Glennon Doyle Melton

I think of love and marriage in the same way I do plants: We have perennials and annuals. The perennial plant blooms, goes away, and comes back. The annual blooms for just a season, and then winter arrives and takes it out for good. But it's still enriched the soil for the next flower to bloom. In the same way, no love is wasted. ”

Compassion does not just happen. Pity does, but compassion is not pity. It's not a feeling. Compassion is a viewpoint, a way of life, a perspective, a habit that becomes a discipline - and more than anything else, compassion is a choice we make that love is more important than comfort or convenience. ”

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. ”

Life is a conversation. Make it a good one. ”

Life is not safe, and so our task is not to promise our kids there will be no turbulence. It's to assure them that when the turbulence comes, we will all hold hands and get through it together. ”

I just think that if we are going to call ourselves pro-life, we must also agree that starvation and poverty and disease and immigration and health care for all and war and peace and the environment are also pro-life issues. ”

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. ”

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. ”

The hardest part of living without social media was remembering that my little life was enough, so I could just stay there and live it without asking for anyone else's permission or validation. I realized that for me, posting is like asking the world, 'Do you 'like' me?' ”

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. ”