Created To be His Help Meet

I’ve been posting random notes on Facebook about this book for months now. Just snippets from what stuck out at me most from each chapter, since I have a handful of friends who have told me they are currently reading it too. I decided I should explain my history with the book in depth here, to go with all those random notes which you can read here:

I first received this book when I was very newly saved. It had been talked about a lot in an online forum I belong to, and I had found out the author sends it free to families with a deployed spouse. So I signed up! I read it with Bible in hand, God’s blueprint for marriage still completely new to me. I was blessed beyond measure as I started to apply what I read and learned to my life, and those blessings overflowed to my loved ones as well!

I did not mention the book to my husband. He wasn’t really on board with my new "Bible thumping, Jesus freak" lifestyle as it was. But then as I was a ways into the book, I noticed his behavior towards me changing for the better.He even started bringing coworkers home for lunch. He had NEVER done anything like that before, but every day a new friend would show up with him, unannounced. I tried to live out what I learned and joyfully served them sandwiches. I found it funny about halfway through that week the chapter I was reading in CTBHHM had a story about a woman whose husband brought some coworkers home for a meal  because they didn’t believe she treated him so well. I thought it was a funny coincidence, but the lunch visitors kept coming, and one day my husband told me it was because he had been talking about me at work, and they did not believe I could possibly live up to what he said! Once I explained how I had been reading it and that was what sparked the change in me, he recommended they all buy their wives a copy!


I will say, it was all Christ in me, and that I have lived more than my share of years being a selfish, nagging wife before learning God’s plan for my marriage. As much as I would like to say I have stayed on that path and never again been disrespectful to my husband since,  it isn’t true either. I didn’t write this to brag in any way, but to share how God used this particular book to bless my marriage abundantly.


In the years since I read the book for the first time, I have recommended it to quite a few people. But a minority had come back angry and offended after reading it. I began to question if I had missed something major as a new believer, or if had been too long since I had read it.  So I picked it up again last year. As soon as I started reading it a second time, I was blessed again by reminders in what God expects from me.

A few chapters in to my second time through, my life started to  turn topsy turvey. Satan was throwing all sorts of obstacles into my life and my marriage, and the book got temporarily forgotten about. It was some of the roughest months I have ever been through.  I knew what God expected of me, but I felt too weak and broken to do what He wanted me to do. I finally reached the point of repentance, and came across the abandoned book  on my desk again.As soon as I picked it up again conviction came, and I saw what needed to be changed in ME, and not the situation surrounding me. Everything else fell into place. God’s way works.

I will say I do not agree with the teaching of the Pearl’s as a whole. In fact, I  have big problems with a lot of their other materials, (I do not recommend anything else by the Pearls, but this book was a huge blessing to me) . But I do not feel that disqualifies the wisdom in this book. I will also say that yes, Debi Pearl is harsh! But I am ok with that too. Sometimes hard headed people like me need harsh wake up calls. In fact I feel that if it were not for my pastor harshly telling me I was going to hell no matter how much of a "good person" I believed I was, I may not have found salvation in Christ. It took THIS book to open my eyes and change me when other good wife books when in one ear and out the other and I set them down unchanged by reading them.
God has used this book to transform my marriage and my life. And for that I will be ever thankful.