“I just don’t feel like my story could be useful on this stage.”
Those were the words of a Secret Keeper Girl intern who was just about to lead worship at one of our events. The enemy of her soul was lying to her and telling her that her story disqualified her from being used. But Kaycee’s* story did not disqualify her, and I knew that.
Kaycee, you see, was sexually abused as a child and was still fighting the battle to believe it was not her fault. I was fighting it with her, but she needed to hear from God.
“Let’s pray and ask God to show you that your story is useful,” I suggested as we readied ourselves for the event backstage.
“What would that look like?” Kaycee asked. “I’m not even speaking tonight. I’m just singing.”
“I don’t know and it’s a tall order,” I answered honestly. “But God can do anything.”
We paused and I laid hands on Kaycee and asked God specifically to use her story somehow, even though she would not get to tell it.
One hour later, I was walking through the nearly empty lobby during the event. The worship team, including Kaycee, was just finishing another song when I noticed a mom and daughter kneeling in the corner. They were both quietly crying, so I approached them to see if I could help.
“My daughter just this minute confessed to me that she’s been abused,” said the mom through thick tears as she hugged her girl. “I’m so proud of her!”
“I am too,” I said, looking her in the eyes. “What made you tell your mom today?”
“I dunno,” she answered awkwardly. “Just every time we sang a song tonight I felt like something was telling me to tell my mom what happened.”
Yes! God did that with our prayer and Kaycee's presence! (I still get chills when I tell the story.)
Working with victims of abuse and healing sexual brokenness has always been a fundamental part of our ministry. This is just the beginning of one story of restoration, but we’ve since heard hundreds of powerful stories about how God has worked through our ministry, and they tend to have a common thread: they don’t happen through keeping secrets. Rather they came through telling them. Girls have revealed wounds to their mothers from the audience of our event and moms have found healing from past traumas they locked away in their hearts years ago. Our ministry has heard story after story of girls and moms who have been freed from harmful secrets through our ministry, and we believe it’s time we acknowledge the disconnect between our brand name and our ministry.
At its conception, Secret Keeper Girl was an offshoot of another project, meant to be a junior-ministry based off my book “Secret Keeper” for teenagers. We never expected it to grow into its own thriving brand, be used to bring over 14,000 girls to Christ and to disciple hundreds of thousands through live events, podcasts, online Bible studies, and a subscription box. We’ve seen powerful works of freedom and healing happen in lives through this ministry. With the growth of the ministry, we came to realize our “junior” name may not be the right fit, especially since the name “Secret Keeper Girl” is not at all indicative of the work that we do.
So, with great excitement and anticipation of even greater ministry, we decided to rebrand to the name True Girl in 2019. We felt this name better encapsulates our ministry’s heart. It presents a more positive, empowering tone, and believe that adopting a more accurate name will increase our opportunity to reach girls who otherwise might say “Secret Keeper What?”
True Girl is a better representation of our mission. In a culture that lies to girls by telling them they have to grow up too fast or be someone they are not, our goal is to equip moms to protect their daughters and raise a generation of girls who are grounded in Truth, so they will be confident in their faith and in themselves, becoming all that God meant for them to be: a True Girl after God.
We are a ministry that takes action to protect victims and goes out of our way to make their healing a priority. And when we saw that our name could be misconstrued as harmful, we changed it.