One80 Podcast Episode 40

Valeria Cerreto: Jesus at the Dashboard

This transcript may have errors that veer from the original recording of this One80 Podcast. Listen at https://one80podcast.com/listen/

Valeria Cerreto:  And, um, that was my lowest moment when I didn’t know where my child was. I didn’t know if I would ever see him again.

Margaret Ereneta: Friends, this is Margaret Ereneta. I’m here with Valeria Cerreto. It’s a privilege to hear from you today. Valeria, thanks so much for joining us to share your awesome 180.

Valeria Cerreto: Thank you so much for having me.

Margaret Ereneta: Before we get started, we have a random question for you. What is the most thrilling thing you have ever done?

Valeria Cerreto: Hmm. probably. Road King Deka rollercoaster at Six Flags in New Jersey.

Margaret Ereneta: I’ve never heard of that one, but it sounds scary. It was

Valeria Cerreto: very

Margaret Ereneta: scary. Are you a thrill

Valeria Cerreto: seeker? A little bit, maybe a little bit sometimes, but now that I have kids, not as much as I used to be.

Margaret Ereneta: Yeah. It does take away some of the thrill seeking, right?

Being a

Valeria Cerreto: mum. Yes. I’m afraid to look out of toll buildings window when I grew up on the. Floor of apartment building.

Margaret Ereneta: Yeah. Well, thank you. Let’s get into your story. You like to say you are a true Samaritan, so can you tell us where you’re from and what that actually means?

Valeria Cerreto: I am from Ukraine and my father is Jewish and my mother is Assyrian.

And in the Bible time children of Assyrians and Jewish people were called Samaritans. So that’s why I like calling myself Samaritan. I’ve never met one, so I think I’d like to meet one. And I think other people like to meet one, so I make sure to share this with people that I’m a Samaritan. That’s

Margaret Ereneta: very interesting.

And you said like the woman at the, well, I’ve heard you say that, a woman at the well. Yeah. That’s great. Can you tell us what it was like growing up in the Ukraine for us? Who wouldn’t understand

Valeria Cerreto: Yeah, so I grew up on the 10th floor of apartment building in the city called Niro, the third largest city in Ukraine I grew up with. A lot of kids in that same building had, there was a lot of apartments there and all those kids, we just grew up together, just like sisters and brothers growing up together.

Somebody would go out and just yell your name, you would like look a different, kind of cut the window and it just come out. And so I loved my childhood. I just loved it and I wish I could give the same thing to my kids. It’s nothing like that here. So we would all just go outside. And we would just play in front of our building.

We had like playground and like we would burn fires and cook potatoes in the fire peop. We would come out with random potatoes and just cook it in the fire and then eat it without salt or anything. It was lots of fun and we would rescue straight cats.

It was so peaceful I grew up speaking Russian. I grew up in the Russian speaking city. I spoke both languages because my grandma, she spoke Ukrainian, but everybody else in my family spoke Russian. My grandma lived in the country, so I would go to my grandma’s country and she had a fruit garden with all kinds of trees, like apples and cherries, sweet cherries, tart cherries, strawberries, like all kinds of stuff grew there.

So I would just come out and I would just have a snack there or whatever. It was so peaceful. It was so calm. My childhood was amazing there. My heart is aching. For the kids who are not gonna have that there now, their childhood is ruined. A lot of kids died now, and it’s just so painful to listen to this, to watch this happen to my birth country, my home country.

The things that happening there now is just, it’s horrible. I dunno. Those kids, they’re not ever gonna have anything like that. They’re not even gonna have any kind of childhood if they even survive. You know? They kids die there every day. It’s

Margaret Ereneta: awful. It’s really just so terrible to watch. Even when you don’t have personal ties, I can’t imagine how hard it is for you and other Ukrainian people to watch this unfolding.

Were you a Jewish home? Were you a Christian home? What was that?

Valeria Cerreto: So at home it was kind of neither one of those things. So my mom is. A Christian, but my dad, you know, neither one of them really following any kind of religion, just in the words, kind of Jewish by blood. My dad is Jewish by blood. My mom is Christian because Assyrian are Christians, and so it wasn’t really any kind of religion going on at the home.

But I did go to Jewish school and Jewish camp for youth and kids, and so mostly Jewish. I grew up mostly Jewish. In environment because I went to Jewish Youth Club and Jewish school and all those things that I was doing. So

Margaret Ereneta: you would identify with being Jewish?

Valeria Cerreto: Yes. Jewish. It would be.

Margaret Ereneta: So did you fully embrace Judaism when you were doing these camps and these clubs?

Valeria Cerreto: Yes, pretty much I did.

Margaret Ereneta: What did you believe about the God of the universe when you were young?

Valeria Cerreto: So I believe that he was strict and we had to follow all the rules to a T and that basically there’s one God and we just had a lot of rules to follow. That was pretty much the main thing of me grown up. Cuz there was a lot of rules.

There were a lot of

Margaret Ereneta: rules to follow in your home or in your religion.

Valeria Cerreto: In the religion, mainly like the specific way to wash hands. Just the not even be able to press a button on the elevator, on the Sabbath, or certain specific details of everyday life that. You just do normally, but then you had to do it with different kind of rules, not necessarily at home, but in spend a lot of time at school and they would take us to synagogues and other events and all kinds of stuff like that.

So, I had to follow different kind of rules.

Margaret Ereneta: And how did you feel about those

Valeria Cerreto: rules? Well, it was kind of overwhelming and it made me feel nervous all the time that I’m not good enough, that I’m gonna do something that wasn’t good enough, do something wrong and things like that.

Margaret Ereneta: What were some other rules that you said there was the rules on hand washing.

What were some other rules that seemed to have weighted you down?

Valeria Cerreto: Well, probably. The eating situation at school, it was all kosher and it was all strict. You can’t bring anything in, you can’t bring anything out. And it was mainly just fish pretty much all the time. And till this day, I can’t really eat fish at much because I ate so much fish at my Jewish school.

Now at home, we didn’t have any of this rules at home. It was not like

that.

Margaret Ereneta: So what was home like? No faith at all at home.

Valeria Cerreto: No, it was kind of like surface faith. It was just believing God is there. We don’t need to go anywhere to get closer to God. We don’t really need to read a Bible. God is there. We, you know, just orthodox Christianity.

So

Margaret Ereneta: what is Orthodox Christianity and how is it different than Christianity that we would understand in the.

Valeria Cerreto: Orthodox Christianity, from my understanding is I don’t think they have services in church.

Like we have a pastor comes out and tells us a message, tells us about things in Bible, and teaches us things. There is mainly, you come out and there’s. Pastor who would just like sing something in like old Russian that nobody could really understand. Wave a thingy with smoke coming out of it.

And then you would just come to a picture of some saint or like Mary Magdalene or something like that. You put a candle under the picture and you would pray to that picture because their belief is that you pray to saints to get your message to God, not directly praying to God. So basically if you want.

A pastor to pray for you for something, you basically pay money for that. If there’s a funeral, you pay pastor to pray at your funeral. So it’s kind of very different there. Now, I don’t know if it changed over the years because I moved. 14, 13 years ago, so it might have changed now, but I wouldn’t know.

What

Margaret Ereneta: was your opinion of Jesus growing up? Was Jesus part of the equation at all? Did you think about Jesus?

Valeria Cerreto: Yes. I’m part of Jesus growing up because my grandma was a Christians. I remember when I was little, I’ve. Present for New Years. So in Ukraine, they do presents for New Years instead of Christmas, I got this golden cross on the chain that I loved.

It was the second after earrings gold jewelry, you know, little girl loved it and my mom had to take it off me the day before I had to go to Jewish school for the first time because that was not appropriate at Jewish school.

Margaret Ereneta: Did you have any inclination about what the cross represented or what that meant?

Valeria Cerreto: Not, not really. It was more like people put crosses on the graves. In Ukraine, you see more of a cross at the grave instead of the stone. So that was like something to do with Jesus. Didn’t really know what.

Margaret Ereneta: So did you celebrate the holidays as a family? The Christian holidays? Did you celebrate Jewish holidays?

Valeria Cerreto: We celebrated Christian holidays at home and Jewish holidays, I celebrated at school.

Were you a good kid? I’m gonna say I was. I was hard-headed as a teenager and rebellious, but as a younger kid, I didn’t think I had, I wasn’t very good student. But in general I was. I would say, Okay. Well

Margaret Ereneta: good. It’s good to be a good kid.

Yeah. So as you grew up, were there influences that led you to question your faith or maybe lack thereof? Were there inklings of hope

Valeria Cerreto: anywhere? So when I was going to school, I knew that I didn’t really belong there. I am Jewish on my father’s line and in school there they would tell my parents that she did this, she did that.

We have people who are more Jewish than your daughter waiting to get in the school. And so I wasn’t even good enough too. So

Margaret Ereneta: growing up, was there a time when you felt particularly far from God?

Valeria Cerreto: Growing up, no, I wasn’t very religious as a child.

Margaret Ereneta: So how did your faith or lack thereof progress post teenage years?

Valeria Cerreto: Once I graduated, I didn’t go to synagogue or church or anything like that. And I got married pretty early. I got married in 18 years old, and then I went straight from like the childhood straight into like adulthood. In a different world.

Margaret Ereneta: How was your marriage?

Valeria Cerreto: It was an abusive marriage. So when I got married to this man, he was from America and he was 20 plus years older than me. I got married to him in March and in August I was already in America. I was here. Language really. I had some basics, but nothing really substantial. And a month after I got here, I got pregnant and that’s when everything changed.

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Valeria Cerreto: He was abusive, not physically. It was a lot of emotional abuse and just basically leaving. So he brought me to the house in the woods, in Georgia Mountains, and I’m from a city, so this. Already crazy for me. And he brought me into this house that our driver was a mile and a half and it was just really different and rough for me already.

And then when I got pregnant, he changed, and it was a different person. He was breeding dogs and I had to clean out foster dogs. I, I was basically a slave. I was just doing a slave work and without any, You know, talking or anything. And he would disappear for days at a time. And we didn’t do any kind of nothing.

No church, no anything, no nothing. And it wasn’t any different for me. So I didn’t know what I was missing. I just knew that I was in another country without a language with a stranger and a house, and I’m about to have his baby and I can’t leave cuz he wouldn’t let me. And I can’t drive.

Margaret Ereneta: He wouldn’t

Valeria Cerreto: let you leave?

No, because first of all, I couldn’t leave because there was nowhere to go. It was the middle of nowhere. I didn’t really try to leave when I was pregnant because I knew I had nowhere to go and he wouldn’t let me go because I was pregnant with his child. And that basically was, I feel like his goal to. In pregnant me and just enslave me basically.

And that’s what happened to me. Later on, I started noticing that he was using drugs. I didn’t know what kind, but I just knew that a person that’s not using drugs would not act like that. Like he would tell me crazy things that are happening in the woods and we are in danger here. And he would call police so many times that they came and arrested him one time when we were in the restaurant cuz he wouldn’t meet them in our house cuz it was too dangerous.

So here I was at the, wait what

Margaret Ereneta: happened? You’re at a restaurant and the police come for him?

Valeria Cerreto: Yes, because when we were at home, he would say that there’s some people in the woods. Killing other people and putting them in some suits of a bear and hanging them on a trees, and they were so dangerous, he wouldn’t let me turn the light on in the house.

My son was, I wanna say three at that time. Wow. And so he would call the police so many times because of some imaginary people in the woods that he took us to the restaurant and he rushed us out of the house so fast that I didn’t even put his shoes. On my child. So he didn’t have shoes on. And we’re sitting in this restaurant and the police comes in to talk to him.

They take him outside and then the server, she walks up to me and she says, you know, your husband’s getting arrested out there. Wow. So I ran out there and he’s yelling to me as as they are putting him in a car. Don’t go back home. Not like I could, cuz it’s like we are like 40 minutes away from home and I’m not driving.

I dunno how to, okay, so then I just sat there in that car with my child not knowing where to go, what to do. He has no shoes. Like I just so remember this. He had no shoes and I just sat there. I was completely lost. I had met some friends online, some girls that was from Ukraine in Atlanta that was like two hours from Atlanta, and one of them come picked me up and took me to their house, and I just stayed there until my ex’s parents.

Came and got him out of the crazy house. They actually put him in the mental institution. Oh, they did? Yeah. So when they got him out of there, he came back and he was just going so crazy. Like one time he shot a gun because he thought he saw something in the river. We had a river right in front of our house and he shot something right next to my ear that I couldn’t hear on my ear for like a couple weeks.

It was so close. It was just so many. Stories like I really barely got out of their life. So my mom have moved at that point to Alabama, to a little town in Alabama called Dothan, Alabama. And ironically, his parents lived in Dothan, Alabama.

Margaret Ereneta: Your ex-husband’s parents lived in that same town.

Valeria Cerreto: Yeah. Well, it’s a neighboring town, so that was my way out.

I tried very hard to save that marriage. I tried, even though there was no love. I had a child with him and child needed a father and. In Ukraine, we are raised, uh, as you know, mothers and, and wives and like in a very traditional way. So I did everything I could to try to save the marriage, but I didn’t know what else I could do.

So I said, maybe if we change the scenery, it would be better if we get out of this middle of nowhere. So I told him, well, your parents are old and they probably need help. Why don’t we pick up and move to Alabama? And so after talking him into it for some time, he agreed. And then we moved to Alabama. I got a job in a restaurant in Olive Garden, and after I got that job, I, um, uh, left him and went to live with my mom because nothing was changing.

Like he would hang bedsheets over windows so that people couldn’t look through the windows, the imaginary people that he saw everywhere. It was a horrible life like, He told me one time he would kill me, and after I left him, things did not get better. I moved in with my mother, but everywhere I would go, he would follow me.

Like I would get in my car, he would be right behind me. He would just follow me everywhere. Everywhere I went, he was there and uh, he would kidnap my child, like he would go there for visitations and then he would refuse to return. Oh wow. He would not return him, return my phone calls, tell me where he is, what’s going on.

He would just not, and I had to search, like I had to go to his mom’s house. I had to go to his house. I had to just drive around and just try to find him and that happened a lot.

Margaret Ereneta: How old was your son when that was happening?

Valeria Cerreto: He was about four or five. And that was really rough cuz he was so little and it was.

Breaking my heart. So he got arrested one time. So I tried to call and report because the dogs that he had was in the bad state. They were just in the dirt. They didn’t have clean water. It was just basically a puppy mill. He was running a puppy mill out of his backyard, okay? And I called the police to report that and they said, oh, you just an ex-wife.

We’re not gonna believe you. You’re just telling us this cuz you bitter or something. And I was like, okay. So one time he kidnapped him. I called the sheriff’s department in that town and I asked to come with me to his house to do. A check if my child is there. And they came with me and they saw the dogs.

He wasn’t there, but they saw the dogs and they, um, collected whatever they needed and eventually he got arrested for that. And when he got arrested for that, they found a laptop that had a video. That’s where he was describing how he was going to kill me. Oh my gosh. What? Yes, he was going to kill me. He was gonna do all those things to me.

And when I tried to do something about it, they said, well, we can’t do anything about it unless he tries. Really?

Margaret Ereneta: Did you say that you got divorced from

Valeria Cerreto: him? Yes, we got divorced and there’s also no parental kidnapping in the state of Alabama. So all those kidnappings I call police and they say, well go to court.

Which we did many times, many, many times. Wow.

Margaret Ereneta: So did you find your son when he wasn’t there and the cops did find the dogs?

Valeria Cerreto: I mean, eventually, I don’t even remember where I found him at that point, but there was so many situations. I guess the most crazy one is when I came to his parents’ house and his parents’ house garage was open.

So I walked in there and they had little glass in the back door, which I looked through and I saw my. My ex’s mother tackled my five year old son down on the ground. She was holding him while he was kicking and screaming. Let me go. I wanna go to my mommy. I was there with my mom too, so we were calling the police while we were doing all this, and her husband was just sitting there at the table facing the window, looking at all this and just eating soup.

Calmly, casually. Nothing’s happening. He’s eating soup. Wow. How horrible. He sat there and. That was really, really rough for me to watch, but then he finally got away from her and ran out to me, and a bunch of police came. But during all this time, I’ve met my current husband now, Nathan. I met him at Olive Garden.

And we started dating and he took me to church for the first time here in America. He was in the Army, he was in the flight school at Fort Rucker. He was studying to be a Black Hawk pilot. And so he took me to church somewhere near the base there. And that was my first experience and I was like, what is going on?

I had no idea. I’d never seen anything like that. And my eyes started to open like more and more, and I started learning more about God, and I was like, oh my gosh. I, I didn’t realize that. That’s, that’s what it is. That’s how it goes. And what

Margaret Ereneta: was something that you were starting to see? Like what was one thing that you could share with.

Valeria Cerreto: Well, the fact that I’m not alone and that Jesus is with me and he’s not here to judge me and he’s here to love me and carry me through the hard times and things like that, and that’s what I was going through still with my ex. He was still following me and still trying to get my boyfriend at the time fired or get him in trouble of any kind, leaving him threatening notes all.

Things like that. One of the situations when my son got kidnapped, I knew of a lady that my ex worked with. They were friends. I stopped at her job to see if my son was there. He wasn’t at her job. She was hiding him at her home. And I came to her work and I literally cried to her. I said, you are a mother.

Can you imagine if somebody did this to you? Just tell me if you know where my child is and she would be like, I have no idea. I dunno where he is. And after like certain for him all day, I got out of her business. I sat in my car. And I just started crying. I just started losing it. I was hitting my steering wheel, I was hitting my dashboard.

I cracked my dashboard. I was just losing it in the car. I was crying and screaming and I couldn’t find him anywhere. And I didn’t know where to go or what to do, or if he’s alive or what’s happening. I just didn’t know. And, um, that was my lowest moment when I didn’t know where my child was. I didn’t know if I ever see him again.

Valeria Cerreto: But in that moment, this weird feeling that felt like peace, which feels like I shouldn’t feel that at this moment. Just come over me. And I felt like I was being held, like I was not alone anymore in that car. I just felt like Jesus just came in. Grabbed me and just patted me in my head. It was a feeling I’ve never felt before.

Margaret Ereneta: You felt like you didn’t know what it was, but it felt divine to you. You did think of Jesus when you were feeling that

Valeria Cerreto: peace. Yes. I’ve never felt that before, but I knew that it was Jesus. Okay. I knew it was him, and basically at that moment I realized that it’s not in my hands, it’s in his hands, and. I just need to give it to him.

And my favorite song throughout that whole period of my life was Jesus, Take the Wheel. And I listened to it many times and I cried all the time listening to it. And it was just a new experience for me. And every time I went to church, I cried every service. Like I cried and I cried and I cried. And it was just like, I just sat there and I couldn’t stop crying.

And then at the end, sometimes, you know, they would say, if you. Common pray or upfront by the altar, and I would be there. I’d be there on the floor bawling my eyes out and I dunno why I was crying, but I was just crying. I dunno why it was so emotional every time I came to church. One time I went to church near my mom’s house.

It was very small church and everybody knew each other very well and I just sat there and I just cried the whole time at the end, pastor. Would you like to come and talk to me? He was like, are you okay? Like I literally cried the whole time and that was for the longest time. Every time I would go to church, I would just cry.

It happens sometimes now, but rarely. But I cried so much during my beginning years of Christianity. We

Margaret Ereneta: wanna hear about your son. So you had this time of desperation. Did you cry out to the Lord when you were in the car? Do you remember like what kind of prayer you pray?

Valeria Cerreto: I don’t really remember. It was such a dramatic event. Assume it was something like, I can’t do it without you. I need your help and you know I’m not alone.

Margaret Ereneta: Yeah. So your son, did you find him that day?

Valeria Cerreto: I don’t remember, honestly. I definitely found him. I don’t know if it was how long, you know, after that happened?

It’s

Margaret Ereneta: just one of many kidnappings, so yes. How crazy that you don’t even remember the outcome because there were so many of them, but this one was the worst. This one was the moment of uttermost desperation where you called out to the Lord and he answered you in that way to give you the ultimate peace.

At that point, did you feel like I’m a Christian now?

Valeria Cerreto: I did. I felt like I was Christian. Yes. I felt like I was Christian, like I’m in the family now. And it was, it was hard because so many people around claimed that they were Christians, but then they did things that were just like, what? How can you do that?

Like around that time my son went to a private school that was Kristin. That my ex paid for and the principal of that school, I don’t know if they were friends with my ex or what, but at one point I came because my son was missing. Again, I came to school hoping he would bring him to school and that the principal reported it to.

My ex that I was at school, and so he didn’t bring him to school. And then when I would come to pick him up, they told me that I’m trespassing and I’m not allowed to be there anymore. And so they would refuse to gimme my child back. I have a physical custody over my child and they would refuse and kick me off the property and things like that.

But then after. Me becoming Christian and giving it to God. I just saw things. In the right place. Now, not everything , but it was just so much peace in me that I don’t have to deal with this, that it’s not my job, it’s not my responsibility. I tried to find ways around things.

How do I do this? Maybe I should hide something in his house and like call the police to get him in trouble. Or maybe I should do this. Maybe I should do that. Maybe I should try to cut a corner here. To try to get ahead and, and then it was just so much easier where I just knew I don’t need to do any of this.

The counselor from school that I saw one time in the hallway saying hi to me, she came to court and she said, I don’t think it’s good for the child to live with this mother because she doesn’t take care of him. She’s a bad mother. She doesn’t know. Never talked to me. The principal came out and said the same thing.

His teacher came out with like a book of like events that supposedly happened to my son, and the judge was like, do you keep a book like that on every child? And she was like, no. So all this people, for some reason, tried so hard to take my child from me to help him. A guy who’s got caught with drugs. All kinds of things, and they tried to help him so much, but the school got closed.

Everybody lost their job, and the principal got arrested for stealing school property, like many, many, many thousands of dollars. So things like that kept happening. Like people who would do things like that to me, I would just see. The prayers being answered, like it was just so mind blowing to me.

It was like, see, you just need to follow me. See, I’m your God. I’m Jesus. I got you. You don’t have to do this alone. And that was all of those, one thing after another, after another. I saw it as God’s showing me you don’t have to do anything. Mm-hmm. You don’t have to give back to people. You don’t have to.

You don’t have to do anything. You have to give it to. Just surrender it to me and I will take care of you. Just trust me. Just trust me and just surrender, and it was really amazing feeling that I don’t have to do this anymore.

Margaret Ereneta: So you were talking about going to church and just sobbing for the first long time, just sobbing uncontrollably.

What else was happening as you became a new believer? Like very often people are in the word and they’re understanding new truths about who Jesus actually is and what happened for

Valeria Cerreto: you. Well, yeah. I started to learn more about Jesus. I started to learn that he was actually. Just a crazy guy. Like they taught us that in jewish school he was a Messiah.

He was the savior, and this love that he was given to me was just overwhelming because I didn’t realize I had it, and then all of a sudden I know I have it. I was just learning that he loves me so much that he just accepts me for who I am. That’s what I learned, that he loves me and that I love him.

Margaret Ereneta: So what was the 180 in your life after coming to Faith and realizing this?

Valeria Cerreto: So I’m raising my children and I’m hoping I’m doing a good job and raising them as a man, you know, after his heart. And I just have so much peace in my life. We still go to court all the time. We just had a court passed summer and I put my trust in him. My favorite part about this whole journey is the peace.

The peace that I get, that he has it. I have no control over anything. He has it all, and I really should not stress about anything, but I mean, not that I don’t stress about anything, but I shouldn’t stress about anything, so just transformed my life completely from. Growing up in the Jewish school, basically with like Pharisees all judgy and looking good in front of other people and doing all these things about actually missing the whole point and now coming to a realization that I was just missing it the whole life, my whole life before Christ and just completely changed the way I look at things the way I.

Process things the way I accept things.

Margaret Ereneta: So you said you’re Messianic Jewish. Can you explain what that is to our listeners who might not know what that

Valeria Cerreto: means? So Messianic Judaism is Jewish people who are completed Jewish, people who believe in Jesus, who follow Jesus, who knows that Jesus is their savior, who accept that.

Follow him and it’s just like Jesus was and Jesus’ followers, they were Jewish, they were Messianic Jews.

Margaret Ereneta: Mm-hmm. You said complete because he is the fulfillment of Judaism the Messiah. Right.

Valeria Cerreto: He is the fulfillment. And people in Israel now who they’re lost and they’re confused that they’re just missing the whole.

They’re still waiting for their Messiah, which he has already come. So that’s a complete Jew, that’s a Messianic Jew, a Jewish person who believes that Jesus Christ is their Lord and Savior.

Margaret Ereneta: So there’s churches for Messianic Jews, but there’s also just an identity that that’s who you are. And it doesn’t matter where you go to church, just in your heart.

You are a Messianic Jew. You’re a complete Jew..

Valeria Cerreto: Yes, but see, Judaism is not necessarily just a religion. It’s actually one or one of not many nationalities that that can be detected by a blood test. Like you can take a Jewish person, blood, do specific tests, and realize that they’re Jewish. It’s not just a religion.

It’s like nationality. So if you have it in your blood, then. Jewish, whether you Jewish religion or not.

Margaret Ereneta: That’s interesting. Well, I have a last question for you. So if there was someone listening today who was going through the same struggles you did in your first marriage where you were trapped and abused, what would you tell that person?

Knowing what you know now about Jesus, what would you.

Valeria Cerreto: I would say give it to God. If you are being abused, do not stay there. Get away from abuse, if you’re in danger, you just need to get away from that as far as you can get away from that and do not feel bad. This is not your fault and you just need to get away and you need to give it to God.

You get help. There’s so many organizations that are helping women with children. If you don’t have church, find a good church and just give it to God. Give it to Jesus. It gives you so much peace, and you have no control over this anyways, so why stress about it when you don’t have control over this? Thank

Margaret Ereneta: you.

Very well put, and I just pray that whoever needs to hear that, that they would hear that and we’ll certainly link in our show notes, resources for anybody in that situation or anyone who just doesn’t feel safe in their marriage. Could you pray for the Ukrainian people in your language? You can pick Ukrainian or Russian.

We just think it’s cool to hear people pray in their heart language. And we just pray along and

Valeria Cerreto: God knows it. Yes. Yes.

Amen.

Margaret Ereneta: Amen. Thank you. Was that the Ukrainian or

Valeria Cerreto: Russian? It was

Margaret Ereneta: Ukrainian.

So thank you so much for your time, Valeria. I really appreciate it.

Valeria Cerreto: Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.

We have blind Tony who put together a poem inspired by Valeria.

Beware when you think you’re standing unless you fall. That’s a scripture that’s applicable to us all because there have been times when we all have made plans and then unforeseen circumstances popped up and snatched the control totally out of our own hands and left us at the mercy of the wind. And we didn’t know when, where, or how it was going to end.

Just like Valeria punching the dashboard until it actually cracked frustration and aggravation, satanic attack, taking us all the way to our wits and. But also opening the door for the father to step in because scripture says many of the afflictions of the righteous. But he also says that out of the more he would save us and he does over and over again, greater greatest, his mercy, his love doesn’t end Jesus Savior please.

Pilot me, take control, and set me free. This is Valeria’s story, and once again, I’m wondering what’s yours. God has the power to open up, break down and enter any locked doors. let us know your story at 180. podcast.com And for more of my poetry, check out Anthony Horton’s poems, channel one YouTube.

And remember until the next time here at 180, we love you, but God loves you even more.