On the women who changed history by praying ugly — and the free study guide to go with the book
I used to edit my prayers.
Not the content — well, actually yes, the content too — but mostly the tone. The delivery. The spiritual vocabulary. I would start praying and then, mid-sentence, catch myself and think: that doesn't sound right. Say it differently. Be more reverent. Less needy. Less like you.
So I'd start again. And again. And by the time I'd finished composing the prayer I was comfortable with, the honest thing I actually needed to say had gone quiet somewhere inside me, and I was performing for an audience of one who, theologically speaking, already knew every word before I said it.
I don't think I'm alone in this.
I think a lot of us have been quietly taught — sometimes by church culture, sometimes by the polished prayers we've heard from the front, sometimes just by the general human discomfort of being truly known — that prayer should look a certain way. Sound a certain way. That the messier stuff should be cleaned up before we bring it to God.
And I think that teaching, however well-intentioned, has made a lot of people pray less. Or not at all.
Pray Like A Girl started with Hannah.
More specifically, it started with me reading 1 Samuel 1 for what might have been the fifteenth time and suddenly noticing something I'd glossed over every time before.
Hannah is in the tabernacle — the most sacred space in Israel, the literal dwelling place of God's presence — and she is so visibly distressed that the chief priest thinks she's drunk. She is weeping. Her lips are moving but no sound comes out. She has poured out her soul so completely that she looks, from the outside, like a woman who has lost the plot entirely.
And God answers her.
Not eventually, after she pulls herself together. Not once she's found more appropriate language. He answers that prayer. The one that looked like a breakdown. The one the priest misread as intoxication.
And I thought: what does that mean for the prayers I've been too embarrassed to pray?
So I kept going. I looked at Mary, who said yes to something that made zero sense and could have gotten her stoned, and then broke into a song that was less gentle hymn and more revolutionary anthem. I looked at Deborah, who held court under a palm tree and prayed in the form of a victory song that named names, called out entire tribes for sitting on the sidelines, and celebrated a housewife who drove a tent peg through the enemy commander's skull. I looked at Hagar — the one nobody puts on the list — crying in the desert with her dying son, offering God seven words with no theological framing at all, and being met by the God who sees.
Every single one of them prayed messy. Every single one of them was answered.
The book wrote itself from there.
What I wasn't expecting to find was this:
The women who prayed the most "improperly" — the most desperately, the most honestly, the most outside the approved template — are the ones whose prayers are still being talked about thousands of years later.
Hannah's prayer echoes in Mary's Magnificat. Deborah's victory song is the precedent for every woman who's ever stood up and told the truth about what happened when it would have been easier to stay quiet. The Syrophoenician woman — a Gentile, a mother, a theological outsider — argued with Jesus himself and came away with a public commendation for great faith. The Bleeding Woman, who couldn't even speak her prayer out loud, who reached through a crowd and touched the hem of Jesus' cloak, got called "daughter" — the only time that word is used in all four Gospels.
These were not women praying quietly and politely in the back row.
These were women who decided that their need was bigger than their embarrassment, and that God could handle exactly who they actually were.
That's the book. That's the whole argument.
God doesn't grade your grammar. He leans in for the tears.
And now there's a study guide.
I've been working with the team to build something that lets you go even deeper than the book takes you — because honestly, every one of these women deserves more than a single chapter.
The Pray Like A Girl Companion & Deep Study Guide covers all ten women, and for each one you'll find:
- The historical world she actually lived in (not the sanitised Sunday school version)
- Hebrew and Greek word studies — the original language behind the translations, because sometimes the words in English are doing a lot less work than the words they came from
- Five reflection questions per chapter that are designed to be genuinely uncomfortable in the best possible way
- Specific prayer practices drawn from each woman's model
- Cross-reference studies that connect the women across both testaments — the threads God was weaving the whole time
- A 30-day prayer revolution challenge to close
It's comprehensive. It's free. And you can download it right now by clicking the button below.
Whether you're working through it alone — slowly, in the early morning with your coffee — or you're taking a group of women through it together, it's designed to be the companion that takes the book's argument and makes it personal.
Because the whole point of Pray Like A Girl was never just information.
It was permission.
Permission to bring the actual thing you're carrying, in the actual state you're in, without editing it first.
Hannah didn't clean up before she walked into the tabernacle. She walked in looking like a wreck and left with peace she couldn't explain.
I think there's something in that for all of us.
Use the coupon code to get the study guide absolutely for Free : "FREEPRAYSTUDY"
If you haven't read the book yet, you can find it in the shop — paperback and ebook both available. And if you have read it: I'd love to know which woman's story landed hardest for you. Leave a comment below. I read every one.
With love and slightly-damp mascara,
Caroline
FREE COUPON CODE: FREEPRAYSTUDY
I've been working with the team to build something that lets you go even deeper than the book takes you — because honestly, every one of these women deserves more than a single chapter.
The Pray Like A Girl Companion & Deep Study Guide covers all ten women, and for each one you'll find:
- The historical world she actually lived in (not the sanitised Sunday school version)
- Hebrew and Greek word studies — the original language behind the translations, because sometimes the words in English are doing a lot less work than the words they came from
- Five reflection questions per chapter that are designed to be genuinely uncomfortable in the best possible way
- Specific prayer practices drawn from each woman's model
- Cross-reference studies that connect the women across both testaments — the threads God was weaving the whole time
- A 30-day prayer revolution challenge to close
It's comprehensive. It's free. And you can download it right now by clicking the button below.
Get it for Free with the code" FREEPRAYSTUDY"
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