Doyle Glennon Quotes & Sayings

I think one of the keys to happiness is accepting that I am never going to be perfectly happy. Life is uncomfortable. So I might as well get busy loving the people around me. I'm going to stop trying so hard to decide whether they are the "right people" for me and just take deep breaths and love my neighbors. I'm going to take care of my friends. I'm going to find peace in the 'burbs. I'm going to quit chasing happiness long enough to notice it smiling right at me. — Glennon Doyle Melton

We know what the world wants from us. We know we must decide whether to stay small, quiet, and uncomplicated or allow ourselves to grow as big, loud, and complex as we were made to be. Every girl must decide whether to be true to herself or true to the world. Every girl must decide whether to settle for adoration or fight for love. — Glennon Doyle Melton

The only meaningful thing we can offer one another is love. Not advice, not questions about our choices, not suggestions for the future, just love. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Maybe there is no way for love to fail, because the eventual result of all love is New Life. — Glennon Doyle Melton

I must smile as we go down so everyone can drown peacefully. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Speaking of messy, I recently quit parenting. I do not parent in August. August parenting is not a good look for me. It's hotter than hell, and the children and I have already had a whole lot of togetherness. — Glennon Doyle Melton

So as I'm walking up and down the grocery aisles, I notice this distinct, mildewy, putrid odor following me. And I keep looking around for the responsible party, until I discover that she is me. I stink. When I get home, Craig rolls out of bed to help me with the groceries and I say "Honey, smell me. I stink." And he sniffs my shirt and says without surprise, "Yes, you do." And I say "Well, what IS that? It's disgusting." And he says the following:
"It's mildew. All our clothes smell like that. We always stink." I'll just give you a few seconds to digest that information. I know I needed a little time. "WHAT? WELL WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME, HUSBAND?" "I was scared to tell you. You get sensitive about ... . housekeeping stuff." "Oh. So let me clarify here. You'd rather reek all day at work and allow Chase to be THE STINKY KID IN CLASS than risk me getting mad?
"Yes. Yes, I would. Definitely. — Glennon Doyle Melton

My courage will come from knowing I can handle whatever I encounter there -- because I was designed by my creator to not only survive pain and love but also to become whole inside it. I was born to do this. I am a Warrior. — Glennon Doyle Melton

them to embrace being human instead — Glennon Doyle Melton

Being human in a world with no tolerance for humanity felt like a setup, a game I couldn't win. But instead of understanding that there might be something wrong with the world, I decided there was something wrong with me. — Glennon Doyle Melton

What is to give light must endure burning. - Viktor E. Frankl — Glennon Doyle Melton

I promised myself it would all be okay if I followed three simple rules: Show Up, Be Brave, and Be Kind. No — Glennon Doyle Melton

Learning how to gracefully accept criticism and compliments is hard, but I'm trying. — Glennon Doyle Melton

The one closest to the departed has to be the first one to step from despair to hope. Nobody else is allowed to jump ahead and shove open the door. That's the rule. — Glennon Doyle Melton

What can I, as a neighbor, do to help level the playing field? — Glennon Doyle Melton

You have to turn your head to see peripheral miracles. — Glennon Doyle Melton

That's the thing about parenting: anxious if you do, anxious if you don't. — Glennon Doyle Melton

So what is it in a human life that creates bravery, kindness, wisdom, and reilience? What if it's pain? What if it's the struggle? — Glennon Doyle Melton

There is no way to overpower, outrun, or outsmart the mad dog of hopelessness because it's simply more vicious than I. The only thing to do is let it attack, go limp in its jaws, and be shaken. But I notice one promising pattern. If I play dead, it will eventually let me go. I start thinking of the dog of hopelessness as an obstacle that will reappear on every curve of the spiral staircase. He'll always be there waiting and snarling, but with every go-round, I'll be more confident and less fearful. Eventually, I'll learn the tricks that will allow me to breeze right past him. But the mad dog of hopelessness will always be there. My spiral staircase of progress means that my pain will be both behind me and in front of me, every damn day. I'll never be "over it," but I vow to be stronger each time I face it. Maybe the pain won't change, but I will. I keep climbing. — Glennon Doyle Melton

You are my beloved! I made you and everything you have ever been or are or will become is already approved. Nothing you can ever do will make me love you more, and nothing you can ever do will make me love you less. That is finished. So stop hiding, stop waiting, and come now! Just get up and dance with me! — Glennon Doyle Melton

Please, no. Let's stay here with our precious cups and drink safely alone. Everything is perfect. Why must you always ruin drinking by adding scary people and things? — Glennon Doyle Melton

I remember that there is no right answer. There are only stories to tell. Every day the world will tell my girls its story about sexiness and what it means to be a woman. My girls need to hear my story. Not so my story will become theirs, but so they'll understand that they are free to write their own stories. They need to know that much of what the world presents to them is not truth, it's poison. And my girls will only be able to detect lies if they know what truth sounds like. — Glennon Doyle Melton

crap. I do not know why this is my solution, but when I arrive — Glennon Doyle Melton

Grief is nothing but a painful waiting, a horrible patience. Grief cannot be torn down or scaled or overcome or outsmarted. It can only be outlasted. Survival is surrender to the brick wall. There — Glennon Doyle Melton

You are not supposed to be happy all the time. Life hurts and it's hard. Not because you're doing it wrong, but because it hurts for everybody. Don't avoid the pain. You need it. It's meant for you. Be still with it, let it come, let it go, let it leave you wtih the fuel you'll burn to get your work done on this earth. — Glennon Doyle Melton

The water is speaking in a language I knew before the world taught me its language. I lie there and I let the sound of the surf massage my soul fo two hours. I let it speak to me and I do not speak back. I just receive. I understand with great gratitude that i could rest here forever, offer the sea nothing in return, and it would never stop speaking to me. The surf is gentle and selfless and steady. This is not a transaction, it is a gift. — Glennon Doyle Melton

There are two different types of time. Chronos time is what we live in. It's regular time. It's one minute at a time, staring down the clock until bedtime time. It's ten excruciating minutes in the Target line time, four screaming minutes in time-out time, two hours until Daddy gets home time. Chronos is the hard, slow-passing time we parents often live in. Then there's Kairos time. Kairos is God's time. It's time outside of time. It's metaphysical time. Kairos is those magical moments in which time stands still. I have a few of those moments each day, and I cherish them. — Glennon Doyle Melton

God created woman as a Warrior. I think about the tragedies the women in my life have faced. How every time a child gets sick or a man leaves or a parent dies or a community crumbles, the women are the ones who carry on, who do what must be done for their people in the midst of their own pain. While those around them fall away, the women hold the sick and nurse the weak, put food on the table, carry their families' sadness and anger and love and hope. They keep showing up for their lives and their people with the odds stacked against them and the weight of the world on their shoulders. They never stop singing songs of truth, love, and redemption in the face of hopelessness. They are inexhaustible, ferocious, relentless cocreators with God, and they make beautiful worlds out of nothing. Have women been the Warriors all along? — Glennon Doyle Melton

I'm trying to fix my pain with certainty, as if I'm one right choice away from relief. I'm stuck in anxiety quicksand: The harder I try to climb my way out, the lower I sink. The only way to survive is to make no sudden movements, to get comfortable with discomfort, and to find peace without answers. — Glennon Doyle Melton

To arrive inside the moment in which you are supposed to feel more connected than at any other moment of your life and still feel lonely is utterly terrifying. It is the most lonely you can possibly feel. I — Glennon Doyle Melton

When they speak to you from their fear
speak past their fear and directly to their love. Their Love will step forward eventually. — Glennon Doyle Melton

You have to be known to be loved, and none of these waving people knows me. — Glennon Doyle Melton

The messiest parts of our lives are also the most beautiful parts of our lives. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Peace isnt the absence of distraction or annoyance or pain. Its finding Me, finding peace and calm, in the midst of those distractions and annoyances and pains. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Daughters-in-law, notice the beauty of the rug that your mother-in-law spent a lifetime weaving. Remember that her pattern is mostly firmly established-no need to suggest improvements. Be kinder than necessary, being mindful that the piece of art it took her a lifetime to weave-her masterpiece-she gave to you to keep you warm at night. — Glennon Doyle Melton

I'm not big on advice, mainly because most days I learn what an idiot I was yesterday. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Chase, we don't believe that homosexuality is a sin. The Bible was inspired by God, but it was written, translated, and interpreted by imperfect people just like us. This means that the passing of this sacred scripture from generation to generation and from culture to culture has been a bit like the "telephone game" you play at school. After thousands of years, it's impossible to judge the original spirit of some scripture. We believe that when in doubt, mercy triumphs judgment. So your parents are Christians who study and pray and then carefully choose what we follow in the Bible, based on whether or not it matches our understanding of Jesus's overall message. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Reading is my inhale and writing is my exhale. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Sister, who needs an umbrella when you are the whole sky?" All — Glennon Doyle Melton

A heart expands exactly as much as her owner allows. — Glennon Doyle Melton

There are only two lives we might live: our dream or our destiny. Sometimes they are one in the same, and sometimes they're not. Often our dreams are just a path to our destinies. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Books are how I learned to disappear, to live in a world other than the uncomfortable physical one. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Our story is the only thing we have that is completely our own. A person who steals it and uses it to entertain is the worst kind of thief. Then — Glennon Doyle Melton

Grief is love's souvenir. It's our proof that we once loved. Grief is the receipt we wave in the air that says to the world: Look! Love was once mine. I love well. Here is my proof that I paid the price. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Since the day I decided to become sober and a mother, I've been trying to become who I am supposed to be. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Each day, we're making sandcastles I know will be washed away. I long for something solid, lasting, strong between us. — Glennon Doyle Melton

The God I decide to believe in is the God of the bathroom floor. A God of scandalously low expectations. A God who smiles down at a drunk on the floor, wasted and afraid, and says, There you are. I've been waiting. Are you ready to make something beautiful with me? I look at the blue cross and decide I will let it be. I will stop deeming myself unworthy of invitations and trust the inviter. I will test out the ridiculous, nonsensical possibility that somehow, in some way I can't yet see, I will rise to meet this call. Yes, — Glennon Doyle Melton

I have decided that I'm ready to stop destroying myself and start creating. I have already accepted my invitation and no one will convince me again that I'm not worthy. Not ever again. I have been invited and I have said Yes. My Yes is final. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Women who are concerned with being pretty think about what they look like, but women who are concerned with being beautiful think about what they are looking at. They are taking it all in. They are taking in the whole beautiful world and making all that beauty theirs to give away to others. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Fancy language tends to make "in" people feel more in and "out" people feel more out, and I don't think that's how words are best used. Words are best used to describe specific feelings, ideas, and hearts as clearly as possible - to make the speaker and the listener, or the writer and the reader, feel less alone and more hopeful. — Glennon Doyle Melton

I don't believe in advice. Everybody has the answers right inside her, since we're all made up of the same amount of God. So when a friend says, I need some advice, I switch it to, I need some love, and I try to offer that. — Glennon Doyle Melton

done everything backward. She'd done everything, forever, by the book. The right way. Until then, I'd only learned this about grace: sometimes, like in my case, you get blessed for no reason. You get something wonderful that you don't deserve. But on that day, I learned that the flip side is also true: sometimes you get screwed for no reason. You get something awful that you never, ever deserved. It all slips away. You cannot earn yourself an easy life or even a fair one. Soon — Glennon Doyle Melton

I'm stuck in anxiety quicksand: The harder I try to climb my way out, the lower I sink. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Now I wonder, is love not a feeling but a place between two present people? A sacred place created when two people decide it's safe enough to let their real selves surface and touch each other? Is that why it's called in love? Because you have to visit there? — Glennon Doyle Melton

Because love is not something for which to search or wait or hope or dream. Its simply something to do. — Glennon Doyle Melton

When you write your truth, it is a love offering to the world because it helps us feel braver and less alone. — Glennon Doyle Melton

That's how you can tell that you're filling yourself with the wrong things. You use a lot of energy, and in the end, you feel emptier and less comfortable than ever. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Here's my hunch: nobody's secure, and nobody feels like she completely belongs. Those insecurities are just job hazards of being human. But some people dance anyway, and those people have more fun. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Loving people and animals makes us stronger in the right ways and weaker in the right ways. Even if animals and people leave, even if they die, they leave us better. So we keep loving, even though we might lose, because loving teaches us and changes us. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Whatever is our new spiritual motto and mantra. Whatever is divine. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Parenting is hard. Just like lots of important jobs are hard. Why is it that the second a mother admits that it's hard, people feel the need to suggest that maybe she's not doing it right? Or that she certainly shouldn't add more to her load. Maybe the fact that it's so hard means she IS doing it right, in her own way, and she happens to be honest. — Glennon Doyle Melton

The original Hebrew word for woman, a word that is used twice to refer to the first woman, three times to refer to strong military forces, and sixteen times to refer to God, is this: Ezer...I learn this: "The word Ezer has two roots: strong and benevolent. The best translation of Ezer is: Warrior." God created woman as a Warrior. — Glennon Doyle Melton

If you feel something calling you to dance or write or paint or sing, please refuse to worry about whether you're good enough. Just do it. Be generous. Offer a gift to the world that no one else can offer: yourself. — Glennon Doyle Melton

I wonder if the priest knows that while he's up here charging for forgiveness, Mary's back there handing it out for free. — Glennon Doyle Melton

She is trying to be brave, but no one knows what brave looks like inside this particular moment. — Glennon Doyle Melton

I just want us to remember than when we became parents, we didn't change species. We're still humans. I mean, we're bad-ass humans, for sure, but humans nonetheless. We make mistakes, all day, and that's good. We want our children to see that. We want them to learn how to handle mistakes because that's an important thing to learn. We expect to make mistakes, we say we're sorry, we forgive ourselves, we shrug and smile, and we try again.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Repeat. — Glennon Doyle Melton

We can choose to be perfect and admired or to be real and loved. — Glennon Doyle Melton

This initial numbness and denial is shock and it is a gift. Shock is a grace period. It gives a woman time to gather what she needs around her, before the exhaustion and panic set in like a heavy snow. Shock allows her time to circle her people so that she can enter the hard work of grief, which will require all of her. Shock is the window offered after the fall so a woman can prepare herself for winter. Two — Glennon Doyle Melton

By the time we landed in the hospital, most of our families considered us insensitive liars, but we didn't start out that way. We started out as ultrasensitive truth tellers. We saw everyone around us smiling and repeating "I'm fine! I'm fine! I'm fine!" and we fund ourselves unable to join them in all the pretending. We had to tell the truth, which was: "Actually, I'm not fine. — Glennon Doyle Melton

She pauses and then says: "Maybe, for now, the only right decision is to stop making decisions. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Let's be Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. Atticus's children, Scout and Jem, carefully watch their father's behavior as the house next door to theirs burns to the ground. As the fire creeps closer and closer to the Finches' home, Atticus appears so calm that Scout and Jem finally decide that "it ain't time to worry yet." We need to be Atticus. Hands in our pockets. Calm. Believing. So that our children will look at us and even with a fire raging in front of them, they'll say, "Huh. Guess it's not time to worry yet. — Glennon Doyle Melton

He is human. I hadn't wanted him to be human. I had wanted him to be perfect and golden - steady and solid, simple and strong - so that I could be messy, complicated, and weak. But we are each all of those things. — Glennon Doyle Melton

that we are just scattered pieces of the same puzzle, so when we hurt each other, we hurt ourselves. — Glennon Doyle Melton

We begin to understand that to coparent is to one day look up and notice that you are on a roller coaster with another human being. You are in the same car, strapped down side by side and you can never, ever get off. There will never be another moment in your lives when your hearts don't rise and fall together, when your minds don't race and panic together, when your stomachs don't churn in tandem, when you stop seeing huge hills emerge in the distance and simultaneously grab the side of the car and hold on tight. No one except for the one strapped down beside you will ever understand the particular thrills and terrors of your ride. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Having something to say and no one to hear it is so lonely. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Defrosting is excruciatingly painful. You have been numb for so long. As feeling comes back to your soul, you start to tingle, and it's uncomfortable and strange. But then the tingles start feeling like daggers. Sadness, loss, fear, anger, anxiety - all of these things that you have been numbing with the booze - you feel them for the first time. And it's horrific at first, to tell you the damn truth. But welcoming the pain and refusing to escape from it is the only way to recovery. You can't go around it, you can't go over it, you have to — Glennon Doyle Melton

God approaches us in the disguise of other people. — Glennon Doyle Melton

We need to be Atticus. Hands in our pockets. Calm. Believing. So that our children will look at us and even with a fire raging in front of them, they'll say, "Huh. Guess it's not time to worry yet." Then we'll watch carefully. We'll just watch and wait and believe until God nods and says, "It's time. Tear open that gift, Mama. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Wherever you go, there you are. Your emptiness goes with you. Maddening. Things that help: writing, reading, water, walks, forgiving myself every other minute, practicing easy yoga, taking deep breaths, and petting my dogs. These things don't fill me completely, but they remind me that it is not my job to fill myself. It's just my job to notice my emptiness and find graceful ways to live as a broken, unfilled human ...
If there's a silver lining to the emptiness, here it is: the unfillable is what brings people together. I've never made a friend by bragging about my strengths, but I've made countless by sharing my weakness and my emptiness. — Glennon Doyle Melton

God deals only with truth and the truth will set you free, but it will hurt so badly first. Sobering up will be like walking toward my own crucifixion. — Glennon Doyle Melton

What I want to be, girls, is beautiful. Beautiful means 'full of beauty.' Beautiful is not about how you look on the outside. Beautiful is about what you're made of. Beautiful people spend time discovering what their idea of beauty on this earth is. They know themselves well enough to know what they love, and they love themselves enough to fill up with a little of their particular kind of beauty each day. — Glennon Doyle Melton

That's the thing about becoming a family: you gotta melt. You have to keep melting into each other until you become something entirely new. The only constant family rule is that everyone has to keep showing up. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Persevere. Bear with great patience each other's infirmities of body or behavior. And when the thorns of contention arise, daily forgive, and be ready to accept forgiveness. — Glennon Doyle Melton

I need to sit with the quiet. I know that much. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Kind people are brave people. Brave is not something you should wait to feel. Brave is a decision. It is a decision that compassion is more important than fear, than fitting in, than following the crowd. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Chase's eyes still glistened while a tiny smile emerged like a hesitant rainbow. This might be his best look. And it is my favorite moment in life. When you realize, Wow, this is bad. Really, really bad. But we're still here. We're gonna make it through. Not over or under or around, but through. And look, we're even going to smile again. — Glennon Doyle Melton

I'm not a mess but a deeply feeling person in a messy world. I explain that now, when someone asks me why I cry so often, I say, 'For the same reason I laugh so often--because I'm paying attention.' I tell them that we can choose to be perfect and admired or to be real and loved. We must decide. — Glennon Doyle Melton

It strikes me that it's always religious people who are most surprised by grace. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Grief and pain are like joy and peace; they are not things we should try to snatch from each other. They're sacred. — Glennon Doyle Melton

I've only begun the work that needs to be done here. Not yet, the voice says. Not yet. See this through. Unbecome, Glennon. Unbecome until you uncover who you really are. — Glennon Doyle Melton

I love God, whoever he is, and I'd really like to get closer to him. I've been thinking about how one of the simplest ways to get close to a woman is to be good to her children. To be kind and gentle and to pay close attention to the things that make them special. To try to see her children the way she sees her children. And how God made us in his image. How he is the mother and father of all of us. So I wonder if that would be the best way to get closer to him too. By being kind and gentle to his children and noticing all of the things that make them special. So many of us spend our time trying to find God in books, but maybe the simplest way to God is directly through the hearts of his children. — Glennon Doyle Melton

But I drink differently than they do. They drink to take the edge off. I drink to disappear. — Glennon Doyle Melton

But the paradox of pain is that it is only universal in retrospect. In the present, it is fiercely personal. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Let's begin at the beginning. It's our only choice, it turns out. — Glennon Doyle Melton

[The child] must be warned that her truth will undoubtedly make some people uneasy and angry, so she'll need to share it strategically, perhaps through art, which God offers as a safe way to express joy and madness. And she'll need a trusted person to help her find her medium, so she won't feel that she has to hide or hold her breath any longer. Because when she exhales, she'll discover that she's created the space to inhale again, and that will keep her going. And this, the importance of this lesson, is why I became a teacher. — Glennon Doyle Melton

People who need help sometimes look a lot like people who don't need help. — Glennon Doyle Melton

I have accepted another one of life's dangerous invitations: the invitation to feel. My — Glennon Doyle Melton

Maybe instead of slamming the door on pain, I need to throw open the door wide and say, Come in. Sitd down with me. And don't leave until you have taught me what I need to know. — Glennon Doyle Melton

I am confident because I believe that I am a child of God. I am humble because I believe that everyone else is too. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Holes are good for making friends, and friends are the best fillers I've found yet. Maybe because other people are the closest we get to God on this side. So when we use them to find God in each other, we become holy. — Glennon Doyle Melton