7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess

by Jen Hatmaker

  So today I was in adoption dossier purgatory, on hold with the police department trying to figure out how to get fingerprinted. This, and three thousand other measures, is to ensure the lovely children of Ethiopia don’t get adoptive parents who flash elementary school kids or enjoy a larceny habit. Good practices, all, but believe me: international adoption is not for the faint of heart. It’s like the first year of law school where the main objective is to weed out the slackers.

  What is a dossier, you ask? It sounds so pretty. Doss-ee-ay, a beautiful French word, like bourgeois or café au lait. France entices you with its lovely language, but sabotage is also French, gentle reader. Dossier = doctor’s clearances, employment verification (oh so fuzzy for an author who kind of works sometimes), police reports, reference letters, fire inspection, new birth certificates and marriage license, residential history from age eighteen (you can’t understand how many houses we’ve lived in), a “rough sketch” of our floor plan, home study with a social worker, proof of pet vaccinations, health insurance documents, a picture album, passports, essays, fifty other forms . . . all notarized and less than six months old, or—you guessed it—redo.

  This is where my head is.

  Trying to determine if we needed a state background check or state and federal, the lady at the police department asked, “Do you have a fast pass?” which I’ve never once heard of; then she put me on hold. This was the crazy-eyed state of mind I was in when Brandon got home. Just as I was cut off after all that, Brandon redeemed the day.

  What you need to understand is that my husband is an exceptional gift-giver. This is his thing. Everyone knows it. Giving is Brandon’s love language; he waits for the actual day to give his present around 13 percent of the time. He tracks down the most meaningful, exactly right gifts for me all the time; it’s almost embarrassing.

  So he sat down with a big ol’ grin, holding a cutesy bag, and said: “I’ve had the worst day, but this finally came in the mail, and my day turned around. I’ve been dying to give this to you.”

  I mean, seriously.

  Out pops a gorgeous handcrafted silver necklace in the shape of Africa; “hope” engraved across the front, “Ethiopia” the back. People, he found it on Etsy, handmade vintage online marketplace. (After posting its picture on Facebook, Susana commented: “You got a man who knows ’bout Etsy? What?”)

  After a day of adoption labor and “Please hold” and phone calls and paperwork, Brandon reminded me why this is worth it with one beautiful necklace. I cried, of course, which is part of his reward. You better believe I slipped it on quick as greased lightning, rules shmules.

  Completing “meaningful necklace day,” two hours later Susana surprised me during Sewing Night (tomorrow’s gem) with precious Etsy gift #2: A long necklace sporting an old-fashioned typewriter key. The chosen key?

  7.

  Slipped it on, quick as greased lightning. What dear people are in my life.

  My Ethiopia necklace reminded me it’s not about the maddening paperwork; it’s about two babies waiting for parents. My 7 necklace reminded me it’s not about adorning myself for attention; it’s about simplifying for God’s glory.

  I plan on wearing them both every day, and if you don’t like it, you can call me a Heinous Breaker of Rules. But they tell of the things that matter, that count, that are lasting and lovely. They represent people who love me and don’t think I’m crazy for adopting children #4 and #5 from an impoverished country or wearing seven clothes for a month. Sometimes life feels lonely and radical; my necklaces remind me I am neither.

  Rather, I belong to a husband and faith community who embrace the grave challenges of the gospel and shore up my defenses. They inspire me. They travel with me. Remarkable, courageous people surround me. I am honored to be on mission with such extraordinary saints. While my stuff is decreasing, what matters is increasing in equal measure.

  Plus, my necklaces are suuuuuper cute, so I’ll just have that cake and eat it too. I can’t help it if my husband and friend have great taste.

  This is the hot mess our adoption agency sent me in ninety-seven attachments. "Here, do this. Tra la la."

  Instead of getting overwhelmed like usual, I got awesome.

  Day 20

  Susana volunteered to host a sewing tutorial to demonstrate it is possible to buy fabric and run it through a serger and create something. We were below-average students, but oh did we laugh. Our evening kicked off with an honorary clip from Pretty in Pink, drawing inspiration from Molly Ringwald and reviving our crushes on Blaine. Then we laughed some more. In the end we were seamstresses I tell you.

  Susana our muse captured the evening:

  Tables were set up, snacks laid out, fabric, scissors, pins, extra bobbins, and measuring tapes properly placed, and sewing machines ready. My kids were miraculously asleep by 7:45 p.m., fun music was streaming on the stereo, and my house gleamed from it’s first professional housecleaning EVER. (Thanks Mom!)

  I had been wearing my handmade clothes all week but saved my favorite item for this day: an exactingly tailored khaki and cream a-line skirt with orange piping and beautifully detailed exterior pockets, like a retro diner uniform. Oh, you know. Something I just threw together one day.

  I patiently awaited my six pupils for the evening and checked my hair in the mirror. I made sure my phone was set to “loud” and checked e-mail to ensure no one needed directions.

  Stop right here. Let me assure you I’m not a Type-A. I’m normally unpolished, unorganized, laid back, and easy. I like messy crafts, chaotic afternoons with children and dirt, and big kitchen messes. But if my biological makeup were faintly Type-A, that teeny tiny, anal-retentive chromosome would have teeny tiny letters that read “punctual.”

  And everyone was late.

  Twenty minutes late.

  “Susana, we’re so sorry. We feel like total jerks.”

  “No. Come in! I’m just glad you’re here!” (Jerks.)

  But resentment lasted thirty seconds, because when you’re with such amazing, hilarious women, well, it’s hard to hold a grudge. So we sewed. And laughed.

  “Come here. Show me again.”

  “Fix it!”

  “Hers looks better than mine.”

  “Susana, the thingie keeps getting stuck in the thingie!”

  Wait, what?

  Shonna wanted to give up first: “The machine keeps breaking.” Jenny kept fixing it while Shonna went on to break the next machine. Then she’d go back to the first, and Jenny would fix the second. This cycle continued for some time.

  And then there was quiet, confident Trina. Everyone insisted her purse wouldn’t work. She had the wrong fabric. She cut her pieces askew. The seam didn’t match up. What’s this extra thing you’ve got hanging here? But Trina, quiet confident Trina, just kept pinning and stitching. And you know what? She didn’t make a fold-over clutch. My dear friends, hers was an elegant evening bag. Just like she planned.

  In fact, everyone finished the projects. Two “pillowcase” shirts and four fold-over clutches later (well, three clutches and an evening bag), they had enormous smiles and something to show off to husbands, “Honey, look what I made.”

  Remember that feeling from grade school? “Mom, look what I made!” It’s that unadulterated sense of accomplishment. Visions of art galleries and coffee table books floating in your head. That is, until your older brother says, “What’s that supposed to be? It looks like you pooped on it.” And you run crying to your room swearing off future creativity.

  Yeah. It’s the same feeling when you’re older. Exactly the same.

  Day 22

  I’ve spent half this month in wet clothes, and it’s getting old.

  When you only have seven clothes, and one is shoes, another is a dress shirt, the third is threadbare yoga pants, and the fourth is an irrelevant long-sleeved s
hirt as it’s mid-March and summer has begun in central Texas, what you basically have are three items: a pair of jeans and two T-shirts.

  Seven clothes is essentially three.

  I don’t have a dirty clothes pile to wash at leisure. I am literally wearing these daily. And to bed. This has created a washing dilemma. If I was a preplanner like Brandon who organizes every day in fifteen-minute blocks, creating short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals with corresponding to-do lists and relevant details in his synced iCalendar with reminder alarms and color-coded details (you think I’m kidding), then I might have clean clothes that I had the foresight to launder during the night.

  Instead, I’m a spontaneous zero planner who has the Mac and iPhone but uses a paper calendar circa 1987 because I can’t understand the Apple calendar feature and it won’t obey when I try to enter a “New Event”, so I have eleven “untitled” entries that never landed on the actual calendar. You might think the “+” sign under “New Event” would add a new event, but you would be wrong. So while my wireless gadgets were purchased to streamline travel, instead I call Brandon from airports to rummage on my computer for information.

  He L-O-V-E-S this about me, and it never frustrates him.

  I start thinking about my day right when it’s happening. Which is why I remember not-more-than-but-possibly-less-than one hour before I need to be somewhere that my jeans smell like mildew (hence the unfortunate Day 16 entry).

  So with my clothes on the shortest cycle, I walk around in a towel. Wearing other clothes is cheating. And I can’t waste a wash/dry session without laundering everything because heaven knows it’s all dirty.

  You might have deduced, forty minutes is not enough to wash and dry a load of clothes. It is enough to get them somewhere between sopping wet and uncomfortably damp. At least six times this month, I’ve pulled soggy clothes from the dryer, struggled into them (wet jeans don’t cooperate), and dashed out the door.

  Listen lambs, wet jeans don’t dry when they’re on your body. Walking into Hill’s Café with friends, I hollered, “My butt is wet!” while the husbands hid. Well, it was. I would feel sorry for them if their butts were wet. I sat in the front seat and pointed the air vents at my rear to dry out. This was not met with compassion so much as outright mockery.

  Dear wet clothes, I won’t miss you.

  Day 25

  I’ve slogged and underlined my way through Consumed, a remarkable book on the shifting nature of capitalism. After reading most paragraphs twice, the facts settled nicely in the brain space between the “Common Sense” and “Don’t Be an Idiot” sections.

  Like this obvious commentary:

  Once upon a time, in capitalism’s more creative and successful period, a productivist capitalism prospered by meeting the real needs of real people. . . . Today, however, consumerist capitalism profits only when it can address those whose essential needs have already been satisfied but who have the means to assuage “new” and invented needs—Marx’s “imaginary needs.” The global majority still has extensive and real natural needs mirroring what psychologists T. Berry Brazelton and Stanley L. Greenspan have called “the irreducible needs of children.” But it is without the means to address them, being cut off by the global market’s inequality from the investment in capital and jobs that would allow them to become consumers.1

  In other words, marketing used to represent basic needs of humans, without much embellishment or hyperbole. Certainly, the Third World still has these needs in spades—to the detriment of life and health and family—but no consumer power. Thus, Big Marketing turned to the wallet of the privileged, invented a bunch of fake needs (Restless Leg Syndrome, prepackaged sugar water, collagen moisturizer, Tide to Go pens), and disregarded the people who were actually dying every day for lack of basics, exposed to the seductions of the consumer marketplace but without the means to participate in it.

  In this new epoch in which the needy are without income and the wealthy are without needs, radical inequality is simply assumed. . . . Inequality leaves capitalism with a dilemma: the overproducing capitalist market must either grow or expire. If the poor cannot be enriched enough to become consumers, then grown-ups in the First World who are currently responsible for 60 percent of the world’s consumption, and with vast disposable income but few needs, will have to be enticed into shopping.2

  This is why I have 327 items of clothes in my closet.

  With my genuine needs met but so many dollars yet unspent, shopping has become a stronger marker of freedom than voting, and what we spend in the mall matters more than what we’re accomplishing together as the church. I am a part of the problem, a contributing member of inequality. Every time I buy another shirt I don’t need or a seventh pair of shoes for my daughter, I redirect my powerful dollar to the pockets of consumerism, fueling my own greed and widening the gap. Why? Because I like it. Because those are cute. Because I want that.

  These thoughts burden me holistically, but the trouble is, I can rationalize them individually. This one pair of shoes? Big deal. This little outfit? It was on sale. This micro-justification easily translates to nearly every purchase I’ve made. Alone, each item is reduced to an easy explanation, a harmless transaction. But all together, we’ve spent enough to irrevocably change the lives of a hundred thousand people. What did I get for that budgeting displacement? Closets full of clothes we barely wear and enough luxuries to outfit twenty families.

  This is hard to process, so it helps to imagine standing in front of the families of my Ethiopian children, who were too poor and sick to raise their own beloved babies. As I gaze upon their hopelessness, I imagine them calculating what I’ve spent on clothing alone, realizing that same amount would’ve kept their family fed and healthy for thirty years.

  What if all my silly little individual purchases do matter? What if I joined a different movement, one that was less enticed by luxuries and more interested in justice? What if I believed every dollar spent is vital, a potential soldier in the war on inequality?

  When thirty-five years of choices overwhelm me, Jesus makes it simple again: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If you read the story, you’ll see that Jesus takes a broad, global, interracial view of who our neighbor is. In other words, what standard is acceptable for my own life? My own family? This is the benchmark for everyone else, which necessitates a decrease in the definition of necessary (for us) and an increase in the definition of acceptable (for everyone else).

  The average human gets around twenty-five thousand days on this earth, and most of us in the United States of America will get a few more. That’s it. This life is a breath. Heaven is coming fast, and we live in that thin space where faith and obedience have relevance. We have this one life to offer; there is no second chance, no Plan B for the good news. We get one shot at living to expand the kingdom, fighting for justice. We’ll stand before Jesus once, and none of our luxuries will accompany us. We’ll have one moment to say, “This is how I lived.”

  More than thirteen thousand of those days are over for me. I’m determined to make the rest count.

  Day 30

  Here we are, the end of the road for Month Two. Here are my observations:

  First, wearing seven clothes was way easier than I expected. In my self-important mind, everyone would notice my repetitions and whisper about my wardrobe. People would obsess about my attire. You know what I discovered? Others aren’t thinking about me nearly as much as I thought they were. Blending seamlessly into my environment, I brought up “my clothing situation” 100 percent more often than it was observed by anyone.

  No one really cares. Shockingly, even I don’t care as much as I thought. With the boundaries locked in, I lived this month unattached to “looking cute.” And no one died. Ministry commenced untainted. Life carried on. I could live my real life on a fraction of my previous wardrobe, and nothing significant would be altered. In fact, th
e simplicity was a blessed relief.

  In the grand scheme of things, “how I look to people” all of a sudden just seems ludicrous. Listen, if my influence is linked to my wardrobe, then my ministry is falsely inflated and built on sand. A well-known ministry leader pulled me aside after I received my first multibook contract and said: “Jen, stay especially connected to Jesus from here on out. With your age and persona, they will try to make a starlet out of you.”

  At the time that sounded ridiculous. I was a twenty-nine-year-old nobody with a vague notion of my mission. Yet that statement lodged deeply, and I was never able to shake it. In a culture that elevates beauty and style, the Christian community is at genuine risk for distraction, even deception. What do we truly admire in our leaders? Are we no different from the secular population, drawn to charisma and style above substance and integrity?

  I hope not.

  I want to belong to a Christian community known for a different kind of beauty, the kind that heals and inspires. I can’t help but remember Jesus, and how God made sure to mention He was plain and simple by human standards:

  He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. (Isa. 53:2–3)

  There was nothing physically attractive about Jesus. He wasn’t rich or notorious, well-dressed or handsome. At first glimpse Jesus was forgettable, neither standing out for beauty or charisma. Maybe this is why the widow and marginalized and sick and outcast flocked to Him. He was approachable in every way.

  Jesus didn’t garner esteem the conventional way, but make no mistake: He was noticed. He was loved by the outsider, hated by the religious elite, revered by His followers, and killed by His enemies. For a plain carpenter from Nazareth, Jesus sure found His way to the center ring; not through power or ruthlessness but subversion and truth. His humility appeals to the unloveliness in us all. We are drawn in by His simplicity, then transformed by His magnificence.