Top 40 Glennon Doyle Melton Quotes

Book tours are super hard for me as a raging introvert. I love humanity, but actual humans are hard for me. So something like a book tour – where I’m constantly on the road – scares the hell out of me.

I believe in people because I believe in God. I think God knew what God was doing when God made each of us.

The closer you get to people who are different than you, the more you learn that we’re all same.

Love is kind, right? It’s not about calling someone out on every little thing you feel.

If no pain, then no love. If no darkness, no light. If no risk, then no reward. It’s all or nothing. In this damn world, it’s all or nothing.

I don’t want to take anything to the grave. I want to die used up and emptied out. I don’t want to carry around anything I don’t have to. I want to travel light.

We are all trained by Disney to believe that the wedding is the finish line, but the wedding is just another starting line. In light of this fact, we should quit the huge, fancy, debt-inducing weddings.

We’ll tell fear it can come along with us in our minivan, okay? But we’ll just tell fear it can’t drive. Sometimes we’ll tell it to not even talk. Like when we tell our kids, ‘Enough. No words.’ We’re going to play the quiet game with fear. Fear is not the boss of us.

You need to remember that being rejected by church is not the same as being rejected by God. God did not kick you out of church, honey. The church kicked God out of church.

A safe life includes following your dreams with the full knowledge that doing so is not, in any way, shape or form, safe in the traditional meaning of the word. Because living safely means dying without too many regrets. That is safe.

We should live out our particular brand of faith, sure – but we should never force our brand of faith upon anyone else. All violence starts with the desire to change others and then never, ever ends.

Pain is mandatory for all of us. It’s what teaches us. Suffering is what’s optional. That’s what happens when we try to skip over the pain.

I’ve seen my name on marquees and bowed to standing ovations. I’ve also been called a fraud, a mental case, a heretic. People all over the country wait in line to hug me or curse me.

Questions are like gifts – it’s the thought behind them that the receiver really feels. We have to know the receiver to give the right gift and to ask the right question. Generic gifts and questions are all right, but personal gifts and questions feel better.

I wrote in my first book that I was broken, and now it just makes me mad every time. This is why writing words in books is so precarious. This is why Jesus only wrote in the sand, right? I just – I hate that I wrote that.

I’m not big on faith rules, but if I had to choose one, it would be that every person must choose a faith issue upon which to hang her hat that requires her to change – not somebody else.

Being a mother is a little like ‘Groundhog’s Day.’ It’s getting out of bed and doing the exact same things again and again and yet again – and it’s watching it all get undone again and again and yet again. It’s humbling, monotonous, mind-numbing, and solitary.

When in doubt, I choose love above any particular ideas offered to me about faith.

One day we will finally see that when we reject any person or group of people, we reject a part of our very selves. All are one. All are in. All are God’s beloved children with a place at the table.

You can be shattered, and then you can put yourself back together piece by piece. But what can happen over time is this: You wake up one day and realize that you have put yourself back together completely differently. That you are whole, finally, and strong – but you are now a different shape, a different size.

The fact that we define ourselves by our roles can be an admirable thing – it’s how we build a life and make a living. But it’s also precarious. Roles change. Sometimes overnight.

Parenting is the most important thing to many of us, and so it’s also the place we’re most vulnerable. We’re all a little afraid we’re doing it wrong.

We’d better not speak against misogyny if, in the same breath, we’re not also speaking against transphobia and homophobia and racism and classism and poverty. This is one fight. It always has been.

Your body is not your art – it’s your paintbrush. Whether your paintbrush is a tall paintbrush or a thin paintbrush or a stocky paintbrush or a scratched up paintbrush is completely irrelevant.

One of the reasons we stay so alone in our lives is because we’re ashamed to talk about the hard stuff. It’s as simple as that. We’re all in pain in different ways, and we don’t get the help we need because we’re too ashamed to talk about the pain.

I don’t think that I’m broken at all. I no longer think that I’m a mess. I just think I’m a deeply feeling person in a messy world.

Often, we need to ignore the words people say and attend to their underlying, urgent, life or death questions: Am I valuable? Am I loved? The great thing is that the answer is easy: Yes! The answer is always yes. We don’t have to think too hard.

Over time, I have come to believe that ‘brave’ does not mean what we think it does. It does not mean ‘being afraid and doing it anyway.’ Nope. Brave means listening to the still small voice inside and doing as it says. Regardless of what the rest of the world is saying.

If we are going to ask for our daily bread, we’ve got to take the time to receive it and eat it. God provide, but we’ve got to slow down long enough to taste and see.

It blows my mind when I actually consider that men are as human as I am. How can you possibly be as human and have all of the thoughts and feelings that I have and never be able to talk about it, ever? Guys are in desperate need of truth telling. They are in desperate need of a revolution.

We’re told that to be successful girls, we have to be small and quiet. Yet to be successful humans, we have to become big and have a voice. There’s an inherent contradiction.

Nothing separates a woman or a family from God’s love. Not death, and certainly not divorce.

Sometimes when you love someone like a mother loves her child, that love can turn into fear. It happens to me all the time. I am so afraid that the world will not be kind to my children.

Many of us spend the first part of our adult lives becoming – stepping into the roles we take on so that they come to define our lives. But I’ve learned that we don’t really grow up until we unbecome.

If grace isn’t shocking and countercultural and scandalous and a little ridiculous, then it’s not Grace.

My greatest fear is that I’ll fail my kids.

Life is a conversation. Make it a good one.

Do not measure your marriage by how much love you feel today: measure it by how much love you’ve offered today.

We need to make friends with ourselves. We are stuck with our self all day, so let’s be kinder, gentler, more amusing company. Let’s take our own hand and say, ‘There, there, sister. You’re doing a good job. I’m proud of how you’re handling all this craziness down here. Don’t give up. Carry on, warrior.’

I used to choose friends based on similarity in age and life stage, but I’ve learned that those were the wrong criteria. Trying to live life exclusively alongside others our own age is like attempting to climb Mt. Everest without a Sherpa. It’s a little dangerous.