Carry On, Warrior Read online

  Additional Praise for Carry On, Warrior

  “Melton, God love her, has the courage and the resolve and the wit to show us all of her dimensions. She’s the anti-Instagram. Her words make the world a better place. And a healing place.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “An inspirational guide. Only by living in a state of loving vulnerability [was Melton able] to do what she desired most: touch others and be touched by them in return. Gentle words of wisdom from a woman driven by ‘senseless, relentless hope.’ ”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Refreshingly frank. Writing, or as she calls it ‘living out loud,’ is for Melton a bracing therapy to chase away loneliness, learn humility, and banish the fears of revealing the less than flattering sides of herself.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Carry On, Warrior is like sitting down for a cup of coffee with a friend to share stories, laughter, and tears, mixed with a whole lot of ‘me too!’s and ‘I thought I was the only one.’ You leave refreshed, renewed, and reminded that we aren’t alone in this. Not even a little. It isn’t the kind of book you put down and say ‘Oh, that was good.’ It’s the kind of book you put down, then go to the store and buy three more copies because you know you are going to run into someone who needs them.”

  —Examiner.com

  “Carry On, Warrior is precisely the kind of book I hope the parents in my congregation will read. Melton is a richly gifted storyteller, and her shamelessness is the best kind, rooted in a refusal to believe that she is anything other than a forgiven and beloved child of God.”

  —Katherine Willis Pershey, Associate Pastor of the

  First Congregational Church of Western Springs,

  Illinois, The Christian Century magazine

  Thank you for downloading this Scribner eBook.

  * * *

  Sign up for our newsletter and receive special offers, access to bonus content, and info on the latest new releases and other great eBooks from Scribner and Simon & Schuster.

  CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

  or visit us online to sign up at

  eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com

  Dedication

  One night my mom, Tisha, was visiting and she asked to talk to me privately. She looked nervous. We walked into my bedroom and leaned up against the bed pillows together. We talked, slowly and carefully, about my writing. She told me how beautiful she thought it was and how hard it was for her to read. She described the pain she felt when she read about my secret life and how confused she was that it all happened while we did our very best to love each other. We talked about how scary it is to share these stories with friends and strangers.

  We cried a little and laughed a little, too. But they were teary laughs.

  We talked for a long time, and then it felt as if we were almost done. I was sad, because I wanted to stay on that bed with my mom forever. I thought about that in the quiet for a while. I wondered what she was thinking. Then my mom looked at me and her lip quivered and even though she was very, very scared she said, I am so proud of you. I am in awe of what you and God have done together. You have to tell your stories. This is what you were meant to do. Don’t stop telling your stories, Honey.

  It was like when I told her I was pregnant, and she was very, very scared, but she looked straight at me and said, Glennon, you don’t have to marry him if you don’t want to. We can raise the baby together. We can handle this.

  It was like when my baby sister, Amanda, announced she was moving to Africa to save little girls from an epidemic of child rape. And even though my mom was very, very scared, she eventually said, It’s what you need to do. Go.

  People are always calling my mom an angel, but I think she is a warrior.

  And I want her to know that this book, and every single word that I write, is for her.

  “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

  —Rev. John Watson

  “Including you.”

  —Glennon

  Contents

  Cast of Characters

  Building a Life

  Part 1: Waking Up

  Chapter 1: Sisters

  Chapter 2: Holy Holes

  Chapter 3: On Writing and Dancing

  Chapter 4: Day One

  Chapter 5: Chutes and Ladders

  Chapter 6: In Case of Emergency

  Chapter 7: Inhale, Exhale

  Chapter 8: Smelly Coughy Guy

  Part 2: Committing

  Chapter 9: Birthdays

  Chapter 10: Lucky Seven

  Chapter 11: Fireworks

  Chapter 12: Out to Lunch

  Chapter 13: Airing Our Dirty Laundry

  Chapter 14: Initiation

  Chapter 15: On Weaving and Repentance

  Chapter 16: Sucker—On Vacuuming

  Chapter 17: Easter

  Chapter 18: Unwind

  Part 3: Multiplying

  Chapter 19: Don't Carpe Diem

  Chapter 20: A Little Advice

  Chapter 21: Brave Is a Decision

  Chapter 22: Whatever, Honestly

  Chapter 23: One, Two, Three

  Chapter 24: Rejoicing

  Chapter 25: A Mountain I'm Willing to Die On

  Chapter 26: On Fish and Heaven

  Chapter 27: Transcendentalist

  Chapter 28: Officer Superhero

  Chapter 29: On Gifts and Talents

  Chapter 30: Mommy Do-Little

  Chapter 31: The Golden Coin

  Chapter 32: Closer to Fine

  Part 4: Holding On

  Chapter 33: On Crying and Pedaling

  Chapter 34: Namaste

  Chapter 35: Hard

  Chapter 36: What D'Ya Know?

  Chapter 37: On Profanity

  Chapter 38: Gifts Are Bridges

  Chapter 39: Hostressing

  Chapter 40: Room for One More

  Part 5: Letting Go

  Chapter 41: Treasure Hunt

  Chapter 42: Jubilee

  Chapter 43: Wherever You Go

  Chapter 44: There You Are

  Chapter 45: Healing Is Listening

  Chapter 46: It Will Be Beautiful

  Chapter 47: By God, There Will Be Dancing

  Acknowledgments

  Momastery and Monkee See—Monkee Do

  About Glennon Doyle Melton

  Cast of Characters

  Like yours, my story is tough to categorize. My life is a tragedy, comedy, romance, adventure, or redemption story depending on the decade, time of day, and how much sleep I’ve had. The constant in my story—the river that runs through it—is my cast of characters.

  My husband, Craig, volunteers to help friends move before they ask. He dances in the kitchen, bathroom, and grocery store. He plays hide and seek with our dog, Theo, when the kids get tired of playing. He remains calm. He wakes every two hours to check our kids’ fevers when they’re sick. He holds his tongue and my friends’ crying babies. He’s golden. And broken. Just like me.

  My firstborn, Chase, is the one who changed everything, just by being born.

  My girls, Tish and Amma, mostly scare me. How do I raise little girls before I’m finished raising my own little girl self?

  My Sister, Amanda, is my Lobster and my left lung. How I breathed without her for the first three years of my life remains a mystery. Sister’s
husband, John, is my safety deposit box. I trust him to hold and protect my most precious treasure.

  My dad, Bubba, translates his love and wisdom into words, like me. My mama, Tisha, translates her love and wisdom into actions, like Craig.

  I’ll add God to my cast of characters. I can’t explain him or her at all, because I don’t understand his ways. I just know he’s the one who cast these folks in my story. I’m grateful.

  Building a Life

  A few years ago, strange things started happening to me at church. I’d find myself in the middle of a lighthearted conversation with a woman I’d just met, and the woman would make a joke that didn’t sound like a joke, suggesting that our family was “perfect” and that this “perfection” made her feel bad about her own family. This happened three or four times over a two-week period. Once a woman said, “You are so pulled together. It makes me feel so apart.”

  My husband, Craig, was standing next to me at the time, and I looked at him confused while he looked back at me, equally confused. This is our signature interaction. I stammered my way through the rest of the conversation, and on the way home Craig and I debriefed.

  We were baffled. Craig and I adore each other, but neither of us would describe the other as “pulled together.” These women may as well have been saying to me, “I’m just so jealous of your height and culinary genius.” I’m five two and a half, and all I know of cooking is how to make the call that results in the delivery of dinner. During our debriefing, Craig and I developed a theory that if you are thin and smile a lot, people tend to believe that you have the universe’s secrets in your pocket and that a raindrop has never fallen on your head. If you also happen to be wearing trendy jeans, well then, fuggedaboutit.

  This theory distressed me greatly. I do not like to make other women feel less than. And I wanted my insides and outsides to match somehow. But I was scared I’d have to start looking like Pig Pen or Courtney Love to make that happen. You see, I’m a recovering bulimic and alcoholic. For twenty years, I was lost to food and booze and bad love and drugs. I suffered. My family suffered.

  I had a relatively magical childhood, which added an extra layer of guilt to my pain and confusion. Glennon—why are you all jacked up when you have no excuse to be all jacked up? My best guess is that I was born a little broken, with an extra dose of sensitivity. Growing up, I felt that I was missing the layer of protection I needed to expose myself to life’s risks—risks like friendship, tender love, and rejection. I felt awkward, unworthy, and vulnerable. And I didn’t want to walk through life’s battlefield feeling that way. I didn’t think I’d survive. So I made up my own little world called addiction and I hid there. I felt safe. No one could touch me.

  Then that changed. On Mother’s Day, 2002, unwed and addicted, I discovered I was pregnant. I alternated between staring at the test in my shaking hand and into my bloodshot eyes in the bathroom mirror. I tried to force these truths to mesh: I am a drunk. I am alone. I am pregnant.

  And because I had no clue what else to do, I prayed. I prayed the only way I know how to pray—in moans and accusations and apologies and tears and wild promises. When I finally stood up from the bathroom floor, I decided to become a mother. I walked out of the bathroom and vowed to never again have another drink, cigarette, drug, unhealthy relationship, or food binge. That vow has been hard to keep. In a whirlwind, I found myself married to a man I’d known for ten sober nights. Marrying Craig turned out to be the best decision I never really made.

  During that time, I discovered that I was strong. That was the first true thing I ever learned about myself. I also learned that wifedom, motherhood, and sober life were really quite difficult. I always wondered if other women found these things to be as difficult as I did.

  • • •

  Then, one day I was at the playground with a new friend from church named Tess. I suspected that Tess was having trouble in her marriage. We hadn’t talked about this, though, because we were too busy talking about more important things, like soccer practice and highlights. I felt frustrated that our conversation never went deeper. We seemed incapable of discussing the very things that were most important to discuss.

  Lost in my frustration, I started thinking about all the time and effort I’d spent building protective layers between my broken heart and the broken world. I considered the ways I’d distanced myself from other people—people who might hurt me more than I was already hurting. People who might be disgusted if they saw the real me. My fear of really being seen had driven me to hide inside the bunker of addiction for decades. When I finally crawled out, I pulled on my secrets and shame like armor and carried my invulnerability like a weapon. Life, to me, had always seemed like a battle to survive. But there at the playground, I realized that surviving wasn’t enough anymore. Sitting there with Tess, I realized I wasn’t really sitting there with Tess at all. There were so many layers of my armor and her armor between us that we couldn’t touch each other. And even if we’d wanted to, we couldn’t have gotten close enough because we were shooting at each other with stories about our “perfect” lives.

  Suddenly this all seemed completely ridiculous. Sure, I was sober and out of hiding, but by denying my past to others, protecting myself with the shield of secrets and shame, I had isolated myself. I was lonely, and a bit bored. Life without touching other people is boring as hell. It hit me that maybe the battles of life are best fought without armor and without weapons. That maybe life gets real, good, and interesting when we remove all of the layers of protection we’ve built around our hearts and walk out onto the battlefield of life naked. I wondered, If I put down my guns, will Tess do the same? I decided it was a worthy experiment.

  I shed my armor and I waved my white flag. All of a sudden I heard myself saying the following to Tess:

  Listen. I want you to know that I’m a recovering alcohol, drug, and food addict. I’ve been arrested because of those things. Craig and I got accidentally pregnant and married a year after we started dating. We love each other madly, but I’m secretly terrified that our issues with sex and anger will eventually screw things up. Sometimes I feel sad and worried when good things happen to other people. I snap at customer service people and my kids and husband regularly. I always have rage right beneath my surface. And right now I’m dealing with postpartum depression. I spend most of my day wishing my kids would just leave me alone. Chase brought me a note the other morning that said, “I hope Mommy is nice today.” It’s depressing and scary, because I keep wondering what will happen if that feeling never goes away. Maybe I can’t handle this mommy thing. Anyway, I wanted to let you know.

  Tess stared at me for so long that I wondered if she was going to call our minister or 911. Then I saw some tears dribble down her cheek. We sat there, and she told me everything. Things with her husband were bad, apparently. Really bad. Tess felt scared and alone. But at the playground that day, Tess decided she wanted help and love more than she wanted me to think she was perfect.

  We hardly knew each other, but we both realized that we were in this together. We went through some tough times over the next few months. Therapy, separation, anger, fear, and lots of tears. But a little army of love circled the wagons around Tess and her family and blockaded anybody from getting too far in or out. And eventually things got better. Tess, her husband, and their beautiful children are together and healing and thriving now. And I got to watch all of that. I actually got to see the truth set a family free.

  • • •

  At that point in my life, I was dying to do something meaningful and helpful outside of my home, but no one would have me. We were rejected again and again when we tried to adopt. Then I tried to become a volunteer at the local nursing home. They seemed thrilled with me until the background check. They never called back. Perhaps they thought I had a secret motivation to get all the old people wasted. Then I tried to volunteer at a local shelter for survivors of domestic viol
ence. It looked as if they might have me until the final interview, when the woman said, “As a formality, I just have to ask if you’ve ever been arrested.” It was hard to explain that it was only five times. She never called me back, either.

  I was depressed.

  But then the Tess thing happened. And I thought, Maybe I could do that. Maybe my public service could be to tell people the truth about my insides. It struck me that for this particular “ministry,” my criminal record was a plus. It gave me street cred. And I considered that maybe the gifts God gave me were storytelling and shamelessness. Because I am shameless. I’m almost ashamed at how little shame I have. Almost, but not really at all.

  So I decided that’s what God wanted me to do. He wanted me to walk around telling people the truth. No mask, no hiding, no pretending. That was going to be my thing. I was going to make people feel better about their insides by showing them mine. By being my real self. But I was keeping my trendy jeans. I decided they were part of my real self.

  A few days after I told Craig that I was going to “volunteer” as a “reckless truth teller,” my minister called me on the phone. My first thought was that Tess had ratted me out. But the minister said, “I know you’re having a hard time with the baby, and it might seem like a bad idea, but you need to tell your story to the church. The whole church. On stage. Live.” Craig sweated and looked into whether he could be fired for having an ex-con for a wife. I planned my outfit.

  Then I wrote down my story, without leaving anything out. I read it to my church, and it went really, really well. People were shocked. It is so fun to shock people. Lots and lots of people wanted to cry with me and tell me their stories. And I thought, Okay, then. Take that, nursing home. I didn’t want to serve your stupid lemonade anyway. Does one get standing ovations and tears of joy for serving lemonade? I think not.

  I’d found my thing: openness. I decided, based on firsthand experience, that it was more fun to say things that made other women feel hopeful about themselves and God than it was to say or omit things to make people feel jealous of me. And it was easier too. Less to keep track of and monitor.