love warrior - quotes from the book

Quotes from the book Love Warrior by Glennon Doyle. Don't agree with Glennon on everything, but she is a beautiful writer and gives a lot of truth to chew on. A very thought-provoking book!

Chapter 1 

[in high school, in the cafeteria at lunch]
"Before I take a step forward I wish vehemently that we had assigned seats. I look out at the sea of faces and understand that we are all drowning in freedom. Where are the adults? We need them here."

[in the hospital being treated for bulimia]
"One day a girl with sliced-up arms says, 'My mom sent me here because she says no one can believe a word I say.' I look at her and I want to say: Does she see that you tell the truth on your arms? Like I tell the truth in the toilet? By the time we landed in the hospital, most of our families considered us insensitive liars, but we didn't start out that way. We started out as ultrasensitive truth tellers. We saw everyone around us smiling and repeating 'I'm fine! I'm fine! I'm fine!' and we found ourselves unable to join them in all the pretending. We had to tell the truth, which was: 'Actually, I'm not fine.' But no one knew how to handle hearing that truth, so we found other ways to tell it. We used whatever else we could -- drugs, booze, food, money, our arms, other bodies. We acted out our truth instead of speaking it and everything became a godforsaken mess. But we were just trying to be honest."

"The hidden, truest rules about how to matter as a girl are: Be Thin. Be Pretty. Be Quiet."

Chapter 4 

[on the bathroom floor, facing an unexpected positive pregnancy test]
 "...I get stuck on that phrase as it runs through my mind. Free for all. Maybe grace is free. Free for the taking. Maybe it's even free for me. This free-for-all overwhelms me, fill me, covers me, convinces me. I decide to believe. Something in me says yes to the idea that there is a God and that  this God is trying to speak to me, trying to love me, trying to invite me back to life. I decide to believe in a God who believes in a girl like me.
"The God I decide to believe in is the God of the bathroom floor. A God of scandalously low expectations. A God who smiles down at a drunk on the floor, wasted and afraid, and says, There you are. I've been waiting. Are you ready to make something beautiful with me?"

[realizing the difficulty of getting sober]
"This is the difference between God and booze. God requires something of us. The booze numbs the pain but God insists on nothing short of healing. God deals only with truth and the truth will set you free, but it will hurt so badly at first."

Chapter 6
[holding her baby for the first time]
"I am this baby's mother. He is mine. I am his. He is the key I've been waiting for my entire life. I am unlocked. Chase and I belong to each other."

Chapter 7 
[reading people's responses to her honest Facebook post]
"I marvel at the honesty and pain. Many messages are from people I've known for years, but I'm discovering that I never really knew them. We've spent our time together talking about everything but what matters. We've never brought to each other the heavy things we were meant to help each other carry. We've only introduced each other to our representatives, while our real selves tried to live life alone. We thought that was safer. We thought that this way our real selves wouldn't get hurt. But as I read these messages, it becomes clear that we are all hurting anyway. And we think we are alone. At our cores, we are our tender selves peeking out at a world of shiny representatives, so shame has been layered on top of our pain. We're suffocating underneath all the layers."

Chapter 9
Types of listeners to the news of her marriage -- the Shover, the Comparer, the Reporter, the God Reps, the Victims, etc.

Chapter 10 
"The surf continues to hit the sand rhythmically and dependably and I trust it will continue. The sun is setting but I know it will rise again tomorrow. There is a pattern to things. This makes me wonder if I can also trust that there is a pattern, a rhythm, a beauty, a natural rise and fall to my life as well. I wonder if the one holding together this sky might also be capable of holding together my heart. I wonder if the one making this sky so achingly beautiful might also be working to make my life beautiful, too."

"I don't know how to fix my marriage. All I know is that I need to tear down my own walls and face what's underneath . . . I look out at the sea, up at the sky, and down at the sand. I think, I can be brave enough to tear myself down -- because the One holding all of this together will hold me, too."

Chapter 13
"It strikes me that it's always the most religious people who are most surprised by grace . . . We sweep up our mess and hide our doubts, contradictions, anger and fear before showing ourselves to God, which like putting on a fancy dress and makeup to prepare for an X-ray."

"We are all desperate for reunion and we are trying to find it in all the wrong places. We use bodies and drugs and food to end our loneliness, because we don't understand that we're lonely down here because we are supposed to be lonely. Because we're in pieces. To be human is to be incomplete and constantly yearning for reunion."

"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."

Chapter 15
"But what the hell does sexy even mean? I wonder if the word sexy is everything that made sex a lie to me . . . Sexy was one type of body and one color of hair and spending an entire life looking into the mirror instead of out at the world . . . I'd been trying to be that kind of sexy for twenty years, and 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 . . . Maybe I can find my own sexy."

"Women who are concerned with being pretty think about what they look like, but women who are concerned with being beautiful think about what they are looking at. They are taking it all in. They are taking in the whole beautiful world and making all that beauty theirs to give away to others."

"I consider the possibility that I've been right and wrong my whole life. I was right to want to be beautiful and sexy; I was just wrong to have accepted someone else's idea of what those words mean. It strikes me that I need to throw out the dictionary the world gave me about what it means to be a mother, a wife, a person of faith, an artist, and a woman and write my own."


Unsure which chapter ...

"Be brave because you are a child of God. Be kind because everyone else is, too." 

options

I have joined a "Cheza" class, which is African Zumba. Every Wednesday a few of us muzungu teachers assemble in the cafeteria; we clumsily dance, sweating to keep up with the Ugandan instructor, trying to ignore the fact that we are occasionally being gawked at [laughed at?] by Ugandan staff and sometimes students. [That's the worst -- to have a middle school student say the next day, "Miss, I saw you in the cafeteria dancing!"]

It's a good work-out, and it is a lot of fun.

A few weeks ago I was walking back from Cheza class and started walking alongside Godfrey, one of the local janitorial staff. We started talking and he began asking me about Cheza class and, more generally, muzungu interest in exercise.

"Back home in Canada," I said, "many people want to be skinny, skinny, skinny. Sometimes that is not healthy. But here -- what is it like here, Godfrey? I heard that in Uganda fat is good."

He thought for a moment. "In Uganda here, fat is good. Skinny can also be good. Here, there are options."

Options! That's a nice way to put it!

In downtown Kampala, there is a billboard with a shining, plump African woman smiling and eating fried chicken. The caption reads, "For chicks with big thighs."

Back home, such a slogan would never help you sell fried chicken! And such a woman -- healthy, but "overweight" by North American standards -- would probably never be found on a billboard, especially portrayed in an attractive light.

Here, there are options!

honey on a pimple?

This week I got a pimple. In one corner of my forehead, just below the hairline. So I did what every embarrassed young woman does -- I picked and touched it until it became several times more noticeable.

I had read somewhere that putting a dab of honey on a zit, covered by a band-aid, works like a charm. The honey is supposedly anti-bacterial and it should dry it out.

What did I have to lose? Last night I dutifully put a dab of sticky honey on my face, covered with a band-aid, and went to bed.

This morning when I removed the band-aid ...

Nothing had changed. Except the area was shiny until I wiped the honey off. The only benefit was preventing me from being able to touch it.

I love honey, but unless I've missed something this supposed "cure" for a pimple does not work. Don't believe everything you read on the Internet, people!

OCM update

It has been awhile since I first ventured into the Oil Cleansing Method (my first OCM blog post was in December 2012).

This is partly because my OCM regime was interrupted by ... a cold sore. A burning, bumpy, itchy patch of red below my lower lip. I haven't gotten a cold sore in about two years. Of course, the morning that I'm supposed to fly back home for Christmas I wake up with that tell-tale tingly feeling -- that feeling that persists no matter how much you deny it, that feeling that is just waiting to change into an ugly outbreak. Despite a 2 gram tube of Abreva that cost me over $20, the cold sore took a few weeks to heal. During that time I didn't feel like rubbing my face with oil and steaming it with a hot cloth.

Now I'm back to the OCM. In the past week I've done it twice. The first time I did a really thorough treatment that left my skin feeling amazing. The second time was a bit quicker -- I just did it in the shower. I probably use even more grapeseed oil than my original 2/3 castor oil, 1/3 grapeseed oil ratio (my skin is much drier in the winter). Since I just squirt the oils into my hands I haven't measured them exactly.

My skin feels soft and smooth. The OCM also seems to be helping me get rid of the tiny blackheads that plague my chin.

I feel happy about the fact that I'm not putting chemicals into my skin. I have a feeling I'll go through the grapeseed oil a lot quicker than the castor oil, though -- besides using more of it on my face, I've also been rubbing down my legs with it after getting out of the shower. Nice and light!

OCM day 1

For those of you who have never heard of it, OCM stands for the Oil Cleansing Method. Some friends and I had a "girls' night" a couple of weeks ago - complete with paraffin wax, nail polish, and a chick flick. One of the girls raved about a natural skin treatment she was trying out, and convinced me to try it, too. It felt amazing!

Turns out, the oil cleansing method is a hot topic on the Internet. Busy, down-to-earth moms to ecoholic hipsters have all jumped on the bandwagon and added it to their blogs. I've decided to give it a shot. 

Here's how it works (from what I've learned): 

1. Combine castor oil with a second oil (the most popular carrier oils I read about were extra virgin olive oil, sunflower seed oil, avocado oil or grapeseed oil) Make sure you get pure, quality oils. 

2. The ratio of the combination will be different according to your skin type. From what I understand, the castor oil is the primary cleanser -- the more oily your skin, the higher the ratio of castor oil. 

3. Rub the oil around on your face (counter-intuitive, I know! Research it -- it supposedly works wonders for ALL skin types!) 

4. Dampen a washcloth with hot water and lay it over your face for thirty seconds to open your pores. Wipe the oil off, rinse the washcloth and repeat until the oil is off of your face. 

I'm using castor oil and grapeseed oil. Instead of mixing the two up in a bottle, I'm trying out different ratios first. Tonight I used a ratio of about 1/3 castor oil and 2/3 grapeseed oil, since my skin is usually dry (especially in the wintertime)! 

Tonight, after day 1 of my second student teaching placement, I decided to treat myself with some all-natural pampering. I ground up 1 cup of oats in our coffee grinder and mixed it into a hot bath (oats help soften your skin). I lit some candles, turned out the lights, and soaked for a good forty minutes. In the tub I treated my face to the OCM, and my feet to a sugar scrub. After getting out and drying off, I moisturized my legs with grapeseed oil. 

So far, my skin already feels great. It feels like a cleanser, toner and moisturizer all in one. Last night I used the castor oil as an eye makeup remover, and it worked wonderfully! It also apparently encourages hair growth (in areas where hair already grows -- I'm not going to turn into a werewolf!), so it should also thicken eyelashes. I mentioned this to Isaac, and he is now using it to rub down those patches on his cheeks that refuse to grow the beard he longs for. 

Day 1 of the OCM ... I'll post an update on how it goes, and whether or not Isaac has grown a beard.