I cannot remember a time in my life when I did not struggle

with shame thinking, there is something wrong with me.

I kind of wasn't even the daughter that my mom wanted.

She wanted a sweet little ballerina that

would play with Barbie dolls.

And she got a girl that loved to read,

loved academics, and loved to play soccer with the boys.

And so I remember all the time, I

would grow up hearing, Christine,

why can't you be normal?

Why can't you be like every other girl?

I was born second generation migrant

Greek in Sydney, Australia.

So I went to school with my little feta cheese sandwiches

because all little Greek girls had feta cheese

sandwiches at school.

But the Australian kids had Vegemite sandwiches.

The Australian kids would laugh at me

and already then it would shame me

because I ate different food.

But what people didn't know, that shame

was exasperated by the fact that I had already--

by the time I'd gone to kindergarten--

been the victim of abuse in my life.

And when you're abused, it's very devastating.

Because when the abuse first starts to happen to you,

you think, what is happening is wrong.

This is shameful.

This is wrong, this should not be happening.

But when no one comes to rescue you,

when it continues to happen week in and week out,

year in and year out, eventually you start to think,

there's something wrong with me and that's

why I'm being abused.

I grew up in a very rigid Greek Orthodox Church

but I certainly had no personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

I did not know that you could have

an intimate personal relationship.

For me, because of the abuse that happened in my life,

because I grew up in a culture which

God was this big bad guy in the sky with a big stick that

was waiting for you to do something wrong.

Every time you did something wrong,

he'd hit you over the head and somehow

had some joy out of all of that.

When I was 22, someone took me to church

and it changed everything.

I really heard the gospel from the Bible.

I was told that Jesus loved me, that there was nothing

that I had done that was too big to separate me

from the love of God.

That even with a past like mine, Jesus Christ,

he died for that on the cross.

That he shed his blood and I remember

the day when the revelation came to me that the blood of Jesus

was sufficient even for my sin.

It was the game changer.

I got a phone call from my brother, George.

He told me that he had just received a letter

from the government department that said that he was adopted.

Well, we went to my mother's house

in order to ask her about this document from the government,

and my mother began to just cry.

And when confronted with this, she said, "I'm so sorry.

George, before your father died, one

of the last things that I promised him

was that I would never tell you and so I tore up the paperwork.

I threw it away and just never thought you would find out."

My mother is crying, my brother is crying, the dog's crying,

and everyone's going crazy.

So I think, what do you do?

So I go into the kitchen, start making some Greek coffee

and some food.

My mother comes in maybe 20 minutes later

and she's standing behind me.

And, in Greek, she says to me, Christina,

since we are telling the truth, do

you want to know the whole truth?

I turned around, I'm two weeks from my 33rd birthday,

and I said to my mom, my word, I've been adopted, too.

And in that moment my mother just starts to weep,

and she says, yes.

I was stunned.

I remember I didn't say anything for a few minutes and then

the very first thing that I said, I went, am I still Greek?

I felt like I was called a lot of names

for a lot of years I wanted to know there was a reason for all

of that persecution.

But then, the next thing that came out of my mouth right

in that kitchen.

I said, oh well mom.

Before I was formed in my mother's womb, whoever's

womb that was, he knew me.

He knitted together my innermost parts,

he fashioned all of my days before as yet that

was one of them.

I'm fearfully and wonderfully made

and regardless of the assault that the enemy sent against me.

He sent an assignment when I was still

in my mother's womb to still kill and destroy my life.

And then when I was three years old,

he sent another assignment into my bedroom

to try to destroy me through abuse and through over a decade

of abuse.

When I went to school, he sent an assignment

into my life to try to quieten me, to try to shame me.

To tell me that you're not good enough,

you're not worthy enough.

You're the wrong gender, you're the wrong nationality.

And all through my life, there was this persecution

of just trying to put shame on me.

And yet, God is a Redeemer.

Now, when I came to faith in Christ at 22,

I discovered that I was created in the image of God.

That I am not the workmanship of a rape.

I'm not the workmanship of an adulterous affair.

I'm not the workmanship of some one night stand.

I'm God's workmanship.

And he has created me, in Christ Jesus for good works.

And no matter what was done to me, ultimately,

what Jesus did for me is bigger than what anyone did to me.