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Share your Brutiful life like Glennon Doyle Melton: Carry On, Warrior

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July 14, 2016

” target=”_blank”>Carry On, Warrior.”

When she discovered she was pregnant, in her own words she was “a hopeless bulimic, alcoholic, drug addict who was about to become a mother.” She changed her life for her future child and became a warrior for love.

There are parts of the book that really inspired me and I want to share several of them with you. I hope you will choose to listen to Melton and “if, anywhere in your soul, you feel the desire to write, please write. Write as a gift to yourself and others. Everyone has a story to tell. Writing is not about creating tidy paragraphs that sound lovely or choosing the “right” words.” Consider sharing your story in my Many times people tell me that they do not know how to write or they do not write well enough. When they share honestly, it is always good enough. As Melton says, we are all “broken and imperfectly perfect.” Take a risk and tell your truth. From Melton, “Life is equal parts brutal and beautiful. And/Both. Life is brutiful. Like stars in a dark sky. Sharing life’s brutiful is what makes us feel less alone and afraid.”

Personally, I have been working on learning to accept imperfection in myself, be patient with myself and forgive myself. Melton says: “My heart opened to the world’s beauty and brutality. I looked closely at humanity and all of its brokenness and decided to forgive it and myself. Since brokenness is the way of folks, the only way to live peacefully is to forgive everyone constantly, including yourself.” I want to take in her words and move forward with my life and my path in joy and in peace. I often wonder how much of my story to share and appreciate her willingness to be open. Melton says: “It’s just about noticing who you are and noticing life and sharing what you notice. When you write your truth, it is a love offering to the world because it helps us feel braver and less alone.”

*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—and maybe to help myself and others feel a teeny bit better.

*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. On my deathbed, I’m not going to wish I had danced like JLo; I’m just going to wish I had danced more.

*Now we know that in order for love to be real and true and good, you need to have had your heart shattered. We know now that a broken heart is not the end of the world, but a beginning.

*Forgiveness and grace are like oxygen: we can’t offer it to others unless we put our masks on first. We have to put our grace masks on and breathe in deep.

*Brave is a decision. It is a decision that compassion is more important than fear, than fitting in, than following the crowd.

*Sometimes we make the mistake of assuming that the things we’re good at are common to everyone. We don’t recognize that our gifts are unique and therefore worth offering.

*I think one of the keys to happiness is accepting that I am never going to be perfectly happy. Life is uncomfortable.

*There has never been anything wrong with you—not one day in your life. You are exactly who you were meant to be, right now, as you are. You are not to be ashamed. You punish yourself, but you have no reason to be punished.

*Three simple rules: Show Up, Be Brave, and Be Kind.

*All of us have experienced great loss and great joy. All of us want to feel peace and joy and to have a sense that we belong somewhere.

*People who have decided to quit making marriage and parenting and friendship and life harder by pretending they aren’t hard. People who just show up, as they are—messy and beautiful—for themselves and for each other.

*We love each other—not because we are all the same, but because we are all so different. We don’t want to change each other—we just want to take a deep breath, stop acting, and enjoy each other. The real each other.

Other inspirational quotes shared in *Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with it. —Robert Fulghum

*And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. —Anais Nin

*As Maya Angelou says. “I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.”

*Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. —Howard Thurman

*From Easter service: Even the bush that looks withered and brittle and lifeless can bloom, if given enough time, enough tending, enough love. A new season will come. There is always hope. What looks like the end might just be the beginning.

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