‘Christian Mommy Blogger’ Glennon Doyle Melton Marries Former Soccer Star Abby Wambach

May 17, 2017 07:42 AM EDT

Glennon Doyle Melton, also known as the "Christian Mommy Blogger," married retired U.S. women's national soccer team star Abby Wambach on Sunday.

The New York Times bestselling author announced the news on her Instagram account, posting a photo of Wambach wearing a sweatshirt with the words "Christian Mommy Blogger's Wife" printed on it.

"My beloveds—please never give up on love. Life could surprise the hell out of you. Trust me—you might just wake up one morning and find yourself smackdab in the middle of heaven. I love my wife. LOVE WINS," she wrote along with the photo.

 

On another Instagram post, she shared about the fear she felt when she and Wambach started the relationship and how her friend and fellow author Martha Beck helped her "choose joy."

"When I fell in love with Abby, I was scared. I thought that my fear might be bigger than my courage, and that because of that size difference, I might miss out on my chance at happiness," she wrote on Instagram. "This was so painful."

She told Beck that ending the relationship with Wambach would be painful but that she was used to "learning from pain."

Beck's reply to her was, "Honey. It's true that God teaches us through pain. But it is also true that God tries to teach us through joy first. You can keep choosing heartbreak and pain, Glennon. But you can also choose joy. God can use that choice too. And I actually believe that God prefers to use joy to teach us."

Melton said she decided to choose joy.

"I have lived a long while learning from pain and God, it's been a good teacher," she wrote. "I'm forty one, now. And I'm graduating to joy. I choose joy."

Melton divorced Craig, her husband of 14 years, in August 2016. Wambach also was struggling with her marriage to fellow soccer star Sarah Huffman, whom she divorced in the same year.

In November, just three months after her divorce, Melton revealed that she was in a relationship with Wambach. The couple got engaged in February, announcing over social media that they have "decided to hold hands forever."

The Christian mommy blogger is known for her liberal views on LGBT rights, homosexuality and same-sex marriage. In 2013, she wrote an article saying that Jesus didn't mention homosexuality and same-sex marriage as sin.

"I know my Jesus, I love Him, and I think if he needed me to believe that homosexuality was a sin, He would have mentioned it. He didn't," she wrote. "When Jesus said that marriage was between a man and a woman, he was responding to a question about divorce, not sexuality."

Melton is a mother of three. She became famous for her 2014 New York Times bestseller, 'Carry On, Warrior: The Power of Embracing Your Messy, Beautiful Life,' in which she wrote honest confessions of her struggle with her marriage, eating disorder and addiction.

Her second book, 'Love Warrior,' published in 2016, was included in the Oprah Book Club list.