Not What I Expected

I bought this book from Revive Our Hearts a year or two ago. The tagline, “The power of a soft warrior” caught my attention. I assumed the book was all about women with strong personalities and how those women (myself included) could somehow fit into the portrait God’s Word paints of a True Woman. I was kind of correct in my assumption, but mostly not.

I finally picked the book up this summer and was a little surprised to find that it is more of a marriage counseling book than anything. It is all about how our “fierce” personalities can cause severe damage in relationships if we are not careful. She discusses at length how we ought to tame and refine our fierce strength to support and encourage our husbands rather than to tear them down and cause division. The author shares from her own experience how her marriage was almost destroyed and how God revealed to her that she was not just a victim but also a perpetrator. Her story is honest and the lessons she brings out of it are thought-provoking and challenging.

My struggle with this book, though, was that I am not in a rocky marriage. I have been working on refining myself since I was a teenager and realized I can be difficult to handle!  To finish this book (because I cannot not finish a book) I had to shift my perspective from “How can I grow through reading this book?” to “What can I learn from her mistakes so I don’t find myself in a similar situation?”

If you are a woman with a strong personality, strong words, and strong opinions and you are struggling in your marriage, this book is for you.

If you aren’t, don’t avoid this book,  but don’t go out of your way to read it, either.