VERONICA NOVOTNY
STAFF WRITER
“You have no idea the treasures he wants to give you, the treasures of heaven he wants to give you,” said well-known chastity speaker Crystalina Evert in a talk entitled “Women Made New.”
Evert, founder of Women Made New, co-founder of the Chastity Project and mother of 10, spoke on April 25 at 7 p.m. in Christ the King Chapel in honor of Sexual Assault Awareness Month. She presented on the healing and spiritual renewal possible after experiencing a broken sense of identity due to the wounds of sexual abuse or sin.
Evert talked about her experience with both sexual abuse as a child and the pressure she faced to use her body to “prove she loved” or gain affection from various boyfriends in high school.
Even during parties, “I still heard God’s voice hunting me down,” Evert said.
After discovering the truth of personal dignity at a chastity talk, Evert embraced her newly-discovered dignity and threw herself into a life of virtue and pursuing holiness.
She said that when she was several years into her marriage, old wounds began surfacing in the form of anger towards her family, emotional unrest and a general sense of brokenness. Evert began attending counseling, frequented the Eucharistic adoration chapel and slowly experienced the deep healing her life had previously lacked.
Even when she felt broken and dirty from her past wounds, Evert said that she realized “(God) wanted to love me in my filth.”
She said she lived by “four pillars of healing” from any sort of wounds: counseling, Eucharistic adoration, spiritual direction and a healthy support system.
After Evert’s talk, the Rev. Nathan Malavolti, TOR, led the women through a time of Eucharistic adoration and offered confessions so that they could receive and experience God’s healing mercy through the sacraments, as Evert had encouraged to her audience to do.
Junior Theresa Sarver appreciated how the topic of the talk was able to reach a spectrum of listeners who had experienced suffering and darkness in their lives due to different forms of abuse or sin.
“I feel like tonight was eye-opening and healing,” Sarver said. “It brought up those touchy subjects that even other Catholic speakers don’t always speak about. … Crystalina was really perfect for this talk.”
The event was hosted by Women’s Ministry, Student Life and Shark.