Have you ever seen the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding?

If so, you’ve basically seen my family on the big screen. Except that we are Italian, not Greek. Minor details! I was raised on the words, “There are only two kinds of people in this world. Italians, and everyone else who wishes they were Italian!”

As a child, the world was black and white for me. I was Italian. I had a huge family with more relatives named Nick than I could count, and I was Catholic. Those few things comprised my identity, and I was proud of it!

We weren’t your everyday Christmas and Easter Catholics. We attended a traditional, Latin speaking mass, where the only thing spoken in English was the fifteen minute homily. My siblings and I would file into church, and spend the service trying to stifle our giggles, knowing we would get a good rap on the head if we got out of control.

I was the youngest of 6 children. My parents had 5 children in their first six years of marriage. As the story goes, when all of the kids were in school (seven years later), my mom got lonely and they had me.

Throughout my early childhood, I watched my siblings struggle through their teen years, experimenting with drugs, alcohol and sex. I had enough Catechism to know they were going to spend a LOOOOOONG time in purgatory! I came up with a better plan for myself. I decided to spend my early years partying, and when I got old I would become a nun to make up for all the sins I planned to commit during the “fun” years!

I was a “relatively happy” kid growing up in suburban America. We didn’t have much money, but we had what we needed. When I started second grade my mom took a job working outside the home. Early that year, I came home from school and found myself in the care of a male teenage relative. When I entered the house I immediately knew something wasn’t right. Before the afternoon ended, my innocence had been stripped from me.

I was terrified.

I was threatened not to tell anyone because, “We would both get in a lot of trouble.” I had no idea what to do. I decided that, despite the threats, I needed to tell someone.

In my seven-year-old mind, my “BIG” 5th grade neighbor would know what to do. I went across the street and told my friend all about what had happened. She sat in stunned silence. I left, feeling relieved that I had shared my secret with someone older and wiser. It would be safe with her.

The next week, when I boarded the school bus, it was as though I was in a movie scene. After tripping over one of the boys extended feet in the aisle, I looked up into a sea of unfriendly faces. It seemed as if the world was moving in slow motion. Kids were pointing at me and laughing and saying obscene things. I knew my secret was out. As I made my way toward an empty seat, gulping back tears, I made myself this promise:

“I will NEVER tell ANYONE again.”

Despite enduring six more years of intermittent sexual abuse, I kept that promise. My life became a cycle of abuse, fear, secrecy, and shame.

As I grew into my tween years, my anger escalated. I was a classic example of the truth that “hurt people hurt people.” In fifth grade I threatened a classmate on the bus. That afternoon, I rode my bicycle to her house and jumped off, muttering curses and threats. Before I even got to her creaky farmhouse door, her grandmother was on the porch screaming at me and threatening to call juvie if I didn’t get off their property! I stopped beating up on Billie Jo that day.

I found another target for my anger, one who was always available... me. I put myself through the ringer mentally and emotionally. I became an overachiever; at least I tried to be one. I worked hard to get good grades, to be well liked, to be “good enough”… But I could never quite measure up to my expectations, and I regularly spent time and energy wallowing in a mire of self-loathing.

I began experimenting with smoking, drinking and promiscuity. I had no taste for alcohol, or cigarettes, but found my body to be useful for manipulating boys into giving me attention.

Then came the middle school years.

Just saying the words, “junior high” sends a shiver down my spine. Who doesn’t remember entering middle school tied up in knots of anxiety, self-doubt, and the fear that everyone in the world is watching you? I remember walking into school every day wishing I could be one of the popular kids; and walking out knowing I wasn’t.

The summer before eighth grade my parents offered me an opportunity to do something I’d never done before. I think they knew I was struggling, but honestly, they had NO IDEA what was going on in that lost heart of mine.

It’s funny the details I recall. We were in the car, the old black Ford with red seats that felt like velvet. They asked, “Tere, how would you like to go to camp this summer?”

“Will there be boys there?” I could imagine my parents sending me to a Catholic all-girls camp, in which case my answer would have been a resounding, “No thank you!”

“Yes.” … (pause)… “It’s a Bible camp.” I didn’t know what a Bible camp was, but if it had boys, I was in.

We pulled into camp and unloaded my SEVEN small suitcases from the trunk of the Ford, onto a little train that would take everything back to our campsite. I was staying in a section of the camp called Teepee Town. That luggage was nothing compared to the baggage I was carrying in my heart and soul.

The week flew by, and I had a great time. I made friends with a girl named Kerry and I even found a camp-boyfriend for the week! I didn’t pay much attention to the Bible lessons, and the songs they sang were completely foreign to me. I thought it was all a little strange, but I still enjoyed it.

On the very last night of camp, we were sitting in a circle inside our teepee, when our counselor asked us a question. I loved my counselor. Her name was Becky. She was tan, with dark hair and straight white teeth, and she seemed genuinely interested in me.

She handed out small slips of paper and said, “I want you to write one word on this slip of paper. Just write yes or no to this question: Have you ever accepted Jesus as your Savior?” I hastily scribbled “no”, and handed her my paper. I leaned over to Kerry and whispered, “What did you write?”
“Yes,” she whispered back.

Hmmm, I thought, maybe I should pay attention to this stuff.

As I listened to Becky speak, I heard her explain that we are all sinners. Well, no one had to convince me of that! I was currently in the “sin as much as possible” phase of my life plan. She was also saying something about Jesus dying on the cross. I had crucifixes in every room of my house. No news there.

But for the first time in my life, I began to understand that the God who created the heavens and the earth, sent His own son, Jesus, to die for me. ME: A promiscuous, bratty, foul-mouthed teenager! I was shocked to think God would want anything to do with me. Yet Becky was saying that Jesus came to die, so that God could have a relationship with us, with me.

That night, as I bedded down in my sleeping bag, I looked up through the hole in the top of my teepee. I could see stars in the clear night sky. I didn’t have a firm grasp of theology, and I didn’t know much more than what I had just heard. But in my heart, I prayed a stammering prayer that went something like this,

“God, I’m making a mess of my life. I want you to take over. I want to give my life to you.”

I didn’t understand the implications of that simple prayer, but it was a prayer of faith coming from the heart of a desperately lost girl who knew that she needed a Savior. There were no fireworks or bolts of lightning in the sky, but in that moment, God had taken me from darkness to light, from captivity to freedom and from death to life.

When I woke the next morning, I didn’t feel like a new person, but I was one. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even tell anyone about my little prayer, but God knew. He heard and He answered me. He began transforming me in ways I didn’t understand at the time.

Ephesians 2:1-9 says, “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.”

That’s my story. I was DEAD, spiritually. I was deserving of God’s wrath. Yes, I had been sinned against. But I also had chosen to sin. I had been living in opposition to God. Left to myself, I was spiraling into self-destruction.

BUT GOD… chose me, rescued me, set His love on me and made me His own.

It has been over thirty years, since I whispered that prayer under a star-studded sky. I am a new person. Even as I recount the story of my childhood, it seems only a distant memory.

This is my anthem: God RESCUED me. Through the transforming power of His word, and the Holy Spirit, living in me, every day I’m inching closer to the woman He has created me to be. I’m learning to walk out the freedom and joy of knowing Him in the midst of my broken world. I’m confident that God is continuing to write my story, page by page.

“Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen”. (Eph 3:20,21)