""Freedom is dependence on God." How and where did we experience that this year?" If I had to answer that question a couple of years ago, I would not have known or perhaps even understood what that sentence meant. My life testifies to that.

When I was 14, I met a boy, Andrea, who immediately struck me for several reasons. The most important of all was that, faced with a fairly complicated person like me (due to various family problems), he did not run away, in fact he proposed that I go with him to the GS meetings. Completely in love, I went and found young people ready to welcome me and support me, but at that age, not understanding anything, I was only dragged by him. After ten years together, we got married. The Lord has given us the grace of having two wonderful daughters (after losing two others) and so we have lived the beauty of twenty-seven years together.

We no longer shared this journey with our friends, I do not know why we drifted apart. However, living in a small town, we had the opportunity to meet and I felt welcomed every time. Until last summer when I got a message from Sara, a friend of mine from my GS days who now works and lives in Milan. When she comes back to visit her parents, she often writes to ask to meet us. While this makes me very happy, it also leaves me very puzzled. A lot of questions were triggered in me, including: “Why does she get in contact with me every time?”

Her message was to invite me for a pizza for dinner. I told my husband about it and we decided to go. At the table, there were many people we already knew, but there was something different. We sat down and started talking, the children were all playing together, and the more we talked, the more I was amazed at how wanted they all made us feel. I looked at their families, their children, and a question increasingly took shape within me, "What do they have that I do not have?"

I remember that when we got home, I kept telling my husband that that evening had stirred something within me. The feeling continued over the next few days until my husband, surprising me, said, "I knew it was like that...."

A few days later, I met Letizia at work. She is another GS friend who was at the dinner. I told her everything that had moved me that night and asked her if they still do School of Community. She said yes and I asked her if I could go with her.

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I am recounting this because everything has changed since that evening. I realized what all those people had that I did not. My outlook toward my husband and daughters has changed. I understood that I am not alone, in fact I have never been alone. That evening, I touched the grace of God with my own hands, which, through the faces of my friends, became apparent. I do not know how to describe how much my heart is filled with this grace. I feel so grateful that I can say I feel free in the true sense of the word. "Freedom, for the human being, is the possibility, the capacity, the responsibility to be fulfilled, that is to say to reach and face one’s destiny" (Luigi Giussani, "The Religious Sense").

Debora, Todi, Italy