Of Mess and Moxie

by Jen Hatmaker

  8. Resolve to try again tomorrow with tactics from a different book.

  Programming Note: This last step could be repeated for infinity until your daughter goes to college. The parenting section at Barnes & Noble is quite large. Surely one of those books can fix adolescence.

  HOW TO GET A GOOD NIGHT’S REST WITH YOUNG CHILDREN

  1. Hahahahaha! There is no such thing. Just put them to bed and satirically say, “Good night.” You’re making a joke. This is comedy. You are so funny! It is not a good night. You will see them sixteen times before sunrise. Go make yourself a second pot of coffee.

  Programming Note: There is one way. Send ’em to Grandma’s, and put your phone on silent.

  HOW TO GET SOME QUIET TIME

  1. Wait until husband comes home.

  2. Tell husband you have to poop. And also you have your period. This will ensure his physical and auditory distance.

  3. Lock self in bathroom.

  4. Pull out stash of chocolate and/or wine you have strategically and masterfully hidden behind the cleaning supplies under the sink since no one cleans except you.

  5. Eat chocolate and/or drink wine, both deeply spiritual acts. Feel good about this. Feel holy.

  Programming Note: Could also stash beach novel with chocolate and wine. If husband knocks after prolonged time in the bathroom, tell him you are constipated. This should buy you another twenty minutes.

  HOW TO GET FUNNY LOOKS FROM YOUR CHILD’S SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER

  1. Play “Uptown Funk” in the car on the way to church.

  2. Send your three-year-old who has trouble pronouncing his n’s to class while still singing the chorus. (Bonus points if he’s the pastor’s kid.)

  HOW TO SURVIVE YOUR FIRST YEAR IN TEXAS AS A TRANSPLANT

  1. Speak about gun control, politics, immigration, and football with no one. (This rule has some flexibility if you live in Hippie Austin, the only blue county in a very red state. It is a hard-core boundary everywhere else.)

  2. Embrace saying y’all immediately, and forgo all criticism of this expression. (See also: all y’all, fixin’ to, bless her, Mama and them, and cain’t never could.) (Also, all soft drinks are called Coke.)

  3. Pledge allegiance to THE Texas grocery store: HEB. It’s your new home. There is no other.

  4. Wear your non-Texan football team gear only in your own home under the cover of night (see step 1).

  5. Carry bug repellent with you at all times. This is non-negotiable.

  6. Wear no makeup and never wash your hair in the summer. Sweat and the messy bun are your new BFFs.

  7. Embrace queso as the fifth food group.

  8. Drive by Jen Hatmaker’s house, which you saw on HGTV, and take a selfie with it. Post this on social media and tag to Jen’s page. This is not at all weird and doesn’t happen every single day.

  9. Drive two hours to Waco and post photos on Instagram so your friends think Chip and Joanna are your next-door neighbors.

  10.Don’t even think about thwarting Texas propaganda. Resistance is futile. You will end up drinking the Kool-Aid. Just give in. You cain’t never help it.

  HOW TO GUARANTEE THE DOG WILL THROW UP ON YOUR BED

  Option 1: Get a brand-new quilt, comforter, or duvet.

  Option 2: Wash current one.

  Programming Note: If company is also arriving the next day, this is guaranteed.

  HOW TO SURVIVE A PUBLIC RESTROOM WITH YOUR PRESCHOOLER

  1. Assume that they will say something untimely and brutally honest like, “Mom, it stinks in here! It stinks so bad! Mommy, did you hear me? It really stinks!”

  2. When it is clear she is oblivious to your facial contortions, gently but firmly cover her mouth with your hand. Brace yourself for the muffled question, “Mommy! Why are you covering my mouth?”

  3. Resign yourself to hiding in a stall until the mystery pooper exits the bathroom.

  4. While in there, do not make the fatal mistake of using the facilities yourself unless you want your offspring to yell, “Mommy, you have a big vagina! Why does your tummy fold over like that? Are you going number two? Girls have three holes!”

  5. Practice containing gag reflex when your little one licks the tampon repository to see “how it tastes,” then lays down on the ground curled around the toilet base. Remind yourself she is building immunities.

  6. Apologize to the mystery pooper as your daughter reaches under the stall and tickles her ankles. You are very, very sorry. Your kid is being terribly creepy.

  7. Finally, wash every bit of exposed skin you can find in the bathroom sink, and douse her in antibacterial gel. Avoid her kisses, because that nasty mouth licked the tampon box.

  Programming Note: If the child is still in a pull-up and the emergency is only number one, consider the sage advice to Just pee in your pants.

  HOW TO HAVE A ROMANTIC EVENING AT HOME WITH YOUR HUBBY WHEN YOU HAVE LITTLE KIDS

  1. Sacrifice naptime to shower and shave and dry your hair. This rare occurrence signals Sexy Time to the husband. Plus, you resemble a sasquatch down there. May need to bring scissors into the shower. We can only ask so much of our razors.

  2. Work yourself to death getting all daily chores done and have kids bathed and in PJs before the hubs gets home from work. This alone is so exhausting that you almost go to bed at 6:15 p.m., but then you remember your grooming labor from earlier and don’t want to waste it.

  3. Order pizza for dinner so the minions will just eat and be done without spending an hour raging against vegetables. Make popcorn and water cups, and send children to the basement for a “super fun movie night.”

  4. Tell older children Mommy and Daddy are folding laundry and will check on them later.

  5. Run to bedroom and lock door. Begin grown-up time.

  6. Get paged by the eight-year-old over the ill-conceived intercom that the four-year-old needs his butt wiped. Dash to basement; clean preschooler standing with his hands around his ankles singing about potty time. This deeply contributes to your sexy mood.

  7. Run back upstairs and lock door. Recommence parent snuggling.

  8. Get paged again by the eight-year-old that they are out of popcorn and someone spilled their juice. Instruct eight-year-old to just “put a towel on it” and grab some chips from the pantry himself.

  9. Re-recommence “Mommy and Daddy Time.”

  10.Eight-year-old again. The six-year-old pushed a button, and the TV isn’t working. Zip back downstairs half dressed, fix TV, haul large ottoman in front of all reachable buttons, and scurry back upstairs.

  11.Sexy Time, Take 4.

  12.Get walked in on by three-year-old scared of “bad guys” and asking why Daddy is squishing Mommy. Soothe scared child, get a snack, put child back in the TV room, close the gate, sprint back upstairs, double-check the lock on the door, embrace husband.

  13.Do not even make it past first base before all the children bound up the steps, banging on the door wondering why it is locked and screaming that the movie is over. Give up in hopeless defeat. Pile everyone on your bed to watch Mickey Mouse, and wonder how you managed to have all these kids in the first place.

  14.Pretend husband might enjoy grooming ministry later that night. This will be the last conscious thought you have until your three-year-old pokes you in the eye at 6:13 a.m. asking for milk and clean clothes since he peed in your bed.

  Programming Note: Motherhood is so glamorous!

  HOW TO MAKE YOUR HOUSE LOOK CLEAN WHILE YOU HAVE BEEN WATCHING NETFLIX ALL DAY, BECAUSE YOU REALLY, REALLY NEEDED TO FINISH THE SERIES YOU’RE LOCKED INTO

  1. Realize it’s five o’clock and husband will be home in thirty minutes.

  2. Run to master bedroom and make bed. Shove miscellaneous junk in closet, bottom drawer, and on your side of the bed.

  3. Take off pajamas (oops) and put on clean yoga pants, bra, and shirt. Redo bun. If hair is unrecoverable and beyond even dry shampoo, put on cute hat. Wipe yesterday’s makeup from underneath your eyes.

/>   4. Brush teeth! If face still looks sketchy, smear on lip gloss.

  5. Take the laundry hamper to laundry room and empty it.

  6. Take clean laundry to room husband never goes in.

  7. Throw dishes in dishwasher.

  8. Spray Febreze in all rooms.

  9. Act like you have been cleaning all day and can’t bear to mess up the kitchen. Ask to go out for dinner.

  HOW TO GET YOUR KIDS TO LEAVE YOU ALONE AND GET OUT OF THE LIVING ROOM

  1. Tell them to clean the playroom. They will promptly play with the toys they ignore 97 percent of the time. This doesn’t matter to you. You don’t care about the clean playroom. You just want some silence. You are faking them out, because you are a smart lady.

  2. Approximately every thirty minutes, randomly call out, “You better be cleaning.”

  3. For good measure, turn on the Food Network in the living room.

  4. When husband comes home and asks where the kids are, say, “Cleaning the playroom,” with a knowing look on your face. Laugh like villains because you are in on this trick together. The inmates are not running your asylum! Crack those long-overdue beers and finish last night’s episode of NCIS.

  HOW TO FIND A MISSING CHILD

  1. Prepare to take a shower or go to the bathroom.

  2. Shut door.

  Programming Note: The missing child should barge in immediately, but should this method fail, silently open a candy bar or start a very important phone call. Look down: there is your kid.

  HOW TO HAVE COMPANY OVER

  1. Frantically clean for five hours. Get mad at everyone for being so gross. Feel very, very cranky.

  2. Follow your children and husband around like a lunatic picking up everything after them, so it appears your house always looks like this, like a model home that nobody lives in. Where are the shoes and the papers and the crap? You don’t have any. This is how orderly you live. Fine, they are all in the front closet.

  3. Lose your mind when you find out your husband pooped in the guest bathroom just before their arrival. Spray hairspray and Windex, because your middle schooler used all the air freshener on his clothes instead of washing them.

  4. Greet your guests with a smile and apologize for your house being “so messy,” even though it hasn’t been this clean in six months.

  5. Enjoy it, because your house will be destroyed again by tomorrow afternoon. This is your lot in life until you are a grandma.

  At family gatherings where you suddenly feel homicidal or suicidal, remember that in half of all cases, it’s a miracle that this annoying person even lived. Earth is Forgiveness School. You might as well start at the dinner table. That way, you can do this work in comfortable pants.1

  — ANNE LAMOTT

  CHAPTER 18

  FORGIVENESS SCHOOL

  A few years ago, my heart got broken. My husband’s too. It centered on one primary relationship but spidered out to several others. It was easily the lowest point in our adult lives. Basically one day we were holding all the important pieces in our hands, and the next day they were all shattered: Brandon’s job, several close relationships, our reputation, our security. It all erupted in a blaze of turmoil and left us reeling for one entire year, the better part of a second, and, truthfully, to the edge of a third. Some loss we predicted with perfect accuracy, but the unexpected collateral damages hurt almost worse.

  We felt betrayed, misrepresented, and wounded.

  And after a while, grief turned to fury and fury to contempt.

  Now, years and tons of emotional and spiritual work later, I can look back and see that long after the actual injury had receded, my bitterness continued to poison. Good grief, on paper we rebuilt, rebounded, recovered in every other way. In fact, we thrived in our next season. Ancillary relationships were either restored or appropriately culled, and there were no tangible effects left to mend.

  And yet, despite the outward healing—new job, new location, new mission, new partners, new season—inwardly, I was still unraveling. I continued to have furious conversations in my head, ones I’d never actually voice. I replayed the worst parts of the story, defending and countering, supplying fresh new life to my anger for years. I reveled in every disparaging bit of gossip I heard and cast God on “my side,” allowing my role in the melee to shrink and the wrongs against me to inflate. I granted all my extra energy to maintaining the offense, and it turned me into a bitter cynic.

  I specifically remember Brandon walking into the bathroom while I was staring in the mirror, perfecting my Face of Fury but Also Nonchalance because I don’t really care obviously and giving a speech to my reflection. Out loud. I was practicing my righteous confrontation and massaging my finer points, making sure my body language communicated both aggression and authority while still oozing with all nine gifts of the Spirit. I don’t care what Brandon said about this imaginary altercation (something about being an unstable mad hatter blah blah blah); I was totally winning that argument, and there was no way he could prove I wasn’t. I was in hard-core training, like a professional athlete.

  Thus the eroding effect of unforgiveness.

  I approach this tender topic with caution, because I know some sins against you were heinous, good reader. Some were “unforgivable” in a court of law or in the long tale of public opinion. Perhaps your abuser went unpunished, your betrayer is unrepentant. Some wounds have visceral effects financially and structurally. Certain wounds hurt feelings, some hurt bodies, some entire families. There are degrees of harm, and not all pain is equal. Our paths to health vary, but we all have this common denominator as the foundation of healing:

  Forgiveness.

  Oh, it is so terrible, isn’t it? Just awful. It is the one thing we don’t want to give. Maybe it helps to discuss what forgiveness is not first. Let it be said: forgiveness is not condoning evil, not forgetting, not brushing something under the carpet, not a free pass. It does not mean minimizing the injury and, consequently, your pain. It doesn’t shrink an offense down, making it smaller in memory, in impact. It doesn’t shrug off loss with a “no real harm, no real foul” response. It does not mean conceding, surrendering to a different version, or yielding your right to dignity. It never communicates that this didn’t happen, it didn’t matter, or it didn’t harm.

  Furthermore, it might not mean reconciliation. Some breaches are restored and relationships mended, but some are not safe. They may never be safe. The other person may be entirely unsorry, and there is no path to harmony. Forgiving chronic abusers does not include jumping back into the fire while it is still burning; that is not grace but foolishness. Forgiveness operates in an entirely different lane than reconciliation; sometimes those roads converge and sometimes they never meet. Forgiveness is a one-man show.

  One last thing: forgiveness rarely equals a one-and-done decision. Very few decide one day to forgive and never have to revisit that release. In most cases, it is a process that takes months and sometimes years of work, and just when you think you have laid an offense down, it creeps back up in memory and you have to battle it anew. Just because this work is stubborn does not mean you are failing or will never be free. Forgiveness is a long road in the same direction.

  Do you ever get the impulse to hang on for dear life? Like someone should stand guard over your injury, and if no one else will, you better? Nurturing anger feels fair, a witness to injustice, like it might hold an open door for acknowledgment or forthcoming repentance or confirmation. If you forgive, where is your justice? Where is your apology? How will this ever be made right? Keeping an offender on the hook leaves room for judgment, which we want deferred for our own sins but rigorously applied to those inflicted on us.

  But I’ve learned keeping someone on the hook really only keeps me on the hook. In attempting to lock up an offender, I imprison myself, captive to anger, defensiveness, and pain, replaying a story that becomes a mental loop I cannot escape from, trapping other innocent relationships and scenarios in a toxic spiral that pois
ons everything. I act out of woundedness instead of freedom, which makes me paranoid and suspicious, crushing everything Christlike and tender and creating a worse mess than I had in the first place. God called us to a forgiving path, not only for a mended community but also for mended human hearts.

  Brennan Manning wrote, “This is the God of the gospel of grace. A God who, out of love for us, sent the only Son He ever had wrapped in our skin. He learned how to walk, stumbled and fell, cried for His milk, sweated blood in the night, was lashed with a whip and showered with spit, was fixed to a cross, and died whispering forgiveness on us all.”1 Jesus walked this sacred road first; we cannot claim His mercies without also claiming His practices. We mustn’t expect a resurrected life when we skip over the cost, the commission, the cross.

  Back when I was nurturing my anger, I’d spend a good half day replaying, remembering words, conversations, correspondence. I practiced comebacks and defensive maneuvers, poking holes in the other story like a State Champion debater. I’d reread e-mails and talk through it all yet again with Brandon or whoever would listen, God bless and keep anyone near me during that season. I expended a great deal of energy, getting worked up again, re-furious, re-hurt. I mourned fresh an apology that was never coming. If I was feeling it, I worked up some tears. I tidied up the narrative a bit more, removing nuance and defining motives, leaving me cleaner and the offender dirtier than we actually were. I imagined catastrophe befalling that person, which made me profoundly happy.

  You know what that other person likely did that day? Ate a sandwich, answered some e-mails, had a meeting, returned some pants to the mall. I was the only one paying the piper, spending energy and mental space not on healing but on imagined vindication. What a waste! That person was not on the hook in the slightest, but I sure was, day after day, month after month, disastrously, year after year. I deferred my own peace, and the only loss was mine.

  The work of forgiveness is so challenging—the actual work of it. The naming, grieving, empathizing, releasing. It’s like a death. A death of what we wanted, what we expected, what we’d hoped for, what we deserved and didn’t receive. Burying those expectations, because they are indeed dead, is truly cause for grief. Expect to feel profound loss as you put them six feet under. Into the casket also goes control, exoneration, maybe even resolution. Those don’t belong to you. We don’t get to control other people or outcomes. I am as devastated about this as you.