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CBN.com – "The fights were so bad that the police were at our house all the time," Christina DiMari tells The 700 Club.
When Christina was only seven-years-old, she began escaping to the only place she felt safe.
"I ran to the beach because it was so peaceful there, and I just loved it. I would just go there and listen to the waves, and it was like my little sanctuary away from this crazy life," she continues.
Christina and her siblings grew up on their own for the most part.
"My mom was just totally checked out on her own program. My father was either at work [he was a lieutenant in the San Francisco Police Department], and he was very bipolar so there was this really good side of my dad and this really bad side."
Eventually her parents divorced, and Christina turned to drugs.
"It made me just escape the reality of the pain of what was going on in my life. By the time I was 12, I was smoking marijuana and by time I was 14, I was doing cocaine, mushrooms, and acid. I totally felt like I was by myself. I started feeling that abandoned feeling," she says.
Just a few months before graduation, Christina was kicked out of school. However, her guidance counselor stepped in and helped her finish.
"She said something that changed my whole life. She said, 'Up to this point, it doesn’t appear to me that you’ve even tried, so why don’t you just try?' The only way I was going to set this in motion was if I agreed to go to college, and that was huge for me because that played such a huge significant piece in my whole journey, from that point on. College was never going to be in my agenda. All of a sudden, I knew my life was gong to be okay."
Christina went to college. She was now motivated to study and succeed. Then a friend asked her a pointed question.
"She was just like, 'I just want to ask you a question. Are you on God’s side or Satan’s side?' "
"I said I think I’m on God’s side, but I don’t know for sure."
"She said that’s just where the Devil wants you is thinking, but not knowing. You could really know. If you really knew God, you would know."
The question she couldn’t answer sparked Christina’s interest. She went to church.
"I was in the middle of the service and just started crying," she remembers. "I was like, that’s it. That’s what I’ve been looking for my whole life and so I went forward at the end and received Christ to come into my life."
Christina started attending church regularly and reading her Bible.
"I had such a passion to help other people also find Him because I felt like I had searched for Him so long and finally found Him that I wanted other people to find Him too."
She eventually married and started a family of her own. Yet she still struggled with feelings of abandonment.
"It really hit me becauase I didn’t even really want to give up all of that. I didn’t want to feel it. I didn’t even want to think about it. I wanted just to be over it."
As Christina prayed, she found her answer.
"In Psalm 18, it says God made my life complete when I place all the pieces before Him. I felt like He was asking me to give Him all of the pieces that are unresolved in my life. He wanted me to give Him all that stuff that I’ve never been able to put back together myself."
No longer trapped by feelings of anger and bitterness, Christina details her struggles in her memoir, Ocean Star.
"It took me on the journey of really putting the pieces together in a way so I could pass over some of the things God has done in my life."
Now she travels the country holding workshops for girls who might feel abandoned like she did.
"In God’s word He just kept having me look at Him. He is everything I need, everything I missed in my mother and father. He provides that for you. I know that God will heal all of us when we give him the pieces."
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