Shelli Virtue grew up a pastor’s kid, graduated from a Bible college, homeschooled her 4 children, is a full-time caregiver to her disabled adult son and was the vice-president of a youth center. She lives in Minnesota (I know, crazy…right?) with her equally crazy (oops! I mean special)(oops! Did I just say that?) husband. Her deep desire is to encourage women to be the best possible woman, wife, and mother they can possibly be through her thought-provoking Bible studies. She isn’t afraid to ask the difficult questions and be open to creative ways of thinking in her approach to better her relationship with God and others.

Her intentional relationship journey started about 10 years ago, but it didn’t kick into high gear until about 4 years ago. Her husband was imprisoned and they had to make a certified effort to make sure their marriage survived. Statistics show that the rate of divorce increases by 32% for each year a person is incarcerated and her husband was going to be spending 3 1/2 years in prison. Yep, try that statistic on for size! (that was 112% likelihood they would divorce)
She was put into a situation in which she needed to find strength to hold her marriage and her family together. In the past, she would have thought she had to do it on her own and would have tried, but there was no way that was going to work this time. She had to dig deep and begin to work on her relationships. She began to work on her relationships with her children, got to know her sisters-in-law by doing online Bible studies together, rekindled old friendships and most importantly began to tackle some of the challenges in her marriage. She is happy to inform you that her marriage survived the time of incarceration and they are happy to be back home together.