Talking to Maria Roselli is like having this wonderful brilliant light beaming down from on high. She is positive, professional and one of the most enthusiastic people I have known. From an Accountant to a Makeup artist, Maria takes her work seriously and in fact, serious enough to want to influence the nations for God. Yes, that’s right, she is out to make an impact for Christ, and yes, she will do it.
Maria’s life story is interesting and a little sad in her early years at first as she struggled with oppression in family life. She grew up in a very insular and strict environment. Her parents were very protective and family life was very oppressive for her. She maintains she was controlled, manipulated and dominated into submission. She took the brunt of her parents’ issues and baggage. Her parents did the best they could but because of their own upbringing they didn’t know any other way. It was generational sin at work, according to Maria. We could all say, “How common is that!”
Growing up she was not allowed to go out at all – and wasn’t allowed to drive but, she managed to get her licence at 25. “My parents didn’t see me as having a career, but just getting married and having children, which was the opposite of my two brothers,” Maria explains. “They were expected to be successful and my father really encouraged their education and to make something of their life. Whereas for me, it was work in an office, get married and have children.” Her parents said they wanted a girl for their old age. So, because of their oppressive ways of thinking and attitudes, Maria developed the same mindset. “My father never allowed me to groom myself; I was never allowed to shave my legs or wear makeup. My father used to cut my hair and my mother compensated by giving me junk food for comfort – out of her own guilt, which led to a weight problem. I felt like I was in a prison with an open door.”
Maria admits she then had in her heart, feelings of lack of self-worth, rejection frustration and resentment.
There was really no joy – she was just waiting for the day when she would meet the ‘fantasy’ husband that her mother had painted for her. “One day I would get married and it would all be beautiful – what an illusion!” she says. “I did actually meet my husband at work and this was a fulfilment of what my parents had declared over me.”
Maria’s parents encouraged her to study Accountancy so she could work in an office, meet an educated man and then he could support her while she stayed at home. That was fulfilled – so all the baggage and issues and generational sin had now been manifested in her marriage. “I did find a man who I loved, but because of the generational influences my marriage suffered,” she says. “Howevernot only my marriage but also my relationahip with extended family and friends. My weight was ballooning as I was turning to food as my comfort, rather than to any power within. By the time my children were four and two, I was suicidal. I cried out to the Lord to help me to find something. I remember saying, ‘My life has got to be better than this; this is not what my life is meant to be.’ I had had enough.”
Maria’s life was about to turn around in a positive way. A few weeks later, whilst visiting her cousin, she found a course list and opened it and came across – ‘Makeup artistry for commercial purposes’. She explains, “There was an excitement in my spirit and I thought, this was what I wanted to do. I had such a hunger for beauty and glamour. The enemy, when I was at a young age, tried to steal it from me. When I was growing up there was ugliness on the inside and the outside.”
She studied hard and received her Certificate and started her own business straight away and began winning awards for best makeup artist in the bridal industry. Maria has won six awards for number one makeup artist in New South Wales and Australia.
However, Maria was searching for the real meaning to life. “There was a point in time that I was after spiritual knowledge – I wanted to know why my life was the way it was,” Maria says quite openly. “This was after my father had died and we had a feud with my mother-in-law and sister-in-law. I was introduced into New Age theologies and after a while I had started a business called ‘Personal Best’ and I had this burning passion in my spirit to help women and help them come out of oppression.
“But there was something missing in my spirit – there was no connectiion to anything – New Age was about pushing and striving in your own strength. Just as I started in that business, the Lord sent a prophet into my makeup studio and she told me it was my calling to be ‘a lamp unto the feet of women’ and draw out the beauty and power which was under the hurt and rejection. I hadn’t met Christ as this stage. I had tingly feelings over my head when she was telling me and my spirit told me straight away this was truth and I gave my heart to Him straight away. I knew I had been called to create an enterprise for charity and to fund missions and centres for women.
“After six months of giving my heart to the Lord I won my latest award for best makeup artist in Australia. I said to the Lord, ‘What do you want me to do with this?’ I felt a leaning in my spirit to start my own cosmetics range. I mentioned it in church to someone and that very afternoon, when I got home, I went straight to my computer and there was an email from a manufacturer asking if I wanted to create my own label. God has answered me. So I did! I called my range ‘PIA Cosmetics’ (www.piacosmetics.com) which is Latin for pure, and is also my daughter’s name, a name that I always loved, as my range is pure mineral makeup.”
Wanting to create finances to fund what God has called her to do is the dream for Maria.
She wants to lead women to the Lord, to know who they are and the beauty and power they have within, when they have an intimate relationahip with Jesus. She wishes to show them how much they are loved and how worthy they are and to not look for validation or approval from others but only unto God the Father and that they can do anything because of the Holy Spirit within them and lead them out of the bondage of their circumstances – to lead them out of oppression, rejection, hurt, fear, lack and limitation. Maria is adamant that with Jesus women can have an abundance of love, joy and peace, good health, prosperity and a purpose in life – they can have the desires of their heart, because He’s the one who put it there and He will fulfil it.
All we need is unwavering faith. “By using my life as an example I want to demonstrate that God can do anything and He’s greater than any circumstance,” she explains. “He has taken someone from utter oppression who had wished they were dead, to someone who has victory for His glory. I want to lead women to be healed themselves and then with God’s power in them, to heal their families, their marriages and have victory over any circumstance and to go on to nurture others to rise up in Jesus’ name. To claim their dignity, beauty and power and to know who they are.
“I want to touch women, not just in Western countries, but globally. I want to have an impact and influence women for their greatness and bring the Lord a harvest of souls by the love of the Father through women. I have now led my husband and children to the Lord and my mother as well and also other friends. So this is my passion in Christ.
»
