Love Warrior

by Glennon Doyle Melton

  I think of Mary years ago, beckoning me to walk toward her. Come. Right here. Right to me, Glennon. Just as you are.

  But, Mary, I’m young and afraid and unmarried and pregnant and lost and alone.

  And she had said, Me, too. God loves us this way. Come.

  If I want to bring all of myself to God, I will have to insist that others can, too. If I want to reside in God’s open arms, if I want to refuse to be dismissed to the back office with the administrators, then I cannot send anyone else there. Our redemption is only as real as it is free. Grace can only be personal if it’s also universal. My freedom and everyone else’s is either bound or loosed together. Our only hope to be fully human together is to first insist upon our right to be fully human before God. And it will only be the acceptance that I am already loved perfectly by God that will let me forgive Craig and those women for loving so imperfectly. So I decide to give away what I need. I’ll pay the price of grace. Yes, grace is true for all of us. I choose all: myself and Craig and the other women—all of us. And for the second time in only a few days, I find myself crying in a room full of strangers. I feel saved.

  But even as I feel the weight of the world lifting, I know this peace won’t last. I’ll have to leave this room. I’ll feel lost again. Fear and anger and panic will cover this grace and truth, just as clouds cover the stars. But fear doesn’t make perfect love untrue any more than passing clouds make the stars untrue. I know how to find my way back to truth, to love, to peace, to God again. All I have to do is be still and breathe and wait for the clouds and fear to pass. Now the room has started feeling too small to hold all the love in my chest. I pick up my mat and walk out.

  * * *

  I drive home and walk into the house. I sit down next to Craig on the couch and he turns off the TV and looks at me nervously. I say, “Listen. Something weird happened to me tonight. I learned that we’re the same, you and me. You thought sex was love and I thought booze and food were love and we got really lost. But that doesn’t mean we’re not loved. We are. You are. You’re forgiven and you always were and you’re loved—just as you are. It’s all going to be okay. I think somehow it already is.” Craig’s eyes looks painfully hopeful, so I add, “Wait. This forgiveness, it’s not personal yet. It doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven you. I’m not there. I just know the truth is that you are forgiven. That whoever made you knows you, loves you, and isn’t mad at you. And that whether we end up together or apart, we’ll be okay. You, me, the kids—we’re going to be fine. Nobody wants to punish us. We’re totally, completely safe. The end of whatever road we choose will be redemption—love will win either way.”

  Craig is quiet as he thinks about this. I look at him and I can tell he’s really listening—trying to take it in. “Okay,” he says after a minute. “Okay.”

  I go into my room and lie on my bed and breathe. I think about the difference between the God I experienced tonight and the God I’d been taught to fear. My mind travels back to the church woman who’d heard the News and said, “God gave you to Craig as his helper. Your duty is to help him through this time.” She was right that that is what they taught us at that church: The word the Bible used to name woman means helper. It was just the religious version of every message I’d ever received from the world—that women are not here to live fully, we are here to help men live fully. Women are supporting actors in the epic stories of men. I think of Liz. Don’t jump through hoops. Walk past the middle men and straight toward the Source. My eyes fall on the Bible I’d hidden away after the separation—when folks started using it like a cattle prod, to keep me in my place or to push me where they wanted me to be. I walk over and open it and look for the passage, right there in the beginning, where God made man and God made woman and woman was called helper. My stomach turns. Could helper really be God’s first name for me?

  I take my Bible over to my computer and start searching for meanings to the passage, digging to find information about that one original word, translated over and over to me as helper. And there on the screen before me, it appears.

  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.

  And the tingly, awake feeling I’d had in the breathing class comes back as I read article after article written by other God smugglers—women who’d started printing their own money instead of waiting in line, other women who’d decided to walk around to the back of the ice cream truck. That translation is wrong, they all tell me. It’s wrong. 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.

  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?

  I was disgusted with Craig for being weak, for failing to fulfill the infallible hero role into which the world and I had cast him. But as I look down at my strong, sober body, I think, What if I have us cast wrong? What if I never needed Craig to be my hero? What if I don’t need Craig to be perfectly strong because I am strong? What if I don’t need Craig to love me perfectly because I am already loved perfectly? What if I am the Warrior I need? What if I am my own damn hero?

  Growing up is an unbecoming. My healing has been a peeling away of costume after costume until here I am, still and naked and unashamed before God, stripped down to my real identity. I have unbecome. And now I stand: Warrior. Undressed for battle. Strong and benevolent. Both yin and yang. Complete, not in need of completing. Sent to fight for everything worth having: truth, beauty, kindness, shamelessness, love. To march into pain and love with eyes and heart wide open, to stand in the wreckage and believe that my power, my love, my light, are stronger than the darkness. I know my name now. Love Warrior. I came from Love and I am Love and I will return to Love. Love casts out fear. A woman who has recovered her true identity as a Love Warrior is the most powerful force on earth. All the darkness and shame and pain in the world can’t defeat her.

  As I think these thoughts, I feel my spine straighten. I drop my breath into my belly, and I laugh.

  14

  THE NEXT WEEK, I pack my bags and fly to Michigan for my biggest speaking event yet. This engagement has been planned for months, born out of the popularity of my book. I feel far too unstable to be exposed to a crowd. I might be a Warrior, but I’m a shaky one. I know that there’s no room for my representative on that stage. These people invited me because of the vulnerability in my writing, so I need to show the audience my real self. It feels like especially brutal timing for that.

  My sister meets me at the gate, takes my bags, and then handles every detail of the trip so I can focus on my presentation. When they announce my name I climb onstage, ignore the crowd, and seek out my sister’s eyes. Her gaze is steady and fierce, her head held high. It’s okay, she’s saying. No matter what happens up there, we’re walking out of here together. Before I begin, I take a deep breath and internalize her confidence. I don’t care about anything but making my sister proud. I say to God what I always say to God before I speak onstage, Okay, I showed up, your turn now.

  My talk is about the mental hospital and how I miss it sometimes. I tell the crowd that I landed there partly because of my addiction, and I landed in addiction partly bec
ause of my wiring and partly because of the world’s wiring. Very young, I looked out at the scary world and decided I was too broken, too different, to risk revealing my true self to it. I felt too weak to survive the pain I knew was the price of love. So I hid.

  I explain that addictions are safe little deadly hiding places where sensitive people retreat from love and pain. No one can touch us there, so we feel protected. But since love and pain are the only things that grow us, we start dying as soon as we hide. The cage I built to protect myself from the world’s toxins also stole my oxygen. I didn’t know I needed to be seen and known like I needed air.

  I tell them that the first time I peeked out of my cage was in the mental hospital. Since it was a smaller world with gentler rules, I felt safe being vulnerable. People wore their scars on the outside, so you knew where they stood. There were no representatives there. It was such a relief to stop acting. There were rules about how to listen well and speak kindly. We learned how to dance and paint and write our feelings instead of eat and drink them. We held hands when we were afraid. I cried when I had to leave. I tell them that twenty years later I still feel naked and overly vulnerable in the big world, so I seek out smaller worlds with kinder rules—places like recovery meetings, my blog community, marriage, friendship, faith, art, family—places where it’s safe to be fully human and fully known.

  I tell them that I’m finally proud of who I am. I understand now that 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. If we choose to be perfect and admired, we must send our representatives out to live our lives. If we choose to be real and loved, we must send out our true, tender selves. That’s the only way, because to be loved we have to be known. If we choose to introduce our true selves to anyone, we will get hurt. But we will be hurt either way. There is pain in hiding and pain outside of hiding. The pain outside is better because nothing hurts as bad as not being known. The irony is that our true selves are tougher than our representatives are. My tender self was never weak at all. She was made to survive the pain of love. My tenderness is my strength. Turns out that I never needed to hide. I was a Warrior all along.

  “Thank you for inviting me here,” I say. “Thanks for being a safe place to bring my tender, true self.”

  Then I turn and walk off the stage and out into the brightness of an empty hallway. Somehow, my sister is already there waiting for me. She grabs my shoulders and she says, “You did it. I can’t believe you did it. You were so beautiful, so real, so powerful. They’re standing up in there. They gave you a standing ovation. You left too fast to see it.” She pulls me into her and I start to feel dizzy from adrenaline, relief, and love. I let her hug me and I think, They gave truth a standing ovation. “Let’s go,” she says. “Let’s get you something to eat.” My sister holds my hands and we walk toward the front doors until we hear a voice behind us.

  “Glennon! Glennon! Wait!” We turn around together and see a gray-haired woman hurrying in our direction. When she makes it to us, she says, “Thanks for stopping. I just heard you speak. You were wonderful. I saw in the program that you’re from Naples. I used to live there, and I know where you need to go to church. What neighborhood do you live in?” I tell her. Her eyes brighten. “Write this down. It’s where you belong. It’s just a couple blocks from you, and it’s one of those places you spoke about—where it’s safe to be fully human.”

  “Okay! Great! Thank you!” I say. Hell no, I think.

  I return home the next night and drive slowly through my neighborhood, searching. There, on a corner I’ve passed a hundred times, stands the church. It’s lit up bright against the night sky and I pull over to stare. The white steeple reaches higher than the tallest palm on the grounds. I feel an aching, a yearning to go inside. I see soft yellow light pouring out through a window. I wonder if, on the other side, there’s a warm room with flickering candles and Mary waiting for tired night people. I wonder if this is the kind of place I could take off my shoes and feel velvet on the soles of my feet. There are no other cars in the parking lot. I consider that a church without people might be the only safe church for me. But I do not go inside, because I can’t risk being sent to the office. Instead I drive home, unpack, snuggle in bed with my computer, and start researching the church’s denomination.

  I start reading and learn that this was the first church to ordain black and gay ministers. I find a picture of its ministers protesting against mistreatment of immigrants. When I stumble upon picture after picture of these churches flying rainbow flags above their doors, hope stirs inside of me. Judging by the website, this church looks safe, but what I really need to know are the hidden rules. So the following Sunday morning during services, I drive slowly through the church’s parking lot, examining the bumper stickers on the cars of the congregation. I find political stickers from both parties. I find environmental stickers and CO-EXIST stickers. I count seven PFLAG stickers. I do not see a single TURN OR BURN sticker, so I decide to give this place a try.

  Craig and I go to church together the following Sunday. We’re greeted by several snazzy, kind, gray-haired ladies wearing heels, lipstick, and suits. We accept their smiles and church bulletins and head into the sanctuary. Craig motions to a pew in the back and I shake my head and walk straight to the front. Craig follows reluctantly. The organ begins and the first note fills my heart and then the silver-haired choir begins the procession. They are singing an old-fashioned hymn and my heart now feels like a balloon that’s floating out of my body. I am trying to regain control because I do not want to be taken for a ride here. Stay steady, I tell myself. But then a balding minister rises and starts speaking and he is so gentle and vulnerable that I give up on controlling my heart and just trust it to him for a bit.

  This minister declares that he is not here to add barriers between God and people; he’s here to remove them. He speaks of the need for a faith that is open and gentle instead of closed and militant. He speaks of his Muslim and atheist and Jewish friends and how each has wisdom he needs. He calls out local and world leaders who spend billions on war and little on peacemaking. He calls out Christians who lobby for tax cuts for the rich and are silent on matters for the poor. He speaks of the candlelight vigil he attended the night before to honor a black teenager who’d just been murdered in a Florida neighborhood while walking his girlfriend home. He calls this death not a misunderstanding, but the direct result of fear mongering and bold-faced racism. He implores his white congregation to consider how it’s part of the problem. This sermon is brave. It is relentlessly kind but not at all neutral. I notice that when the minister refers to God, he never uses a pronoun. To him, God is not a man. And when referring to people, he always says “she or he.” His language is painstakingly careful. He is speaking a language I recognize as love. Love is careful and love is humble. This man is careful and humble, and he is using his voice to lift to the surface those who’ve been forgotten. He is using his freedom to go back and fight for those not yet free. The last are first, even in the words he chooses. I do not see any pictures of Mary, but I sense through this minister’s language that the divine feminine is present and safe here.

  After the service, Craig and I walk out of the sanctuary and a woman approaches us with a sincere and curious smile. As I say hello my eyes fall on the comma-shaped, rainbow-colored pin on her lapel. She notices me noticing it, and as her hand rises to touch the pin she says, “The comma is because God is still speaking. And the rainbow is for the gays, of course.”

  “Ah,” I say, “yes. Of course. Well, I’m here because a lady in Traverse City chased me down and promised that this was the place for a girl like me.”

  I describe the woman and this rainbow lady says, “That’s Kathy! She was a minister here. Amazing, brilliant, strong woman. She was
a Catholic nun and then became an Episcopal priest. She marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., you know. Well, welcome. I’m Charnley. Lovely to meet a girl like you.” Charnley turns, points to the minister, and says, “That guy is my husband.”

  I smile. I like that instead of introducing herself as the minister’s wife, she calls him her husband. On the way out, Craig looks at me and says, “We are totally coming back here. Don’t you think? This place feels right.”

  “Yes,” I say. “Maybe so.”

  We return the next week and at the end of the service Rev.Ron and another leader, Rev. Bev, announce that they’ve just hired a third minister named Dawson—a man who preaches like fire and who happens to be gay. This gray-haired congregation has voted him in. They have voted not to tolerate him, not to change him, but to ask him to lead them. As Bev smiles after her announcement and the congregation cheers, I stop holding my breath. I decide to take a risk on this family. Not because I won’t get hurt, but because they are the right people to get hurt by. I trust the rules here. After Rev. Dawson is inducted as our minister, I join the congregation officially.