In this episode, Victoria Riollano leads us in a discussion on how to spiritually protect our children by creating a war plan for our family. Get Victoria's free War Plan Template when you subscribe to her newsletter. Get your copy of Warrior Mother: Equipping Your Heart to Fight for Your Family's Faith and get her free resources.   Show Notes: Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith: Welcome, everyone. This is Dr. Saundra, and you're listening to I Choose My Best Life. Today, we're chatting with Victoria Riollano, and she will help us understand how we can be warrior moms who stand in the gap for our families. Victoria is a mom of eight. She's also a military spouse and knows a lot about this process. So I'm looking forward to our conversation. Victoria, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I want to hear a little bit about your background. What made you write a book about being a warrior mom? Victoria Riollano: Yeah. So, as you said, I do have eight kids. I didn't start off that way. In fact, when I had two kids, I realized that motherhood was extraordinarily more overwhelming than I expected. As a person who has a background in child development, that's what my degree is in. I just figured motherhood would naturally come. But I will say a couple of years into my journey, I found myself hiding in closets for my kids when they were too noisy, just not knowing what to do, crying all the time, anxious, depressed, fearful, all the things motherhood was basically taking its toll on me and it wasn't until I really started to put my trust in God and allow him to lead my journey and rest in him that I started to see things change and realize that I was more courageous, more resilient than even I thought I was. So yeah, that's what kind of encouraged me to write this book for other moms so that they could know that they could rise up above those daily challenges and really be warrior mothers themselves. Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith: I love the fact that you come at this from someone who has experience with just what it looks like to be a warrior in your own family because you have a spouse who is in the military. What has your experience been as a military spouse as it relates to parenting and home life and just supporting your spouse in that process? Victoria Riollano: Yeah. So, one thing about being a military spouse is you always get to hear the stories when they come home. One thing that has always been a central theme is this idea of the commanding officer taking the lead and being the people who have to follow the commanding officer is something that my husband will always talk about. And that really came to life to me when I started to write this book because, for so long I was the commander in chief of my own home, of my own heart, of my own parenting journey. So just being a military spouse helped me realize that there is power in submitting to authority sometimes. For me, Submitting to God has really been that pivotal thing that's changed my parenting. And so, even throughout the book, I give so many of his stories as examples of how we can allow God to take the lead and take charge of our parenting. Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith: Now you talk about having a war plan inside of your book, Warrior Mother. So what is a war plan? And why do we even need one? Victoria Riollano: Yeah, so that chapter is my favorite chapter because I am a planner. I plan when I go to the grocery store, I plan when I go to the mall, and I plan vacations for months and years at a time beforehand. And so, for me, what I realized is when it came to my parenting, I had no plan. I just let each day happen as it may. And most of the time, it didn't end very well. And so the work plan is just an opportunity for mothers to take that pencil and to pray and to take that paper and to say, God, what is it that you have for my family? And so, the work plan includes a foundational verse. It includes things that are non-negotiables for your family, things that you are just no