Girls, forget that noise. I’ve since had a small taste of that, and it is the oddest, most bizarre alternate universe ever. Being low-grade Christian famous is straight-up crazy. I only occupy a very minor corner of this zip code, enough to know what I’m talking about but not enough to make me a weirdo. I am regularly confused by my life. I do things I never planned on a hot day in my imagination: write books people read, speak on stages, talk on the radio, show up on TV sometimes. Are you kidding me with this? I wanted to be Janet Jackson or, if not that, a librarian. I taught fourth grade and married a youth pastor. This was not my life plan.
I wrote my first book in 2004. It was published in 2006 with two others I fast-tracked. I wrote three more in three years, and exactly no one read any of them or knew anything about me for the next five years. I basically worked for free, and I’m pretty sure I made negative money. I spoke at every sort of retreat, once in a living room with five women, one of whom slept through my entire “talk.” At one small church, I was introduced as “Jen Hatfield,” and no one corrected her because they had zero idea what my name was either. In fact, until a few years ago, when you googled my name, the same question popped up every time: Did you mean Jean Hatmaker?
I cannot quit laughing about Jean. I miss that girl.
Trust me: don’t waste your time overvaluing Christian famous people. It is so easy to cast public figures as prototypes of discipleship or pristine examples of faithfulness, but all that admiration is totally misplaced. I mean this sincerely: only Jesus is worth your full devotion. He alone will never let you down and will always lead you correctly. The rest of us? Oh my word. We will fail you, disappoint you, and even shock you, because we are the exact same brand of human as anyone else. I am short-tempered, lazy, self-preserving, and indulgent. I do not share all your theology and interpretations, and if you look to me as your spiritual plumb line, you will be gravely disappointed, if not now, someday. Believe me. You will want to kick kittens. Sometimes my mess outpaces my moxie, and no one has the good sense to deactivate my social media accounts so I will not become an actual threat to the kingdom of God.
Idolizing human beings just isn’t the way Jesus built His community to thrive. He decentralized, empowering ordinary people to be carriers of the good news. He commissioned the kingdom to mamas and daddies and fishermen and widows and fresh new believers and former terrorists. Jesus had nothing but harsh words for the Fancy Leader paradigm of His day, and for good reason: being overly admired spiritually is the death knell of integrity. It creates such a mess! To borrow Jesus’s words, it protects hypocrisy, creating “cup and dish leaders” that are incredibly shiny and clean on the outside, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. And that leader will not lead you well, because you will become a commodity, a means to an end, a caricature. Jesus is the sole hero, the only leader truly worth His salt.
I have a way better idea.
After my last book release, I invited my entire volunteer launch team to my house for a big party, so almost three hundred women came from virtually every state. We’d been deep diving into real life together for half a year (and still to this very day more than two years later), so coming together was less about Going to Jen’s House and more about finally meeting treasured friends face-to-face. After the party, one of our girls, Corie, came up with the best solution to celebrity culture, which we’d worked terribly hard to dismantle in our little community:
Fangirl Jesus, and fangirl your friends.
Yes. Truly, I want you to freak out over Jesus. Now that thrills me. Save your best devotion for Him, because Jesus is so worthy of stars in our eyes, butterflies in our stomachs, heart palpitations in our chests. He really is, man. What is not to love about a guy who pulled children onto His lap and saved a failing party and touched the untouchables and told off the religious elite? I have always said that if you don’t love Jesus, you just don’t know Him. He is the full and complete jam, and we would all be fighting to sit by Him at dinner if He was here now (and you know He would sit by the most wretched, broken-down person there and give everyone else FOMO). I cannot wait to meet Jesus in heaven. He is my favorite.
Then fangirl the flesh and blood people around you, the ones you live by, live with, live for. Go gaga over your own people; that is well-placed loyalty. Overvalue them, over-love them, over-encourage them. Rather than overloading the top-heavy accounts, we should put far more love deposits in other columns, diversify the portfolio, spread out the investment, bank locally.
One of my girlfriends created a text rule, which basically means anytime she has a lovely thought about someone or is reminded of them in any way or notices something delightful about a person, she immediately sends them a quick text saying so. She just voice-texts it, so it is always full of weird misspellings and nonsense words (“You are such a wonderful chair leader [cheerleader] for women! You practical need tampons [pompoms]!”), but she sends the love before the thought leaves her mind, which increases the chance of delivery by around 100 percent. This is not taxing or hard or time-consuming, but she fangirls people better than anyone. We live for her texts.
Fangirl the people who never get fangirled. You know the ones: the underdog, the quiet hero, the little guy. They are shy or behind the scenes or difficult or loners. It’s boring when the same old obvious people get all the enthusiasm; the spotlight naturally gravitates toward certain folks in our culture, those who fit the template. But the earth is jam-packed with amazing, extraordinary people who color outside the narrow lines society deems noteworthy, and they deserve applause too.
Remy’s elementary school has grade-level awards ceremonies every nine weeks where they celebrate all kinds of achievements: academic, social, physical, relational. The end of the year includes overall, yearlong awards voted on by the kids. Last year, building suspense with dramatic pauses, our principal called up the Buda Elementary Employee of the Year: Head Custodian Josie Garza. She ran up to the stage, shell-shocked with both hands covering her face. The entire auditorium lost their minds, and I choked down sobs until I nearly passed out. Quiet, gentle, accomplishing her hard workday in and day out with generosity and cheerfulness—what a joy to fangirl Ms. Garza! Three cheers for all the Ms. Garzas! May we find them, love them, and celebrate them.