Of Mess and Moxie

by Jen Hatmaker

  Finally I get to the checkout lane. Without exception, my cart is piled so dangerously high that I am holding six items in my hands and tucked into my armpits that literally could not fit, while simultaneously keeping the precarious bounty from spilling off the cart with my right foot. (One time I checked out with Sydney and Remy, who is Ethiopian, and between the different-skinned girls and ridiculous cart, the checker asked, “Do you run a children’s home?” For the love.)

  The intuitive bagger immediately gets a second cart, because my burgeoning basket could basically qualify for vehicular manslaughter should it ram an unsuspecting customer. It weighs around eight hundred pounds and could lay waste to a small child caught in its inertia.

  Thus begins the long haul home. As I pull into the driveway, I see my children scatter like a bunch of draft dodgers during the Vietnam War. (Just in case you wondered how naturally helpful the children of a pastor and Christian author are, now you know. Zero percent.)

  The unloading and putting away of the groceries is easily the worst part, and here is the singular moment those five kids come in handy. It’s like a small staff. I fetch them from their hiding spots as my labor force, and they manage to eat three entire bags of food between the car and kitchen. After throwing out the old takeout containers, mysterious leftovers, and sad cilantro (why can I never use it in time?), I engage the Tetris of fridge organization and rearrange the pantry from whatever bullcrap disorder my kids inflicted, because it seems fine to them to put the lentils next to the baking powder. Then it is the rinsing of the produce, the breaking down of the cardboard for recycling, the folding of the twenty-nine reusable grocery bags, and the washing of the Tupperware resuscitated from cryopreservation.

  From start to finish, this whole process takes around seventeen years.

  At least I’ll only have to do it again six days from now.

  JEN’S GROCERY STORE DAY SUPER SANDWICH

  This is my go-to recipe on shopping day, because by the time I’ve put the food in the basket, put the food on the conveyer belt, put the food into the car, taken the food into the house, washed the food, put the food in the fridge/freezer/pantry, I’M OVER THE FOOD. This is not a day to make an elaborate meal, because I have angry feelings toward food. So, make the grocery deli and bakery your sous chefs:

  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

  Purple onions, if they won’t incite mob violence

  Pineapple

  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Slice your ciabatta loaf in half lengthways. Spread a thin layer of pesto on the bottom, layer up the meats, cheese, and veggies and basil, and spread a thin layer of marinara on the top half. Close ’er up, stick on a sheet pan, cover with foil, and warm through for about fifteen minutes. Slice and serve with cute little individual bowls of marinara, because the only thing better than marinara is more marinara.

  Cut up a pineapple for your “side dish,” because you are still very much over all the food.

  This entire procedure takes five minutes to assemble. Maddeningly, your people will fall all over themselves loving this dinner while barely commenting on the two-hour Indian feast you prepared the night before. I TOASTED AND GROUND MY OWN SPICES WHILE MAKING BIRYANI AND NAAN, and they are like, Mmmmm! Store-bought pesto on bread! Delicious, Mom! You’re a great cook! When in fact, I’ve made a sandwich.

  Fine. I’m awesome.

  It’s not the load that breaks you down; it’s the way you carry it.1

  — LENA HORNE

  CHAPTER 5

  WE LIVE

  In 2015, I had the opportunity to speak on the farewell tour of Women of Faith after its twenty years of faithful service to women. These gals, some in their sixties, seventies, and even eighties, have changed so many lives, I cannot even imagine what their corner of heaven is going to look like. (It will be very crowded with plenty of inappropriate humor, I can tell you that.)

  Sandi Patty was one of the longtime WOF contributors. If you don’t know Sandi, there is a zero percent chance you grew up evangelical in the eighties. I wore her tapes plumb out. She is a singing legend, and her particular flair involves super high, grand finishes. The kind where you just fall out. I adore her. I adore her to the ends of the universe, her and her whole big crazy wild family.

  One weekend on the tour, she asked for prayer for an impending procedure on her vocal cords, kind of a scary one, and since I am a stable adult, I hollered:

  “Not her voice, Lord! Anything but her voice! Take her legs!”

  One should rethink asking me to pray for a person’s needs.

  I can’t count how many times I’ve witnessed something similar: the uber healthy fitness buff contracts heart disease. The most devoted mom loses a child. The faithful wife is left behind for another woman. The committed pastor is cannibalized by his elder board. The first-rate athlete loses mobility.

  The main thing is attacked, and no amount of devotion could stop it.

  It is a watershed moment when we start bargaining with God: Anything but this, Lord. I did everything right! I invested wholeheartedly. I sacrificed greatly. I nurtured this specifically. I need this particularly. I love this especially. How could this go down despite my dedication?

  Until recently, I possessed a very developed sense of entitlement to my best things. I mostly expected them to live on their own island of protection, tucked away from harm, disease, disintegration. I bought the notion that my own attentiveness and control would maintain the island, and for good measure, I imagined that God Himself endorsed my system. Especially if that particular main thing was used in His service (double immunity!). I invoked “a hedge of protection” around my island like contemporary prayer circles taught me to. I read the books with Ten Steps for _______ and recorded every lecture on Eight Ways to _______ and implemented the basic protective measures the experts recommended. I assumed the cocktail of diligence, obedience, privilege, and vigilance would insulate my best things from harm.

  It was a lovely fantasy. Not biblical or sensible or rational, but lovely.

  The problem is life.

  Last year, within six months, I had five main things go down, catastrophically. Two of them involved my children, easily the most treasured inhabitants on the island. All illusion of control, all assumed security—vanished. The details are private, but I can tell you this: we were rattled to the foundation of this family. It was like looking down at your feet on solid ground and watching it erode as you stood there. When you believe your island has been protected under your vigilant watch, then you discover your surveillance was flawed, or you find out one of your beloved inhabitants has struggled alone mightily, it will knock you so flat you fear you’ll never rise again.

  It is a sobering realization that our children must live a real life in a real world, that they are targets, vulnerable to the same suffering that plagues us all. They will experience everything we never wanted for them: heartache, trauma, fear, isolation, agony, loss. They will not be the first generation to live a pain-free life. They will not be the only human beings to make it out unscathed. We can have it all in place, all in check, all under our thumb, and they are still not exempted from Jesus’s statement: “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33). It is the most awful situation. What a horrible system.

  During this same season, I noticed something strange happening with my hands. My knuckles began stiffening, my tendons started to knot, and my fingers began to draw in. Because I am very careful about my health, I completely ignored it. Sure, I had some simultaneous symptoms in my foot a
nd shoulders, but I chalked it all up to “random weirdness” (a medical term I invented).

  Finally, one evening on my porch, I asked my friends, “Do you think my hands look strange?” and held them up. Because my friend Tray is merciful, he shouted, “Gross! I can see that from here!” My friend Jenny Web-diagnosed me in four minutes with a condition called Dupuytren’s contracture, and an appointment with a hand orthopedist confirmed it.

  Basically, I have an irreversible, degenerative condition almost exclusively found in old men. In fact, there are four ancillary symptoms that sometimes accompany DC and I have all but one, and the only reason I do not exhibit that manifestation is because it is penis related, so there you are. The upside to this diagnosis is that my orthopedist constantly tells me how young I am. (I am the clear Prom Queen of the Waiting Room.) The downside is that there is no cure or reversal and my hands are going down.

  During these exact months, my brother was swept up in a massive group injustice, an absolute nightmare that stole an entire year of peace and destroyed dozens of lives and families. It traumatized several dear friends, and had it simply been a different day, my husband and dad would’ve been involved too. The injustice shook us to the core, and when there was nothing left in the tank, when we were all on empty, my mom was diagnosed with cancer.

  Somewhere in the midst of this season, I got mad. I went from wailing grief to fury: Really? My kids? Of all the people! How could this be? How could so much struggle have taken place under my own roof? My brother and mom? My beloveds. This is unfair and wrong and low and mean, and I am not having it. I am not. I am livid. And my hands? They aren’t remotely as important as my family, but still! Now? This is how I work, God! For YOU. I am a writer, for the love of the land. I do not have space to process this physical loss right now. My family, my hands—this is the substance of my best work.

  I had no idea how addicted to self-rule I was, or how much confidence I placed in false security. Stumbling around in the debris of dreams I thought I’d earned for me and mine was like being in a dark and lonely valley. I felt white-hot panic that everything was an illusion, it was all slipping, it was never even there. What else didn’t I know? What else was breaking down? I thought we’d paved a yellow brick road straight into our predictable futures. I had never been so scared. I would be in a perfectly ordinary setting and feel the searing tickle of fear snake up my spine and envelope my entire head until my brain felt on fire. I didn’t sleep a full night for months.

  Somewhere deep within, from the place I’d deposited God’s Word my entire life, finally rose a quiet truth that laid the first paver stone out of anguish: “God has not given you a spirit of fear.” I do not mean this in any contrived, pithy Sunday School way. It emerged as the only solid piece of ground to stand on: fear is a liar. It cannot be relied upon to lead well, to lead out, or to lead forward. It is an untrustworthy emotion, not of God, and it never leads to health, wholeness, wisdom, or resurrection. And since fear was my primary state of mind, I knew everything I was imagining, concluding, and assuming was a lie. I wasn’t yet able to envision an alternative, but simply understanding that I was constructing a false narrative was the first pump of the brakes.

  Good reader, you may be in a season of suffering, too, and it may have understandably catapulted you into alarm. Or it could be that fear is your default state; you simply live in it. Some of us were raised afraid and learned to view the world through the lens of dread. (My girlfriend’s mother sends us terror alerts, worrisome weather reports, and news on local criminal activity anytime we are taking a trip together. We are forty-two-year-olds.)

  The Bible is so incredibly helpful because, truly, God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7). Practically, that means making decisions out of fear, drawing conclusions from a place of fear, and getting stuck in the trappings of fear will lead us away from the truth, away from health, away from Jesus. It will, choice by choice, take us further from the sound mind and place of power God carved out for us. In short, it will mess us up. Simply identifying fear as the dominant emotion is a helpful red flag. It tells us: Whoa up, sister. These thoughts and ideas cannot be trusted.

  Once I admitted to operating out of a destructive head space, I shook off a bit of paralysis and started putting into practice the spiritual disciplines I preach. First at bat: declaring faithfulness—not so much mine (as I kicked a piece of our fence down in fury) but God’s. I remembered: He is good. He has always been good. He loves us, and He is here. He is paying attention, and He heals. He can redeem what has been harmed. I do believe this. I was so terrified that I forgot for a minute, but I remembered. It was such a comfort that I cried from relief. God is faithful. He can be trusted.

  Next up: community. Probably the darkest days of my life were the ones between discovery and disclosure. I am a member of a small friend tribe forged by one million moments of confession, transparency, truthfulness, and vulnerability. We’ve fought hard and won intimacy in life’s trenches together for years and years and years. Hand to God, there is not one thing unsaid among us. So I finally reached out and said:

  I need you.

  In the whole of my life, I will never forget sitting with our friends, crying together, praying together, their assurances of solidarity healing my heart on the spot. We pushed the fear back even more, their words of wisdom chipping through the ice of loneliness. 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.

  Then: do the work. In our case, this looked like counseling, education, hard conversations (and lots of them), and speaking God’s Word over our family. Healing requires partnering with Jesus in the work He is accomplishing in us. We move. We engage. We do the things. Sometimes that involves therapy or medication, and by the way, there is no shame in either. It is not “lack of faith.” Rather, it is a sign of incredible strength. Whether you go for preventative maintenance or because you are hanging on by a thread, 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.

  There is nothing weak about being in the care of a counselor. That is strong, sister. That says you are not passively waiting for your strength, your restoration. You are doing the work, poking the bear. You are actively laboring with God and making good use of someone else’s gifts to develop into a stronger, healthier person. Bravo, I say! May we use any tool possible as we pursue healthy marriages, healthy kids, and healthy souls. To abuse and suffering and loss and grief and pain and a horrible enemy, I say: Come at us, bro. We’re not going to take this stuff lying down.

  The truth is, God created us with resiliency. Mankind is incredibly able to heal, to rise back up, to stare down pain with moxie. Jesus strengthens our minds for the task of recovery. We’ve got chops, girls. Pain is universal; there is no avoiding it, no system that will sidestep struggle. This terrible, mean voice screams out, “What did you do wrong? How did you go so terribly off the script?” when life bursts at the seams, but that’s a lie. Life can be hard because life can be hard. We’re not doing it wrong. What matters is excavating our pluck from the rubble and refusing to be defined by loss. Sometimes it looks like fury, sometimes determination, activated by a flash of our eyes and a straightening of our spines. Rather than cower under its weight, we force pain into a partnership, using it to grow, to learn, to catapult us into a deeper, wider, sturdier life.

  In our family we read, we learned, went to counseling, studied, took constant temperature checks. And then we covered it all with spoken truth. A dear mentor sent me this exact text:

  No matter what is stirred up, you stay tied down. Anchored down. I see debris flying—swirling like a tornado over your head—but I see you tied by a rope aro
und your waist that is holding your feet to the ground. I see you up on your tip toes. Flatten those feet on the ground and stand firm. Trust Jesus. Trust Him with what you cannot reconcile.

  So I did that. I flattened my feet, reclaimed my moxie, and told my people:

  Your future is beautiful and purposed.

  You are exactly as God planned you.

  Jesus loves us and is with us.

  We are not fragile. We are overcomers.

  Our bodies may suffer, but our spirits LIVE.

  And I am here to tell you today, as I write this, we live. Dear ones, it was just a bit ago I thought I would never smile again. And even worse, I thought I would be scared the rest of my life. Some things I’d counted on were gone, and they left a vacuum of insecurity.

  But God has not given us a spirit of fear, nor has He saddled us with a spirit of defeat. We live because Jesus lives, because He is real and present and moving and working and He will not have us conquered. This is not hoodoo; it is a powerful reality. Flatten your feet, because nothing in your life is too dead for resurrection. It can be the very worst thing, the main thing, the one thing of which you said anything but that. Darkness can find your soul or marriage or child or body in ways that you begged against, that you blocked in every way. It can be worse than you think and more crushing than you imagined.

  And even then, we live. This is the power of Christ in us. Rock bottom teaches us that God is who He says He is and He can do what He says He can do. We buy what we’ve been selling because it is real. God’s healing work means actual lives are restored, actual hearts are mended, actual strength is renewed. Real marriages can come back to life, flesh and blood families are repaired, and, miraculously, those very fractures fuse back stronger than before.