You Will Not Feel Ready: Jen Hatmaker Solo episode

People tell me I’m brave all the time. About the divorce, about the book, about rebuilding my life while everybody watched. And every single time, I feel a low-grade panic, because I know what it actually looked like from the inside: sitting in my parked car for 45 minutes because I could not make myself walk in, typing one sentence and deleting it 15 times, sobbing in the parking lot outside my brand new financial planner’s office. I was not brave. I was scared, and I moved forward anyway.

We’re kicking off our October series, Courage to Change: Do It Scared, and today it’s just me and you. I’m handing you a much smaller word than “ready.” Ready is a feeling, and you can’t schedule a feeling. Willing is a decision, and you can make it on a Tuesday while you unload the dishwasher. We’ll sort fear into two piles: the warning you should heed and the fee you simply have to pay. And I’m going deeper on two stories: the months I waited too long to face what was happening in my marriage, and the years I coddled my fear before publicly changing my theology on LGBTQ inclusion in 2016. That was the best fee I ever paid.

Coming up this month: Barbara Kingsolver, Kim and Penn Holderness, and Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers of Pantsuit Politics. You’re not going to feel ready. But you can get willing, and willing is available to you in the next ten minutes.

Thought-provoking Quotes:

• In my life, ready never came. Not one time in my entire life did readiness already exist before the hard thing.
• Ready is something like a feeling, and you can’t schedule a feeling. Willing is a decision. Willing is a choice.
• Fear is not measuring whether or not you should. It is measuring whether or not this thing matters.
• There is fear that is a warning that should be heeded. And then there is fear that is just a fee. It’s just a cost that you’re going to have to pay.
• The first one has a real object, but the second one has an audience.
• The fear was a fee. It was not a warning. And I did have to pay it. It’s the best fee I ever paid.
• I may not be ready, but I am willing.
• You’ve done harder things than this. And you did those things scared too.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Awake: A Memoir by Jen Hatmaker - https://bookshop.org/p/books/untitled-memoir-jen-hatmaker/22287565
• Join the AWAKE Collective on Letters from the Middle - https://jenhatmaker.substack.com
• October AWAKE Collective Reflection Guide, with this month’s writing prompt: “The Thing I Would Do If I Were Not Scared”
• Leave us a voicemail - https://jenhatmaker.com/podcast: Tell me the change you’re scared of, or the one you already did scared.

Connect with Jen!
Jen’s Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/

Jen’s Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmaker