Are You Ready to be a Love Warrior?

 

I was deeply touched by Glennon Doyle Melton’s book, Carry On Warrior. Melton’s book helped me remember that people are messy.

Her new book, Love Warrior, is full of wisdom about the fact that life is hard. She shares about her deep despair when her marriage was devastated by infidelity. I appreciate her honesty about the hard times and what she did to keep walking forward when she did not know what to do next.

Are You Ready to be a Love Warrior?Her book is full of inspiration that I want to print and put up all over my house:

“What I Know:

1.  What you don’t know, you’re not supposed to know yet.

2.  More will be revealed.

3.  Crisis comes from the word meaning to sift. Let it all fall away and you’ll be left with what matters.

4.  What matters most cannot be taken away.

5.  Just do the next right thing one thing at a time: That’ll take you all the way home.”

“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.”

“Maybe, for now, the only right decision is to stop making decisions.”

“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.”

Are You Ready to be a Love Warrior?“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 with the fuel you’ll burn to get your work done on this earth.”

“The bravest people I know are those who’ve walked through the fire and come out on the other side. They are those who’ve overcome, not those who’ve had nothing to overcome.”

“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 loved well. Here is my proof that I paid the price.”

“The Journey of the Warrior. This is it. The journey is learning that pain, like love, is simply something to surrender to. It’s a holy space we can enter with people only if we promise not to tidy up.”

Are You Ready to be a Love Warrior?“I tell myself, It’s okay for a woman to hunger, Glennon. It’s okay for her to satisfy her appetite, to enjoy all the juiciness. Remember, don’t be a lady—be a Warrior. The Warrior feeds all three of her selves: mind, spirit, body. I breathe deeply and then start on the potatoes.”

“To be human is to be incomplete and constantly yearning for reunion. Some reunions just require a long, kind patience.”

“What if I am the Warrior I need? What if I am my own damn hero?”

“I’m not a mess but a deeply feeling person in a messy world.”

“Sexy is a grown-up word to describe a person who’s confident that she is already exactly who she was made to be. A sexy woman knows herself and she likes the way she looks, thinks, and feels. She doesn’t try to change to match anybody else. She’s a good friend to herself—kind and patient…And she knows how to use her words to tell people she trusts about what’s going on inside of her—her fears and anger, love, dreams, mistakes, and needs. When she’s angry, she expresses her anger in healthy ways…Sexy is more about how you feel than how you look. Real sexy is letting your true self come out of hiding and find love in safe places…You can’t buy sexy, you have to become sexy through a lifetime of learning to love who God made you to be and learning who God made someone else to be.”

“I now know the path of the Love Warrior: I will not betray myself. I will trust the wisdom of the still, small voice. I will not let fear drown her out. I will trust her and I will trust myself. Love, Pain, Life: I am not afraid. I was born to do this.”

Lisa Ellen Niver

Lisa Niver is an award-winning travel expert who has explored 102 countries on six continents. This University of Pennsylvania graduate sailed across the seas for seven years with Princess Cruises, Royal Caribbean, and Renaissance Cruises and spent three years backpacking across Asia. Discover her articles in publications from AARP: The Magazine and AAA Explorer to WIRED and Wharton Magazine, as well as her site WeSaidGoTravel. On her award nominated global podcast, Make Your Own Map, Niver has interviewed Deepak Chopra, Olympic medalists, and numerous bestselling authors, and as a journalist has been invited to both the Oscars and the United Nations. For her print and digital stories as well as her television segments, she has been awarded three Southern California Journalism Awards and two National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards and been a finalist twenty-two times. Named a #3 travel influencer for 2023, Niver talks travel on broadcast television at KTLA TV Los Angeles, her YouTube channel with over 2 million views, and in her memoir, Brave-ish, One Breakup, Six Continents and Feeling Fearless After Fifty.

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