by Jen Hatmaker
Andrew:I’m guessing you’re bored.
Trina: I don’t know what to do.
Andrew: Start tackling your tasks?
Trina: I can’t yet. I’m suffering Today Show withdrawal.
Andrew: Would it help if I gave a tech script overview of the likely programming?
Trina: Yes, but don’t make fun of my soft journalism.
Andrew: Let’s see, cheery good morning, one belly laugh and show summary, then cut to serious-faced anchor, most likely ethnic.
News: Somewhere in the U.S. a child is either missing or was horrifically harmed. Straight outta the trailer park, her grandmother will be interviewed with an attorney on one side, a T-shirt with the child’s image on it, feather earrings and bad dental work.
The oil spill is still a massive catastrophe, according to the individual in the live shot standing in front of distinctly coastal Louisiana scenery (shrimp boats are nice). We’ll see images of oil-soaked birds struggling to escape caring hands and dead sea life on the beach.
Obama will say something about something.
Then, in the weather, it will either rain or not rain locally, and we’ll see footage of someone somewhere picking through the wreckage of a tornado-flattened house or being plucked from the rooftop of a flooded home by a helicopter or johnboat.
In celebrity news a much prettier person than we will ever meet in real life either did or did not have sex with someone, meaning there is either a scandal or a child on the way/newly born.
Cut to commercials, most likely Clorox, diaper, or menstrual related.
Back for a cooking segment, probably a summer-themed recipe, which means there will be fresh tomatoes in it. Pray the second-tier talent doesn’t sever a tendon while clumsily chopping ingredients.
Cut to witty banter between the show’s personalities either at the desk, in a faux living room setting, or outside where regular people holding up signs are kept at arm’s length by rope barriers and the veiled threat of tasering.
Repeat every half hour until Ellen comes on.
In a similar substitution Jenny’s husband Tray sent me three pictures from www.awkwardfamilyphotos.com to view via e-mail, technically following the rules to abstain from time-wasting Web sites. (He sent me two, but I begged for a third to satisfy my sophomoric, inappropriate humor.) There is nothing better than a family of eight, dressed in Star Wars regalia, posing at Olan Mills.
I am really, really immature.
Day 12
This silence has been awesome. Our house feels peaceful—well, as peaceful as a house with three kids and all their homies can feel. I like the missing white noise of media. I like the silence during the day. I like the alternative rhythms we’re discovering. Like:
• Cooking together
• Walks after dinner
• Porch time with our friends
• Sydney’s endless craft projects at the table
• Dinner with neighbors
• Actual phone calls
• Four books read, a fifth in queue
• Caleb’s new obsession with fishing
These are emerging out of the black hole of media. It’s not rocket science; there’s just space for them now. With the TV off, we ask, “What else can we do?” With the Wii packed away, the kids invent their own games. With an hour to kill after dinner, we grab Lady and hit the sidewalk. Some of this is out of boredom, some out of desperation, but still.
Several times, as I realized I was caught up on correspondence, done with laundry, and finished with my to-do list, God whispered:
“Hi there.”
My communion with God suffers not for lack of desire but time. And let’s be honest: I say I don’t have time, yet I found thirty-five minutes for Facebook and an hour for my shows. I found half an hour for YouTube videos on how to fix little black girls’ hair (my Ethiopian children are on deck, and I can’t have them looking nappy). I found fifteen minutes for the radio and twenty-four minutes for a missed 30 Rock episode. So when I say I don’t have time, I’m a gigantic liar.
I have time. I just spend it elsewhere.
God hasn’t made a nuisance of himself or given tasks for my newfound time. He’s just been . . . extra there. Sort of like, “Remember I’m here with you all the time? And I can help you choose kindness and patience during the day?” (Could also insert: gentleness, meekness, self-control, love, selflessness, forgiveness . . . you know, all the things that come so easily to us humans.)
God is using 7 to transform the ease of my communion with Him. It’s intimacy like a comfortable sweatshirt, beyond dressed up Sunday wear—past the formality, past the spiritual tasks. More like, “Let’s just live this life together.” I’m not transferring this extra time to hard-core Bible study and theology formation. Honestly, that’s already my bread and butter. I study God’s Word for a living.
This is something different. Something more relational and daily. Something in the gaps of spiritual activities, in between the stuff on a calendar. It’s just simple communion, the natural kind between people who spend a lot of time together. I’m pondering this:
He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. (Mic. 6:8)
Without the noise and static, I’m learning about that walk humbly part. Frankly, justice and mercy are my first languages; I’m a doer. Acting justly satisfies the deep part of me that so wants a happier, safer, kinder earth. I feel productive with a task, a list, a project, a mission. I like the word “act” in this verse. (Gotta be honest, I’ve been trying to earn my salvation for some time.)
But God is teaching me walk humbly—daily, simply, quietly. It’s in the walking humbly that God trains me for acting justly and loving mercy. Being aware of God’s presence is a powerful catalyst for courage later. Acting on the latter without the former is just charity, not worship. Plenty of people enact justice without devotion to Jesus. There is no salvation in that, no devotion. That well of mercy will run dry without replenishment, without supernatural motivation.
If more of us took the “walk humbly with your God” part seriously, we might become agents of justice and mercy without even meaning to.
Day 14
Straight up: I dreamed about TV shows last night.
I saw the So You Think You Can Dance premier. Epic. There was an Animal Planet piece about an alligator I can’t recall, but I remember thinking, See? This is the kind of important science I’m missing. I’m getting dumber during this media fast. I watched a sewing show (?). My REM mind was grasping at TV straws. It’s very deprived. Lastly, I enjoyed Law and Order specifically starring Mariska Hargitay as Detective Olivia Benson and Sam Waterston as Executive Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy; yes, I know they are on different Law and Order dramas, but the sleeping mind will have what it wants, and mine wants those two on the same show. (Can you imagine the snappy dialogue?)
The last thing I recall was the sharp realization I was doing something naughty. I was a TV watching fraud. 7 had been compromised. I swear to you, I was already making excuses in my dream (“Brandon turned it on.” “I thought 7 was over.” “I didn’t take my gingko biloba.”).
I apologize to my readers for watching TV in my dreams.
Day 15
Between 7 tunnel vision and this media vacuum, my eighth book released today and I thought it was next month. My in-box started blowing up with preorder messages: I got my copy! Guess what I got in the mail today?! Got my hot little hands on your book! I’ve already read half! The cover looks awesome, Jen!
Me: Really? I can’t believe you got it a month early!
Friend: It came out today, stupid. Don’t you know your own release dates?
Me: Um, evidently not.
This is helping make sense
of the Blog Tour I start next week. I thought it was dumb to promote a book that wasn’t available yet.
7 will be my ninth book. As I type that, I am stunned. After my fifth book, I said I was done writing because I didn’t know anything else. I’d mined everything in my brain, and there was nothing left. So God changed our lives. Then I had more to say apparently, although from book six on, my writing sounds like a girl who has clearly come undone and cannot communicate without an avalanche of emotion. I’ve bawled through the writing process on my last four books.
When I think about the girl who wrote A Modern Girl’s Guide to Bible Study, my first book, I can hardly remember her. Recalling what I cared about, how I acted, how I spent money, what mattered to me, what I misunderstood about my mission, what I thought I knew, how I loved, how I lived . . . it’s like describing another person.
If I could go back to the Jen of 2004, surrounded by babies and banging out that first book on a borrowed laptop, I would tell her a few things:
First, I would stroke her hair and tell her I knew how hard she was trying. I know she genuinely loves Jesus and is trying to be obedient. I would be far more gentle with her than she was with herself during those years. I would remind her she is only twenty-nine, and managing three kids under five with a husband logging seventy-hour workweeks is ridiculously hard. It’s okay to cry sometimes. This will pass. The kids will grow up and wipe their own butts soon. You’re doing a good job. (Why is the current me so much kinder to me than the 2004 me was to me?)
Second, I would drive myself around the extravagant neighborhoods in west Austin, the houses I dined in and met with women in and brutally coveted while we baptized people in their multimillion-dollar backyards. I would note the meticulous landscaping and four car garages and the beautifully groomed women with killer wardrobes and perfect bodies. Then I would gently tell myself: “This is all meaningless; substitute happiness. This vicious trap will capture you with no mercy if you get too close.” I would describe the liberation of living below your means, something the 2004 me has never experienced. I would assure her that this affluent lifestyle is a horrible goal—go ahead and stop trying, stop dreaming, stop striving. You will be stunned where true happiness actually comes from soon.
Then I would link arms with myself and walk down the street we lived on. I would kindly explain that our neighbor to the left, the one who never mows and lets her house fall down around her, junking out the neighborhood, is actually a widow whose grown son and friends take advantage of her. I would go on to explain that she is all alone with a pastor’s family next door who has never lifted a finger to serve her but only complains about her messy yard. I’d show 2004 Jen that the gospel is neutered until it grows hands and feet and actually becomes good news to someone, like someone whose only label was “irresponsible neighbor” when it should’ve been “widow in distress.”
I would tell Jen:
It’s okay to admit your worst struggles. To actual people.
You don’t have to be awesome. You can be ordinary.
You can trust the Spirit when He challenges your interpretation of Scripture.
You can ask, “Why do we do this? Why do we think this? Why do we say this?”
Pastors aren’t always right. God is your authority.
Jesus warned against wealth for a reason. Stop chasing it.
Next, with affection, I would ask 2004 Jen if she knew where Ethiopia is. She would lie and say yes because she hasn’t discovered the freedom in admitting ignorance about anything yet. I would describe this beautiful, tragic country and the others like it. To her shock, I’d reveal that she would become so burdened by its poverty and enamored with its beauty that she would adopt two of its children. (2004 Jen tells me to get out at this point, as she had a one-year-old on her hip, a three-year-old on her leg, and a five-year-old whose exact location was unknown.) I’d kiss her overwhelmed cheek and assure her better days were coming, days that weren’t so self-absorbed and lost and frustrating.
I’d tell 2004 Jen that one day she would garden. We’d laugh our heads off together.
Then I would call forth the best in her, and I would say: Guess what? Soon your whole life will be centered on justice. You’re going to walk away from power and reputation, and you’ll break bread with the homeless and give away the shoes off your feet. It will be awesome. You’ll be free soon. This nagging tension that things aren’t right, that life is more than blessing extremely blessed people . . . that’s all true. A torrent of believers are demanding more from the indulged American life, daring to imagine that discipleship is adventurous and risky and sacrificial and powerful. You won’t believe how many of them there are. You’ll be drawn into a thrilling chapter God is writing in the church, with new and ancient themes.
Finally, I would hug 2004 Jen, understanding that discipleship is a journey, and each stage is a necessary precursor to the following one. God was right in Proverbs: our light is the dimmest at the beginning of salvation, but it grows brighter and brighter as we go. There is no wasted scene, no futile season. God gives us what we can handle, when we can handle it. We are drawn more and more deeply into the knowledge of Jesus. A baby can’t handle a steak before she has teeth. The steak will come, but for today milk is on the menu. That’s not an insult; it’s biology. The baby will get there. Be patient. Do the best with what you know. When you know more, adjust the trajectory.
Self-hatred is not appropriate when God reveals a new angle. That is not the way of Christ, who abolished condemnation under the banner of grace. The wise responder humbly receives truth, allows it to supersede the version he or she is holding, and adjusts. This progression is not cause for shame but gratitude; thankful God never leaves us where we are but draws us into a richer faith. I giggle to imagine what 2017 Jen would come back to teach me; I don’t even know what I don’t know.
So for now I’ll continue to reduce and simplify, fight and engage until I know what else to do. What I know now is this: less. I don’t need to have the most, be the best, or reach the top. It is okay to pursue a life marked by obscurity and simplicity. It doesn’t matter what I own or how I’m perceived. Whether I succeed in the market or land hopelessly in the middle is irrelevant, although this used to keep me up at night.
I’m just beginning to embrace the liberation that only exists at the bottom, where I have nothing to defend, nothing to protect. Where it doesn’t matter if I’m right or esteemed or positioned well. I wonder if that’s the freedom Jesus meant when He said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:3). In order for Jesus’ kingdom to come, my kingdom will have to go, and for the first time I think I’m okay with that.
Day 18
Last year our husbands left Jenny and Shonna and me unsupervised for too long, and we planned a Disney World Christmas surprise. My kids had never been, and after wasting colossal amounts on Christmas crap, I decided this was superior holiday spending. We got past the hotel-booking-stage, even beyond the five-day-fast-pass investment, when Brandon and I said, “We’re morons. We have a $40,000 double adoption. What kind of idiots spend their adoption money on Space Mountain?”
So with no small amount of disappointment, we pulled out.
Jenny and Shonna—best friends that they are—must have decided never to mention the trip again, as I was like the senior girl who didn’t get to go to prom because she got mono. Being good friends, all her BFFs said prom was stupid anyway, the band was going to be lame, and they were only going because their moms were living out their unrealized dreams vicariously through them.
Jenny and Shonna were so tight-lipped that I forgot they were going. I’m certain this was intentional because we exchange 438 e-mails and initiate 762 conversations about every trip we take together. Our husbands beg us to stop talking about it two months before our plane leaves. The anticipation is half our fun, but I didn’t hear one
solitary predetail about their five days at Disney. I mean, come on.
This same emotional preservation is happening right now. I’m sure of it.
I know this because my favorite show is currently on its fourth week—So You Think You Can Dance—and I haven’t heard boo about it from my friends. They are acting like they aren’t watching. I mentioned it to my girlfriend Christi, and she shrugged it off, “Oh, it’s just tryouts. Super boring. Who cares, right?” AS IF we haven’t organized watch parties, dance contests (true story), show trivia quizzes, season soundtracks, and attended SYTYCD Live in Austin for the last three years.
The same friends who call me to watch a show together on the phone are acting like they’ve lost interest in reality TV. I know they’re reminding one another not to mention anything and to act like TV is for losers, pretending to wish they were on a media fast because there is nothing good on and they could spend more time in Bible study and meditation like I was getting to.
This is an elaborate conspiracy, and I’m onto them.
And I love them.
Day 21
Is it really ground breaking news that too much media is bad for us? Is anyone thinking, You know what my kids need? More TV. I see couples having dinner in silence, checking their phones, as if anything cannot wait one hour. Don’t get me started on the Bluetooth guy; it makes me want to ask, “Have you always been a jerk?” Wear it in the car, dude; do not wear it into Jason’s Deli and have a loud conversation while making the cashier wait for your order. If I am close enough, I will pinch you, and I don’t even know you.