Quotes touch our hearts and help our spirits heal

It’s late on a Sunday night, almost Monday morning, and I am on my iPad googling Glennon Doyle Melton. My daughter Julie told me to read Melton’s book, “Love Warrior, A Memoir” two years ago. Sunday, I finally got around to it. I read it in a day. And at the end of the day, I wanted more.

sayings.jpeg

This is what a good book does. Does the author have other books, you want to know. What is she doing now? How has her life turned out? The end of a good book is alway the beginning of more.

I scanned Doyle Melton’s bio as a philanthropist, blogger, and author. I watched her TED talk. I clicked on her website and laughed at her pithy entries, then signed onto Instagram to follow her. And then I hit pay dirt. I found Glennon Doyle Melton quotes.

The thing about quotes is that they are like tapas for the mind, one thought, just a few words, and easy to digest. The saying “time heals all wounds,” for example. It may not be true but it’s satisfying. And it goes down in a single bite.

“The only meaningful thing we can offer one another is love,” is a Doyle Melton quote. “Not advice, not questions about our choices, not suggestions for the future, just love.” Perfect, isn’t it? And this one: “Sometimes people who need help look nothing like people who need help.” Isn’t this true? And “Don’t let yourself become so concerned with raising a good kid that you forget you already have one.” Short and spot on. They all are.

Quotes inspire me. And they intrigue me because they offer both history and a kind of immortality. People may not remember an entire book or movie but they remember sentences. “In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart” (“Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl”). “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” (“A Tale of Two Cities”). “May the force be with you” (“Star Wars”). “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn” (Gone with the Wind). Who isn’t familiar with these words?

One of my daughter Lauren’s favorites quotes is, “No one ever gets hurt sitting on a couch.” She made it up. It’s a verbal thumbing of her nose to exercise. Runners wear out their knees. Tennis players wear out their elbows. Dancers. Skiers. Hikers. Anyone who moves is in danger of injury.

“First they run. Then they run away.” She made this up, too.“Wee steps and slow,” my Scottish mother-in-law always said. It means one step at a time. Don’t look at the whole picture. It’s too overwhelming. Now even the great grandchildren, who never met her, who were born years after she died, say, “Wee steps and slow.”

“Never whistle while you pack,” is my husband’s contribution to immortality. Funny? Yes. But definitely good advice.

A young friend told my son, when his son was born, “Put that kid in day care where he belongs.” This is now a classic quote in our house. Along with “Lovely, Barbara,” which is what we saywhen we like something. And “Big Ben, Parliament, kids,” which is what we say when we are driving somewhere and going around in circles.

Doyle Melton’s quotes are clearer. They don’t have to be explained. “The water is speaking in a language I knew before the world taught me its language. I lie there and I let the sound of the surf massage my soul for two hours.”

Her book is honest. Sometimes uncomfortably honest. “I am more costumed than I am dressed,” she writes. She takes off that costume and bares her whole self. “I’m in here. I am good on the inside. I have things to say. I need help getting out.”

She gets out. And in every word of “Love Warrior,” not just the few excerpted, easy to swallow sound bites, she shows us how.