by Jen Hatmaker
Do you know where I encountered my first vision for becoming a writer? What’s that? The Bible? Oh no, sweet reader: A Girlfriend’s Guide to Pregnancy. I read it in 1998 while pregnant with my oldest, and for the very first time I realized it was possible to write on a serious nonfiction subject (childbirth in this case, Jesus in mine) in a funny-funny-funny, friend-next-door, sometimes tender, and often inappropriate way. I guffawed and boohooed my way through Vicki Iovine’s book, and as I closed the last page, I remember thinking: This is how I’ve always wanted to write, a thought I’d never actually had until it entered my mind fully formed.
A savvy reader might notice the similarities, in fact, between my inspiration book and my actual first book written five years later: A Modern Girl’s Guide to Bible Study. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but I hedged closer to outright plagiarism as the working title was A Girlfriend’s Guide to Bible Study, which we were forging ahead with until I got a cease-and-desist letter from Vicki Iovine’s lawyer, a moment that should have mortified me but instead caused me to squeal: I GOT A LETTER FROM VICKI!!
To this day, almost twenty years after I picked up that book, when readers tell me we could be “best friends,” a plunging sense of gratitude spreads through my chest, because my inaugural inspiration came from another writer who made a living as a (trademarked!) girlfriend, guiding her readers through shared experiences with humor, candor, and warmth. I learned truth from Jesus, but I learned tone from Vicki. When you tell me I feel like a friend, I can’t explain what a deep compliment you are paying me, because my first true north as an author was not as an expert or theologian or authoritarian teacher but as an honest friend in the trenches with my readers.
I still draw from several categories of mentorship, because the day I stop learning is the day I need to hang it up. I regularly read books on the craft of writing, some a dozen times each. I start every day reading news articles, theological essays, positions opposite mine, and current-event commentaries. I cannot be a leader in any capacity without paying attention. I constantly reach for introspective, quiet spiritual practitioners like Henri Nouwen and Richard Rohr because they help steady the wild, dramatic, wordy compass I was born with. I devour humor writing like it is my job, mostly far outside the Christian subcategory. I cannot even imagine where I would be if David Sedaris, Tina Fey, and Erma Bombeck had not instructed me in the ways of satire. I also shut down my laptop and get out in the world, because academia has its place but can atrophy a real life. I need to see and smell and travel and put my arms around human beings. I cannot write a good story if I am not living one.
Doctors put in the work to be good doctors. Teachers do the work to be phenomenal teachers. Budding creators cannot imagine themselves beyond the need for development or unworthy of the investment, paycheck or no paycheck. Worry less about getting recognized and more about becoming good at what you do. Take yourself seriously. Take your art seriously. You are both worth this.
And by the way, do not become immobilized by good art already out there. Stop that this instant. I did everything out of order on my first book; not until the manuscript was finished did I comb the shelves looking for “comparable titles” for my “book proposal” (these were things I’d never heard of a hot day in my life). I remember standing in the aisle of a bookstore, running my fingers along book after book in my genre, thinking, Oh my heavenly stars. My book has already been written by famous and smart people. I could barely bring myself to peek inside them, terrified at how much better they were than mine. I went home and told Brandon, “It’s over. There’s no room for me.”
But . . . there was.
There is no scarcity in creativity. The world always needs good offerings. We cannot have too much beauty. There is no such thing as too much wisdom and literature and story and craftsmanship. There is room for you. Don’t be intimidated by successful makers; be inspired by them. Creativity doesn’t divide but multiply, finding new expressions in everyone inspired by someone else’s gift. We can draw from our favorite writers, artists, musicians, thinkers, leaders, teachers; they sharpen and stretch us, laying pavement for our own gifts, offering possibility and permission to be even better versions of our own creative selves. No need to feel threatened or minimized by someone else’s amazing talents. It is all fed by the same river that has no end, no threshold, no limits.
Draw from your treasured mentors and then create what only you can; there is no one else who can do exactly what you do in the way you do it. Your story is yours alone. No one has already claimed your seat at the table no matter how similar the genre. Do your time; there is room for you.
Final note: just because one person says your work is crap doesn’t mean it is. Or maybe it is, but that is not the end of your story. You cannot bail with your first rejection, first critique, first outright troll, first rough patch. You’ll be done by the end of the week. Applause is not your end game or, in any case, your motivation. It can’t be. If approval replaced dedication as creativity’s fuel, this world would be barren, empty, decidedly less lovely. Creating is a synonym for perseverance. Keep going, learn from criticism, ignore the haters, press onward. The Harry Potter series was rejected twelve times before it got picked up, and IT IS DOING OKAY NOW.
As a writer, I can promise you that getting published (or featured or awarded or recognized) will not make you miraculously happy, rich (oh my gosh), or validated. I’m laughing as I type that, because I know you are thinking, Yes, it will. I don’t care what you say. It won’t. I’m telling you. You’ll still be in your weird mind wondering why your life is mostly the same. Traditional success doesn’t fix you like you thought it would.
Listen to me: this is my twelfth published book, a couple made Important Lists, and I swear I still feel wonky and wobbly and nervous and like a poser. Every time I sit down to write, I wonder if I can pull it off this time. Then, miraculously, as I push the watching eyes and lists and expectations out of my mind and open my heart as wide as it will go and put my fingers on the keyboard, there it is: the craft, the joy, the magic.
As it turns out, the applause isn’t as fulfilling as the work.
Art is worth every second. So here I am, creators, cheering you on. We need you. We need your stories and craftsmanship and gifts and courage. We need you to prioritize your creativity. We need brave, committed artists to decorate this hurting world with loveliness, to partner with God in making beautiful things. Erase these words—selfish, frivolous, unimportant—and replace them with these—necessary, exquisite, courageous.
Bring it forth.
The world awaits, dear ones.
We’re all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.1
— DR. SEUSS
CHAPTER 11
DEFER AND PREFER
Dinner conversation last night:
BEN: Mom and Dad, do you guys French kiss?
REMY: Gross! That’s what dogs do!
BRANDON: Only French dogs.
ME: Brandon, gosh.
SYDNEY: Then don’t read Mom’s books, you guys. She talks about sex.
CALEB: Oh, I know. “Have lots of sex.” I read that right next to the kid chapter! Sick!
BEN: I wish I didn’t know this!
REMY: What does that mean?
ME: JUST EAT YOUR FRIED RICE, YOU GUYS.
BRANDON: Hurry up and go upstairs so me and Mom can French.
SYDNEY: This is why we can’t bring our friends over.
Sometimes I miss the days when our conversations revolved around Minecraft. When one births a shiny new baby, one does not envision that child discussing your sex life over Chinese food someday. (A friend recently told her five kids they were having another baby, and her sixteen-year-old daughter sobbed, “Do you guys not know what responsible intercourse is?!” Their fifteen-year-old daughter then burst into tears and wailed, “We’re
going to have to drive a church van!”)
Parent Sex: delighting teenagers worldwide. Like I always tell our kids, after this many years, just be glad your parents still have sex and like each other. And this comforts them zero percent.
You guys, brace yourselves: Brandon and I got married at twenty-one and nineteen. (College sophomore reader? I was your age. Let it sink.) I was a literal teenager who couldn’t even drink at her own wedding, not that we had any booze in the Baptist Fellowship Hall, but still. We have been married twenty-three years now; more than half my life. What we two fools were thinking marrying that young, I have no clue, because when I look at a nineteen-year-old girl now, I want to pet her hair and maybe rock her. Babies!
Allow me a few thoughts on marriage discovered the normal way: in hindsight.
First, the upside of being a child bride. We were both so young, so freshly launched in our own skin that we weren’t yet entrenched in our habits, our passions, our preferences. The main scaffolding was in place: our devotion to Jesus and crazy, mad love. With the structural elements and a few load-bearing walls in place, something happened after the wedding:
We grew up together.
Rather than navigating our twenties as two individuals blending very developed lives together, we matured as one unit, writing a new adult story with our lives. I cannot imagine where I would be today at forty-two without Brandon helping me learn who I was at twenty-three. There is no part of my adult story that doesn’t include his wisdom and balance, his perspective and discernment. There is no me without him. This is our life, every piece of it, each memory, every adult moment we built together.
As a bright reader, you’ve probably guessed there was also an underbelly to marrying so young. For instance, we banked just north of eleven thousand dollars our first year of marriage. That was our combined salary from two part-time jobs, and we suffered one of the biggest fights that year because Brandon bought chicken fingers from the Arby’s drive-thru. WE AREN’T MILLIONAIRES, BRANDON. While that seems hilarious now, financial struggles are nothing to sniff at. We slogged and sloughed our way through poverty and emerged with some bad habits, some debt, some scars. We did not surface unscathed; I still operate out of a scarcity mentality that wore a groove into my financial psyche.
More important, that early on, we simply hadn’t developed the building blocks of a happy union yet: compromise, communication finesse, selflessness, wisdom. These took time, and although we are still slowly acquiring them, we left many ugly words and regrettable decisions in our early wake. Could we have avoided them if we were older? Probably. I don’t know. Those first couple of years are hard. They just are. Maybe all the first few years are wobbly. Two selfish people joining together for life is a miracle every time.
Almost two dozen years later, the communication part is still the biggest slice of the pie, the key element that tends to make or break us. It deeply affects our general sense of security and how much sex we are or are not having. And even after all these years, it is still work. We are not yet at that stage when marriage skips along seamlessly, a lifetime of spoken words smoothing the road and receding in importance, when a pat on the hand or a glance conveys everything necessary, muscle memory from decades of communication.
Nope. We’re still climbing the mountain, trying to mix two different processing styles into one cohesive, happy marriage. It has helped immensely to prioritize self-awareness on personality traits and preferences, because although like-minded in tons of crucial ways, Brandon and I are basically processing opposites. In our early years, every conflict ended in an impasse, as we prefer two different routes toward the same conclusion:
BRANDON: What we need here is words. Lots of words. Millions of words immediately. We will speak whatever words are in our heads, however half-baked, and eventually they will lead us to the end.
ME: What we need here is to retire to our private quarters; think many, many thoughts about this internally; inwardly adjust behavior; and recover from the confrontation, then carry on with our lives.
What could go wrong?
Brandon is a verbal processor. He finds his ideas by talking them out. Rather than work stuff out in his head, he says the first sentence out loud, then continues until he reaches a resolution. Practically, this means he may say something early or midway through that doesn’t match the ending. It isn’t disingenuous; it is simply a half-formed thought that leads to a more-formed thought that leads to the conclusion. Consequently, for him talking is the only way through conflict; silence or space isn’t time to sort things out—it is simply an unresolved black hole. The speaking part is essential to his process. That is the way his mind and ideas work. It is why he used to tape his skeletal notes on the glass door and talk out his sermons in the shower on Sunday mornings. Brandon’s ideas find full formation verbally.
Likewise, his urgency and expediency is wrapped in intensity. According to him, it is proactive; according to me, aggressive. His tone is intense, posture intense, language intense, emotions intense, volume of words intense. This is not right or wrong; it is simply the way Brandon is wired. He is not a laid-back guy, which also means he gets stuff done, he works hard, he handles conflict, he is a great visionary. He is in Go Mode most of the time; his fuse is shortish but his reach is long.
I am an internal processor. I think three million thoughts until I say one of them out loud. I spend the majority of my life in my head. By the time I give voice to feelings or ideas, I have considered that thing from every angle one hundred times. This is slow and takes time, which, as it turns out, can be “frustrating” for a verbal processor who is completely on hold until I join back in. I think my way to conclusions, so by the time I get there, they are pretty cemented. Thus when I hear an idea halfway through that doesn’t match the ending, it feels like a lie (but you said . . . ?). In contrast, my sermon notes are practically scripted, endless pages of ordered points, because my ideas find full formation internally through writing. I don’t even leave 2 percent of a talk up to “verbal winging,” because that is never how I make any sense. (Even typing that sent panic up my spine.)
Consequently, intense communication fries a circuit for me. It is all too immediate, too unconsidered, too many careless words flying around. I am like one of those fainting goats; I just freeze and keel over. Because I deal with life in my head, I am not comfortable navigating assertiveness, word overload, and half-formed ideas alongside conflict resolution. I feel manhandled, confused, or unheard. On the other side, Brandon feels ignored, disrespected, or punished.
Just understanding our opposite processes has been life changing. Without any self-awareness, all that’s left is frustration, but acknowledging our basic operating systems removes the ancillary malice once assumed in conflict: bullying and insensitivity or withholding and disregard. Neither of us wants to harm. Ever. We aren’t being difficult or obstinate. We don’t want to punish each other. There is nothing wrong with either of us. This isn’t some weird game with a winner and loser. We have no axe to grind in conflict.
We just work through ideas and feelings differently.
Worth noting, we virtually always come to the same conclusion, eventually. We are incredibly compatible across almost every subject and value. We both want intimacy and mutual respect and emotional safety in our marriage. We like the same things. We have the same kind of fun. We love the same friends. We pick out the same couch simultaneously. At the end of the day, we love each other equally and want the other to be happy and secure in this marriage.
So we work. Brandon, God love him, will sit quietly next to me and talk to me like a spooked cat: May I have fifteen minutes to talk calmly about this thing? He even loosens his physical posture as if to say: Look how easy breezy I am about this, everyone just be cool. Or he will give me notice, building in the time I seem to require: Can we talk about this thing after the kids go to bed? Excellent. This makes my brain so happy, and it will spend the next six hours getting ready.
In
the midst of it all, my brain tries to tell my adrenaline: No one ever died from a heated discussion. Get a grip, Hatmaker. I force myself to stay in, to stay engaged, even to say words out of my mouth (!). I remember that what I interpret as aggression is simply a man who loves me, trying to fix something that is off. That’s all it is. He just has a lot of feels and words about it, and I can handle that because I am a grown-up. I can meet him somewhere in the middle. It communicates love to him when I engage, telling him I care enough to see this thing through.
We have learned to accept each other’s limits, especially when we raise the red flag signaling an impending meltdown. We can respect each other’s thresholds and adjust accordingly now. After twenty-three years, we’ve discovered deference and preference—deferring to the other’s process and preferring each other’s needs. This comes naturally around 38 percent of the time, so that seems like a miracle. It’s like Mother Teresa level; although, come to think of it, Mama T was never married; she was probably like, A husband? Girl, please. I have WORK TO DO. Leave your feeling words at the door and hold this baby and kindly get out of my face.
As it turns out, 38 percent (with a 62 percent Mama tried rate) means we are still pretty into each other. We French kiss and stuff. Brandon is still my favorite person, and we’ve built a beautiful shared life. Sisters, listen, we are still scaling the mountain with work and compromise, but at this point in the hike, I’m here to tell you the view is worth the climb. The fragile tipping points that once set us off are mostly smoothed out because, Lord have grace, we cannot feel strongly about everything. We’ve achieved a midlevel chill rate and are no longer jittery, high-maintenance young adults circling the drain about nonsense. Our base camp is more like: I like you, I like this, I like us, sometimes not, but mostly yes.
Around this stage of marriage, we’ve noticed a temptation to believe that another person, someone other than your spouse, would make life so much easier, so much better, so much less annoying and difficult, but that whole suggestion is based on faulty logic. There is a fake idea swirling around out there that says if marriage is hard, we’re doing it wrong. If our person gets on our nerves or still does that one frustrating thing after two decades, moving on to a different man would fix everything that is difficult.