warrior women

“So who am I now that there’s only one place at the table….one pillow with a head dent, one towel damp after a shower? There’s only one toothbrush in the holder. The seat is never left up anymore. I can still write…

In this wide-ranging interview, two mothers who have experienced the grief of losing their children transparently answers questions from how to push the question “why” through the grid of God’s love and sovereignty, to how to protect marriages assaulted by grief. Nancy’s loss of two children uniquely qualifies her to offer help and hope in sorrow’s darkest night.

Andrea Herzer, a woman well acquainted with long term debilitating health issues, having spent the last twenty years with multiple illnesses, including regional pain syndrome and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, joins read more…

Days, months, and years after the loss of her sister, Natasha Smith tried to hide the grief she carried. But the pandemic took away her ability to hide her sorrow and her five-year-old’s response to her unexpected tears gave her permission to grieve – not in a room by herself but with her https://markinc.org/help-and-hope/can-you-just-sit-with-me-with-natasha-smithread more…

When Clarissa Moll’s young husband, Rob, died unexpectedly, she soon realized she was at a crossroads. Would she walk toward hope or slide into hopelessness? In this conversation with Sharon Betters, Clarissa answers such questions as: 

Is there any way to prepare for such a tragedy? Are there stages for grief? What kind of work can grief do in our hearts that grows the fruit of the spirit? How is it helpful to “welcome” an emotion like fear – how does dissecting an emotion help us keep those emotions in check – or should we even try to keep them in check? What about regrets? Either for our own behavior or read more…

Roasann has experienced disappointment, pain, and loss – but her scars and wounds are not obvious – very much like many of you. Today Rosann lives with the kinds of chronic illness that many of you contend with – often alone in your struggles because they are not visible wounds or scars. In this conversation with Sharon Betters, Rosann offers encouragement to fellow travelers, that though the pathway is often hard and you feel hopeless and helpless, there is a light in the darkness and purpose in the pain.

Christine Runge Weiss, Founder of Faith Wears Pink, an online support platform for women battling breast cancer, shares how she learned she had breast cancer at the age of forty-four. Her diagnosis followed wave after wave of personal crises. In this conversation with Sharon Betters, herself a breast cancer survivor, Christine offers hope and practical help to breast cancer warriors. One evening she realized she was helping over twenty women with their questions, fears, and the unknowns of their journeys. She decided they all needed a way to talk to each other so she started a “Breast Friends” Facebook page. She eventually changed the name to Faith Wears Pink and as of today over 1000 women have connected through this platform. Faith Wears Pink not only connects breast cancer warriors but also gives gifts to women read more…

There are many blessings that come with age: retirement, grandchildren, travel, and life experience. Today’s culture, however, marginalizes old age, often portraying it as burdensome and hopeless. Many older women read more…

In this poignant conversation Claire describes how her birth mother told her about the abortion, Claire’s response to the news, and how she is watching the Lord bring beauty from ashes as she shares her story across the country as a means of showing a real life baby is the victim of abortion.

When Erin Kauffman was 29 years old, the unthinkable happened.—a driver fell asleep at the wheel and at sixty miles per hour slammed head first into Erin’s car. In this conversation, Erin describes the devastation of realizing the bottom half of her body was crushed, the long rehab, and how this accident changed the direction of her life. Though Erin continues to struggle with long term pain and time consuming medical care, she offers hope to anyone in similar circumstances.

Rachel’s Craddock’s mother died after a long battle with breast cancer. Rachel was fourteen years old. In this interview, Rachel answers some hard questions not just about her mother’s death but also her own decision to have a double radical mastectomy after she learned she had a high chance of getting the same kind of cancer as her mother.

Melanoma, the word strikes fear into the hearer, especially when it is a diagnosis for a loved one. Al Groves and his wife, Libbie, heard these words and knew life would never be the same. In this  conversation with Sharon Betters, Libbie shares the journey that her family experienced in the year after her husband Al’s diagnosis of terminal cancer. She offers her family’s story as a means of coming alongside of others who are struggling with cancer, God and grief.

Corie Weathers shares her own marriage struggles as a the wife of a military chaplain in this conversation. She describes intimate, sacred moments where her understanding of how she realized that when she said goodbye to her husband when he was deployed to Afghanistan, she was actually saying goodbye to life as she knew it. Corie doesn’t leave listeners without hope or a path forward.

On October 2, 2006, Marie Monville’s husband entered an Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and shot ten young girls, killing five of them, before turning the gun on himself. How does a person find hope in such darkness? How does the wife of the man who perpetrated such horror rebuild her life and the lives of her children? How could she ever forgive her husband?

How do you find purpose when you are in excruciating pain 24/7, survived 78 surgeries and most likely face more? Add to that your status as a double amputee. In this interview, Gracie Rosenberger, who was 17 when she was in an almost fatal car accident, shares what life and marriage is like with such challenges. Gracie’s story reveals a woman of strength and determination in the face of impossible obstacles.

Renee Dixon compares her life as a widow, single mom, and small business owner with mounting bills to climbing a hard, rocky pathway filled with gnarled roots. She describes how she learned to grasp those roots as a means to pull herself along the hard road of life that sometimes felt impossible to travel. Those gnarled roots along the pathway helped shape Renee into a woman whose own determination, endurance and grit encourages the very people she is called to serve. 

Within hours after Victoria’s birth, Karen and her husband learned that their third daughter had Down Syndrome. Though initially frightened by this news, Karen and her family’s love for Victoria grew deeper as they recognized the awesome privilege of raising such a precious daughter.

In this interview, you’ll hear Sherry describe what it was like to hear the diagnosis of M.S. and how it changed her life. Listeners with a similar diagnosis will be encouraged by the way Sherry has confronted this disease and learned how to continue to invest her life in the lives of others, even though she is sometimes physically limited. This conversation will also help “healthy” people learn how they can come alongside of someone whose constant companion is M.S.

In 2009, Debbie Kahler was diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer, a disease that strikes fear in the hearts of anyone familiar with its deadly prognosis. Most people would respond with despair to such tragic losses, tempted to give in to the fear of losing their own battles. Yet that is not the message of Debbie’s journey.

Carolyn Fredericks shares her own grief journey after the death of her husband. This transparent interview will encourage widows and their families, that there is hope and purpose after the loss of a beloved husband.

Baseball great Darryl Strawberry readily acknowledges that people often think two things when they hear his name: Darryl was a great ball player, and Darryl lost it all to drugs. In this interview, Darryl and his wife Tracy share their story of drug addiction and how they found a pathway to restoration and wholeness. Their transparent responses to hard questions will challenge listeners to examine their own lives.

In this transparent interview, Patti shares her shock and pain when her husband divorced her. Listeners will hear how she told her children and helped them deal with their own broken hearts, found the right attorney, processed the deceit and betrayal and learned how to forgive.

A chronic condition is a human health condition or disease that is persistent or otherwise long-lasting in its effects. The term chronic is usually applied when the course of the disease lasts for more than three months. These interviews with women with chronic illnesses are able to give thanks to God everyday even when their pain becomes too much to bear.

Dr. Chuck and Sharon Betters talk with Vicky (Saadeh) Mullen about facing the terminal illness of her husband, David, who was only 37 years old when he was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor.