The Warrior Wives Club: How to Fight for Your Marriage

Once upon a time, years and many prayers ago, I started a little group for women who wanted to pray for their marriages. Every month we would get together in person, but every Monday, I sent out an encouraging email on marriage.

There were only three rules:

1. What happens in Warrior Wives Club stays in Warrior Wives Club.
2. No husband bashing. Although transparency is encouraged, you want to speak about your husband the way you would want him to speak about you.
3. Commit to praying not only for your spouse but the other marriages in the group.

Prayer Works

The group grew over time to dozens of women in 11 states and three countries. Prayer works (#obvi) and struggling marriages were changing! The premise was to “weed your own garden” or “pray it on ‘em don’t lay it on ‘em.” Instead of focusing on our husbands’ ﬂaws, we focused on God and the ﬂaws in our own lives that needed changing. Turns out when we stopped trying to change them and focused on our relationship with the Lord (the only One who can actually cause change), things started happening! First in our own hearts and perspectives and often with theirs following. We saw men freed from pornography. We saw marriages on the edge of divorce turn around completely. We saw cold sex lives restored and couples go from being merely roommates to attentive spouses once again. We saw critical and controlling wives turn into prayer warriors and encouragers. It was incredible to be a part of, and I learned so much from these women about marriage and the power of praying together.

Sharing It With Others

After having one of our monthly meetings, a friend told me how much of an impact this was having on her marriage and said the emails should be put into a book so other women could beneﬁt and possibly start their own group. As I sat there staring at her wide-eyed, she went on to say she would design the cover and my mind ﬁlled with questions like, “When would I have time to do that?” Or, “Would anyone actually want to read this?” Speaking of reading, I felt like another friend was reading my mind as she chimed in, “Yes! I save all of these emails in a ﬁle and often send them on to other women who love them! This is such a great idea…you need to do this! You already have a lot of the content, so it wouldn’t take as much time as you think!”

Pursuing the Goal

On the way home I toyed with the idea and the thought of more groups forming excited me. Mainly because I knew how much this group had helped me. But a book was deﬁnitely outside of my comfort zone. The hard things usually are, which is good because it forces you to be dependent on God in a way you normally wouldn’t! Since this thing was started because of prayer, praying about it now certainly seemed appropriate. After asking Jesus to give me the strength and time to put this together, I decided I would commit at least 15 minutes a day to this, more if I had time.

Compiling emails from the last three years turned out to take longer than I thought. Turns out, this whole thing took longer than I thought! Ha! After a year of compiling, picking the best content, sourcing references, writing part two of the book (how to start your own group), editing, prooﬁng, and ﬁnally sending it oﬀ to two friends and my pastor to do further edits, the book was ﬁnally ﬁnished. (Check it out here.)

Commitment Is Key

My goal was to have the ﬁnished manuscript sent oﬀ to the publisher before my fourth son, Titus, was born, and I kid you not, the day before I went into the hospital was the day everything was sent in. And the exact day I got home from the hospital, a week later, there was a hard copy waiting for me to approve! I held this beautiful thing in my hand and could not believe this dream was realized. I posted the momentous occasion on social media and before I knew it, I was getting pictures of people holding the book they had ordered from Amazon with invitations to their friends that they wanted to start their own WWC group! The whole thing felt surreal and out of body. Especially since at that point I was fully in the newborn stage and felt like a poser with spit-up in my hair in an apocalyptic living room. As grateful as I am for this group-turned-book, what the last few years have shown me most is that although marriage is diﬃcult and often under attack, most people truly don’t want to throw in the towel. They want to work at it, ﬁght for it, and see it through. That encourages my heart more than anything, and I hope it encourages yours too.