Revive Our Hearts

Dana Gresh: God delivered Laura Perry Smaltz out of a transgender lifestyle. During that process, she learned some pretty incredible facts about God's design for gender.

Perry Smaltz: Did you know that there are over 6,500 biological differences between male and female? And that's only what scientists know about. That doesn't include everything God knows that we don't. 330 billion cells are replaced in your body every single day. You have trillions of cells, but every single day, 330 billion cells are replaced and regenerated.

And that means your DNA that has your sex chromosomes in every single cell is like the information code that tells your body how to make those cells. So every day, your body is going to billions of your cells, recognizing that you are female and then regenerating those cells based on that information. So every day, all day long, your body is telling you over and over that you are female.

Laura Perry Smaltz: So can you have a male brain in a female body? We hear this all the time in this trans culture. But the reality is if your sex chromosomes are in every single cell of your body including your brain, then that's biologically impossible.

Dana 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 May 25, 2026, I'm Dana Gresh. Today and tomorrow, we're listening to a powerful testimony from Laura Perry Smaltz. The transformation God has worked in her life is truly stunning. And I have a hunch that after these episodes, you're going to be extra in awe of your womanhood.

She shared the message we're about to hear at a True Woman conference. The theme that year was "Heaven Rules." It's time to explore with Laura how that theme applies to our God-assigned gender.

Laura Perry Smaltz: You know, it's interesting, I was thinking about the fact that I'm teaching a breakout on the joy of embracing biblical womanhood. It is hysterical if you know my story. For anybody that doesn't, I lived as transgender for about nine years and had surgeries and hormones and all kinds of other mess, but the Lord delivered me out of that mess.

And so I'm just incredibly grateful to the Lord because I didn't think I'd ever look like a girl again. I didn't think I'd ever feel like a girl again. And I just couldn't imagine. There was so much pain there in being a woman. And I think for so many of us, even if you've never had a thought of wanting to be a man, I think for so many of us, sometimes it's just painful to be a woman.

Sometimes it's just hard for various reasons. And so I think the fact that I'm teaching this breakout really is just about what the Lord has been teaching me. I'm not a doctor or an expert, but I tried to live as a man and I tried to be someone else. But as I have come into this place where I've learned to trust the Lord in who He made me to be, and as He's healed me, I've begun to understand that His design is really good.

So that's kind of what I want you to come on this journey with me. So just to tell you a little bit about my story, it was just a little over six years ago that I came out of that lifestyle. But I was trusting my feelings of who I wanted to be rather than who God had created me to be. Born female, and I had lived as male and really I had a job where I was only known as male, so fully passing as male and had no desire to leave that lifestyle.

Even though I realized it really wasn't real, I just was convinced that I could never be a woman again because there was just so much pain there and I didn't even know why. And I knew I was living a lie. I eventually realized that transition wasn't real, that none of the surgeries or anything else had made me a man. And I didn't know why. I couldn't put my finger on it.

I remember standing in this group of guys one time and they all thought I was a man. I was at a job where I was only known as male. They didn't even know I was trans. And yet I knew there was a difference there. And I couldn't put my finger on it. I didn't understand why, but there was something so profoundly deep in me that was telling me that I was a woman.

But still, the very thought of identifying as a woman was just too painful to bear. Every time I thought about it, it was as if a knife was being plunged into the depths of my soul, ripping my heart out. And I'd undergone a double mastectomy, a hysterectomy, an oophorectomy, all the legal changes. I had a beard, I had a lower voice, I had hair all over my body.

But the conviction of the Holy Spirit had been growing in me. I had gotten saved in October of 2014 and I was convinced that I was going to be a man of God. And I was really on fire for Jesus. God had radically transformed my life and yet He didn't leave me there. And the Lord just began to pursue me more and more.

But eventually, I was under so much conviction that I felt like I was in this deep dark pit that I just couldn't get out of. And I was like, "God, I cannot, no matter—I will give You everything in my life," and I really surrendered everything to the Lord. But I said, "I cannot go back to being a woman. It is too painful."

And again, I didn't even know why. All I knew was when I thought about being a woman, it just felt like so much pain. And that's what I hear from so many of these young women. But the Lord asked me to leave it and He reminded me of the verse that says, "If anyone will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever will save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake shall find it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and yet forfeit his own soul? Or what shall he give in exchange for a soul?"

And I knew then that the Lord was asking me to just walk away. And so when I first left the lifestyle, it was the hardest decision I've ever made. And I honestly thought I was going to be miserable the rest of my life. I just wanted to die. I had no expectation of transformation. I really thought that I was just going to live in misery the rest of my life.

But I knew that one day that God had promised me a redeemed body, He promised me I would no longer have a sin nature. So I knew in heaven one day it would be okay. But I thought if I can just hang on for the next 40 or 50 years, however long I live and just be miserable, then one day it'll be all right.

And that was about the expectation of my life. So I really thought the rest of my story would go something like this: Laura sat at home with her mom and dad and cried her eyes out about how painful it was that everybody knew she was a woman. And then I just really thought that would be the rest of my life.

But when Nancy asked me to speak about the theme this year, I was so excited. God had put this idea of being heaven-minded on my heart over the last couple of years. So what does it mean that heaven rules over our lives? And specifically for this breakout, over our understanding of embracing our gender as female, and further over embracing biblical womanhood.

Even if you've never had a single thought of wanting to transition to a man, you've probably not liked being a woman at times. What does it mean that heaven rules over our lives? And specifically over this idea of biblical womanhood because a lot of times that's just hard. And I think it's really about learning to trust the Lord that His design is good. But that's not always easy.

I could have told God that Jake rules. Jake was my transgender name. But I know at least one person in this room who is happy that I didn't. When I look back, I thought I was happy identifying as a man. I was happier than I had been before when I was under so much rejection and all the pain that I had suffered from men that treated me like trash.

And I just had no worth or value as a female. I didn't know the joy of embracing biblical womanhood yet, nor was I interested. But I chose to say that heaven rules, to say that God knew better than I did. Sometimes people hear my story and think I was so brave and I had this great faith. Not at all, not at the time.

I mean, God had really built my faith over a couple of years, but I cried hysterically as I went through shaving my legs and my face, buying female clothes. In fact, the first time I tried on female clothes, I cried so hard I couldn't drive home for 20 minutes because I was just crying hysterically. And I thought there is no way I can do this, Lord.

I didn't really trust the Lord. I had no expectation of transformation. And the pain was just more than I could bear. But the only thing that kept me going was the knowledge that God is on the throne, that heaven rules, that He is sovereign, and that He had a reason for making me a woman.

Proverbs 3:5 and 6 is one of the most popular verses in the Bible. In fact, I looked up on Google "most popular Bible verses" and the first seven results that came up, all of them listed this verse. And yet I think most of us don't live like we believe it. I mean, do we really trust in the Lord with all our heart and lean not on our own understanding? Do we submit to Him in all our ways?

I think we like the part where it says He will make our paths straight because we all want to know the will of God. But do we really live this first part? When I first came home, it's kind of hard to see in the picture there, that was the first day I came home to my mom's Bible study. And I was amazed as these women just embraced me and loved on me.

And for the first time in my life, I began to really feel loved by women and feel accepted as a woman. I still looked so masculine and yet the Lord, even there, I looked so much softer than I had just a few days earlier. And I think it was just the Lord beginning to do that healing work and He just began to transform me.

And then of course, I had me and my husband. We were just married four months ago. So God has just done an incredible work. But it's been just a miracle of the Holy Spirit. I didn't figure out how to fix all this. And it wasn't an intellectual thing. Even as I was trying to figure out how do you describe the joy of embracing biblical womanhood?

I kind of chose the topic before I thought about it too deeply because I know that I've had all this joy. But I struggled in how to communicate this. And one of the reasons I think, like how do you describe what it's like to an unbeliever? How do you describe what it's like to be in the presence of God?

How do you describe the transformation that Jesus has done in you? Imagine telling a dead person what it's like to be raised from the dead. That's what we've all experienced in salvation. And so this really, I think ultimately has been about a healing work that the Lord has done in me. And it's not an intellectual knowledge. It's a deep working of the Holy Spirit that has been within me.

But we all have to make this decision: does heaven rule or do I? What I didn't know then was the healing, redemption, and transformation or restoration God had in store for me. I'm so thankful He didn't leave me in that darkness. I didn't understand the great things that God had for me in store.

Ask yourself, are you like I was? Willing to obey God but completely untrusting of His ability to make biblical womanhood a blessing for you and not a curse. Are you convinced if you embrace biblical womanhood that you will be confined, restrained, and undervalued? What if the Lord wants to heal the pain that caused you to reject His design and intent for womanhood?

And biblical womanhood could be a great joy instead of pain. And again, even if you've never struggled with wanting to be a man or something like that, I think sometimes it's just hard to be a woman. Sometimes we feel like we don't quite know how to do it. Or we feel like God's design is restraining.

I'm sure most of you in this room are not desiring to be that way, but I think so many times we've been sinned against so much. Whether it's a bad relationship with our father or maybe girls that have bullied us, things like that. So this breakout will cover biblical womanhood a little differently than you might have heard before.

I know this ministry is all about biblical womanhood, so I was very intimidated when I thought about teaching this. And this ministry has so much material on this that has really changed my life because when I came out of the transgender lifestyle, I was okay with identifying as woman just because that's the way God made me. But I didn't like being a woman.

And it was about a year later I was in this discipleship group and about six months in, they were going to do this study from Nancy and Mary called *True Woman 101: Divine Design*. And that's the last thing on this earth that I wanted to read. I was not interested. But I was already invested in this discipleship group and I thought, "Well fine, I'll go ahead and do this study."

And really the first chapter I was like, these questions are so dumb, this really doesn't apply to me, and they just don't get it that I'm this trans person. But by the second chapter, it was interesting because I don't know if anybody remembers what the second chapter is on. It's about how God created man. And I remember reading that and going, "I am not a man."

And it really began, the Lord really began to soften my heart and open my heart to the fact that I was created different. It was like, "Okay God, well if I am really created differently then You're going to need to teach me this design because I don't understand." Sin has really distorted male and female relationships.

And I think sometimes we often project something on manhood by someone that has hurt us. And we'll say, and this happens all the time, maybe there's a man that's really hurt you in your life and you'll say men are all jerks or men can't be trusted or men are not protective or whatever it might be. And in fact, that revelation actually is what started me on this quest of "God, male and female design is so much more profound than we understand."

Why is it that when somebody sins against us we project it on the entire sex? Half the population. And yet I hear this all the time. And often it goes back to one person in your life. And sometimes multiple people. But a lot of times what happens when there's unforgiveness in your life, a lot of times you will project those same things on other people.

And you ever hear people talk about how people push their buttons? Well, a lot of times when people are pushing your buttons, there's unforgiveness there that the Lord is trying to highlight to you and is trying to say this needs healing. But we just keep acting like this is just a—this is just the way I react or that just sets me off. And we want to blame it on other people. But the Lord is saying there's a hurt here that He is constantly trying to remind you of.

But this started me on this quest of like, "Lord, what is male and female really?" I mean, I know what the Bible says our roles are. But I began to get this sense that there was something deeper. So is there really a difference between male and female? And I think some of that is obvious but some of it's probably not so much.

The Lord had given me this example a couple of years ago about a detective who goes to—and this was a blog I wrote a couple of years ago—and he goes to this—he's called to this crime scene and it's his best friend's house and his best friend has said he doesn't have any knowledge of what happened and he gives him an alibi or whatever.

But the detective is going through the scene and he realizes he's caught his friend in several lies and the evidence is not matching his friend's story and he realizes in horror that his friend actually has murdered his wife. And so he wants to help. He doesn't want his friend to go to jail. So he alters the entire crime scene to make it look like his friend is innocent.

But what he's done he hasn't actually changed what actually happened. All he's done is change the evidence of what's happened. And so what we have today is people that are changing their gender, they're transitioning, but all they're changing is the—making the evidence look like something different than what is stamped so deep inside.

Because the reality is, did you know that there are over 6,500 biological differences between male and female? And that's only what scientists know about. That doesn't include everything God knows that we don't. 330 billion cells are replaced in your body every single day. You have trillions of cells, but every single day 330 billion cells are replaced and regenerated.

And that means your DNA that has your sex chromosomes in every single cell is like the information code that tells your body how to make those cells. So every day, your body is going to billions of your cells, recognizing that you are female and then regenerating those cells based on that information. So every day, all day long, your body is telling you over and over that you are female.

So can you have a male brain in a female body? We hear this all the time in this trans culture. But the reality is if your sex chromosomes are in every single cell of your body including your brain, then that's biologically impossible. It's not—it's not possible to have a male brain in a female body or vice versa.

And I want to go through just some of the differences. This is a little bit longer study and it's not really the focus of today, but there are so many differences between male and female and I just love to study this because God's design was so incredibly intentional. Have you ever heard Nancy and Mary talk about how women are created relational? We're created from the side of man, we're created to be in relationship.

And I think that's really the essence of what it means to be a woman. We are relational by nature and we are to create and foster and nurture relationship. And I think to help men understand relationship better, especially with the Father. And I think women connect in a way that men struggle to.

Girls respond more readily to faces. They begin talking earlier. Boys respond earlier in infancy to perceptual discrepancies in their visual environment. In adulthood, women remain more oriented to faces and men to things. Men are much more object-oriented, much more task-oriented. And even in women, some of us become very career-focused, but we're still very relational. We're wired so different with different needs and different basic ways of functioning.

So one of the coolest differences, I love this. So there's a difference in the hearing between men and women. So women have better high-frequency hearing. They're particularly adapted to a baby's cry. They're able to discern between a broader range of emotional tones in the human voice. All these things are so cool to me.

But men are better at blocking out unwanted and repetitious noise. In fact, this was so funny to me as I started studying this and I asked Perry, and he was over at my house doing some work in the backyard, and I'm in the house studying and there was this barking dog that was driving me out of my mind.

And I finally went out and and I was like, "Are you tired of this dog? Is this bothering you? I can't stand this. I just want to—" not that I would ever hurt an animal, but I was like I couldn't take the barking. And he was like, "Oh, I think I heard it earlier, but I hadn't noticed it." I'm like, "How do you not notice this dog?"

But it's the same. And they're better at sound location, detecting changes in the audio environment. And you just think about the way that God designed men and the roles He gave them for men to be the protector. And so men are able to tell where a sound is coming from a lot better than a woman. And so they're able to sense danger a lot easier.

But of course, we are designed to where we can't tune out a baby's cry. God gave us that for a reason. And then of course, men are able to detect predators, danger, whatever it might be. Women tend to function better when they're sleep deprived. Again, that goes back to babies.

But remember, even if we haven't had babies—like I don't have my own children and won't be able to, I had the female organs removed—but even if we don't, this points to the greater reality of how we are to nurture and foster life. So even if you say, "Well, I may not be able to have kids or I've never had kids," something like that. The fact that it's pointing to how God designed us to be able to care for babies, but it's actually pointing to a greater reality than that.

Our taste and smell are different. Again, this goes back to women have better senses of taste and smell. They have on average 43% more cells and almost 50% more neurons in their olfactory bulbs. This is the part of the brain that's responsible for processing smells. Women usually have more taste buds than men. Sorry.

Women of childbearing age taste flavors more intensely than younger or older females and they may notice increased sensitivity during pregnancy. And this is all about being able to taste and smell and avoid foods that are bad for the baby. Skin is about thicker skin by about 25% in males. They have higher densities of collagen, they're less sensitive to the cold. They sweat about 30 to 40% more than females.

But again, they were created—now it's in our society today, a lot of men and women have desk jobs, but originally God created man to till the ground and for much harder physical work. And so He's given them greater protection in their skin to be able to help them with that. There's differences in the heart and I'm not going to go through all these, but like even the lungs, the men have a larger lung volume than females.

The carrying angle, this is interesting. We're not as strong as males. God gave us weaker muscles and a different type of muscle. But God designed different things like the carrying angle for a baby. And you can see that blue line is actually the same angle. It's hard to tell, but so her arms come out wider but it's to be able to carry the baby in a way that's different from the man because our muscles aren't quite as strong.

There're actually different types of fibers. Women tend to be much more flexible. Men have a lot more of the fast twitch fibers so they have this explosive energy. And I remember one time I had been running for several years and I loved to go jogging and Perry had not been—he'd been jogging some, but not as much.

But I remember I said, "I'll race you to the van," and he shot past me with such power. I was blown away and I thought, "Where did that come from?" And I felt like even if women are better at endurance, but men have this explosive power and their muscles are just different. I'll never forget that. I was just stunned by this energy.

And then just a difference in the way our hips are designed and of course the pelvis is more flexible to allow for the expanding birth canal. Every single part of the body is designed differently and every part of the body speaks to the roles that God gave us. So men have broader shoulders which speaks to his responsibility for the family's provision.

Shoulders even in the Bible represent the burden of the family. He is responsible for the family's well-being as the protector, he bears the burden for teaching his family as the priest of the home. He generally—not always in every relationship, but universally across every culture—men are almost always taller. Usually like four to six inches on average to be able to protect and cover.

The woman kind of fits perfectly under his arm. He's able to spring into action, he's able to run faster. They have longer legs, a stronger back. So Eve is more soft and flexible and she's the helper and the nurturer. She's responsible for nurturing life. She fits under his arm and at his side.

And every part of her body is designed to create and nurture life. She has a better ability to recognize facial expression. She has a longer torso to accommodate the extra reproductive organs. And think about this, this is often the first question when a woman is pregnant, often the first thing that anybody asks her: is it a boy or is it a girl?

And why is it that this is the first thing? God He says two things about human beings: that they are made in the image of God and that He made them male and female. And so I began to think, "Lord, this is the first—" I mean, we know they're human just because they're coming from a human parent.

But the first thing that is declared over a child is that they're male or female. And I began to understand that this was something really profound. And I think it really ultimately—and I know this ministry talks about this a lot, but we know that this points to the fact that this is all about Christ and the bride.

That a man is going to leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh. This is a profound mystery, but I'm talking about Christ and the bride. And this is all about displaying the gospel. And really, masculinity and femininity display the full character of God.

I was asking the Lord one time—and sorry, I've kind of got off my notes here, Perry was saying right before this that I would probably get off my notes and I do. But one thing that I noticed is that God the way He designed us. When I was looking up the word for—you remember in the in Genesis where it says that I will God said I will make a helper suitable for him?

The word suitable is the word "neged" which means opposite of, which I understand that's really obvious. I can understand opposite of. But it also means in front of or in the side of. And I was thinking, "God, that doesn't make sense. I don't understand what that has to do with it."

And the Lord reminded me when I was living as trans, I had a partner that was a man living as a woman and it was so obvious to me that he was a man. And he was dressing like a woman but this was clearly a man. And I kept thinking, "Why is this not real for him? Why do I still feel like this is fake?"

This was long before I figured out that I was the one being fake too and that it's all fake. But he was like a mirror to me. I could see the truth in him I couldn't see in myself. And the Lord reminded me I'd shared that so many times and I could see these qualities in him. Even though he's acting like a woman, he's dressing like a woman, he's taking the stereotypical women roles, he's into more stereotypical women things.

Oddly until—this is so interesting. He was so feminine and had all these like effeminate things until his brother came back in his life and reconnected him with his family. And all of a sudden he really began to shed this desire to be female. And he didn't want to tell me I don't think at first, but he became more and more masculine as he reconnected with his brother. I think there were some deep wounds there.

But anyway, that aside. So the Lord was teaching me about this concept in front of and in the side of. Men and women display different characteristics of God. Men represent His strength, His protection, His provision, things like that. And women represent His softer nature: His love, His relationship, His nurturing, how He cares for us.

And so those are qualities the qualities that men have are ways that women struggle to trust. Think about how we struggle to trust men that they will protect us because we fear that they will hurt us. We struggle to trust that they will provide for us, things like that. And so men display these characteristics of God that we don't inherently understand and we display that to them.

And so when we are trying to be like men, we're actually distorting the image of God that He's created. So there's this complementary nature. Men are wired to protect, women need to be protected. Men are wired to be providers, women need to be provided for. They're wired to initiate and we're wired to respond. And God created this beautiful picture to be in perfect harmony together.

So again, there are various childhood experiences that may play into this. Like if a someone that's raised by a father who abuses their mother, they may think being a woman is unsafe. If they're sexually abused as a child, they may see only what her value may only be in what she can give sexually.

If she's not allowed to do things her brothers are allowed to do, she might see being a woman is restricted and underprivileged. If she had a really overbearing mother, she might reject her femininity. If she grew up playing with boys more, she might not know how to fit in with girls and she might think she isn't like them. So these are just some various things that I've heard, but I think it can all lead to a distorted view of what it means to be a woman.

Dana Gresh: What an important message this is, especially for those of us with daughters and granddaughters growing up in a gender-confused culture. Laura Perry Smaltz will be back tomorrow to discuss more of the complementary differences between men and women. In the meantime, let's brainstorm how we can show our girls it's good to be a woman.

We've got some resources here at Revive Our Hearts that illustrate the beauty of biblical womanhood. As you know, we love to call it true womanhood. Laura mentioned *True Woman 101* by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and Mary Kassian. That's an incredible study that digs deep into God's purposeful design for women.

We've also got countless podcast episodes and blog articles in the womanhood category on our website. You can search by topic at reviveourhearts.com. You're just going to get lost in rich biblical content like you heard today. I could go on and on. True womanhood is one of our core messages at Revive Our Hearts and 25 years later, God is still allowing us to share it.

This weekend, we're wrapping up another ministry year, which means we're taking a good look at our finances as we prepare for the year to come. At this time, we have a budget shortfall we're asking God to help us cover. We're so grateful for all He's provided already. You can check out the progress bar at the top of our homepage at reviveourhearts.com to see just how generous listeners have already been.

Now, there's still a ways to go if we're going to reach our $1.4 million goal and close that budget gap. Maybe like Laura, you've been impacted by Nancy's teaching on biblical womanhood. Maybe Revive Our Hearts has helped you to embrace your femininity as a good and beautiful thing rather than a limitation.

If that's true and you haven't given yet, would you prayerfully consider making a donation before the end of the month? When you do, we'll gift you Nancy's latest resource called *Called to Thrive* as our way of thanking you. We believe that every woman is called to thrive in Christ and this booklet expresses that core message in nine brief yet biblically rich devotionals.

When you give, you allow us to keep bringing you this message, but you also help us to tell the woman across the globe that she is called to thrive in Christ, that her womanhood is a good and beautiful gift worth joyfully embracing. To give and request *Called to Thrive*, visit reviveourhearts.com or call us at 1-800-569-5959.

Thank you so much for asking the Lord how you might partner with us as we seek to call every woman to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ. Tomorrow, we're hearing more from Laura Perry Smaltz and she's going to broach a topic I think we need to talk about more often, and that is emasculating men. It's become so normalized in our culture and I wonder: do we even realize we're doing it? It's going to be an interesting conversation. 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.