Secret Keeper Girl

 On January 23rd, five hundred moms and daughters from the Alaskan Kenai Peninsula came out to be challenged to live according to Truth. The Lord led me to teach primarily from Acts 16:16-30. It was NOT a good day for Paul and Silas. Read the passage. They’d been stripped of their clothing and their dignity, beaten until they were black and blue and flogged until they were bloody. Then, they were thrown into prison with shackles on their feet. It absolutely was not a good “little t truth” day. The little t truth (or reality of their circumstances) was horrible. I bet you’ve never had a day that bad before!But verse 25 reads, “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God…” What? Are you kidding? Now, I don’t know about you but it seems to me that it is just “about midnight” when the Enemy of our souls brings out a magnifying glass to illuminate all the bad “little t truth” of my life. I can assure you that I don’t feel like singing. BUT Paul and Silas knew that the focus of their life had to be “Big T Truth”—Jesus.  So, the lifted their eyes above the horrible “little t truth” and gazed up. What happens next is amazing. The other prisoners gawk. (Check it out in verse 25. They’re not singing along!) And suddenly a great earthquake rocks their world and sets them free from their “little t truth.” Only, THEY DON’T LEAVE! In the next moment, the jailer is crying out “What must I do to be saved?” And Paul and Silas got to share the Truth (Big T, to be sure) with him and all the others in the jailhouse! Now that is a jailhouse on the Rock!Ya know, I have to wonder. Would the jailer have hungered for Christ if Paul and Silas had whined and wailed about their “little T Truth?” Would the other prisoners have stayed to listen to the gospel if Paul and Silas had done anything less than sing their lungs out for their big T Truth? I don’t think so. You see, our ability to focus on Big T Truth through the difficult little t truth circumstances of our life is what ultimately illuminates Christ in our lives to a lost world. Did you get that? If we are going to be credible witnesses, we’ve got to stop sobbing and start singing!I know you probably have some difficult little “t” truth stuff going on in your life. Trust me, I’ve had my share lately. I know! But what are you (we) focusing on? Little t truth? (That’s sure to make it worse.) Or Big T Truth? (It’s a promise in scripture that this will make it better!)On a thrilling side note. The morning after I delivered this extraordinary piece of Truth from God’s word, I was seated at a delightful brunch with the small group that’s been studying Lies Young Women Believe. As I munched on my quiche and fresh fruit, the entire church starting shaking like crazy. Yep! You guessed it. I survived my first earthquake there with those precious new friends. It was a 6.1! They’re so used to them, that they just giggled and said, “Welcome to Alaska!” I, however, pondered that moment as the day went on and decided that I would pray for God to unleash and earthquake of Truth through those precious Truth Seekers! I hope he’ll do the same for you, too! (Enjoy this photo of me with those precious girls, taken just moments after the quake! Note how calm I appear!) Special thanks to my friends Shana, Terri and Eileen for making this event possible! 

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You read that correctly. By the time they are teens, our daughters feel tremendous pressure NOT to value motherhood. In a survey that I completed with Nancy Leigh DeMoss in 2008, we found that the majority of teen girls value a career path more than being a mom. A Christianity Today survey in the same  year found that the majority of Christians felt it was harmful to encourage young girls to be wives and moms. They felt other roles should be esteemed as valuable.I hope you disagree. I certainly think that being mom to Robby (my PSU honors student), Lexi (my budding high school actress), and Autumn (my brave, newly adopted teen) is my greatest role, along with being their dad’s wife. I will leave no greater mark in this world that raising them up to be great citizens and lovers of God.This week, I’m in a sort of think-tank with Nancy Leigh DeMoss, Mary Kassian (author of “The Feminine Mistake”) and other key leaders to figure out what we can do to correct the problem. (Think of me “think-tanking” like in the photo below with Nancy taken last fall when we were talking to teen girls! Most of the women at this event are writing books on feminism or speaking out on the Biblical role of feminism. I’m not. I’m basically on site to lend my thoughts on how we can engage teen girls in embracing a Biblical view of their femininity. Do you know what my advice is going to be? Don’t focus on the teens! Focus on the little girls…ages 8-12. Those are the years when values are formed. Those are the years—for the most part—in which we define marriage, determine sexual values, make decisions about our life goals, etc. (Sounds so young, huh?) But it’s true.If you have an 8-12 year old girl, talk to her about how much you love being her  mom. Let her know that it’s better than sliced bread. Pass on the value of motherhood by valuing her!   P.S. One of the ways you can do that is by starting one of our   Secret Keeper Girl Eight Great Dates. These fun dates help you to engage in conversations that allow YOU to be the one to form her values about vital issues.

It’s been estimated that the line-up of Bratz dolls products exceeded 1000 billion dollars in sales in 2008. Do you have a problem with that? I do. One look might be enough to help you understand why.

Her dreamy eyes and pouty lips are complemented by her fish-net stockings and belly-baring shirt. Psychologists say that even girls who play with more innocent looking, but excessively “beautified” princess dolls tend to initiate a play world that includes seduction to get the prince. Imagine the life-skills this teaches a girl!  Is it just play? The experts don’t think so. “It puts girls on a conveyer belt to sexual activity,” says Diane Levine, PhD of Wheelock College in Boston and author of “So Sexy So Soon.” 

Though all-too-many parents are falling for the Bratz phenomena, many have said, “no.” A parent’s group petitioned Scholastic Press to remove a line-up of Bratz books from school flyers. The group succeeded! But that doesn’t mean we’ve succeeded in getting the Bratz craze to end.

So, what’s a mom to do when her 8-year-old bellows that she doesn’t have the “coolest doll on the planet?” Well, I turned to the world of Groovy Girls. Lexi loved ‘em! They’re…well…groovy. These new-millenium rag-dolls feature funky colors and eccentric designs. Lexi collected them by the crateful until she was about eleven. She played with them hours on end and loved them. Though Lexi is fifteen, we still have the collection.

Best of all, the makers of Groovy Girls actually state that that they are on a mission. Their website claims that “our…dolls provide a safe way for young girls to experience fun, fashion-filled doll play while promoting age-appropriate values and attitudes.” I vote Groovy Girls all the way. Check ‘em out at Groovy Girls.com.

This month Focus on the Family’s Weekend Magazine features “Tough Questions with Dannah Gresh” every Saturday. And, for the record, they were very tough questions! Dr. Julianna Slattery asked me just about anything. From how to talk to your kids about sex from how did I talk to MY kids about sex. I recall making some serious confessions about my parenting skills with her in that little studio. I don’t know if this will get aired, but I talked about an alarming encounter I had this summer when I hung out with Lexi’s cast of a musical. The fifteen year old at the table with us was actually bragging because her mom allows her to “blow up the inflatable queen-sized mattress when her boyfriend stays over!” If you don’t think I had something to say about that, you don’t know me very well. Check it out on your local station this Saturday or listen in right now by going to Focus on the Family’s Weekend Magazine.

Posted by Dannah Gresh, creator of Secret Keeper Girl OK, moms and big sisses! Listen up about the belly fat. I’ve been buying my share of New Year’s Resolution-motivated fitness magazines this week and I was confronted with my own ability to harm my daughters. How can getting fit be harmful to your daughters? Well, it seems that when we say, “I look soooo fat” they internalize it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t translate to a thought about YOU, but a thought about THEM! Studies have been done to confirm that what a mom says about her own body becomes a consuming thought to her daughter about her body. The result? One magazine reported that about 30% of ten year olds are worried about their body image. These are thin, healthy-looking tweens but between the messages from the cover of magazines and our own obsession with love handles, they don’t have a chance. God wants you to love how he created you as much as you want your daughter to love how he created her. That’s a habit best CAUGHT, not TAUGHT! So, pull out those dumb bells. Dust off your running shoes. Drink your protein shakes, but keep it positive. It’ll help keep your daughter’s head straight. (By the way, it’s a great time of the year to start the Secret Keeper Girl: 8 Great Dates About True Beauty!) 

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