Some people struggle privately, in the safety of their family and close friends, tucked away from public scrutiny. They reach out to a small handful of trusted people and gallop towards stability in the comfortable cushion of dependable community.

Others, like for instance, me, post their mental breakdowns on the global internet and hope for the best.

Fortunately for me, my actual people read my digital meltdowns and intervene.

Thus, my husband whisked me away last week for a motorcycle ride through the Hill Country with friends, staying overnight in the most charming log cabin on the Frio River. It was for my mental health recovery, and let me tell you: I should fall apart more often.

On the back of the Harley (a gift from one of our favorite people on earth…true story…please don't hate on this outrageous kindness), riding through the most beautiful hills and rivers and wildflowers and scenery in our state, I plugged in my earbuds and tapped into The Gift From The Heavens: Pandora. I pulled up one of our current favorite stations: Carrie Underwood. Oh, Carrie. Let’s just make this easy: Be mine. Thank you.

After jamming to Before He Cheats and Undo It for a spell, my memory tapped me on the shoulder, reminding me of the former female country voices who clogged every corner of my mind with lyrics and longings for so many years.

Trisha...Faith...Alison...Shania...Martina...Jo Dee...Martie/Natalie/Emily...Reba; these girls, with their high-waisted jeans and belly shirts, sang the anthem over my college years and 20’s. They spied on me and stole my thoughts and experiences, then wrote songs about them.

They sang me through new independence and the sharp thrill of young adulthood. My college girlfriends rolled our windows down and turned the music up, belting out our freedom, and man…I DID feel like a woman. We’d bring our stereos down to the lake and lay out, slathered with baby oil, hastening our impending skin cancer, a testament to the folly of youth, singing Martina songs and dreaming of the day we’d have marriages like Tim and Faith.

These singers watched me fall in love with Brandon, and they wrote songs declaring our glorious love to the world. After all, our very first date was on a country dance floor, twirling and spinning to Some Kind of Trouble by Tanya Tucker, feeling mildly positive we were headed into the hurricane of young love. These women made sure to capture every emotion of that raw, reckless season, so fragile and dramatic and visceral. Each song proclaimed my angst and happiness and hopes and self-indulgence. Trisha was right: She’s in love with the boy, and even if they have to run away, she’s gonna marry that boy someday.

With surgical precision, they then documented my life with that first baby, so overwhelmed and tender, my love bleeding out sideways. They wrote words to help the rest of humanity understand how my heart was now living outside my body, making me ache with helpless, hapless, hopeless love for this tiny boy. The songs gave it all flight; From This Moment On by Shania, This Kiss by Faith, You’ll Never Know by Mindy, played softly during middle of the night feedings when moonlight flooded my son’s face and I thought, well, this is it, this is how it ends for me; I’m just going to die of love, right here, right in this glider rocker. I was so grateful these women declared 1998 ‘The Year of New Motherhood Music’ for me.

For my generation, these women sang us through all those formative years, when we were only ankle deep into our own stories, humming the opening notes to a song that wasn’t yet written in us. They gave us confident words when we needed them and lyrics of grief and disappointment when life refused to cooperate like the books said it should. Their words resonated deeply, which of course I now know why; these women were mothers and wives and daughters singing their own stories, letting us borrow them for our weddings and relationships and dreams. These were heart lyrics, life narratives. Some things are just universal.

As I thought of this baton that has now been passed to Carrie and Taylor and Miranda and Kellie, I’ll admit, a few tears slid backwards on my cheeks, and my memories caught in my throat. So much is behind me. It happened so fast. One minute I was singing Born to Fly by Sara Evans with my toddler in the backyard, and the next minute I’m seeing him through his final six weeks of middle school.

I meant to savor every single moment, but life was harder than I envisioned and time went faster than I planned; my kids’ early years were like five minutes…underwater. These beautiful chaotic years of raising children are infinitely slow, but viciously fleeting.It’s the darndest thing. How I have a high schooler in four months is simply beyond me.

All those songs, markers through such precious, impossible years are obsolete today. They were stakes in time, but now they are just memories. They were so good, so very good, so right and true and special and timely, but now I have to dig them out like the old pictures of first birthdays and Christmas 1999 and preschool graduation programs I haven’t converted to digital copies yet, relics of a bygone era in more ways than one.

So on the back of the bike, I switched my Pandora channel to “Trisha Yearwood” and sang every note to every song, as familiar as the church hymns I can still sing harmony to. I threw out gratitude to these women for singing their lives out loud, and in that, helping so many of us find ours. I thanked them for anchoring so much life change in lyrics throughout college, early 20s, young marriage, young motherhood; they sang my story.

I dried up those tears, wrapped my arms around Brandon, my love of 18 years, threw my head back and sang with Jo Dee:



FOR THE LOVE, I didn’t even pay homage to the Indigo Girls, the Cranberries, or Whitney Houston. Who sang the anthems over your life? Who sang your story? (Mamas and Daddies ahead of us: tell us to treasure these years. We hate when you say that, but please tell us again.)

For the last few years, God used Easter to mess me up. I’ve mentioned the Easter I gave my boots away and life was forever altered. The next Easter, we launched Austin New Church and my story divided in half: before ANC and after. The following Easter was our church’s one-year anniversary as God delivered on his promise and ANC was legit; a monumental lesson on his faithfulness.

So let me finish the story about this Easter; there was more than NeNe and her little pink purse. When you bring your entire church downtown to feed 800 homeless people including a band, worship, a message, communion, and resource stations, it gets…messy. The sanitized version of church goes out the window. The rules to maintain an organized service simply don’t apply to an outdoor service dominated by the homeless.

So during Brandon’s brief message, one very sad, very lost woman screamed, “Where were all of you when these men were violating me?! Where were you??” There was more, none printable. It was raw and desperate, littered with expletives and sorrow. If we came to proclaim freedom for the oppressed like Jesus said, then we needn’t look further than this broken woman.

What did I do? How did her grief move me? Well, I motioned for Tray to “take care of her.” My instinct was to protect the service, keep everything decent. I mean, a shattered woman screaming during church is just too messy to indulge.

My church family, however, responded with grace befitting the Bride. Brandon spoke gently to her, Christi tried to embrace her, Ryan held out his hand, others interceded for this prodigal daughter. If Jesus really meant the church was a hospital for the sick, not a showcase of the healthy, then we were seriously having church.

Cut to the next day.

I was preparing to be the keynote speaker at an event two weeks away, the Ladies’ Retreat for the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma, around 3000 women. I was locked into Mark 10, where Jesus engaged blind Bartimaeus a week before he went to the cross. I got down to business studying.

I had so much to teach. Other people.

Ahem.

Bartimaeus: poor, blind, beggar. Probably looked like every homeless person I know. Outcast, shunned from the temple, unclean, discarded in every way – a true societal reject. And here comes Jesus with his entourage, headed to Jerusalem to be “king” (oops, they had a little misunderstanding about what that meant – their bad). Everyone is excited, everyone is cheering. Yay, Jesus! We’re getting our king and we’ll be free!

“As Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus (that is, the Son of Timaeus), was sitting by the roadside begging. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’” (vs. 46-47)

Whoa up. Yikes. This is awkward. This is embarrassing actually. There is nothing dignified here. This reeks of desperation. I mean, Bartimaeus? Poor, blind Bartimaeus screaming at Jesus? Sheesh. What a mess, Jesus surrounded by normal, decent followers, forced to deal with this sad, sorry homeless guy screaming bloody murder.

“Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’ Jesus stopped and said, ‘Call him.’ So they called to the blind man, ‘Cheer up! On your feet! He's calling you.’ Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus.
‘What do you want me to do for you? Jesus asked him. The blind man said, ‘Rabbi, I want to see.’ ‘Go,’ said Jesus, ‘your faith has healed you.’ Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road.” (vs. 48-52)

And bam, right in the middle of my important studying to teach others how to follow Jesus, the Holy Spirit leveled me. Who was I in this scenario? Not Jesus, mercifully pausing for a blind beggar on his way to the cross, but the embarrassed “Christ followers” who scorned this humiliating interruption during their Christ-following and sanitized this awkward confrontation to get on with their holiness.

I cried for an hour.

I have so far to go.

“Rabbi, I want to see.” Bartimaeus asked for the most basic human need. In biblical times, blindness meant he was considered cursed by God, which made him unclean, which made him an outcast, which made him a beggar. Unlike James and John who nine verses earlier asked to sit at Jesus’ right and left hand in glory (predicated by the awesome demand, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask”), Bartimaeus only asked for mercy.

This is like the starving asking for food, the orphan asking for parents, the homeless asking for shelter, the sick asking for medicine; basic human needs – food, shelter, care, love. These aren’t tangled up in power or position, they aren’t born out of entitlement or greed. They are a plea for mercy, the cry of every human heart.

Decorum has no relevance for the mother who prostitutes to feed her children or the nine-year-old who eats trash to survive the streets. The “rules on how to behave” are meaningless for the 66 children infected with HIV in the last hour or the 25,000 people who died today from starvation.

The poor world is begging for mercy like Bartimaus, while the rich world is asking for more favor like James and John.

I taught this mess at the BGCO Ladies’ Retreat, including my dismal failure on Easter. I wondered if the American church was like well-mannered nice-talkers, sitting in a living room sipping coffee, talking about choir practice, while the world burns down outside our windows. While the richest people on earth pray to get richer, the rest of the world begs for intervention with their faces pressed to the window, watching us drink our coffee, unruffled by their suffering.

It’s just not right.

So I blubbered in front of 3000 women, bawling for the anguish of others and my own heinous disinterest, worried we were missing the point. I told the story about giving away my boots and asked if a similar moment wasn’t in order – not that shoes will change anyone’s life, but there is something spiritual and submissive about offering the shoes on your feet, the sweater off your back. It tells Jesus: I’m in.

It’s the engine behind this month of Seven: giving away is somehow sacred, connecting to the sacrificial heartbeat of Jesus. It’s as transformative for the giver as a blessing to the receiver. When God told us to give, I suspect he had spiritual formation in mind as much as meeting needs.

You might want to sit down.

Before I formalized this or offered any structure, women started pouring down the aisles, pulling their shoes off. They left jackets, Bibles, purses, diamond necklaces, wedding rings, cameras, iPhones, bags – I have never seen anything like it. Eventually, I just turned off my microphone as hundreds of women laid face down, sobbing, barefoot. The stage was covered in their offerings, falling onto the ground and taking over the room.

It filled 70 large moving boxes.

It was the greatest possible giveaway of Month Three.

I learned something: There is much hope for the American church. It’s too soon to declare the Bride hopelessly selfish or irrelevant. The fear my message would be received poorly was so debilitating, I hadn’t slept for a week. When women are accustomed to beauty and happiness messages, discussing a crumbling world caused me no end of anxiety.

I’ll repeat: 70 moving boxes full of offerings; thousands of women going home in the pouring rain, barefooted. The church is not beyond the movement of Jesus. A stirring is happening within the Bride. God is awakening the church from her slumber, initiating a profound advancement of the kingdom.

Please, don’t miss it because the American Dream seems a reasonable substitute, countering the apparent downside to living simply so others can live at all. Do not be fooled by the luxuries of this world; they cripple our faith. Like Jesus explained, the right things have to die so the right things can live – we die to selfishness, greed, power, accumulation, prestige, and self-preservation, giving life to community, generosity, compassion, mercy, brotherhood, kindness, and love.

The gospel will die in the toxic soil of self. Paul wrote, “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection.” We want the life part without being united with Jesus in the death part, but that version of Christianity doesn’t exist – that is a false gospel, void of sacrifice.

The fertile soil of death is where the gospel forms roots and actually bears fruit. We have to die to live; we have to die so others can live. It almost sounds like Jesus’ mission. This is the church he was willing to die for, a Bride that inspires and changes the world. This vision is worthy of radical obedience.  Don’t give up on the church.

There is hope for her yet.


This is the week Jesus made all things new and rescued us from ourselves. May worship and obedience and mercy and love reign in our hearts. Struggling with the church and all its mess? You are welcome here and I am glad to walk beside you.

It’s Easter.

Between ages 0-32, I celebrated Easter the fun way: with bunnies, baskets, and expensive clothes. What better way to say “Jesus reigns” than dressing my preschooler in a $45 dress to show her off in the church lobby? (You’re welcome, Jesus. Be blessed.)

Now, let’s be clear, if you had asked me what my Easter priorities were as I stood all fancy in the lobby, I’d become grave and mention the resurrection. For crying out loud, I’m a Christian. But truthfully, between the outfit shopping, the Easter baskets, the egg ______ (dying, stuffing, hiding, hunting), the pictures, the lunch menu, and the gift buying, Jesus was flat last. I started thinking about him as the band started at church, and I thought about him for a whole hour.

That’s just true.

But for the last three years, Jesus has messed with me. Frankly, he’s hijacked all my holiday endeavors. I’ve always celebrated holidays with a Cultural Major and a Spiritual Minor. Take Christmas, for example. I endlessly spent on garbage no one needed and worked myself into a December frenzy and oh well. La de da. Now I’m overwhelmed by the poor and the disgusting consumerism cycle and the heinous neglect of Jesus and the appalling nature of it all.

Then we got to Easter, or as God called it, Passover. “Easter” is a little name picked up from the Anglo-Saxon fertility goddess of spring, ‘Eostre’, who saved a frozen bird from the harsh winter by turning it into a magical rabbit who could lay eggs. Hence: ‘Easter’, bunnies, and eggs. Why are elements of a pagan religion associated with the highest holy day of the Christian faith? (Oh bother. Can’t we just carry on and dye our Eostre eggs in peace?)

Assessing the typical American Easter, on one side I see Jesus on the cross, humiliated and mutilated, bearing the failures of every person past and present, rescuing humanity through an astonishing miracle of divine redemption, splitting history in two and transforming the human experience for eternity. On the other side, I see us celebrating this monumental heroism with chocolate bunnies and boiled eggs, with Jesus as an afterthought. It doesn’t make sense. (Insert some of you tossing this book in the garbage. Don’t mess with my Easter fun, you hippie chick.)

Austin New Church decided to rethink “The Traditional Easter Service That Brings In More People Than Any Other Day Of The Year.” It is our church’s two-year anniversary, and certainly we could stand more foot traffic, but I’m not sure Passover is best celebrated by a high-attendance Sunday of people who won’t be back until Christmas Eve.

We literally asked ourselves: What would Jesus do? Would he drop a bunch of cash on fancy clothes? Buy out the chocolate and plastic egg supply? Find the biggest church in town and spend twenty minutes posturing in the lobby?

Who in Austin might want to celebrate the astonishing hope of resurrected Jesus, but might feel uncomfortable surrounded by beautiful people dressed to the nines? Who needs the gospel spoken into their brokenness, but might not be welcomed by the saints in the sanctuaries? It came quickly to us:

The homeless.

If Jesus came to proclaim freedom for the captives and good news to the poor, then Passover uniquely belongs to the bottom dwellers. So we cancelled service and took church downtown to the corner of 7th and Neches, where our homeless community is concentrated. We grilled 1300 burgers and ate together. Our band led worship, then in a powerful moment of solidarity, we shared communion. It was a beautiful mess of dancing, tears, singing, and sharing. It wasn’t an “us” and “them” moment; it was just the church, remembering the Passover Lamb and celebrating our liberation together.

Now, if we get one repetitive request when serving our homeless friends, it’s this: “Do you have a bag?” (Could also be: Can I have that bag? Can I take that trash bag? Do you have a bag I can put this bag in?) So this was the perfect moment to give away seven of my nine purses, which were nice and roomy, just like the ladies want.

When the gals had a perfect view for maximum impact, I hollered:

“Hey girls! Anyone want one of…these?”

Cranberry red leather.
Green with gold buckles.
Chocolate brown bohemian bag.
Turquoise with short handles.
Burnt orange across-the-shoulder.
Shiny black backpack bag.

And one little purse I debated on bringing. It was a tiny thing, hot pink crocodile by Gianni Bini, functionally useless but fashionably magnificent. Our street girls want the biggest bags possible, since they carry everything they own. A wheelbarrow would be a huge hit. So my little vanity purse was a wildcard, but at the last second with a conspiratorial nudge from the Spirit, I threw it in.

Not surprisingly, it was the last purse left. What self-respecting homeless woman picks a hot pink purse that would barely carry her bus pass? Glamour handbags are only for women who have eight others and a house in which to stash them. So I stood there with my one little purse, when it’s rightful owner, the one for whom I daresay that purse was stitched together, made a beeline for me.

She had on her Easter finest, tights included, though it was ninety degrees. Flouncy dress with – what else? – hot pink flowers. Hair done in sections with matching beads, pink floppy hat on standby. Leather dress shoes polished to a sheen. Dainty ribbon necklace and rings on four fingers.

She was six-years-old. Her name was NeNe.

Never has a purse better matched its owner. She slipped that hot pink number over her arm and never put it down, not even to eat. Her mom looked at me and no words were necessary; mothers speak a silent language. I took her picture and fussed over her beauty and breathed a thank you to Jesus for the nudge.

I serve a Savior who finds a way to get pink purses to homeless six-year-old girls.

Jesus is a redeemer, a restorer in every way. His day on the cross looked like a colossal failure, but it was his finest moment. He launched a kingdom where the least will be the greatest and the last will be first, where the poor will be comforted and the meek will inherit the earth. Jesus brought together the homeless with the privileged and said, “You’re all poor, and you’re all beautiful.” The cross leveled the playing field, and no earthly distinction is valid anymore. There is a new “us” – people rescued by the Passover Lamb, adopted into the family and transformed into saints. It is the most epic miracle in history.

That is why we celebrate. May we never become so enamored by the substitutions of this world that we forget.

How do you celebrate Resurrection Sunday? Have you been participating in Lent? What has God shown you? I'd love to hear your Easter story.

(This post is excerpted from "7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess")

My name is Jen Hatmaker. I’m super white. I even have blue eyes. My hair was snow blonde then it was dirty brown and now it’s gray but I color it so who even knows anymore? (I’m sorry. I overshare when I’m nervous.) My husband and I cranked out three carbon copies of us.

I grew up in the lower middle class. In my early years, we lived in racially diverse cities. I was the only white girl in my second grade class in Little Rock, Arkansas, a fact I was oblivious to, because you get the luxury of being oblivious when you’re seven. I lived in south Louisiana, where there is every shade of skin color under God’s yellow sun. But I logged my formative middle and high school years in Wichita, Kansas…Haysville, Kansas to be exact. Pretty much total white bread. 

I nonchalantly enjoyed my white privileges my entire adult life, one of those people who said “racism is dying” and “things are different now” and “we’re colorblind” and casual ignorance like that. I gushed and over-loved any black people in my life, of which there were very few; none in a real relationship with me that wasn’t exaggerated and a little contrived and over-zealous.

But then we decided to adopt two children from Ethiopia, and in November 2010, as I was shopping for their very first care package to send over, I was standing in the middle of the Target toy aisle, and I sent out this SOS text:

Where are all the black baby dolls? 

I sat down in the middle of Target and cried my eyes out.

How did I never notice this? How was this my first sense of outrage over this discrepancy? How could I have yammered about the end of racism and “a fair system” when evidence to the contrary was staring me in the face every single day?

Sybrina, please envision me getting down on my knees in front of you, this white mama, and asking you to forgive me. I never understood the systemic racism that persists in this country, because I didn’t have to. The system is structured to grant me privileges and power through no merit of my own; simply by virtue of my skin color. This same system denies and protects this oppressive hierarchy, conditioning white people to not even see it.

We don’t get followed around in the store by suspicious security.

We don’t get singled out or searched by policemen.

The bandaids in Walmart all match our skin color.

The children’s section in the bookstore is full of covers with white kids.

If I ask to speak to a manager, he or she is usually white, like me.

And our sons don’t get murdered walking down our own street holding Skittles. 

So because these things didn’t happen to me, I ignorantly assumed they were not happening to you. I casually consumed my white privileges – these unearned assets that granted me the benefit of the doubt and free passes and guaranteed security and permanent insider status – assuming that anyone else, anyone, could enjoy these same advantages by making good choices and working hard.

But it is simply not true, because the same system that keeps me on top keeps you on bottom. If anyone is automatically granted insider status, by definition that means someone has outsider status. We see this when a black student or man or woman accomplishes something extraordinary, and they are called “a credit to their race.” If a white person pulled off the same thing, he would just be called awesome. You have to work harder for acknowledgment, and then singling it out as an exception to the rule diminishes and demeans your merit.

I didn’t know about the Black Male Code, because I didn’t have to. I had the luxury of knowing my sons would breeze through applications and security lines and entrance exams and interviews, receiving unmerited approval at the first glance.

But then I got this son.

And I watched in horror as this son was cut down in the prime of his life.

And my heart was seized in terror. Because everyone loves my Ben right now. Who wouldn’t? He’s eight and the size of a first grader. He’s adorable and silly. His Ethiopian accent is the cutest thing that has ever entered your ears. He’s writing stories about “A Dog as the President” and he wears and a helmet and kneepads when he skates. He watches Power Rangers.

But I’m learning what is going to happen six years from now, Sybrina. People will start to suspect him for no reason, or train a watchful eye on him at the mall, or fear him. He may ask a white girl to prom, one he has gone to school with since these innocent years, and get his heart crushed when her daddy forbids it. He will have to be careful in public with his friends, as the most innocent activity will likely be interpreted as threatening…like walking down the street with candy and tea in his own neighborhood.

I have grieved endlessly for your son. I just keep trying to make sense of it, and sense won’t come. There is simply no sense in this injustice. You don’t get to murder a teenage boy because you’re paranoid and suspicious of him. You don’t get to do that. Would this have happened if Trayvon was a white kid named Troy? Would he have been viewed with the same fear? Will our black sons ever escape this treacherous plight and just be free to be children? 

I’m ashamed that I haven’t seen or cared about this inequity until I had black kids under my roof, Sybrina. I’m so sorry. I would completely understand if you dismissed my solidarity here, because just two years ago I claimed America was a post-racial country, and that is a sorry state of willful ignorance. Neglecting the hard, important conversations about race, justice, ignorance, and inequity until I literally had skin in the game is appalling, and if you reject my concern now, I wouldn’t blame you.

But if you’ll have me, I’d like to stand with you.

I’d like to link arms and stand up for our black sons and daughters, calling the system so wrought with disparities to reform. I want to engage these challenging discussions with respect and commitment to one another, because I can no longer be complicit in the battle against equity.

We’re going to have to work hard here, because it’s tempting to make sweeping statements and unfair generalities. It's easy to say things are all bad or all good or never this or always that, and that's not true and won't get us far. Both of our races are wrought with fools and charlatans and bigots; none of us are perfect and this is complicated. It’s going to take respect and humility to navigate this well, to begin pulling the threads to unravel such an entrenched system. But I want to start here, with you:

I see Trayvon.

I know he wasn’t a perfect kid. He probably opened up a sassy mouth to you and whined about chores. His room might have been a pigsty no matter how much you fussed at him (but with a face like that, I’m sure he got away with it). Like all seventeen-year-old sons, he probably drove you crazy sometimes, pushing against the boundaries barely holding him back from young adulthood, anxious to spread his wings. But he was the son of your heart and he mattered and he deserved life.

I am devastated it was stolen.

Please know that as for me, I promise to do the hard work and ask the hard questions and enter the difficult places to turn the tides for my son and all the black sons, and I grieve that it is too late for yours. I hope the national outcry for Trayvon has comforted you; so many of us see him. We are hungry for a better world where our boys can walk down the street unafraid and unfeared.

Please accept my hand; I stand with you, two moms demanding more for our sons. I am sorry you’ve lost Trayvon, my sister. I’m so very sorry. May his legacy help us move into a wider space together, tearing down walls and stereotypes and fear and building communities where we truly love our neighbor once again.

All my love to you.

In certain ways, I’m a typical first-born overachiever. I was filling calendars with due dates and meetings back in junior high. When I figured out you could wear a bunch of tassels on your robe if you graduated with honors, it became my life mission. I calculated how many B’s I could get in college and still graduate Magna Cum Laude, and I hunted that dog down, lobbying for every 89% like some sort of freak. Impending deadlines? I am an animal. I like my life to go by the book. Which book? Whichever one everyone is yammering about.

But in other ways I am a nincompoop.

I once employed a rather consistent habit of running out of gas. I was always perplexed to feel my car sputtering, assuming I was losing my tranny or throwing a piston. As it turns out, you need fuel to keep your car moving forward. Or it will sputter. And quit moving forward. Evidently, there is a little gauge to help you determine when this moment is drawing nigh, and one must pay attention to the little gauge. The gauge is helpful. The gauge is our friend. Except when you ignore the gauge and find yourself stranded on the side of I-35. Again.

May I so truthfully confess to you that I am running out of gas? I’m beyond the sputtering stage. The car is coasting to a dead stop, and I’m stuck on the side of the road, on empty.

Empty.

The gauge has been trying to tell me I was in trouble, but I had places to go, so I kept driving. These places are important, you see, and people were counting on me to get there, to show up. They still are.

This is a terrible time to discover I am out of gas. Why, just this morning, I signed a contract to write a 9-week DVD curriculum for 7. Due in less than three months, including a week of filming. I have a live webcast in one hour and four minutes. I have events the next two weekends, where women will tell me their stories, will need me to be present and engaged, where I’ll once again have to pour my heart out teaching, which is something like running a marathon without the weight loss. And then I’ll come home and not have three seconds to recover before every person in this family needs me, because that’s what families do; they need each other.

The signs have been there, dragging the gauge toward E: The loneliness and isolation, the disconnection from my community. The arguing and nitpicking and defensiveness. The shallow well of patience. The tears coming too easily, too quickly. The sense of being utterly overwhelmed. The feeling that expectations were snaking around me, entangling, dragging me to the bottom of a murky lake where there was no oxygen, because it is debilitating to keep hearing “you’re so awesome” when I know I’m not.

I hit a wall this morning where there was just nothing left.

A black pit lodged in my stomach and I ground to a halt.

I should’ve read the gauge several miles back, when I was disconnecting from real live human people because the ones on the computer were so abundant and urgent and insistent. You’re real too, good readers, but there are so many of you and you’re everywhere. Meanwhile, I have these people right here, right in front of me, connected to me by blood and love and proximity and community, and I’ve learned I can’t multiply like I thought; I mostly divide.

I should’ve read the gauge several miles back, when this feeling of impending doom would overtake me before an event, assuring me that I will never, never live up to the expectations people have of me. When I would read on Twitter: “Jen Hatmaker is up next! She is going to kill it!” and I wanted to dissolve, because maybe I won’t kill it at all; I don’t always kill it. That my life is way more ordinary than you think it is, and I feel like a caricature because the parts of me that you see are the parts I’ve let you see, and the picture is incomplete. This is heavy knowledge.

My marriage needs me. My kids need me. My friends need me. (You know what all my friends say to me these days: “I miss you.”) I need time with Jesus, without thinking about how I’m going to teach His life-giving words to others.

I want to loan every one of you my influence for your good causes, for your passions and adoptions and fundraisers and mission work, but I just can’t. I want to partner with all of you and help do it all, all the good work, all the important work that we care about so much, but I just can’t. I want to say yes to every conference you invite me to, I really do because I know you love your people so much and you want to see God’s kingdom come in your faith community, but I just can’t.

I wish I could Skype into all your 7 Book Clubs. I wish I could record a personal message for the launch of your Spring Bible Studies. I wish I could endorse every one of your books, because I’m so proud of you and know exactly how thrilling this is. I wish I could write a blog for all your important things. I wish I could move the needle forward on all your adoption questions. I wish I could have coffee with every one of you visiting Austin. I wish I could call you and talk about how to get your book published. I wish I could speak the exact, healing words you need as your marriage is crumbling in Michigan. I wish I could adequately express – with all the words and space necessary – how much every single kind, encouraging, inspiring email moves me and lifts me.

But I’m on empty, dear ones.

I’m reminded of (the most moving, amazing, brave, remarkable) blog series by Beth Moore’s sister, Gay, who charted her course from full-blown alcohol addiction to freedom. Oh, it’s so moving. So extraordinary and beautiful. But this one thing she wrote stuck with me:

I, too, need to do something different.

Some things that will take work and commitment, restraint and discipline. I don’t even know what they are yet. I need to remember what is “best” and refuse to let the “good” steal it away, because I could spend my last living breath on the good; it’s plentiful. These are going to be hard, because I’ve burrowed down into something of a dark place, and the very things needed to pull out are the same ones I’ve lost energy for, kind of like wanting to lose weight without dieting or working out.

Lastly, God has me thinking of you, as He so often does. It occurs to me that some of you are in the exact.same.place. Which comforts me, readers, but it also makes me sad for us. If you are on empty today, having expended all you have to give and sitting stranded on the side of the highway, may I suggest that perhaps this is not the very worst place to be, that sometimes the car running out of gas is a gift, because otherwise you'd never stop?

This very morning, as I was writing the third paragraph of this blog, my Lifeway event leader sent an email to the speaking team for our Abundance event in Houston this weekend from 2 Kings 3, when God led his people into the desert:

First of all, who prays for her SPEAKING TEAM to show up for an event empty? I guess someone who has been chatting with the Holy Spirit and knows that a handful of us are, indeed, coming dry. I could barely read the email through my tears.

Second, we serve a God who fills the desert with water, even if we didn’t see the rain. He accomplished this while the Israelites slept, while they rested. They woke up to water in the desert.

For me, maybe for you, dear one, we need a short season of rest, even though a battle is impending and we are surrounded by sand, parched. Maybe we need to trust God just enough to close our eyes and believe Him for water in the morning. After all, “this is an easy thing” for the One who has already redeemed humanity.

The night is upon us; our hands are spent from work. The only sane thing to do is rest. God sometimes does His best work while we entrust ourselves to his overnight keeping. Our responsibility is laying down the tasks, setting aside the duties, which is much harder than it sounds. There is never an end to the work; just an end to the day. Sometimes the very hardest obedience involves stopping for the night.

Somehow, God managed to fill the pools with water “about the time for offering the sacrifice.” This is so dear to me. I know how many people need you. I know that so many things depend on you showing up, same as me. But if we are obedient in this, God will renew us in time…in time for the kids, in time for our spouses, in time for our community, in time for our ministries. He will not restore us too late. He will renew us just in time.

His mercies are new every morning. Great is His faithfulness.


Thank you for letting me confess this to you. Are you on empty? Count on my prayers.