Of Mess and Moxie by Jen Hatmaker

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Product Details

Wrangling Delight out of this Wild and Glorious Life

Mess, I think we can all relate too. Life is messy and it can be hard and that's okay. Moxie, this word seems a little more foreign to us. According to Jen, "It is a throwback to women with pluck, with chutzpah, with a bit of razzle dazzle. It says: I got this...we got this together. It evokes a twinkle in the eye, a smidge of daring and stubbornness in the face of actual, hard, real, beautiful life."

And I suppose that really is how life is. It's messy, but it's beautiful, but takes courage to live it and live it well. It's the resilience in the face of the pain and the heartbreak. I think I maybe just now understood this better than I did while reading the book. It all felt a little out there to me, like I couldn't quite grab a hold of it, but writing this out, it makes sense. It is that looking for the beauty in the bleak, the joy in the juggling of the baby years, the intentionality when the days feel intense with just doing what needs to be done. Okay, that's all my rambling now, what about the book?

I think this is the second book I have read by Jen. I read Seven and loved it. This book was a  little harder for me and I think it might have a lot to do with the stage of life I'm in right now. I feel large and pregnant and duckish and ready to have a newborn in my arms and so books that require too much thought processing right now might not have the same appeal to me that they might in two years from now. I'm not sure that's the reason, but I struggled a bit with this book. I love a book that looks at life in a humorous way and yet pulls out truths to live by. I struggle with a book that can feel a little sacrilegiously humorous to me. And yet, that wasn't really this book either. Basically I finished the book and am still unsure what I think about it. The style of the book is in many ways so me, and yet I couldn't quite get into it.

One chapter Jen talks about the church and how the church needs to be geared for more people than the typical mom and dad with children. How it needs to be accepting of other types of people, how there needs to be room for the LGBTQ community, etc. I absolutely agree with this, but I was uncomfortable with what feels like acceptance of them and their lifestyles. Jesus loves everyone, absolutely, but he didn't love their sin. To me, church should be the same way, we accept everyone, but we do need to address the sin. And maybe that is what she meant, I don't know. That chapter just disturbed me a bit. I also am not a proponent of women in leadership as a pastor. Definitely use women to lead ladies' groups, etc. But yet, I really like the idea of church being a sanctuary that we can come to and be accepted.

Jen has some funny stories, including some great How To's, like How to Dress a Toddler in Three Easy Steps, How to Get Uninvited Back to a Home Decor Store, How to Mother Adult Children, etc.

So overall I did like the book. I think I struggled a bit to go back and forth between the humor and the serious and I think that might be some my personality (though I do love sarcasm) and some might be a temporary decrease in processing ability from which I hope to fully recover. Because most of the time, I think I can appreciate humor from which you can learn a good lesson.

I received this book from Book Look Bloggers and was not required to write a positive review.

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