Marti Pieper
Greetings from Marti Pieper in #Senecastrong, South Carolina, where we’re persevering through the COVID-19 pandemic and recovering from a devastating tornado that hit the morning after Easter. I’m grateful our family and home are safe, and I’m also grateful for my personal and professional friendship with today’s interview subject, the fascinating author, speaker, life coach, and licensed counselor Tina Yeager.
Welcome, Tina, to the CAN blog! Please tell us about your book.
Tina Yeager
Beautiful Warrior: Finding Victory Over the Lies Formed Against You guides readers to overthrow shame, resentment, unresolved anger, bitterness, and unforgiveness. Embrace identity in Christ so you can embrace your destiny. Pick up your shield—the Word of God, your identity in Christ, and healthy thought patterns—and become the divine heroine you were destined to be.
And you’re the perfect person to write this book! What inspired you to do so?
The more I worked with teen girls and women, the more pervasive I discovered the issues of low self-esteem and purpose were. Yet my female clients, the teen girls I worked with in ministry, and I myself had felt alone and hopeless in our struggle. I felt compelled to share the truth of our potential strength as warrior sisters and a map to empowered living.
Beautiful Warrior by Tina Yeager
What do you hope readers will take away from this book?
I pray women will feel empowered to overthrow self-defeating patterns and embrace their potential as Christ-anointed warriors.
What was your greatest challenge in writing this book?
I’ve always been a writer, and even earned a creative writing degree. Though I had drafted many fiction and nonfiction manuscripts since I started pursuing a call to write in 2004, Beautiful Warrior presented the greatest challenge I’d ever faced. I never expected writing my personal struggles to be so hard. It required piercing my heart with the pen and scrawling my pain onto the pages. I also had to peel the layers from my life and bare raw, vulnerable tissue to the world.
I know that pain. What’s your favorite section in this book?
I like the final chapter best, “Be-YOU-tiful.” It’s probably the most poetic and hope-drenched chapter. There’s a sense of celebrating the reader’s victory that I absolutely cherish in the depths of my soul.
What themes do you return to again and again in your writing?
I adore revisiting how we each fulfill a role in a Christ-anointed, heroic journey as part of God’s amazing plan.
And when did you first recognize God’s call to write for Him?
When my oldest child still wore diapers, I recall the Lord impressing the call to write upon my heart. He has echoed this call in ways I cannot deny throughout the twenty-eight years since.
You and I share a love for reading. What do you read for pleasure, and what are you reading right now?
I love to read contemporary fantasy novels and lyrical nonfiction. Each morning, I read a devotional selection from Carol Kent’s He Holds My Hand.
What’s your favorite bookstore—and why?
I adore Sassafras on Sutton in Black Mountain, North Carolina. The charming venue wraps its maze of gifts and books in historic brick walls. I never enjoyed a more delicious cup of chai, but owner Susanne Blumer’s company proves even sweeter.
Now that I live in the Carolinas, I might have to check that place out! Please tell us about your favorite library memory.
I can still smell the old books and snow melting on the doormat of my first library in rural Illinois. The bungalow setting clustered us into cozy racks and beanbag corners. Even at six years old, the library hugged me like a snug sweater on a wintry afternoon.
I love that! What are your hobbies or activities or passions outside of writing?
I admire visual art and love to dabble in jewelry crafting. Short hikes to waterfalls and mountainside drives lift my soul. I’m an unrepentant latte addict, as well.
Please tell us about your next project.
I’m working on a new nonfiction project about becoming the hero of your life story. I also have a completed nonfiction manuscript on how God uses broken people that my agent is shopping. In addition, we’re considering a few fiction pieces for editing and submission. I’m focusing a lot of time on my podcast, “Flourish-Meant,” and online video events as well.
You sound just as busy and productive as ever, Tina. Thanks so much for sharing with us today!
To learn more about Tina Yeager, visit Tina’s website and Tina’s blog.
For His glory,
Marti Pieper
