Glennon Doyle Melton is a wife and mother with a crazy past. After hiding in her own shame and pain for years she finally decided that if she was honest with herself and everyone around her, if she took off her armor, she would be able to do hard things and find the strength she needed all along. In her book she tells us poignant stories about some of the most gut-wrenching and laugh-out-loud moments of her life. I underlined something in every chapter, fell in love with her family and ended up feeling like she and I could be great friends. (I actually always like to think that I could be friends with my favorite authors.)
Words are my favorite. I think they hold power and that they're meant to share. The following are some of my very favorites from this book. Please do yourself a favor and take the time to read them and let them shape you a little bit today. Then do yourself another favor and go buy this book for you or someone that you love.
Maybe all my days are filled with little miracles, but I'm too distracted by what I think is my life to notice them.
An intimate friend is someone who notices when I'm saying something important and never forgets it. Each feeling, story, and secret is a gift. A good friend knows that, so she doesn't throw it away. She keeps my gifts in a special place and never loses them, so my energy and time feel well spent. In an intimate relationship, every conversation builds on the last, and what each has shared is what binds. Good friends become each other's keepers. I hold your story in my mind. I carry if for you. I'm a record of your life. I know what you will do next because I know what you've done in the past. We communicate through a glance or a raised eyebrow. I know telepathically that you are remembering the very same thing at the very same moment. In those moments, we are on the same page of each other's stories.
A new season will come. There is always hope. What looks like the end might just be the beginning.
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. Trust me, baby, it is. It is more important. Don't try to be the best this year, honey. Just be grateful and kind and brave. That's all you ever need to be.
We keep loving, even though we might lose, because loving teaches us and changes us. And that's what we're here to do. God sends us here to learn how to be better lovers, and to learn how to be loved, so we'll be prepared for heaven.
I don't know what this life is doing to me with all these love experiments, but I think one of these days I am just going to melt into this beautiful world.
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.
When your miracle doesn't happen the way you planned, it becomes important to look for peripheral miracles. Peripheral miracles are those that aren't directly in front of you. They're not the one on which you've been so damned focused. You have to turn your head to see peripheral miracles.
My destiny is to remind you to look up from the castles you're building in the sand long enough to notice the cathedrals that God's building all around you--without you, without your sweat, without your tears, without your consent. While you dream your dreams, he's busy building your destiny. And there is as much beauty in your destiny as there was in your dream. Let go and believe that whatever it is, it will be beautiful.
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