This episode is supported in part by the Christian Standard Bible, a translation designed to be faithful to the original text and clear for everyday readers. We're grateful for their partnership in helping bring gospel-centered content to families like yours. To learn more about the CSB, visit csbible.com. Recently, Time magazine published an article about the epidemic our teen girls are facing in the United States and even our preteen girls. You ready for this?
I don't know. I don't think I want to hear it. Uh Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson. And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com.
This is Family Life Today. These are the findings that came from the CDC, which stated that teen girls are now in crisis. One in three girls considered suicide in 2021. Let that just sink in. One in three girls considered suicide.
Are you sure this is accurate? That's so high. This makes me teary, like reading it, thinking of my granddaughters. And it said that's a 60% increase since 2011. And it also said more girls are feeling so sad and hopeless that they can't even engage in normal activities.
I'm not kidding. Like, I'm teary right now because our young women aren't. And I've talked to so many moms of teen girls and preteen girls that are at their wit's end. They don't know what to do because their daughters are believing a lot of lies. And our culture is speaking lies and telling them lies.
And we, as women, are like, we want to go to war and battle for our daughters, but we're not always sure how to go about that.
So today we have hope. We do have hope. We have Dana Gresh with us today. Dana, I'm so glad that you are here. I am so glad to be here.
And you're already stirring my heart up. Really? Getting on my soapbox. Oh, good. Just get right up on it because I want to talk about it.
We're going to talk about this and what an appropriate name for your book called Lies Girls Believe. I think many of our listeners have probably read Lies Women Believe. Nancy DeMoss Wagamuth wrote that book, and I went through that. I bet a lot of women have gone through that. But you do a podcast with her.
Yeah, I do. Revive our hearts. Yeah. I'm her co-host. We've done stuff together since 2008.
I wrote lies young women believe for teen girls. And many of them said, Well, my lies started when I was a teenager, or my lies started when I was 10 years old.
So we've been working to kind of just bring that truth to girls in an age-appropriate way, because the crisis you're talking about. Chills me to the bone. Do you have granddaughters? I do. I have Addie and Zoe twin girls and Stella Bella.
Stella. Stella Bella? Stella. I call her Stella Bella. That's not her real name.
You know, I've done makeup names. And I just think the world they're growing up in is real scary. That number, I hadn't heard that Time magazine number. It doesn't surprise me because in the years that I was writing this book, right about that time, right before 2021. We were seeing the number of ER visits for poisoning, burning, self-harm.
For nine to thirteen-year-old girls, rising nine to thirteen. Nine to thirteen. And the average girl in the nine to seventeen range scored so high in an anxiety test that in 1957 they would have put that girl in inpatient treatment for. Mental health care. Come on.
But today it's so common. We're just like, oh, that's pretty normal. That's how that's normal for teen and tween girls.
So just keep going. But it's normal is not okay when it's that. Yeah, that's not normal. And so lies girls believe and the truth that sets them free. This is for the age of seven to twelve.
Seven to twelve. Eight to twelve. Yeah, somewhere in that range. What do you think's going on?
Well, so here's what Nancy identified: is that lies always have two evidences. One evidence is sin, right? The very first sin ever committed, we read about it in the book of Genesis. Satan lies to Eve in the form of a snake, and she believes the lie. Because she believed the lie, she acts in disobedience against God.
So sin is one evidence of a lie. But the other thing that we don't really notice in there, but like there's a lot of insecurity in there. You know, she's like, wow, really. Really, God's withholding something good from me? Like, because Satan's saying, hey, listen, God knows that if you eat from this tree, you're going to be just like him.
And she has emotions that are kind of not written about on the page. But we can kind of read between the lines and know: okay, she had to feel some insecurity to believe that lie. Oh, maybe that's true. I'm doubting God, I'm feeling insecure and inferior myself, so I'm going to eat so. The good news about that is that before our daughters sin, because they've believed a lie, they're going to give us the telltale sign of what I call sticky emotions.
I thought this was genius.
Now, listen up. This is really good.
Okay, if you think it's genius, you need to know that it was actually my husband's idea. There we go. We knew we love Bob. You know what? We're going to edit that out.
Just own it. We love Bob. But I was like, what do we call this for the eight to 12-year-old girls when an emotion is unhealthy? But a sticky emotion is an emotion that just sticks to you and it won't go away, or you're not sure why it's there. Because emotions are a good gift from God, right?
When He created the world, He looked at the world and said it is good. That included our emotions, our joy, our happiness, our hopefulness, even our anger and our sadness can be good when used in the right way because. Emotions are a message. They're a message from God. And when those emotions are not fun ones, like stress, for example, that sends you the signal that, oh, your daughter's stressed out.
If you do less, if she's not in before school activities and after school activities and travel, soccer team on the weekends, and she does less, that emotion will depart because the message was read and responded to, and it's not needed anymore. But you know, I think all of us have been on vacation eating Bond bonds and our feet up, and we still feel stressed out. That's probably because something's really out of order in our life. And it might be because we're believing a lie about our life, about ourselves, about God, about our world. And so, if we can teach girls how to identify those sticky emotions and recognize them as the evidence of a lie, and then trace them to see what that lie is and replace them with truth, we can help them experience freedom in Christ.
This is one of my passions for not just young girls, but women. Yeah. It's amazing how many women are living with lies every day. They've been doing it so long. They don't even recognize it as a lie.
If you can help your daughter learn how to understand her sticky emotions now, you're not just helping her behave better today and not sin tomorrow, but you're helping her 30 years down the road to be a healthy woman of God. Yes, a healthy mom, a healthy wife. Living in freedom. Living in freedom. And in some ways, you're stopping a legacy.
Yeah, if that girl grows up and is a mom, she's not going to pass it to the next generation. If she doesn't, or he doesn't, we pass it. Right. What are some of the warning signs for moms as they're listening, as they think, my daughter is actually her stomach's upset before she goes to school? Are there things that moms and dads should be looking for in our kids that maybe our girls are believing lies?
Yeah, I think anytime there's a chronic negative emotion that either doesn't go away no matter what you do, for example, a girl who's fearful even when she's completely safe, or you don't understand why it's there. Again, she's fearful, doesn't know why. I was just in Colorado Springs a few weeks ago and heard about a true girl. That's the name of my ministry for Tween Girls, who was having trouble with sleeping. She was terrified that someone was going to sneak into her bedroom at night and steal her.
This wasn't. Rational at all.
Now, the funny thing is, the mom was a trauma therapist, a Christian trauma therapist, and she was like, I don't know how to help her. Can you imagine how horrible that must feel as a mom? And I think for other moms, like, wait, if she can't help her, who can? But here's this thing.
Sometimes the person we're least objective with is our own children, right?
So I was able to go to her. This is a weird thing, but I had COVID, and since then, I've had chronic anxiety. At night. And it's physiological. The doctors say it's a melatonin problem.
I'm almost asleep and then I wake up fearful.
So I have had to be like, okay, this is a physiological thing, it's not even an emotional thing, it's completely medical. But I've had to go to the Word of God. I memorized Psalm 91. And whenever I wake up, In the beginning, I would wake up and for two hours, I would be terrified in my bed at night because I would be like, something's really wrong. I don't think I was having panic attacks, but I was having something like that.
And now I'm waking up and quoting Psalm 91. Can you quote Psalm 1999? He that dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, my rock and my refuge, my God. And if you go on, it says, I will not fear the terror of night.
I will not fear the terror of night. And I can do the whole Psalm, but I will. I just start to recite that in my mind and I fall asleep in five or 10 minutes.
So I go to this girl and I say to her, I hear you're having a hard time sleeping. 'Cause I say to the mom when I meet her, I'm like, Where's your daughter? We're going to pray for her. Take me to the warrior in women that comes out like, I'm going to protect my girl. My husband's looking at me because I'm not Miss Spontaneous, not like he is.
And he's like, We're going where? And I was like, We're going to go pray for that girl.
So I just tell her my story. I say, Listen, like, I, there's not truth to my fear. Is there truth to your fear? Like when you're afraid somebody's gonna steal you, is that has that ever? And you have saying there's not truth to your fear.
Right. I'm asking her, is there truth to it? She's like, No. I was like, Has anybody ever come into your room and stolen you? No.
Do you have you ever known anyone that's come into your room and stolen you? Been stolen? No. Have you read about it in the news?
Well, not really. I said, Well, I mean, because it could happen, it has happened, but it's probably not gonna happen to you. Does your house have l locks on it? Yeah. Does your house have an alarm system?
Yeah. We actually have video cameras.
Okay.
So maybe, like me, your emotion isn't telling you the truth. She's like, Oh. And so I invited her to learn Psalm 91 with me. This is like a nine-year-old girl. And I prayed with her.
And several weeks later, the mom said she's memorized Psalm 91 and she's sleeping like a baby every night. I mean, that's just how it works. That's a simple example of it. And sometimes it's a lot harder because there is a real fear or there is a real hurt. I mean, what you described going through with your dad, that's a real trauma.
That's a real hurt. But it was interpreted in the wrong way. But you're right, Dana. I wish I have sexual abuse in my background. And so I can remember one time that it happened.
My mind twisted, and I thought something must be wrong with me. This must be my fault. This is something that I do. And so you don't even realize that just becomes this lie of unworthiness and shame. And then you just carry it into adulthood.
And now I'm having consequences of these lies that I'm hearing in my head over these years.
So if we can get our girls to identify and talk about the things that they're hearing or the lies that they're dealing with. What a freedom. What a freedom. Even something like that, such a severe trauma, such a severe pain. The word tells us we can have victory over that.
Yes. And I have found freedom and victory. But it's taking work, too. Sure, it does take work. But Jesus said.
You will know the truth and the truth will set you free. He said, If you're truly my disciples, you'll abide in my word and you'll know the truth and the truth will set you free. Let me ask you this: Was some of your work getting in the word and saturating your heart with the truth of the scriptures? And Dave knows this: I could not exist without the power of God's word. It's become, it's not that I should read it.
It's become like It's my food every day. It sets me free every day. It reminds me of God's goodness, His grace, and His unconditional love, and His power that has set me free. And so the answer is yes.
So that's truth replacing lies. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, we've got to take what is. True in the word and replace it with whatever emotional sticky feelings we have.
Now, not all the time is a sticky feeling a lie, but a lot of times. we are allowing the emotion to become the boss of us rather than using it as a messenger. That's a good way to say that. And saying, okay, God has given me stress or God has given me guilt. What is he trying to tell me through this?
And you go to the word and you learn what it's for, and then the emotion goes away. Like, that's how it's supposed to work. Like, we should feel guilt, we should feel anger, we should feel fear. When a bear is chasing me, I want to feel fear, right? Because that's what makes me respond to it.
But. When we just feel them and we don't do anything about it, that's when sometimes they can settle in and become lies. And if you don't fix them when you're young, have you ever seen the VeggieTail fib? No. Okay.
There's a Veggie Tales cartoon, you know, where this fib is teeny tiny. It's this little boy tells a lie and it's this teeny tiny fib. And by the end of the thing, he's like the marshmallow man in Ghostbusters. He's enormous, you know. If you don't deal with that lie when it's small and manageable, it does grow and become far more damaging in our lives.
And it spills into every area of our lives.
Now, is a seven-year-old, ten-year-old girl or boy able to identify the lies on their own, or do they need somebody to help them? They do need help. That's why we wrote the book and that's why we wrote A Mom's Guide to Lies Girls Believe because we want mom to be the one to help her. This book is beautiful. It's.
I wish all of you could see it. I hope you'll all buy it because it's a workbook and it's beautifully written and illustrated, and there's great questions. I like that it has a theme of this Zoe.
Now I'm realizing, that's your granddaughter.
Well, I didn't know I was going to have a granddaughter named Zoe when I wrote the book. She was born like a year later and named Zoe.
So it's kind of cool. And why did you decide to use this little girl named Zoe? Because Zoe shows up at the beginning of each chapter, and it's kind of just like a story form chapter book type writing. Let me read an introduction to Zoe. Meet Zoe, and she's so cute.
She has a little picture. She's a girl whose name means life. She's going to join us as we explore these sticky feelings, the lies they reveal, and God's truth. And we're going to start with the very first woman who believed the very first lie.
So, what are you waiting for? Let's get started. Yeah. So, Zoe shows up at the beginning of every chapter, cute little drawing of her, and she has. And the girls have to help solve that problem by telling her what the truth is.
And there's pages at the end of the chapter that says, Zoe has believed what lie, and they identify the lie. What Bible verse do you think Zoe needs to meditate and think about truth? And they write in the Bible verse that they would have found in that chapter. But what we're doing is we're putting them in the driver's seat of being the counselor and the advisor because sometimes it's a little easier to be objective and learn the process when it's not your own lies you're identifying. And then hopefully at the end of the book, We do give her the tools so that she can start establishing that habit and practice for her own life.
How many truths do you have and lies do you have that Zoe deals with? The book deals with 20. We surveyed 1,500 church-going tween girls because we wanted to make sure that the lies that we introduced in the book were lies that they really were struggling with. And then we narrowed that down to 20 that were really popping up pretty consistently. Lies like it's not that great to be a girl or it's not that different.
Or boys and girls aren't that different, was not the predominant lie, but we were alarmed when roughly just under 10% of the girls were saying, Yeah, I believe that lie. This is seven to ten year old girls five years ago. And that's gotten worse in five years. Yeah, very rapidly. If that's five years old, The survey is five years old.
Would you jump into gender dysphoria today? We do jump into it in there. We knew it was coming. I've been studying that. I was part of a a think tank on binary 15 years ago, before it was hit, you know, in the news, binary and non-binary language.
And so I knew that this was coming fast and furious.
So the girls don't, we don't talk about the lies in there. We don't talk about transgenderism or pronouns. What we do talk about is that sometimes almost all of us are like, it'd be nice to be a boy because boys seem to be stronger athletes. It'd be nice to be a boy because boys seem to be a bad person. They can go to the bathroom outside.
That is not a thought I ever had. But I'm not going to ask you if this is not even. I don't want a granddaughter just told me, like, oh, I wish I could do that.
So this is so normal, right? To compare ourselves, right? But with the culture telling all these other lies around those really normal feelings that girls have had for centuries, it can lead to really some scary lies.
So we went ahead and said, let's talk about why it's so great to be a girl. And there's just some really basic. Basic theology in there about God chose two genders, and here's why. Let's go back to Genesis 1:26 and 27, where he says, In the image of God, he created them, male and female, he created them.
Now, listen, there are so many things that are Godlike about us, right? Our language proficiency. the ability to defy gravity and fly to the moon. Our creativity, that we can compose sonnets and create great works of art. These are all very godlike qualities.
Even the way we have emotions, I'm an animal lover, so I believe animals have emotions. I think they're adorable and I love them, but we have them in a much more complex, sophisticated way, right? And a much more purposeful way.
So there's a lot of things about us God could have mentioned when He said, You're in my image, but He says two things: maleness and femaleness. Are what display my image in this very critical foundational verse. And so it must matter. That God chose you to be a girl. And I like to tell moms: one of the most important theological sentences you can say to your children right now is: It's great to be a girl, or it's great to be a boy, or God chose you to be a girl, God chose you to be a boy.
Again, you don't have to study the counterfeits to plant the truth. And that's just one of the lies we deal with in the book. Man, as we celebrate 50 years of ministry, we continue to hear stories of how God is transforming families through family life. Like Andrew and Eileen, for example. When they married, they were so full of hope.
Weren't we all? But life storms came fast. A newborn family tension and strains on their marriage, and their home just felt heavy. But God wasn't finished. Through Family Life's Weekend Remember, and Love Like You Mean It Cruise, they rediscovered Christ's design for marriage.
And they were even, listen to this, able to help Andrew's parents reconcile after years of distance. Which is really what it's all about. God changes our marriage so we can impact others.
Well, here's the thing: thousands of couples are facing storms like this right now. And some are quietly hurting, some are on the brink of divorce. and some need hope to day. And I'll tell you what, this ministry is supported financially from partners like you who say, I believe in this and I want to give. And right now, every monthly donation will be matched for a full year, doubling the impact of your gift.
So we really hope and pray that you'll consider joining us. All you have to do is visit familylifetoday.com. Or call 1-800-FL today. And together, we can shape the next generation of families who walk with Christ. Encourage moms right now who have those daughters between that age.
Why is this so important to talk about these things? Yeah, I think one of the really important reasons we're going to talk about it is so that they can have that long-term freedom. One of the girls that I mentored, one of the first girls I mentored, believed the lie, everyone leaves. And I was her, she was in high school, I was in my 20s. She was just always.
Fearful that I was going to abandon her. Her youth pastor had left her. And then she gets married. She goes away to college. She comes to see me, and she's like 25 now.
And I'm like, You're still struggling with that, aren't you? She's like, Oh, I'm terrified my husband's going to leave me. And we began to pray because by then I had learned you can know the truth, and the truth will set you free. And I was like, Let's try to figure out when you started feeling that way. And we spent about two hours that night praying.
And you know Her lie was attached to her parents' divorce. She was in like sixth or seventh grade. And Her mom and dad divorced, and she said, From that night on, I had panic attacks that everyone would leave me.
Well, the truth is that people will fail you.
So, where do we go in God's word?
Well, the verse that God brought to her heart as we prayed for her was. I will never leave you or forsake you. And being able to be anchored in that changed her forever. She drove home that night. And one of the things, the way it manifested is she could never really sleep alone.
She had a twin, so she always had a twin in her room, roommates in college, husband. That night she drove 18 hours to go home and got tired on the way, stopped in a hotel room, never even thought to be afraid, and slept like a baby. I mean, that's how powerful truth can be. And if we can give our daughters that gift so that they don't have to go through 10 or 15 years of believing a lie like everyone leaves, but they can live in the security of the truth of God's word, that doesn't mean her life's going to be easy and perfect and there aren't going to be heartaches. It means she will thrive through them.
She'll thrive through them. And that's what we want women and our daughters and men and boys to thrive in the freedom. That God brings. Through the cross, really. Yeah, it's all through the cross.
Well, I always love having Dana Gresh in the studio. I really love her, and I feel like this book is going to be so helpful for so many. Again, the book is called Lies Girls Believe and the Truth That Sets Them Free. And you can get it at familylifetoday.com. Just click on the link in the show notes, and we've got Dana back with us tomorrow.
And we have resources to help you as a parent. And you can go to familylife.com slash parenting help. Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry celebrating 50 years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most. Yeah.
