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In Costa Rica, a woman found healing and new purpose through Celebrate Recovery.

Mariela came to a Celebrate Recovery group carrying decades of quiet pain.

On the first night, she shared with the group that she struggled with depression. But as the small group worked through the lessons together, a deeper story began to surface. Mariela remembered her mother telling her—when she was just four years old— “I never wanted you.” Those words had followed her ever since.

Week after week, Mariela showed up at Celebrate Recovery. She did her homework. She prayed. And one evening, as she journaled through a lesson on forgiveness, she said God gave her a picture she’d never seen before.

“I saw myself as that little girl again,” she told Marty and Joy Hand, the TMS Global Cross Cultural Workers who were leading the group. “And I saw Jesus standing beside me. He was there when my mother said those things. He was with me the whole time.”

That moment changed everything. The memory didn’t disappear, but its weight lifted. Mariela forgave her mother and began to walk in a new kind of freedom. By the time she completed the Celebrate Recovery program, her sadness had lifted, and before long she was leading others herself.

Today, Mariela serves as the ministry leader for that same recovery group, helping others find the same freedom she found when she realized that God had never left her side.

“That’s what Celebrate Recovery does,” Joy said. “It helps people see that God was there all along—and that changes everything.”