Revive Our Hearts

Narrator (Female): As her daughters grow, Kristen Wetherell wants them to become beautiful in all the ways that matter. So, she wrote them a poem.

Kristen Wetherell: What makes you beautiful, my dear, is not your eyes, your ears, your nose, the face that your reflection shows. It's not about the things you do, the gifts and work God's given you.

Narrator (Female): That poem became the devotional for girls titled *What Makes You Beautiful*.

Kristen Wetherell: It's not what people say or do, but what God says is true of you. For God says beauty is the art of loving Him with all your heart.

Dannah Gresh: This is the *Revive Our Hearts* podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of *Lies Women Believe and the Truth That Sets Them Free*. For August 10, 2026, I'm Dannah Gresh.

I've got Kristen Wetherell with me today. She's a wife, a mom, and the author of numerous books, including *Help for the Hungry Soul*, *Humble Moms*, and the award-winning *Hope When It Hurts*. Kristen, welcome back to *Revive Our Hearts*. You've really become a *Revive Our Hearts* favorite.

Kristen Wetherell: You're my favorite, so I'm just so thankful to be here. Thank you for having me. It's a privilege.

Dannah Gresh: I have a humdinger of a question. I've never said "humdinger" on the *Revive Our Hearts* air before, but I just did. The last time we got together to interview, you were having what I'd call one of those sanctifying mom days. I don't know if you remember. How is momming going today?

Kristen Wetherell: It's so funny that you say that because I prayed on the way here. I said, "Lord, I know that tears can be good. Tears are healing. Sometimes people just need to hear the person who is speaking cry because they need to know that they're human, too. But please, I would just like to not cry today."

Motherhood is, as we raise these precious little souls, I'm just constantly humbled. I'm constantly humbled by my need for God to basically do the same work in my heart that I'm wanting Him to do in their hearts. I'm sitting before you needing God's grace, tired because my son woke up at 4:50 AM because his hand hurt. One day at a time, by God's grace.

Dannah Gresh: Why did his hand hurt?

Kristen Wetherell: I don't know. We never figured it out. But alas, we were up bright and early.

Dannah Gresh: I feel for you. My dog, for whatever reason, barked at 5:40 this morning and never went back to sleep after that. You have felt led by the Lord to really focus on the topic of true beauty for your two beautiful girls. Tell us about your girls first.

Kristen Wetherell: I would love to. My eldest is Joanna, and she will be "true girl" age very soon. She will be eight in October. My youngest is Lydia, and she is two and a half. They are dear sisters. Then I have my little five-year-old son, John, in the middle of them. I think about them and pray for them all the time because I am a female, and I know the struggles that females go through.

Dannah Gresh: You must already be beginning to see the battle for beauty in their hearts. How are you seeing that?

Kristen Wetherell: It starts early, and some of it is good. God made us for Himself. God made us to be drawn to glorious, beautiful things because He's glorious and beautiful. From the very beginning, I have seen Joanna being drawn to Disney princesses. That's not a bad thing, but I wrote her a poem that I hoped might become like a picture book to direct her heart to the source of true beauty.

When we look at a lot of these messages that we're seeing in these movies, it really is about appearance. It really is about even how you behave, and that's not where beauty is found. The world will throw lies at us all the time. I see in them frequently a desire to be told, "You're really beautiful," and to adorn themselves. What a neat way to get to point them to the One who can adorn them.

Dannah Gresh: I think we have this desire in us with our girls to tell them they're beautiful. I didn't ever feel like telling my son that, but I felt like telling my girl that. The world has had a backlash against that by saying you should never tell them they're beautiful. You should tell them they're strong, independent, capable, or smart. I'm not sure that our over-focus and obsession with external physical beauty—the answer of that is never to affirm it. What is it that you want your daughters to know about their beauty?

Kristen Wetherell: A number of things, but ultimately, I want them to know that they're beautiful because they're made in the image of God. They're beautiful because God is their maker and their creator, and He has imprinted His own image upon them.

Isn't that what I still need to hear every single day? Even I am looking left and right to try and figure out what gives me value and what brings me worth. At the end of the day, it's not how many books I've written, it's not how well my kids are doing, and it's not the way that I look. It's the fact that I'm made in the image of God. I really do have eternity stamped upon my heart because He's done that.

Dannah Gresh: You say that like it's easy to figure out. I'm looking at you; God did well when He made you. You are a beautiful, gorgeous woman. Have you had beauty struggles? Did you struggle to figure that out? Did you struggle to get to the point where you believed what has value in terms of beauty is not what I look at in the mirror, but it's this stamp of God's image on my spirit?

Kristen Wetherell: I have. Where does it come from? I don't know. Is it just a sense in our fallen spirit that's been affected by sin, where we are looking elsewhere for worth and dignity? I would say especially in the formative years of high school and college, you become attuned to what's around you. When you're really little, kids just don't care, and that's so wonderful. I love that about little kids. They are not worried about what other people think. That's why Jesus says to come to Him like little children. There's just no pretense. What you see is what you get, and they just don't really care.

Suddenly, as we develop and mature, we're suddenly aware. People have thoughts, and maybe they're about me. I would say especially in the college years when I was trying to figure out what it meant to live on my own as an independent person. I've always been very driven, and body image issues took root in that time. I wouldn't say that I struggled with an eating disorder, but I would say that I struggled with some disordered thinking about taking care of myself, my body, exercise, and eating.

It wasn't until the Lord took the legs out from under me and I found out that I had Lyme disease—and all of that was completely taken from me—that He began to do a great healing work.

Dannah Gresh: How old were you when that happened?

Kristen Wetherell: I wasn't diagnosed with Lyme until 2014, so I would have been 25 years old.

Dannah Gresh: You were a young adult. You suffered through those teen years and those college years, like most of us, trying to figure it out. How did being diagnosed with a disease sort through all those beauty lies for you?

Kristen Wetherell: I couldn't exercise anymore. I was so weak. Some of my symptoms involved joint pain, muscular weakness, chronic fatigue, and my immune system was completely shot. All the things that I prided myself on before—training for a sprint triathlon, having all these goals—were gone. I've always been very Type A, so if I have a goal, I go and get it.

I think that's how I thought about some of these things. I have a goal, so I need to work out so many times a week in order to achieve the goal. I need to eat a certain way so that my muscles are healthy. Then suddenly, you feel terrible, and you can't do any of the things that you wanted to do. It's incredibly reorienting and incredibly humbling. I am more than my body, but also, God is going to redeem my body someday. Someday I'm going to have a body that doesn't break down. It was very reorienting, a big perspective shift for me.

Dannah Gresh: My husband Bob and I have just walked through this because he's had long COVID. It's the same kind of thing: muscle pain, joint pain, fatigue. Everything gets stripped away, and you have to stand before the Lord and ask what your value really lies in. It sounds to me when you're sharing your testimony, 1 Timothy 4:8 says bodily training does have some value, but godliness has a much higher value. Our spiritual training has a much higher value. It sounds to me like your standard of beauty and physical wellness was emphasizing bodily training. The Lord brought you to a place of reckoning.

Kristen Wetherell: Absolutely. It makes me think of Isaiah 40:7-8. The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it. Surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of the Lord endures forever. Godliness has value in every way. That will last.

Christians are not gnostics; we don't disparage the body. We're not saying our bodies are bad. God created us with bodies, and Jesus was raised from the dead in a body. Someday God will raise our bodies to be like His glorious body. God cares about our bodies, but these earthly bodies are not forever. When we have a very physical, real understanding of them, it gives us perspective about what does endure forever.

Dannah Gresh: I think you have figured out some really important things. It sounds like you figured them out in your 20s. That's about when I figured out some of these beauty lies myself. But you would like your daughters not to have to learn on the hot pavement of life what it took you so long to learn. Is that what's burning in your heart?

Kristen Wetherell: Absolutely. I think God is helping me come to peace with the reality, though, that some of these lessons will just have to be learned. I can't protect them from everything and I can't control everything. But I can teach them. I can say, "Here is part of my story."

I feel so privileged that I get to write these resources that I can hand them and say, "I wrote this for you. This is something that I wish I had, something that I wish I had thought more about in those years." I hope by God's grace I model it. I know that I'm not a perfect person—none of us are—but by God's grace, I hope I model it. I know I can't control or protect them from the work that God is going to do, despite me or through me or whatever it is. God's going to do His work in their lives, and that brings me a lot of peace.

Dannah Gresh: It brings me peace, too. You sat down one day and wrote a poem about beauty for your daughters. Tell us the story of what led up to writing that poem.

Kristen Wetherell: I was thinking about my daughter Joanna, who was five at the time. Lydia was not with us yet. Her obsession with Disney princesses—and we really did try and screen some of those movies, but some of them are really sweet movies—and we would watch parts of them with her and read books. She was just so drawn to beautiful things and princessy things. I decided I would write her a picture book, giving her a better vision for beauty. That's what the poem is; it was actually a picture book that was intended for my Joanna.

When I submitted it to the publisher, they said they were wondering if developmentally this is maybe a little above that age group. Perhaps it's a resource for pre-teens. Maybe we expand it and turn it into a devotional and the poem is a part of it. That's how *What Makes You Beautiful* came to be. I've been pretty humbled because my daughter was excited about it for about two days. We did two days of devotions together and then she said, "We'll do this another time." She'll be ready for it when she's 10 or 12 or 13.

Dannah Gresh: You've written this poem. It's radically vulnerable and beautiful. They're the words of discipleship from a mother's heart to a daughter's heart in an area where the battle will be thick—the battle over what she thinks and believes when she looks in the mirror and sees herself. What part of this poem is maybe the most poignant, most precious, and most meaningful to you that you really want your girls to grasp onto? Would you read that for us?

Kristen Wetherell: I would love to. It's a little section toward the end.

What makes you beautiful, my dear, is not your eyes, your ears, your nose, the face that your reflection shows. It's not about the things you do, the gifts and work God's given you, the risks you take, the friends you make, or beauty for pure beauty's sake. It's not what people say or do, but what God says is true of you. For God says beauty is the art of loving Him with all your heart.

Dannah Gresh: That is beautiful. Of course, there are a few pages of the poem before that and about a page after that. But the book is divided up to where we hear a little bit of the poem on each day's devotion. Let's go into that day's devotion or some of the content from what you just read. Where do you go in God's word to really help her learn that beauty is the art of loving Him with all of your heart?

Kristen Wetherell: In that day's devotional, the scripture that we look at is Deuteronomy 6, which is the greatest commandment. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. God says these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.

What is the great aim of our life? Where is highest joy to be found? It's in loving the Lord because that's what we were made for. And yet, our hearts are just so drawn to so many other loves. It's not that we can't love other things, and I hope that I teach on that faithfully in this book. God created us also to enjoy His good gifts, and He created us to be pointed to Him in so many of the things that we enjoy. Yet they're not ultimate things; they're meant to point us to the gift, which is Him. Growing in loving the Lord is our great privilege and our great challenge in the Christian life.

Dannah Gresh: I'm sitting here thinking as you say, "What makes you beautiful, my dear, is not your eyes, your ears, your nose, the face that your reflection shows." Everything is a picture of a spiritual truth. Every physical reality is directing us to Him. Romans 1:20 says creation screams out to us about His power and His character. You've even mentioned the whole princess idea. Isn't that us trying to tell the story of God's rescue of our heart?

Kristen Wetherell: Yes, the kids and I talk about that all the time.

Dannah Gresh: What do you tell them?

Kristen Wetherell: Often, sometimes my daughter will roll her eyes at me because she knows that I'm going to do this almost every time. We'll just try and figure out how God's story is in every other story because His story is the source. It's where we got all of our best ideas from.

We'll look at a movie like *Beauty and the Beast*. That's my favorite Disney movie. Belle is my favorite Disney princess. I think we see there a picture of how a faithful love actually changes a heart. I think Belle in a sense is almost a picture of Christ and how He comes to love the unlovable, and in loving them, He changes them. We even see this glorious picture of the resurrection at the end where this beast dies but then he's raised into his actual self. I light up every time I talk about it and my daughter looks at me and she says, "Really, Mom, again?"

Dannah Gresh: I love it so much. There's a Christy Nockels song—have you listened to the Christy Nockels *Lullabies for the Beloved* album?

Kristen Wetherell: I have not, but I have heard of it.

Dannah Gresh: It is amazing. She has some lyrics in one of those songs that say every fairy tale you've heard, they have borrowed your story. It's just the concept that every fairy tale that you're going to read is really our hearts just reaching out for the rescue story of Jesus Christ.

You let them roll their eyes when you tell them that every time. They're going to be telling the kids behind them. I remember sitting at a fire pit and overhearing one of my daughters, who was in college at the time, telling a high school girl in our Christian high school words that I had told her over and over again as advice. She's telling this girl, but I'm like, "Wait a minute, didn't you roll your eyeballs into the back of your head every time I told you that between the ages of five and fifteen?" They are parroting it, and she will one day tell her story to her daughter because you have so faithfully told yours.

I love the book; it's beautiful. Anybody that knows me knows that I have a special call in my life for God's little women. *Revive Our Hearts* is all about helping women grow in freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ. But my heart beats for the little women, the pre-teens and even younger than that. You've written this beautiful 20-day devotional for girls, *What Makes You Beautiful*. What age group do you think it's most appropriate for?

Kristen Wetherell: Really the pre-teen years, so eight to twelve, somewhere in there. Even nine to twelve because I do think some of the concepts are a bit abstract, so they want to be developmentally ready for it. But I also tried to keep it simple.

Dannah Gresh: Here's the thing about it: you've written with poetry in the beginning and then you've unpacked that poetry in each of the daily devotions. Two things I really commend you for. One is poetry forces us to be intimate with the words, and that forces us to learn. That's a beautiful learning tool.

The other thing I would say is your eight, your nine, even maybe your ten-year-olds, they're going to need mom-daughter devotional time with this book. That's a really good thing because you're teaching them how to have devotions and how to digest something. Then the ten, eleven, twelve-year-olds are probably going to want this tool and learn some independence in their devotional time. I love it and I highly recommend it. Kristen, I read dozens and dozens of books for this age group every single year, and this is at the top of the list. It's a beautiful book, well-written, and I am so happy for us to share it with our *Revive Our Hearts* audience.

Kristen Wetherell: Thank you. Praise God.

Dannah Gresh: Praise God indeed. The book *What Makes You Beautiful* is available on our website at reviveourhearts.com/store. Exciting news: today we're offering this resource for a donation of any amount. To give and request a copy for you or a pre-teen you love, visit reviveourhearts.com or call us at 1-800-569-5959. We're so excited for you to dive into the topic of beauty with the little women in your life.

Speaking of little women, many of you know that they have a big piece of my heart. I founded a ministry called True Girl and I'm the host of the *True Girl* podcast.

This is *True Girl*, a podcast for girls and their moms. Together we'll explore God's truth for us one drive at a time. *True Girl* is designed for moms and daughters to listen together. It's a perfect length for a car ride. We cover big topics in a way young hearts can understand—topics like beauty. Today our destination is not the grocery store or the ballet studio or school. We're heading to the source of true beauty. Where does true beauty come from? We'll have to drive much farther than the local mall. Don't be disappointed, but we won't be stopping at Claire's. You can't even find true beauty on your favorite online shopping site. But by the end of this episode, you can understand that you are a masterpiece created by God. *True Girl* is hosted by Dannah Gresh, author of *8 Great Dates for Moms and Daughters*. Let's get moving for season one, episode three, titled "The Source of True Beauty."

Hey girls, today we want to talk about where our sense of true beauty comes from. I'm joined by lead teacher Stacy Rudolph. Hey Stacy.

Stacy Rudolph: Hey.

Dannah Gresh: Stacy, tell me that there have been times in your life that you spent just a little too much time shopping online or obsessing about something you needed to wear so that you could feel beautiful, confident, or cool.

Stacy Rudolph: You are not the only one. I mean, you would have thought I had an obsession with Converse. I felt like I was not cool in school if I didn't have the next pair of Chucks. I don't know what it was, but I loved them. I'm a sneakerhead.

Dannah Gresh: Converse, that was the thing. Okay, when I was in sixth grade, you know what I needed? Clogs. They are totally not even in style anymore, but I saved and I saved because I knew if I had this pair of clogs that I would be the coolest girl in school. If I could have that money back! Boy, have times changed. Those clogs were painful.

Does this sound like something your tween would enjoy? I hope so. Head on over to reviveourhearts.com to listen to the rest of that episode. We'll link it in today's transcript. The *True Girl* podcast is meant to be little drive-time nuggets of truth so that from the time you drive from home to church or from home to school, your daughter and you have together meditated a little bit on the truth of God's word.

Tomorrow, join Nancy as she explains a phrase from Proverbs 14: "The wise woman builds her house." Does this passage suggesting you've got to grab a hammer and nails and literally build your own place of residence to be a wise woman? Thankfully not. If so, I have a feeling many of us would be sleeping outside tonight. So what does it mean exactly? You'll have to join us to find out. Please be back for *Revive Our Hearts*.

This program is a listener-supported production of *Revive Our Hearts* in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.