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"There's no way I'd have let my boys hang out with me when I was their age. I was a bad influence!" Christina DiMari laughs. We're enjoying coffee in her Louisville, Kentucky, home, chatting about her beach-based mentoring ministry. On the mantel in the next room rests a large portrait of Christina's family—her husband, Michael, and two sons, Trevor, 15, and Jake, 16—at the beach. With her peaceful home and strong family ties, Christina's life seems almost picture-perfect. It's hard to imagine her ever being a bad influence.
Yet much of Christina's childhood was a nightmare. In her 2006 memoir, Ocean Star (Tyndale), Christina tells her harrowing tale of growing up in San Francisco with a mother who never wanted children and a violent alcoholic father. Once she could ride a bicycle, Christina took frequent refuge at the ocean, becoming involved in the area's surf and drug cultures as she moved into her early teens. A tight-knit group of friends buoyed her when her mother bitterly proclaimed Christina never would amount to anything and her father drunkenly stalked around the house with a gun.
Today Christina, 44, is the driving force behind the creative workshops known as The Ocean Star Tour. Her one-day events draw enthusiastic crowds of young women to the beach, where she encourages those sitting on beach towels around her to dream big and recognize God is the source of all life-giving dreams. She currently hosts ten events a year, at which she uses beach-inspired terms to explain what a God-filled life looks like. And in June 2008, Group Publishing will release Christina's six-week curriculum based on her workshops. She hopes the material will inspire similar gatherings across the world.
Christina realizes the dark days of her childhood helped birth the idea for The Ocean Star Tour. "Without a loving mother, I wished I had someone a little older to come alongside me and show me the way. But I was so awkward with older women," she says. "In eighth grade I remember thinking, I'm going to be that older woman for someone else. I'm going to make it not be awkward." That year the eighth graders each took a first grader to the zoo. Christina took Chrissy Lofgren, and they're still friends to this day.
Christina was a freshman in college when a classmate introduced her to Jesus. She soon realized the comfort she felt at the edge of the ocean was from the Creator of the ocean. She says, "Just as a wounded starfish can mend if thrown back into the ocean, I learned my broken heart could mend if I immersed myself in God."
TCW recently talked to Christina about her passion for mentoring, dealing with a traumatic past, and the importance of friendship in a woman's life.
You love the ocean, yet you live in Kentucky! How did that happen?
My husband, Michael, is the concertmaster for the Louisville Orchestra, so I moved here when we got married 18 years ago. Let me tell you, those first few years were difficult. I missed my friends and the ocean so much! I begged God to provide Michael a job on the West Coast, but I guess the answer was "no," because it never happened. I finally realized I was going to have to bring the beach to Kentucky in order to stay sane. That's why my whole house is the color of sand or the sea. And my friends are all over the house—in pictures and in gifts they've given me through the years. I've created an environment that makes me feel connected.
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