“There was something broken in me,” Christina relates of her younger years.
Sexually abused as a child and introduced to alcohol in middle school, she was easily charmed into marriage to an older man when she was 21. “He won me over, but he was abusive in every way,” she recalls. “If there was a way he could control me or manipulate me, he did.”
Then her husband broke her arm, and Christina knew she had to get out of the marriage. She filed a police report, and when her husband was arrested, she came to Moriah House with her two young daughters.
“It was life-changing,” Christina says of arriving at Moriah House. “I immediately felt protected, safe and loved.”
Christina tells us the program was very rewarding, especially the counseling and being in community with other women. Eight years after graduation, Christina maintains relationships with many of her friends from Moriah House, residents and staff alike. She comes back often to share her testimony and to donate clothes and other goods.
Although raised as a Christian and saved at 13, Christina had never “sold out for Christ” until she came to Moriah House. “It was holy ground,” she says. “This is where my relationship with Jesus became very real.”
Christina’s daughters, now 12 and 14, attend a Christian school where they get good grades and have both had leading roles in school musicals. “They’re very well-adjusted,” Christina says. As for Christina, she has adjusted to life as a single parent. Shortly after graduating from Moriah House, she got a job, a house and a car. Today she is an office manager for a waste management company. Looking back, she says, “I would pray, and God would provide. He always made a way when there didn’t seem to be one.”
No longer broken, but healed by God’s mercy, Christina says, “There are all kinds of causes you can give to, but Moriah House can change someone’s life. You’re providing hope and life for women and children.”
“Forget the former things, do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing!” — Isaiah 43:18-19
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