Melbourne News

Leah Darrow visits Melbourne

Friday 14 September 2012

By Laura Meli
Kairos Catholic Journal

MORE than 500 people packed Australian Catholic University’s Central Hall in Fitzroy on Sunday 9 September to hear former model Leah Darrow share her story of faith.  The former contestant on America’s Next Top Model and now full-time apologist and speaker for Catholic Answers in the USA, was in Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne from 2 -10 September where she provided a series of talks on chastity and her conversion.
 
Leah spoke about growing up in a Catholic family and yet never truly knowing her faith or God. At the age of 15 she made a decision to “accept the lies of the world about love instead of God’s truth”.
 
“I had a wrong definition of love—I didn’t know really what love is. I didn’t know my worth, I didn’t know my dignity,” she said. From that point on, Leah “opened up the door to culture and to everything else”. 
 
In the eyes of the world, Leah was a woman of success. After appearing on America’s Next Top Model, Leah moved to New York City and began a flourishing career as a model and where she received “a big break” with an international magazine.  It was a moment that would change Leah’s life, and yet, not in the way she could ever have imagined.
 
Upon arriving at the photo shoot, Leah was confronted by a rack of “defective” clothes. After a moment of hesitation, Leah recalls, “I put on the outfit, got it going, and began to model in my immodest outfit.”  It was in the middle of this photo shoot that Leah had a “St Paul conversion”.
 
“This is the moment praise God for my reversion.  This is that moment of why I am even here, why I am even talking to you. I was standing there, with the photographer taking picture after picture … And then a flash came across my eyes.” 
 
With this flash, Leah saw her own life, like a mirror inside her mind. She saw herself before God with outstretched empty hands and as Leah recalled “I know that that was the reflection of my whole life.” The emptiness of her life “hit me right in the face and I was blinking, trying to regain my focus.”
 
Leah knew with conviction that her life had to change; she left the photo shoot before it was finished and walked out those doors.  Leah’s conversion was an ongoing process. It took many years of perseverance and support from her loving family to turn her life back to God and open up to his true definition of love.
 
“I knew I was made for more and I wasn’t being everything I was made to be... The best part of my story is not that I was on America’s next top model, it’s that Christ Jesus worked in my life and brought me back from this really bad place and has given me a second chance.”
 
Leah was also the special guest at an event hosted by ACU, ‘Melbourne’s Fashionably High Tea’ which was held at The Gables in East Malvern. More than 80 women and some men—including Leah’s husband of two months Ricky—listened to Leah’s words of advice about mixing fashion with femininity.

Leah Darrow’s visit to Australia was hosted by ACU Identity and Mission, Archdiocesan Office for Youth, the Life, Marriage and Family Office, Parousia Media, Theology

Photos by Farrah Allan