Christian Author Jen Hatmaker Files for Divorce, Says “I Am Shocked & Brokenhearted”

New York Times best-selling Christian author Jen Hatmaker and her husband of 27 years, Brandon Hatmaker, filed for divorce on August 21, 2020. She posted the following response to the matter on Facebook:

“I first thank you for the kindness you have shown these last two months. We are in a moment with no handbook and without a single clue how to navigate this privately, much less publicly. I don’t know how to hide grief, so I haven’t, and I am grateful for your absolute decency these last few weeks. I don’t know how to say this, and I still cannot believe I am even saying it, but Brandon and I are getting divorced. Although the details are ours alone, this was completely unexpected, and I remain stunned as we speak. I am shocked, grief-stricken, and broken-hearted.

Although this community is impossibly dear, beloved to me, in case you are an interloper who revels in the pain of another, I beg you to spare us your cruelty. We have suffered so greatly. (Hateful comments that harm our family will be deleted.) The kids and I are getting away to retreat for a while, and I ask for your kindness…and for some room to breathe. Please respect the privacy of our children and our extended family. Our loss is not for public devouring. We are real people managing this in our real life in real time, and we are doing the absolute best we know how to do.

If you pray, pray for us. Hold us so dear to your hearts. We have felt your prayers these last few weeks. We have experienced your mercy. Thank you for being good to us. Know that we are deeply surrounded by love and have not been alone a single second in two months. Please help protect us and keep us safe as we try to heal and rebuild.

Yours,
Jen”

https://www.facebook.com/jenhatmaker/posts/3154977917934515

Jen and Brandon rose in popularity when they hosted the HGTV show, ‘My Big Family Renovation’ that documented the Hatmaker family renovating their 1908 farmhouse. You could say it was ‘Fixer Upper‘ before there was ‘Fixer Upper‘.

The couple has 5 children (2 of them being adopted), and Jen appeared on TODAY earlier this year speaking out against racial inequality. She said her Ethiopian daughter asked her why ‘white people thought they were better than black people,’ and it caused Jen to break down and start speaking out.

“I just sat there in front of her and cried my eyes out,” the Christian speaker and mother of five shared. “I said, ‘No no no, you are beautiful and you are important and you are equal to anybody on this earth.’ I said, ‘This is their problem.‘”

In recent years, Jen Hatmaker has made many controversial headlines, speaking out about her support for LGBTQ marriage, as an acclaimed Christian leader and author.

In April of 2016, Jen said on social media that she had “opened her arms” to the LGBTQ community.

“Here are my arms open wide. So wide that every last one of you can jump inside. … There is nothing ‘wrong with you,’ or in any case, nothing more right or wrong than any of us, which is to say we are all hopelessly screwed up but Jesus still loves us beyond all reason and lives to make us all new, restored, whole. Yay for Jesus! Many are concerned that sentiments like these might be enabling someone to stay in their sin—which would not, in fact, be very loving to the person in the long run.”

Later that year in October of 2016, she revealed that her views on same-sex marriage had changed, and believed that a same-sex union could be ‘holy’. Afterward, LifeWay pulled her books from their shelves, and many responded questioning her newfound belief that same-sex marriages were holy (in God’s eyes).