Quotes from Jen Hatmaker

Thank you, 4:00 p.m., for being the time of day that thoroughly confuses me: post-homework and pre-dinner. I am already exhausted and fairly irritable. The children are losing their ever-loving minds, and husband is still tucked away in his sane office with all mental faculties intact and won't answer my SOS texts to hurry and come home or their blood is on your hands. Do I make a coffee? Or pour a glass of wine? Yours, Witching-Hour Survivor.

The day I am unaware of my privileges and unmoved by my greed is the day something has to change.

Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children. William Makepeace Thackeray

If we all raised others up instead of raising ourselves a little higher, there would be few needs left on earth.

A worthy life means showing up when showing up is the only thing to do. Goodness bears itself out in millions of ordinary ways across the globe, for the rich and poor, the famous and unknown, in enormous measures and tiny, holy moments. It may involve a career and it may not. It may include traditional components and it may not.

Could the highest level of "right theology" involve loving God and people like Jesus suggested?

Love refuses to deny or dismantle another's perspective simply because I don't share it.

Desperately wanting God's kingdom to come, we lead with the law, like a sixteen-year-old girl who thought a Bible on a desk corner would represent the story of God more than the warm, safe embrace of human connection.

We can heal and hurt each other, and we do. I'm hoping to help lead a tribe that does more healing and less hurting. I consider that my job.

There is nothing more meaningful, life-giving, or lovely than home

we are the richest people on earth, praying to get richer. We're tangled in unmanageable debt while feeding the machine, because we feel entitled to more. What does it communicate when half the global population lives on less than $2 a day, and we can't manage a fulfilling life on twenty-five thousand times that amount? Fifty thousand times that amount?

If our kids only expect blessings and exemptions, they will be terrible grown-ups.

What many of us embraced as solid and certain seems condescending and exclusive to them. Values that felt trustworthy to some of us—authority, tradition, reason, logic, absolute truth—read like easily dismantled propaganda to postmoderns. Authority—parents, church leaders, government—has failed the next generation in profound ways.

Who you are matters. Your soul is cause for great delight. There is freedom in this discovery and absolute liberation in its ownership. When who you are on the inside matches the outside, you are ready for everything else.

Wise women know what to hold onto and what to release, and how to walk confidently in their choices—no regrets, no apologies, no guilt. I deeply believe God wants this freedom for us. Scripture instructs us to live presently and joyfully, resisting worry and believing Jesus set us free for freedom's sake.

Love God, love people. Act justly, love mercy, walk humbly. Treat people as you want to be treated. If you want to be great, be a servant.

We can't deliver folks from their pits, but we can sure get in there with them until God does. Live long enough and it becomes clear that stuff is not the stuff of life. People are. We need each other, so we probably ought to practice radical grace, because our well-flaunted opinions are cold companions when real life hits.

You can care about new things and new people and new beginnings, and until you are dead in the ground, you are not stuck. If you move with the blessing of your people, marvelous. But even if you don't, this is your one life, and fear, approval, and self-preservation are terrible reasons to stay silent, stay put, stay sidelined.

It started as a selfish act and has turned into a way of life. I can't stand to watch someone throw anything away that belongs in my green bin.

This is why my clothes come from Target; I'm there for Sharpies, so I guess I'll buy this shirt facing the aisle.

I don't like when people minimize their gifts. There is a difference between humility and insecurity, and self-effacement does no one any favors. We teach our watching children to doubt and excuse and diminish themselves.

You are doing a wonderful job. Parenting is mind-numbingly hard and no one is perfect at it and we'll all jack a thousand parts, yet somehow, against all odds, it will be enough.

It's so weird to live in this world. What a bizarre tension to care deeply about the refugee crisis in Syria and also about Gilmore Girls. It is so disorienting to fret over aged-out foster kids while saving money for a beach vacation. Is it even okay to have fun when there is so much suffering in our communities and churches and world? What does it say about us when we love things like sports, food, travel, and fashion in a world plagued with hunger and human trafficking?

Thank you, Obvious Warning Labels. Without you I might have stuck my kid in a washing machine, lit a match near an open gas line, used my hair dryer while sleeping, or, God forbid, not realized eggs may contain—wait for it—eggs. I have no idea how I ever function without you. (I almost ingested the contents of a lava lamp just yesterday, but your label made another quick save. God bless.)