Our only hope to speak with kindness, to lead with patience, and to not threaten our children with homicide is to ensure our spiritual reserves are not bone-dry. Moms are the middle of the flow chart; the arrows of exertion flow constantly out from us, but when no arrows of strength, grace, and peace are flowing in, the whole mechanism is in danger. Goodness in equals goodness out.

Jen Hatmaker

Categorized in : Children Spiritual Mom

You will never have this day with your children again. Tomorrow they will be a little bigger then they are today. This day is a gift. Breathe and notice. Smell and touch them; study their faces and little feet and pay attention. Relish the charms of the present. Enjoy today mama. It will be over before you know it.

Jen Hatmaker

smell feet children

God does not change, but He uses change—to change us. He sends us on journeys that bring us to the end of ourselves. We often feel out of control, yet if we embrace His leading, we may find ourselves on the ride of our lives.

Jen Hatmaker

journey use doe

I don't want my kids safe and comfortable. I want them BRAVE. ... I don't want to be the reason my kids choose safety over courage. I hope I never hear them say, 'Mom will freak out,' or 'My parents will never agree to this.' May my fear not bind their purpose here. Scared moms raise scared kids. Brave moms raise brave kids. Real disciples raise real disciples.

Jen Hatmaker

mom real kids

Usually the things we think we need become the very things we need a break from.

Jen Hatmaker

break needs thinking

It is immature and lazy to imagine we know everything there is to know about someone before we know that someone. We don't know their stories, their histories, their real live human feelings. We don't know their favorite movies and best memories and what makes them afraid. It is unfair to take one fact, one thing they've said or we heard they said, or one thing they wrote, or someone else's experience, or a group they identify with and make a character sketch. If people did that to us, the picture would be so woefully incomplete, we wouldn't even recognize our own description.

Jen Hatmaker

real character memories

There are only 24 hours in a day. We need to quit trying to be awesome and instead be wise.

Jen Hatmaker

wise trying needs

We have this one life to offer; there is no second chance.

Jen Hatmaker

no-second-chances second-chance chance

As 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.

Jen Hatmaker

compassion kindness jesus

Be patient. Do the best with what you know. When you know more, adjust the trajectory.

Jen Hatmaker

trajectory do-the-best patient

Our stories affect one another whether we know it or not. Sometimes obedience isn't for us at all, but for another. We don't know how God holds the kingdom in balance or why he moves a chess piece at a crucial time; we might never see the results of his sovereignty [...] I might just be one shade of one color of one strand, but I'm a part of an elaborate tapestry that goes beyond my perception.

Jen Hatmaker

chess-pieces color moving

Our children are humans and deserve to be treated respectfully. Discipline doesn’t include raging, screaming, abusing, neglecting, humiliating, or shaming our kids. God never treats us like that. That sort of discipline never “produces a harvest of righteousness and peace.

Jen Hatmaker

discipline kids children

Maybe we don’t recognize satisfaction because it is disguised as radical generosity, a strange misnomer in a consumer culture.

Jen Hatmaker

generosity satisfaction culture

We cannot carry the gospel to the poor and lowly while emulating the practices of the rich and powerful. We’ve been invited into a story that begins with humility and ends with glory; never the other way around.

Jen Hatmaker

powerful humility practice

I won't defile my blessings by imagining that I deserve them. Until every human receives the dignity I casually enjoy, I pray my heart aches with tension and my belly rumbles for injustice.

Jen Hatmaker

dignity blessing heart

I see a strategy for fracturing humanity well in play: just keep people separated and let them reinforce invented boundaries in their imaginations. Because when people come together and really listen to each other, doing the hard work of human kindness, virtually every barrier is breached.

Jen Hatmaker

hard-work play kindness

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.

Jen Hatmaker

coffee suffering people

When the jars of clay remember they are jars of clay, the treasure within gets all the glory, which seems somehow more fitting.

Jen Hatmaker

clay treasure jars

For whatever reason I was born into privilege; I've never known hunger, poverty, or despair. I have been blessed, blessed, blessed--relationally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.

Jen Hatmaker

hunger-poverty despair blessed

Obedience isn’t a lack of fear. It’s just doing it scared.

Jen Hatmaker

scared obedience

For Jesus, who lived so lightly on this earth, He didn’t even have a place to lay His head. I want so deeply to be like You.

Jen Hatmaker

earth want jesus