There I stood, on top of the bridge, staring down at the frigid torrents of a raging river. I was ready and even content with my decision to cash in my life insurance policy. With no children, no hope and over a half a million dollars in debt, it was time to jump. That’s when I felt a hand on my shoulder and heard an audible voice say, “Go back to bed, I’m not through with you yet.”
There is a core longing inside of each and every one of us. That core longing is to hear these three things from our biological fathers, “I love you; I am proud of you and you are really good at…” In my case, those words never came. My biological father abandoned me before I was even born. Through his physical assaults, he hoped to cause a miscarriage. When that failed, he chose to use psychological warfare to discredit me and even humiliate me.
For me, it was an extremely painful 21-year pursuit of a relationship that never would come to fruition.
Ultimately, it would literally take an act of war for me to accept and embrace the father figure that God had placed in my life through my Mom’s third marriage. In 1991, after receiving orders to report to Ft. Benning GA, for the Gulf War, I found myself at a crossroads. As a U. S. Army Infantry Soldier chances were I could become a casualty of war. My dilemma? Do I serve my country with my biological father’s name or do I take on the name of the man who had been a real father to me since 6th grade? The choice was easy.
So, in February 1991, I became a Liberati by legal adult adoption.
For the next 14 years, I would continue to wrestle with abandonment issues and an absent father wound. The pain at times was manageable only by self-medicating with drugs and alcohol. This only numbed the pain. Material pleasures didn’t help either, they simply added to the debt that I was accumulating.
I could no longer endure the pain. I found myself rationalizing my decision to end my life and cash in my Life Insurance policy. I figured that due to my intense pain, I must have been causing pain to all those around me. I justified my decision, thinking that my death would relieve the pain of others and that they could find joy if I wasn’t around. What a lie the great deceiver tries to web.
I listened to the voice I heard on the bridge. I went back to bed, and the next Sunday morning I met with a friend from church. He listened to what I had experienced. No questions asked. He just listened. After hearing my experience, he asked me if he could pray for me. "Yes," I said. I was surprised by his prayer. He was thanking God for working in my life. Later that week, he invited me to a spiritual retreat called, “The Walk to Emmaus.” It was on that three-day retreat that I gave my life to Christ. It was a life-changing weekend to say the least.
I came home with Christ in my heart. Even my wife could see a difference in me. That night before we went to bed, I felt the need to read from Scripture. Having never done this before, I wasn’t sure where to start, so I read a suggested text from one of the speakers from the retreat. It was Luke 19:9-10 which read, "Jesus said to him, 'Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and save the lost.'”
I fell to my knees. My wife didn’t understand, so I read it again and explained that I had been lost, was now found and was bringing salvation to our home. We both cried and praised God at the same time. That night, in the presence of the Holy Spirit, we conceived our son, Anthony Christopher Liberati, who was then born on Christmas day. God is Good! All the Time!
A year later, at another spiritual retreat, I experienced a call to ministry. Today, I am in my 10th year in pastoral ministry seeking to bring salvation to the lost. My prayer each day is to live up to my name’s sake: Christopher (bearer of Christ) Liberati (to liberate, a bearer of Christ who came to liberate. May it be so.
“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” Luke 19:10
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