuilding on sand is a fool’s errand. To save a marriage you have to want to.