Of Mess & Moxie by Jen Hatmaker

I'm kind of late to the party with Jen Hatmaker. She's written 12 books and many people have known and loved her for years. I knew the name but had never read anything of hers until now. I had heard a little bit about the "fall from grace" that Jen experienced a couple years ago but did not know any particulars. (Jen said in an interview that she supported same-sex marriage and believed LGBT relationships could be holy. The Christian publishing company she worked with dropped her, and she was vilified by many of her previous fans.)

Anyway, I enjoyed Of Mess and Moxie. It reminded me a bit of Anne Lamott's writing, in that she is often hilarious. Three times before even getting halfway through the book, I had to run to the bathroom because otherwise I'd have peed my pants! (I've grown to accept that there are times I will be sitting on the toilet laughing my fool head off.)

Here is one of the stories that caused one of my fits of hilarity, I think because it strongly reminds me of myself:

Anyway, when Sydney was in fourth grade, she had a field trip to . . . something somewhere. Listen, I am good at other things. I knew driving parents had to follow the buses pulling out at 8:30 a.m. Great. I showed up to the school parking lot with all the other moms ... 

Two buses pulled out, and I got in line behind the other cars and put my mind on autopilot as we headed south down I-35. ... later, I started thinking, Good night! Where are we going? What was this field trip? Something about government? Or maybe astronomy? I pulled alongside the buses just to make sure I hadn’t lost the caravan, but sure enough, our school name was emblazoned on the side. 

After an hour and a half, we pulled into the San Antonio Zoo, which I surely didn’t remember as a pertinent detail. I parked, sauntered over to the buses, and watched the entire fifth grade contingency pile out. Which was delightful. For fifth graders. But my kid was in fourth, and I had inadvertently followed the wrong bus—not to the correct destination ten minutes from school, but to another city.

That is SO something I would do!

Jen is a very "regular" person, too. People call her "relateable." That's another way she is like Anne Lamott. She writes about Sandi Patty, a Christian singer, requesting prayer for a procedure on her vocal chords. Jen writes:

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.

She writes about how life can be hard, even for children, and says:

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.

We can relate, right?

I really appreciated what Jen wrote about forgiveness. 

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.

I especially like that line, "Forgiveness is a one-man show." It's been free-ing for me to realize that. Like Hatmaker says, the person you forgive may not be sorry, and may not even think they need to be forgiven. I've had cases where it's not just that they aren't sorry, they don't even realize I'm hurt or upset with them -- I forgive them before they even know. And I don't mean to brag (in case that sounded like bragging), I just mean that the other person can be totally uninvolved in the act of forgiveness.

Another good line, which she quotes from Anne Lamott, "Earth is Forgiveness School." This also speaks to what Jen says about forgiveness not bring a "one-and-done decision." That is another thing I've discovered. Often, I feel greatly relieved that I've forgiven someone but, disappointingly, I find I have to keep making the decision over and over.

I like Jen Hatmaker and plan to read more of her books. I admit I like Anne Lamott more. I admire many of the female theologians and writers. I love it that they have become a kind of band of sisters. Anne Lamott, Jen Hatmaker, Nadia Bolz-Weber (the Sarcastic Lutheran), Sarah Bessey, Shana Niequist, Brene Brown, and more. It's great!