Melanie Shankle Quotes & Sayings

After sixteen years of being married, I can safely say that marriage tends to amplify whatever junk is in your life. — Melanie Shankle

When Perry and I walked into the hospital waiting room and I saw her sitting there, I began to cry, because that's what friendship looks like: knowing your friend better than she knows herself and being there to hold her hand while her heart breaks. — Melanie Shankle

There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves; it is not my nature. JANE AUSTEN — Melanie Shankle

Friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow. AUTHOR UNKNOWN — Melanie Shankle

We both learned how to be a friend by watching the women who came before us. Women who taught us that it's okay to show someone who you really are-that when you stop hiding behind a mask of perfection and protection, you unlock something beautiful.... Our girlfriends weave a luminous thread from the women we are to the women we hope to become, We may never find perfection, but we'll never be alone. — Melanie Shankle

Some roads we travel in life can feel like the ones that might break us, but that's why God surrounds us with people who will cheer us on and wipe our tears and listen as we pour out our hearts. Because often, it's not what you say but what you do that really matters. — Melanie Shankle

Sometimes the best families are the ones God builds using unexpected pieces of our hearts. — Melanie Shankle

Motherhood is the thing in a woman's life that catches her by total and complete surprise. — Melanie Shankle

Sometimes the things that make sense in light of eternity don't make sense while we're still walking it out here on earth. Yet we will trust him; yet we will praise him. — Melanie Shankle

And it's a reminder that Mr. Right isn't out there. There's just Mr. Right-for-You. He may look totally different from what's right for your best friend. Your marriage is a unique being with as much of its own DNA as you and your husband bring to the table. I remember early on in our marriage, Perry and I were friends with a couple who did everything together, even grocery shopping. I thought something was wrong with us because we had so many separate interests. But that's just who we are. It's not wrong; it's different. — Melanie Shankle

It was the beginning of learning that I can't look to any one person to be my security blanket, and that my value goes deeper than one person's opinion of me. I learned that friendships are fragile and we need to handle them with respect and reverence. — Melanie Shankle

I believe that is what happened during this time in my life. God had other things for me, and he knew me so much better than I knew myself, so he moved me along to a new place. It certainly didn't lessen the pain at the time, but if I've learned anything along the way, it's that sometimes the best lessons are the ones that hurt the most. — Melanie Shankle

I watched her with the crab as she ignored all my admonitions that the poor crab just needed to be set free if he was to have any chance of surviving. And God showed up there on that beach to teach me a lesson. Nothing survives when it's being smothered. Life, real life, requires being free to move about in the great big ocean, not being cradled in little hot hands that will stifle independence and creativity. We can't keep our crabs (or our kids) in a bucket and expect them to go far in life. — Melanie Shankle

In a lot of ways home improvement is like marriage. It's not glamorous. It can take a lot of hard work and effort. There are days it feels like it might be easier to burn the whole thing to the ground and start all over again. Then you remember how much you love the house or your husband and you recommit yourself to what it takes to see the whole thing through. Even when it might involve paintbrushes and compromise and sanding and scraping all the rough edges. And when you look back on a tough patch a few months after the worst has passed, you don't remember all the hard work and the tears. You just have the satisfaction of knowing you've made something beautiful. — Melanie Shankle

Sometimes you can look back on times in your life and know that God was guiding you even when you didn't know you were supposed to be listening. — Melanie Shankle

Because that's what friends do. They speak the truth when you've lost your way, pick you up and brush you off , tell you that you're going to make it to the other side, and cheer you on until you get there. — Melanie Shankle

Someday you're gonna look back on this moment of your life as such a sweet time of grieving. You'll see that you were in mourning and your heart was broken, but your life was changing. ELIZABETH GILBERT — Melanie Shankle

I think it can be easy to settle for less than you deserve just because less is right in front of you and the best may still be unseen. But I guarantee there are many women in marriages who are so lonely that they long for their single days when at least they had the hope of finding someone who would understand them, love them, and care for them. — Melanie Shankle

I believe there is no greater act of marital love or martyrdom than attending an event involving your spouse's family without your spouse in attendance. — Melanie Shankle

Sometimes God brings relationships to an end as a way to move us along to where he has called us to go. — Melanie Shankle

But ultimately we attempted to find some middle ground because at the end of the day we love each other in spite of all our many and vast differences. — Melanie Shankle

Not one thing we've done changes that we are his. That he created us and loves us with a love more fierce and loyal than any we will ever know. He isn't looking for perfection. He's looking for humble hearts that know we are nothing without his lavish grace. — Melanie Shankle

And you know what I realize now? That we're all waiting on something, no matter where we are in life. It's the human condition. — Melanie Shankle

And I realized it's kind of a metaphor for friendship in general- being willing to let someone see all your weaknesses and knowing they won't broadcast them to the world. Because life has a way of throwing things our way that aren't always pretty, and they can leave us vulnerable, hurting, and in desperate need of someone who will help us carry our burdens until we're safely on the other side. — Melanie Shankle

In short, I was like Ron Burgundy and in a glass case of emotion. — Melanie Shankle

God gives us these raw, little people, and we have to form them and mold them and teach them how to operate in society. And if we get a glimpse of all the ugliness that lies right beneath our own polished surface? Well, then, there's a humbling lesson too. It's those moments when I realize I have to extend grace to Caroline as she figures these things out by trial and error in the same way God lavishes me with mercy, even as I make the same mistakes over and over again. — Melanie Shankle

Our job as mothers is to do the best we can to teach our children that life is better and friendships are richer when we treat others with kindness, when we remember to share, and when we use nice words. To remember that every person we come in contact with may have a few cracks in their hearts even if we can't see them and that love is always the best response. But — Melanie Shankle

And it made me realize that we often find our people at an early age. The ones who encourage us, love us, and share our weird desire to play with sliced dill pickles in the cafeteria and sing commercial jingles. The years may change our faces, our bodies, and our lives, but there are connections we make early on that remain part of who we are forever. — Melanie Shankle

Friends are God's way of apologizing for your relatives. — Melanie Shankle

But at the end of it all, you're two people God has joined to journey through life together. For better or for worse. In hunting season and in health. — Melanie Shankle

When I look back on the sixteen years Perry and I have been married, I can see the places where we've made each other better. There are parts of us etched into each other like the rings in the trunk of a tree. We've grown, we've changed, we've been forever marked. And ultimately, we are so much better together than either of us would be on our own. — Melanie Shankle

You hear so many people talk about finding their soul mates only in relation to who they marry, but I think that, as women, our real soul mates are often found when we recognize some version of ourselves in someone else. — Melanie Shankle

As a new mom, your life changes overnight. Your priorities change, you forget to brush your teeth, you aren't sure how you're ever going to balance all your new responsibilities, and it's overwhelming. Not to mention that your body that used to be almost purely recreational has become much like a dairy cow but not as delicate and petite. — Melanie Shankle

But my personal favorite words of wisdom came from Gulley during the last thirty minutes of the trip, when she broke up a backseat scuffle by declaring, 'When you lick the person sitting next to you, there's a good chance you're going to get punched.'
I believe the only reason that gem is missing from the book of Proverbs is because Solomon must never have traveled with three kids in the back of his chariot. — Melanie Shankle

But there are a few people in your life who become so much a part of you that it feels like you're missing a limb when they're gone. — Melanie Shankle

There are probably only a handful of times in our lives when someone who will change us forever walks in - when we find someone we can love with our whole hearts, who will challenge us and shape us and make us feel like the world is safer and brighter just because they are in it. A person who loves us for exactly who we are, yet teaches us to be better because of who they are and how they live their life. — Melanie Shankle

When we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not-knowing, not-curing, not-healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is the friend who cares. HENRI J. M. NOUWEN — Melanie Shankle

That's what I told Gulley that morning when she called me on her way to work, and she agreed. Her oldest son, Jackson, is also in junior high, and we agreed it's not for the faint of heart or the insecure. It's a new stage of parenting that is incredibly exhausting mentally, with all manner of absurd scenarios we couldn't have imagined back when we were parenting during the toddler years. Those years were more physically exhausting, and I think Gulley and I survived only because we had each other. — Melanie Shankle

When I look in his eyes, I don't see perfection. I don't see a love story that would necessarily be something people would watch on a big screen and dream about. I see someone who will fight for me and protect me and love me in spite of all the ways I am still a wreck. I see home. Wherever he is. That's my home. — Melanie Shankle

Because the thing about Nena was that she never failed to make you feel better after you'd spent time with her. She had an easy laugh and a quick smile, and she was the best listener. One of Honey's friends called her on Sunday morning and made the comment that it's hard to lose someone who was your biggest fan. And that's how Nena was. She made us all feel like she was our biggest fan. — Melanie Shankle

Which is why we have now added a vow to our friendship that we will never ever "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" each other. That at we will always talk things out and never allow miscommunication to derail our relationship.

But the whole conversation made me think about times in my life when I've felt that way, like I've been dropped with no sign that it was about to happen. And I think Gulley is right- it's the worst feeling in the world because it leaves you feeling completely helpless. — Melanie Shankle

Real motherhood is different. It's better and it's messier and it's more complicated. It will break your heart and make you laugh harder than you ever imagined. You find yourself alternating between feeling like your friends talked you into some sort of pyramid scheme so you could share in their misery and thinking this is the most fulfilling thing you've ever done in your life. — Melanie Shankle

So we did the only thing we knew to do. We got in the car and drove to Dallas to be at the funeral with Jen. As she and her family walked down the center aisle behind her dad's casket, she smiled at us despite the big tears that were rolling down her cheeks. And that's when I learned one of the most important lessons I've ever learned about what it means to be a good friend: you show up for your people. You don't wait for your friend to ask you to come; you get in your car and go. You don't have to know the right words to say, you don't have to offer sage wisdom about loss and love; you just show up. You hold her hand and hug her neck and wipe her tears. You let her know that you hurt because she is in pain, and you'd do anything to take it from her if you could. You listen.... You show up for your friend, in the good times and the bad times. — Melanie Shankle

Anne Lamott says in Traveling Mercies, I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools - friendships, prayer, conscience, honesty - and said, Do the best you can with these, they will have to do. And mostly, against all odds, they're enough. — Melanie Shankle