Robert DiCristo had reached his limit with his daughter Brianna. She had wreaked havoc on all around her and almost died from a heroin overdose in front of her 2-year-old son, James. Not long
after her parents divorced, when DiCristo was 12, she discovered that her mother was a drug addict. Bonding over drugs, they became best friends – first using opiates, then heroin. A high
school dropout, DiCristo was pregnant at 15. Though her father wanted her to move in with him, she refused.
By then, her 39-year old mother was dying. After her mother died, DiCristo says she had no choice but to live with her dad. But it didn’t take long to burn every bridge with him. “I wrecked my car twice and started using heroin with an aunt,” she recalls. “I was tearing apart the whole family with one bad thing after another.” A few weeks before Christmas 2015, DiCristo says she overdosed in the middle of the night, collapsing on the floor unconscious and not breathing. Robert and DiCristo’s brother kept her alive until an ambulance arrived. A week later Robert drove her to a Teen Challenge 12-month program called Beauty for Ashes.
“Everything was God, God, God,” says DiCristo, 19. “I thought: You people are crazy. I was so overwhelmed.” Cindy L. Zello, the program’s executive director, asked DiCristo to try to last two
weeks. DiCristo did, and just as she started to adjust, she discovered she was pregnant, again. Zello began interceding before God on DiCristo’s behalf and her prayers began to be answered. By January 2016 DiCristo started attending church and participating in group Bible studies. Once she began hearing about Jesus, DiCristo wanted to learn more. Soon she surrendered her life to
Christ, accepting Him as her Lord and Saviour.
Still, DiCristo says she was scared to try to parent two children. But God kept reassuring her. Through Beauty for Ashes, DiCristo has been learning how to be a mother to James, now 3½ years old, as well as her 2-month-old daughter, Mercy.
Source: penews.org
Bible Study: Galatians 2:20
APRIL: Praise God for Christian intercessors like Cindy Zello. Pray WIDER for addicts that you know of to overcome addiction with Gospel led help.
