(TW: self-harm)

Chelsea was 13 when she started cutting, using the sharp edge of the tab of a soda can. She would graduate to scissors and then a razor, creating tiny little slashes along her wrist, then up her arms, into her stomach. It wasn’t until she took a tumble off a bike and put a small gash in her right elbow did the doctor deliver the unexpected discovery to her family.

Unexpected, sort of. Her parents felt a personality shift around age 11, when her friends disappeared and Chelsea became more isolated and withdrawn and set off by the smallest of inconveniences. As her father confided in me one day not long ago, “You have no idea.”

I do, actually.

We’re residing in a harsh place, what with this pesky virus lurking about, but it was already quite dicey for teenage girls like Chelsea, who every single day come face to face with a world littered with booby traps.

It’s a world they often find precariously daunting; the emotions they most express are the ones no parent wants to deal with: rage, sorrow, desperation, emptiness.

Tiffany Daniels knows a thing or two about this. She has seen it, heard it, watched as those around her experience it.

Not wanting her daughter or anyone else’s daughter to fall into similar snares, she founded a yearly conference to help high school girls embrace what she calls “their security and identity.”

Since 2015, THERE{4} Teen Gathering has served more than 7,000 girls by pouring into them so much about their worthiness and value that the negativity booming in their ears becomes a whisper, if that. Over two days, passionate speakers and worship artists use inspirational messages and personal testimony to build them up spiritually so they can be resilient socially.

“It’s incredible to see how much truth is poured into these students over 36 hours of incredible speakers preaching the Gospel from the moment they arrive to the moment they leave,” Gloria Umanah, the dynamic spoken-word artist, says after her participation. “They feel seen and known and loved and heard.”

THERE{4} Teen Gathering offers up that rare environment where it’s safe to share struggles. They speak of the challenges young women face today, unlike that of boys, by pointing them back to God’s Word – changing a mindset changes actions.

“The world is constantly telling them you need to look, perform, do this like this, be this way,” Daniels says. “That’s a lie. They should not find their security through social media or media in general. Trying to find their true identity and the unique person they are and dispel comparisons. To dispel the lies the world tends to tell them, and us.”

In other words, many of these girls are drowning in a sea of impurity and don’t know it. Chelsea didn’t. The lies took root on social media: You’re not skinny enough, pretty enough, wealthy enough.

Lies become truth if we listen to them long enough.

“Every girl is carrying something,” Daniels says. “Whether it is ‘my hair is always frizzy’ to contemplating suicide. At the conference, we’re very intentional. We get them to come face to face with what they are afraid of. Whatever that stronghold is, we walk them through that, whether it’s comparison, suicide, parents, issues with boys. We want them to get to a place where they finally say, ‘You know what, I don’t need to carry this.’”

This year’s THERE{4} Teen Gathering, its sixth, is set for Feb. 19-20. Pandemic limitations have pushed it out of Central Bible Church, where Daniels’ husband, David, is lead pastor, to virtual status.

Awaiting them online will be speakers such as Jamie Ivey, Katherine Wolf and Sade Robertson Huff, the Duck Dynasty alum who tells young girls to stop searching for fame “and follow God because if we need anything after this year, we need a Savior.”

As for the different feel of a virtual conference, don’t fret, says Daniels. An online presence means THERE{4} Teen Gathering will be able to reach some 10,000 girls – worldwide – instead of the 1,500 the church usually holds. “We’ve got girls signing up from the northeast and Midwest and Florida,” Daniels says, her voice rising. “It’s exciting. We don’t see this as a limitation. We see this simply as expanding our reach.”

For more: there4gathering.com