Love Warrior

by Glennon Doyle Melton

  Earlier in the season, the mother of one of Amma’s teammates nudged me and said, “This is my friend, Joanne. She doesn’t have kids on this team, she just comes to watch Coach Craig. Aren’t we the luckiest soccer moms ever?” Then she winked at me. Since then, I’ve avoided Craig after games so this poor woman doesn’t die of embarrassment when she learns that Coach Craig is my husband. But now I notice that this isn’t a fluke; all the moms are beaming at Craig. Of course they are. He’s handsome and gentle and he adores their kids. What’s not to beam about?

  Amma’s team loses the game by seven goals, but Craig doesn’t seem to mind as his players huddle around him for their postgame pep talk. He crouches down while they maneuver as close to him as possible. A little girl with shiny black curls snuggles onto his left knee and I watch Amma flop with a flourish onto his right. She wraps her arms around Craig’s neck like a jealous monkey, claiming him. Craig kisses her forehead and then reaches around her to high-five the rest of the team. I draw a bit closer along with the other moms. One of them catches my eye and winks at me. I decide that is really quite enough with the winking. I concentrate on resisting the urge to muscle my way into the huddle to claim my own section of Craig’s lap. Suddenly, I imagine pulling Craig toward me and kissing him tenderly. I feel a warmth, a stirring. The feelings travel down through my body. Then the vision and feeling evaporate and I stand there stunned and disoriented.

  After a loud “Go team!” Amma and her teammates run off with their orange slices while Craig prepares to coach Chase’s team. From a distance, I watch Craig peel off his first coaching jersey to replace it with another. I feel shocked to suddenly see—right there in the light of day—Craig’s stomach and chest. They are smooth and toned and completely exposed. A teeny electrical current runs through my body. I feel like running across the field to him, placing my hands on his chest, and yelling to all the beaming mamas, That’s my man! Wait, what? MY MAN? Who AM I? A jealous teenager at the food court? I feel baffled at myself. Within the span of an hour I’ve experienced pangs of jealousy, teeny electrical currents, and sudden kissing visions. And now I feel this … powerful stirring. This being moved, awakened, which feels like a low tingling. It feels like my body is tugging at me, the same way my kids do when they need something from me. My body is saying to me, I want something. I’ve practiced enough to know how to listen. But what does my body want? Craig?

  Months ago, when Ann asked me, “What is attractive to you about Craig?” I’d stared at her blankly. She changed her wording. “Okay, what do you respect about Craig?” I’d been unable to answer either question. I’d lost respect for Craig, so I’d lost attraction. I wonder now if this low tingling is a signal that I’ve recovered some of both. I look over at him and wonder, What do I respect about him right now? Maybe I respect his coaching? He’s confident here. A leader. Could be that. Maybe it’s his kindness to the kids and parents? His patience and easy laugh? Then I look at him and think, Wait, is it the coaching and kindness, or is it just the abs? Can a woman respect abs?

  I watch him in the circle with Chase and the boys and I think, I know what I respect: Look at him. There he is. He didn’t jump off his mat and run out of here. He messed everything up and then he stayed and fought through his pain and my pain and the kids’ pain and he let none of it scare him away. He chose the Journey of the Warrior, too—and so there he is, still in the middle of his life. He became his own hero. He was his hero and I was mine and now here we are, together. Two heroes. Not two halves that make one whole, but two wholes that make a partnership. That’s attractive.

  My mind travels back to my wedding day. I see myself walking down the aisle toward Craig. There he is, standing with the minister. He’s smiling, but he is so clearly afraid. He is not ready. Are we ever ready for the terrifying gifts life offers us? I can see now that he is, as he stands there in his tuxedo costume, everything I hate: uncertain, weak, dishonest, unhealthy. But he is also everything that I love. He is hopeful. He is brave. He is afraid, but he has shown up anyway. He is human. I didn’t want him to be human. I wanted him to be perfect and golden, steady and solid, simple and strong so that I could be messy, complicated, and weak. But we are each all of those things. “I just need to know if you can really know me and still love me,” he had said to me in his therapist’s office. I think about my parents sitting on the couch, betrayed, terrified, exhausted, saying to me, “Do you even love us, Glennon?” Yes. Yes I did. I, of all people, understand that you can love someone so much it aches and still hurt them, again and again. I know that you can love and betray the very same person. Is it possible that I walked down the aisle toward exactly the right person? Toward my healing partner? Toward myself?

  When I got to the end of that aisle, Craig took my hand. He knew my mess and he married me. I thought he was perfect and I married him. Who was braver? In my mind’s eye I watch us take each other’s hands. I feel so tender. This is the first tenderness I’ve felt in so long. Tenderness and respect mixed together feel a lot like love.

  I’d been angry and ashamed because my marriage was so far from perfect. But perfect just means: works exactly the way it is designed to work. If marriage is an institution designed to nurture the growth of two people—then, in our own broken way, our marriage is perfect.

  * * *

  This thought enters my mind: I am going to have sex with Craig today. It is going to be my idea. This is a decision delivered from my body to my mind and soul. My body has joined us as a decision maker. I feel a wave of terror. What if my body is trying to betray me again? Can I trust my body? What if it tells me to give myself up and he throws it all away again? Then this answer from my mind: What he does with my love is neither my problem nor my concern. My body wants to offer and receive love and I am going to listen. This is not just about trusting Craig, this is about trusting myself.

  Later that afternoon, Craig drops the kids off to play at a neighbor’s house and then he comes back home to take a shower. While he showers, I sneak into the bedroom, peel off my clothes, and jump into bed. I hide all the way under the covers so Craig won’t know I’m there. I feel ridiculous and reckless under there. When I hear him come out of the bathroom and start making his way across the room, I peek out from under the covers and make a high-pitched noise, like a mouse. Good God, I am five years old. Craig looks over at me, sees me under the covers, and raises his eyebrows. He says, “Hey. What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know,” I reply. “I’m in here. I’m under the covers.” This is not sexy, I think. This is definitely not sexy.

  But what the hell does sexy even mean? I wonder if the word sexy is everything that made sex a lie to me. Sexy meant grown women acting like lingerie is just what we want for Valentine’s Day even though it’s obviously wrapping paper for a gift our husbands want returned to them later. Sexy was pretending not to be hungry. Sexy was bleach and heels and bending over pool tables and other uncomfortable things. Sexy was one type of body and one color of hair and spending an entire life looking into a mirror instead of out at the world. Sexy was what marketers told me was sexy so I’d buy whatever they were selling. I’d been trying to be that kind of sexy for twenty years, and lying there in bed, I realize that’s going to have to change. That definition of sexy is what poisoned my husband and me and it’s never going to work for us again. I am going to have to try to have sex without any fake, commercial sexiness involved. Maybe it’s possible that I don’t have to hate sex just because I hate the world’s definition of sexy. Maybe I can find my own sexy.

  Craig keeps standing there, waiting for me to speak. It’s been a year and a half since we’ve really touched each other, and we’ve never touched each other as the new people we are now. I see the fear on his face and feel my own fear. I remind myself that scared and sacred are sisters. “It’s okay, I’m scared, too. Come here,” I squeak.

  “I can’t come there,” Craig says as he points to his towel. “I’m naked under here.”

  “I
know,” I say. “It’s okay.” He walks over slowly, drops his towel on the floor, and scrambles into bed with me. Side by side, we hug. It’s a gentle, loose hug—like we’ve practiced. I notice that we’re both shaking. That feels honest. I wonder if shaking is my kind of sexy. I look over Craig’s shoulder and out the open window. Birds are chirping. It’s sunny and bright. Nothing feels dark, scary, sinister, or dirty. We are out in the open, in the light. I silently beg God to show up. Please, God, make it different this time. Help. If it’s not different I’m afraid it will all be over. Not just for us, but for me. Please come in and help us with this. I take a few deep breaths. I am here. I am in my body. I’ve remembered.

  Then we kiss. And the miracle that happens is this: I stop wondering things. My brain changes modes. I do not hover. I am not God. I am just human, so I can let go and be present and surrender to this, whatever it is. I show up. Mind, body, spirit—all of me, at once.

  I hear myself say things. Not stupid fake things like I’d learned from movies, like: “Oh my God” and “Yeah, baby,” but real things—things I’d learned to say from all the hugging practice. I speak my insides. I say, “Slow down. Stay there.” There is one horrifying moment in which Craig pulls away from me and closes his eyes and I can feel him dismembering. As soon as he disappears, I do, too. I think, If you leave right now, if you close your eyes and pull away and it becomes clear that your mind is with the stilettoed ladies and not with me, I swear this will never happen again. I swear to God if I feel you leave this place I will.… Suddenly, I am alone again. I am alone with my fear in my mind. I am two people: me on the outside having sex, and me on the inside all alone. I know I have to tell the story of my insides with my voice if I want to stay whole. No abandoning myself. So I say, “No, don’t. Come back. You’re scaring me. Stay here. All of you. Stay here.” I pull Craig back toward me and he holds me lightly but closely and he is suddenly back. I can tell. We are both back from the alone and we are together. He is not with the stilettoed ladies and their version of sexy. He is here, with me and my version of sexy, which is: After all of this, I am trying again. I am trying. I am still here. All of me.

  And for a few moments there is a meeting of two bodies. And for a few moments there is a meeting of two minds. And for a few moments there is a meeting of two souls, with no lies between them.

  Here I am. Here you are. All of me. All of you. Here. In love.

  Afterward, we lie in bed and breathe together for a bit. And I look over at Craig and see tears running down his face. There he is. All of him, right at the surface so I can see him.

  “That felt different,” Craig says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “That felt like love.”

  * * *

  Amma shimmies around the kitchen with one hand on her hip and the other on the back of her head. She strikes several suggestive poses while shouting, “I’m sexy and I know it. Oh yeah, oh yeah!” I recognize this as the chorus to a recent pop song. I stare at Amma and wonder, Where exactly does a kindergartner learn to arrange her hands and shake her hips like that? An observer would be forgiven for thinking we spend family night at the local strip club. Amma stops dancing long enough to study the question on my face. She says proudly, “Beyoncé, Mama. I learned this dance from Beyoncé.” I hear Craig laugh in the other room. We are all suckers for Beyoncé.

  Tish, the morality cop of the family, bounds into the room, and like a referee throwing a flag onto the football field, she yells, “Inappropriate, Amma! Sexy is inappropriate!”

  Amma yells back, “No, it’s not!”

  Tish says, “Yes it is! Sexy IS inappropriate, right, Mom?”

  I freeze. This argument sounds very much like the civil war that has raged in my mind for the last two decades. Is sexy inappropriate? Is sexy wrong? Is sex wrong? It can’t be wrong, but how can something that has forever been twisted to subjugate women not feel wrong? My girls stare at me, waiting for the verdict. Delivering it feels above my pay grade. This moment feels heavy with meaning—as if my response might determine the kind of women these girls become. How can a woman who’s been so confused about her body and sex for so long lead her girls toward healthy relationships with sex? How can I possibly be the right person for moments like these? What is the right answer here?

  I look down at my girls’ expectant faces and I remember that there is no right answer. There are only stories to tell. Every day the world will tell my girls its story about sexiness and what it means to be a woman. My girls need to hear my story. Not so my story will become theirs, but so they’ll understand that they are free to write their own stories. They need to know that much of what the world presents to them is not truth, it’s poison. And my girls will only be able to detect lies if they know what truth sounds like. I take a deep breath and tell myself to relax. This is just the beginning of a lifelong conversation the three of us will have about womanhood.

  I say, “You know, I think sexy is good. It’s just that most people are confused about what it means. Want to know what sexy really means?”

  Yes, they nod. Their wide eyes say, I can’t believe Mom keeps saying sexy.

  “I think 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. When she’s joyful, she does the same thing. She doesn’t hide her true self because she’s not ashamed. She knows she’s just human—exactly how God made her and that’s good enough. She’s brave enough to be honest and kind enough to accept others when they’re honest. When two people are sexy enough to be brave and kind with each other, that’s love. 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. That kind of sexy is good, really good, because we all want and need love more than anything else.

  “Fake sexy is different. It’s just more hiding. Real sexy is taking off all your costumes and being yourself. Fake sexy is just wearing another costume. Lots of people are selling fake sexy costumes. Companies know that people want to be sexy so badly because people want love. They know that love can’t be sold, so they have big meetings in boardrooms and they say, ‘How can we convince people to buy our stuff? I know! We’ll promise them that this stuff will make them sexy!’ Then they make up what sexy means so they can sell it. Those commercials you see are stories they’ve written to convince us that sexy is the car or mascara or hair spray or diet they’re selling. We feel bad, because we don’t have what they have or look how they look. That’s what they want. They want us to feel bad, so we’ll buy more. It almost always works. We buy their stuff and wear it and drive it and shake our hips the way they tell us to—but that doesn’t get us love, because none of that is real sexiness. People are even more hidden underneath fake sexiness, and the one thing you can’t do if you want to be loved is hide. 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.”

  My girls are quiet, listening. I study their faces as they study mine. Amma tilts her head and says, “Oh. I thought sexy meant pretty.”

  “Hmm, nope. Pretty is another thing that can be sold. What and who is pretty is also something those people in boardrooms decide. It’s always changing. So if what you want to be is pretty, you’ll have to keep changing yourself constantly—and eventually you won’t know who you are.

  “What I want to be, girls, is beautiful. Beautiful means ‘full of beauty.’ Beautiful is not about how you look on the outside. Beautiful is about what you’re made of. Beautiful people spend time discovering what their idea of beauty on this earth is. They know themselves w
ell enough to know what they love, and they love themselves enough to fill up with a little of their particular kind of beauty each day.”

  “Like when I dance!” Amma says, spinning and twirling around me.

  “Yes. Like when you dance. Many of the things you see me do each day, I do to be beautiful. It’s why I take time out to spend with good friends. It’s why I read and look at art and always have music I love playing in the house. It’s why I light candles in every room. It’s why I watch you climb our banyan trees in the front yard. It’s why I roll around on the floor with the dogs and why I’m always smelling the top of your heads. It’s why I drag you to watch the sunset each week. I’m just filling up with beauty, because I want to be beautiful. You girls are beauty to me, too. When you smile at me, I can feel myself filling.”

  The girls look at each other, giggle and beam.

  “You two will meet plenty of people who are pretty but haven’t yet learned how to be beautiful. They will have the right look for the times, but they will not glow. Beautiful women glow. When you are with a beautiful woman you might not notice her hair or skin or body or clothes, because you’ll be distracted by the way she makes you feel. She will be so full of beauty that you will feel some of it overflow onto you. You’ll feel warm and safe and curious around her. Her eyes will twinkle a little and she’ll look at you really closely—because beautiful, wise women know that the quickest way to fill up with beauty is to soak in another human being. Other people are beauty, beauty, beauty. The most beautiful women take their time with other people. They are filling up.