One day, a woman named Amalia came to Pastor Jim Cymbala’s office at the Brooklyn Tabernacle. She began to tell him her life story. Amalia’s father had been a violent alcoholic who beat Amalia’s mother. One night, to protect her mother from another beating, Amalia traded bedrooms with her mother. That night, Amalia’s father began molesting her. Soon, the only way to keep Amalia’s father from beating her mother was to allow him to molest little Amalia. After many years of this abuse, Amalia married a young man in her building and moved out. Amalia’s new husband introduced her to the pleasures of drug use, and soon she was hooked. Their marriage ended, and she found work as a stripper. After giving birth to a baby boy, Vinnie, Amalia decided that she needed to make some changes if she was going to be a good mother to her little son. And here was the point of her visit: Amalia wanted to know if God could really accept her after all she’d done, and if He could change her life. Through the prayers and guidance of the Brooklyn Tabernacle prayer group, Amalia became a Christian. God healed her feelings of shame, her depression, her nightmares, and her memories of abuse. A few months after her conversion, Amalia found her father and forgave him for all he had done to her.