Help From Above - Помощь Cвыше

by Tatyana Noel-Tsygulska

“The curse causeless

shall not come”

        (Proverbs 26:2)

Prologue

The truth is more amazing than fiction. The story I want to tell is actually happened to me. At first, I offered it only to my friends to read. It made a deep impression upon them and inspired optimism.

I began as an emotional failure full of complexes and became a free, mature person, able to solve personal problems and help others. After being an alienated loner doomed to spinsterhood, I became a happily married woman.

Behind my unique story there is a common method. I want you to understand how these things are possible and to be able to use this method. It works for everybody. When you put it into practice, you will see it with your own eyes. I will share with you my magnificent discoveries about where to look for solutions to the problems of loneliness and misunderstanding by others, in particular how to find your soul mate.

Chapter 1. King Solomon’s Descendant

When I was seven years old, a dramatic experience made me believe that the most important thing in my life was to love and be loved. Out of nowhere, there came a bright scene, which stayed with me for a long time. I smelled the freshness of a river in shadowy woods. A slim young dark haired man is standing on the bank of the river waiting for his chosen one. With a graceful smooth walk, a young woman is coming to meet him. She is wearing a white ballroom gown with a fluffy airy skirt, outlining her figure. Her face is glowing with a happy smile. She stretches her arms out for a hug. She is confident in her happiness, in their mutual love. Now, I was this girl. Later this childhood impression grew into a conviction that the meaning of my life was to love a certain man. I desired to dedicate myself for him and to live by him and for his sake. However, an insidious voice inside whispered, “Nothing will happen. You will not make it.” I listened to it. Moreover, I believed it.

For long decades, my private life was going nowhere. Those I fell for were either indifferent to me or they despised me. I felt rejected and hurt.

I was not ugly. Quite often young men would come up to me in the street to make an acquaintance. Nevertheless, those men, who displayed some interest in me, did not interest me at all. If it was just a random situation, my failures should not be perpetual. I should have been able to connect occasionally, at least once. However, I did not have any success. Every time I liked somebody, the guy would not like me and vice versa. It was obvious there had to be a cause. What hindered me? I kept asking myself, “Why are they not interested in me?” I guessed, that I might have been cursed. Was it possible to get rid of the curse? I did not know.

Sometimes I wondered why my life experiences did not teach me anything at all. I kept stumbling over the same things. My personal life kept unraveling like a repeating script. An unbearable anguish was oppressing me, because the most important thing in my life was missing. I guessed that if I got rid of my sensitivity and amorousness, it would solve the problem of my unrequited love.

I hated my birthdays. They triggered my loneliness with an especially sharp and poisonous thought that I was another year closer to my grave. About every six months, pangs of despair and darkness seized me and I wanted to kill myself, but something held me back. I used to explain it as an unwillingness to hurt my family and friends; and a “desire to watch through my life to the end of “the movie”, hoping maybe later there would be something better.”

My slight hope for a miracle also kept me going. I incorrectly imagined what kind of a miracle might rescue me. I thought that it would be the love of a man. However, if I had met my husband earlier, being the person that I was, either I would have not noticed him, or I would have destroyed our relationship with my own hands without even realizing it. A saving miracle proved to be better than the love I imagined.

On my thirty-second birthday suddenly, for the first time in my life, I had a premonition and even felt confident that something good was about to happen. I was spending my summer vacation in Crimea, a famous Soviet Black sea resort area. I was sitting in a seaside café with my roommate, Vera. We were leisurely eating ice cream, when unexpectedly a sweet transparent sensation of peacefulness enshrouded me. Two days later, I met an astounding person who changed the course of my life completely.

I decided to go on a mountain excursion. I came to the Excursion Bureau and found out that they had quite a few mountain trips. I hesitated about choosing either a one-day or a two-day excursion to Demerdgi, the most beautiful mountain in Crimea.

My decision to take the one-day trip seemed trivial, but led to momentous consequences.

About 7 am our group gathered at a bus station. Two men arrived, a brunet and a blond short one in their early thirties. At first sight, there was nothing special about the short guy. Blond-haired males never attracted me; they seemed bland. However, when he started talking I found it increasingly interesting to listen to him. Gradually I began to discover his amazingly inimitable personality. I have never seen such people before.

The trip included a bus ride I did not expect. I was not carrying money with me. Since I did not know anybody in the group, I asked one of our leaders, the brunet, to loan me some money to pay for the bus ride. He told me to talk to his partner, Valeriy. Valeriy immediately loaned to me, an absolute stranger, the money without any guarantee of ever being repaid.

Growing up in the Soviet Union, I had observed that people generally were harsh and uncaring. Valeriy expressed empathy to strangers and was always willing to help. In all his words and actions, he showed so much consideration for other people and genuine care about them. He volunteered to extend our excursion for more sightseeing without more money. The day I met him he had left home at 5 a.m., before the busses began operating and walked six miles to meet our excursion.

He invited volunteers to go on a 15-kilometer excursion to another mountain two days later. I was among the few first who readily accepted this invitation. That trip was not by the Excursion Bureau, but from the tourist group where he worked and Valeriy toted a very heavy backpack full of food for the entire group. In such small things, he manifested his compassion and unselfishness in helping people. Moreover, he was not proud of himself and did not consider his actions to be something special. I would have taken all the credit for all those good actions, but he did not. All he was concerned about was how to serve others better.

He was amazingly modest, meek and eager not to judge people but to understand them. I did not hear one unkind word about other people from him. Even the tone of his voice showed incredible sincerity and striking kindness. He exuded special inner warmth and I felt a desire to warm up beside him.

He took responsibility for himself; he did not shift it on to others. For instance, he acknowledged, “I became disappointed with myself.” I heard these words for the first time in my life. Normally people complain about somebody else disappointing them. They see a cause of their misfortunes in others and in external circumstances.

I always lived in a hurry, being afraid I would not make it somewhere or afraid I would miss something important. I was amazed that he never once acted hurried, as if he knew some special secret unknown to the rest of us. A passion to discover his secret blazed up in me. Before meeting him, an urgent need to find understanding from other people overcame me. I dreamed about others understanding me, but I did not care much about my understanding them. Observing Valeriy for the first time, I felt an urgent desire to understand another person. This desire was akin to an unquenchable thirst for cold water on a hot day.

Before meeting Valeriy, I could not “find myself” and did not know how I wanted to behave. I felt like being myself only when I was alone. In the company of others, a strange power drove me, which impelled me to behave in a way I did not want to. The way I treated others often left an unpleasant after-taste in my soul. I valued honesty, yet expressing my feelings to people directly seemed impossible. True expressions of feelings appeared to me as sickeningly sugary and I preferred to hide them under a disguise of rudeness and mockery.

I had never before observed such a model of good behavior. Everything around me appeared unsatisfying. I was afraid of other people and did not trust them. I felt like a hunted beast, which they only wanted to hurt. Due to Valeriy’s influence, I became aware of how many times I unthinkingly hurt people out of self-defense and I experienced regret about those actions.

He gave me a model of the best. The most admirable part was that his example looked achievable to me. When we think, “I will not ever be able to do that!” it is discouraging. I had a gut feeling that I could be able to relate to people the way he did.

I intuitively started imitating him and felt immense freedom, as if I had recovered from a long agonizing disease. I sensed a heady feeling of unknown power and control over myself. From that time on, I became able to behave the way it pleased me. My conduct became friendly and natural. My attitude toward other people changed drastically. Fear evaporated. I began understanding people and caring for them. Enlightment dawned on me as if a veil fell off my eyes. Exciting freedom came. Almost everybody around felt so close to me. I experienced sympathy and warmth toward them and saw them as friends. I came to believe that even those who acted hostile to me could change if I would firmly stick to the ways of goodness.

It was a sheer miracle, because all this marvelous transformation in me happened by watching Valeriy’s extraordinary personality. He was just the way he should be in order to help me. If he was somebody a little different in some respects, he would not have influenced me. That is why I came to the conviction that God had sent me that man in order to rescue me. I came to believe in God’s existence rationally. From being a complete atheist, I became an intellectual believer. I decided that God would certainly send me a soul mate. I just needed to wait. Back then I did not know the Word of God and did not have a clue that merely waiting was not enough.

I wondered, “What kind of nation gave birth to such a wonder as Valeriy?”

Therefore, I asked him, “What nationality are you?”

He answered, “A Jew.” I was surprised because his last name Solomianik sounded Russian.

“Then why is your last name is so Russian-like?” I asked.

“It derives from my ancestor’s name, Solomon. Have you heard about Solomon, son of David?” he said.

“I read the novel “Sulamith” by Kuprin,” I answered. (It was the novel about Sulamita, Solomon’s favourite wife).

“Ah, fiction”, responded Valeriy with disappointment in his voice.

I was intrigued. Not every day you meet royalty. I also had no clue where else besides fiction one could read about Solomon and thought perhaps history books can tell me something. In order to learn more about his ancestors I asked historians where I could read about those Israeli kings. They directed me to the Bible. I did not expect the Bible to be the source. Not long before then, I had acquired a Bible out of curiosity because in Soviet Union it had been a forbidden book for decades. I had started reading it but did not get too far in it and laid it aside. Now I opened my Bible and found the section about David and Solomon.

The life story of David strikingly differed from descriptions of other famous personalities. It was not glamorized for show and it persuaded me with a sense of reality. David stirred up my interest. The story of him dealing with his deadly enemy King Saul especially impressed me. Saul envied David’s success and pursued David with attempts made on his life, but he fell into David’s hands. David had an opportunity to kill Saul more then once, but he spared his adversary and let him go, because Saul was God’s anointed one (1 Samuel 24 and 26). I admired the magnanimity and nobility of David, qualities the world around me lacked, but for which my soul craved. I became interested in the Bible.

Chapter 2. I Want To Spend My Life Mending Broken People

The transformation that happened in me due to meeting Valeriy was so radical and healing that I felt a passionate desire to share it with others. As a Christian song says,

“I want to spend my life mending broken people,

I want to spend my life removing pain,

Lord, let my words heal a heart that hurts,

I want to spend my life mending broken people.”

From that moment on, I sensed in me an ability to help people. I was searching for answers about the puzzle of my unusual transformation and was trying to discover the method of my healing.

My search led me to humanistic Psychology. It emphasizes the possibility of personal growth, mental health and self-actualization; a person can be in control of his destiny. One of its founders, Carl Rogers based on his prolific and successful experience in resolving people’s mental problems believed, that only the client knows what his problem is and how to solve it. The therapist is just required to arrange the necessary conditions. Success in therapy depends on warm trustworthy relationships of both the therapist and the client. I proved during my many years of practice that Rogers was right in this respect.

When I practiced Humanistic Psychology, I noticed and marveled that so many therapeutic principles were similar to Biblical principles. For example, the principle of not using assessment, i.e. we should not stick labels on people, which usually begin with the words “s/he is…” or “you are”: “He is arrogant”, “you are impossible”, “she is dumb”, etc. The Bible says, “do not judge”. Because Valeriy did not blame or judge anybody, I felt at ease and safe. I was able to allow myself to take chances and try new unexplored patterns of behavior.

Judging and evaluating of persons creates huge problems in human relationships. When we eliminate judging, misunderstandings and conflicts resolve, we are able to forgive the hurts caused to us, mental wounds heal, broken relationships are mended, and foes turn into friends.

While searching for the method of soul healing, I discovered that besides giving up evaluating and judging people, humanistic Psychology and Christianity share other common principles.

* The attitude or principle of unconditional acceptance. Unconditional acceptance of a person is required from a therapist. He should accept an individual completely the way he or she is now, not the way they could be in future. This principle corresponds with the unconditional love of God to a sinner in spite of his/her sins.

* The principle of confidentiality (keeping secret what you’ve learned about the other person while listening), is written in the Bible in Proverbs 11:13 “^KJV A talebearer revealeth secrets: but he that is of a faithful spirit concealeth the matter.”

* The necessity to avoid discussing somebody’s wrongdoing with others. We have to confront him/her directly (Matthew 18:15-17).

There are many more similarities between Psychology and the Bible, and to describe all of them in my short discourse is just impossible. For more information you can refer to Mental Healing From Psychology and the Bible.All that, as well as many other things from practical Psychology convinced me of the truthfulness of the Bible. Occasionally I used to read it and tried to follow what I found in it. My Bible reading was mostly intellectual and did not bring and noticeable spiritual changes. When I found out that God commanded people to keep the seventh day Sabbath (Genesis 2:3, Exodus 20:8-10), I was astonished. I tried not to do secular work on Saturdays and read the Bible. I tried to keep the Sabbath holy as far as a human can do it by his own strengths, without God’s help.

I used Biblical and psychotherapeutic healing principles in my life and obtained significant success in communicating with people. When I was a teenager, I suffered because of misunderstandings and stressed-out relationships. When I wished good things for people and they suspected me of evil things, my pride was hurt so much that I considered it too humiliating to explain myself. I preferred either to keep silent (let them think what they want, I am not like that, I am above it); or to break the relationship and burn the bridges behind me (I don’t need such “friends”); or to behave rudely in order to make them think even worse things about me (I want to be hurt even more!). It is obvious that I was causing harm to myself, but at that time, I considered myself a complete victim of other people’s evil intentions.

I preferred books to the company of people. I loved to read very much. I was not only fascinated with the lives of literature characters, but I also believed that the writers possessed special wisdom and they could prompt people how to act and to build their lives. However, how can we distinguish which ideas and descriptions are realistic and truthful, what will work and what is just simply a fruit of their imagination, fiction? The genres of belles-letters people call fiction for a reason, it means counterfeit. Sigmund Freud in his article “Dostoyevsky and Parricide” showed that authors often sublimate their unsatisfied desires and dreams, and write their books to satisfy themselves in an imaginary form. The word “sublimation” means “adorning” or “decorating”. Quite often literary men describe events, which they would like to experience themselves, but were not able to do. Is it possible that in reality everything will turn out as a novelist wrote? That is a big question.

As I was becoming acquainted with humanistic Psychology, I increasingly acquired real successful experiences. I came to a realization that my failures occurred mostly because of my pride and harshness. For instance, when someone reprimanded me, I frequently protested silently by thinking, “It is none of your business. What counts is that it suits me.” Generally, in my life I had a tendency that when conflicts or misunderstandings arose I would have an attitude, “I don’t give a rip.” I thought I did not care about myself. Later it dawned on me that I did not care about the reactions and feelings of others and thus about them too.

Humanistic Psychology suggests constructive ways for solving conflicts and to take responsibility upon us. For example, one should not become withdrawn but establish contact by confronting a person directly; expressing what makes us unhappy by conveying reliable information. We must exclude evaluating, labeling or judging their personality and must use objective descriptions of observed behavior.

When Psychologist helps a client separate subjective opinions and assumptions from truth or facts, then misunderstandings are cleared up, pain is healed and broken relationships are mended. This approach contradicts a lot of common views and positions held by many writers. My favorite novels often described how characters kept silent, hid their love and rejected their loved one, if the latter did not behave the way they wanted. Those characters cherished their own pride. One of my favorite poems was by a famous Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov:

“They loved each other with such a long and tender love,

With deep yearning and mad stormy passion.

However, they avoided confession and encounters with each other, as if they were enemies.

Their speeches were empty and cool.

They parted in speechless and proud suffering,

the precious image they saw only sometimes in a dream.

Death came. Meeting beyond the grave.

But in the new world they did not recognize each other.”

It is amazing how we form our aspirations, dreams and models of behavior under the influence of our literary tastes. We like our feelings, we want to experience them again and again, and we start believing that those behavioral models and the situations where they appear are the best. I thought that I was looking for mutuality, but in fact, my feelings and passions were feeding my pride and led me to loneliness.

My experience with Psychology, which professes principles of humanism and objectivity, taught me to value the truth over fiction. I saw that objective reality has incomparably greater value than any attractive insinuations and opinions. I lost interest in fiction. I started to prefer scientific research and honest descriptions of what took place in reality, such as autobiographies and testimonies. That is why I began valuing the Bible. I am telling this story, because it is an example of what had happened to me in fact and not in the imagination of a writer and I am trying to be as objective as I can.

I was sharing my discoveries with other people, helping them to fix their broken relationships. Sometimes the effect of psychological intervention was so striking that it reminded me of magic. A depressed brokenhearted person came to my office. He saw life as black and joyless, as if everything around him was bad. In a short time after dealing with the problem, he was transformed; a radiant smile lit up his face, his soul blossomed, he started to see the colors in life and noticed the good and worthy things. I was just amazed. I had not done anything that complicated!

People who went through therapy were amazed that they knew so little about such an effective method of help. Those who heard about somebody’s experience of healing second hand reacted with skepticism, “Is it some kind of a hypnosis?” There was no hypnosis at all. Everything is so simple; you have to love, to accept a person, to listen to him attentively, to exert self-discipline and to stick to some rules.

All this and many other things from Practical Psychology showed me that the Bible is reliable and tells the truth. I was reading it now and then and tried to practice what I had drawn from it. For example, I learned that it is necessary to witness about Christ so I was doing it.

It seemed that through this collection of knowledge and experience, even my personal life should have to become smoother, but nothing of the kind occurred. It was still hopeless. I continued this way for six more years.

I had already experienced a long chain of disappointments in seeking a husband. By the age of 28, it “dawned” on me that since nothing seemed to be going right in my personal life probably it is due to my wrong principles of choosing my life partner. I thought I should seek a person who would love me, not whom I would love. Therefore, I married a man who seemed to love me. Nevertheless, I was wrong. After my son was born the marriage ended.

Chapter 3. Cabbage and 10 Dollars

In 1993 I became terribly sick and went to Crimea to a different health resort area. There I shared a table with a couple from Russia - a husband and wife, Tolik and Irena. They were open sociable young people with a friendly tactful sense of humor. There was nothing special about their appearance except Tolik had a slight limp. We enjoyed our fellowship a lot, talked about different subjects and joked. I liked that they did not pressure me about any religious topic.

When we were visiting at the dinner table, I was lamenting that I wanted cabbage salad and the cafeteria did not serve it.

In a week, I brought a cabbage for supper. Just that day they served cabbage salad.

Tolik remarked, “You did not believe that God knew your needs and would provide for you, did you? The Bible says, “^KJV Ask, and it shall be given you’” (Luke 11:9).

After thinking about his words for a couple of days, I approached Tolik with a question, “You probably had in your life periods of distress, of loss and disappointment. How do they relate to God’s care?”

He replied, “When I was an unbeliever I thought the same way.”

Irena told me, “Tolik had a spine disease doctors considered to be incurable. His ailment confined him to a wheelchair. One night we both had been praying until dawn and in the morning he rose up and walked. Just a little limp remained.”

Their witness impressed me a lot. Then I requested permission to ask him some questions about the Bible and they invited me to their room that evening.

That night he washed my face with water, recited some prayers, which I now can identify as from Psalm 91, asking God for my healing. I spent more than two weeks with them, praying and studying the Bible. I felt better and better every day. I had an impression of being born again. Tolik taught me how to pray and how to read the Bible. I told Tolik and Irena that I normally did not trust people when they suggested some religious help. I was sure that they just wanted to use me.

When I shared with them about my personal troubles and wept, Tolik embraced me and wept along with me. I was touched to the bottom of my heart with his compassion. It opened the door of my heart to trust, as if a dam was broken, and I was flooded with warmth.

Irena asked me, “Do you believe now that Tolik doesn’t need anything from you?”

Oh, yes, I believed that. Then Irena said, “Do you know how Christ is rejoicing this moment because His daughter has come to Him?”

Uninvited tears pinched my eyes. I sensed an emotional connection with the Lord, which reminded me of getting my second wind. That moment I saw Someone close, who was really concerned about my life. God healed me spiritually, mentally and physically.

I sensed the presence of the Holy Spirit all the time. For example, though no human told me anything I discovered that rock music is incompatible with the peace of mind, which I received while dealing with this young couple. One night as I accompanied my roommate to a discotheque, the peace left me. I ascribed this effect to the music.

My faith grew to the extent that after our Bible study at midnight I felt no fear while I walked home past an empty field, where two days previously a murder had taken place. I was so confident that God was keeping and guarding me because I was doing His will, studying His Word.

I spent about two weeks with them in Bible study and prayer. From then on, I read the Bible regularly and prayed every evening, as Tolik and Irena taught me. Back then I did not know that it is better to pray in the morning in order to receive an inspiration for the upcoming day. “^NIV But I cry to you for help, O LORD; in the morning my prayer comes before you” (Psalm 88:13).

I also found out, that it is necessary to pray about my soul mate, to ask God to send me my life partner: “^NIV You do not have, because you do not ask God.” (James 4:2). Just waiting for him is not enough.

I learned it is better, if not just one person asks God but at least two people, “^KJV …if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 18:19). So, I myself began praying, asked my classmate to pray for me, and began to wait with greater confidence in a positive result. It is interesting that my classmate also asked me to pray for a solution to her housing problem. I fulfilled her request. In one year, she was married and moved into her husband’s apartment.

The Bible helped me to solve a very difficult problem. I was living in housing provided by a family member, Anna. We did not get along at all. I tried to teach my son to do different chores. My dependence on Anna was interfering. As I asked my son to help me do chores around the house, he would reply, “You are the mother. You should do that.” I became very upset recognizing the fruit of Anna’s influence. She would angrily interrupt my attempts to teach my son to clean up after himself, “Is it too hard for you to do it yourself for your child?” thus sowing seeds of disobedience and disrespect to parental authority in his mind. I wondered how to raise him without harmful intervention.

To protect Anna’s identity I have omitted some details. For the same reason I do not mention some names. My goal is to not to embarrass others, but to share my successful learning experience with you, pointing out a better way.

My relationships with my friends suffered because of Anna’s intrusion. They were afraid of her and did not want to come. When they did come, they saw her tightly pursed lips and heard her clearing her throat in disapproval. This drove them to meet me somewhere else.

I was dreaming of independent living. However, that step, which I saw as the only solution, contradicted public opinion. Very few supported me and I was afraid of public condemnation. Those supporters advised me to sue her and to take away from her what belonged to me in the court. Nevertheless, I considered such a variant unacceptable.

Little by little, a verse in the Bible was speaking to me. I had thought about this verse over and over again. It occurred in four different places in the Bible, which showed to its importance. It pointed to the same solution. I saw I should leave her and leave everything behind. At last, I realized that God’s will for me was to make that step. Awareness that the truth was on my side, that God is on my side, inspired me, and I made up my mind to move and start living independently.

My salary back then was only seven dollars a month, which did not allow me to implement my plan, though I worked at three jobs and carried two and a half teaching loads. To rent even a one-room apartment cost at least ten dollars a month. Ukrainian money is gryvnas, but the rent had to be paid in US dollars. By the way, Soviet apartments are different from American apartments. Soviets do not count rooms with bedrooms, like in America. If it is a one-room apartment, it means not one-bedroom, but only one room, which serves as a bedroom and a living room at the same time. Many families could share the same bathroom located down the hall or in the yard.

I was praying and asking God to help me to fulfill His will. In a couple of years, the financial situation in the country changed. Though my salary in gryvnas remained the same, the currency exchange rate improved and in dollars it became much more. Thus, I could carry out what the Bible verse called me to do.

The financial barriers were removed, but emotional conflicts bound me like shackles. Breaking them loose and throwing them off my shoulders was not easy. When at last I put my plan into operation, Anna reacted the way I feared she would. Her rage was lashing out over the edge like molten metal, burning me with red-hot splashes. She accused me of treachery even though I had not given her any promises. She kept trying all kinds of measures to reverse the chain of events, even threatening to summon my ex-husband from a different city. Nevertheless, I did not give up.

Some people admired my courage. A coworker thanked me for my example, which encouraged her to undertake the same steps in a similar situation. However, I knew that it was not to my merit. I just did not see any other way out of that desperate situation. The first commandment has a special meaning for me. “^KJV I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:2-3). It was God who led me out of the house of bondage. Noteworthy that first, the Lord brought the Israelites from Egyptian slavery, and subsequently He entered in the covenant relationships with them. Christ not only taught the way of God, but He healed the sick, cast out demons, fed the hungry, and served people. God first reveals His love in a perceivable tangible way, and then invites people to follow Him.

Some of you may feel dispelled by my faith. For years I was afraid of such “religious” stuff. Once when I was looking for a mate through media ads, an American answered my ad. In his letter he shared with me, “I love Jesus.” It was unclear and unpleasant to me how it was possible to love the one who is not visible or heard. Seventy years of Soviet atheistic history left noticeable patterns, ugly scars and emptiness in the hearts of many Soviet citizens, including me. Propaganda had been bombarding us for such a long time about the non-existence of God and saturated us with prejudice against faith and believers.

I was taught, “Only uneducated illiterate grandmas could believe such a fairy-tail, as God, but educated people would not buy this stuff.” However, how can we be sure, that He does not exist? Prejudice is a false idea created before meeting somebody or something related to it. How can we know something for sure before we are acquainted with it? We should get rid of prejudices. We should not allow them to poison our perception of the world, to cloud our spiritual eyes with cataracts. We have to grasp the truth with a fresh viewpoint and with an open mind and heart.

After my resolute step, a completely new life started for me. My relationship with my son improved. I managed to involve him in helping around the house. I enjoyed unimpeded fellowship with my friends.

In a few years, Anna showed encouraging changes. Once in my presence she was talking with a woman, Zoya. Zoya was complaining about her acquaintance. This person did not treat her nicely by behaving the same way I had treated Anna. I notice how Anna commented on the “not nice” behavior of Zoya’s acquaintance, “If under such circumstances a person is leaving, it means he feels badly there.” Actually, Anna expressed empathy to Zoya’s acquaintance and in an indirect way to me also. “^KJV When a man’s ways please the LORD, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him” (Proverbs 16:7).

After obtaining my independence, I also allowed myself to make riskier crucial decisions, which were waiting ahead of me.

Chapter 4. What Has He Seen In His Life?

Seven months passed. One evening I came home from work and turned the TV on. They showed an ad about evangelical program by a young American preacher Lowell Hargreaves, who just arrived in our city. “Shall I go, or what? At least I will be able to listen to a native English speaker.” I did not expect much, reckoning arrogantly, “What can such a young guy tell me? What has he seen in his life?”

Nevertheless, the influence of his personality was powerful and made an indelible impression upon me. I was sure he had true faith, he really believed in what he preached and lived his everyday life in accordance with it. I am always more impressed not with theory, no matter how persuasive and clear it is, but with testimonies of those who apply their teaching in their every day life.

Lowell shared an episode, which happened to him after his conversion. He suddenly realized that he was wrong when he was stealing food from a college cafeteria. Restitution for the damage caused, always follows true repentance. He decided to go to the cafeteria, to see the director, to apologize and pay for the stolen food.

“The Devil had a long list of reasons why I did not have to go there”, Lowell related, “Imagine how embarrassing it will be for you. They will think that you are nuts.” But I told him to shut up. I arrived in the cafeteria and announced to the director, that I became a Christian and repented of stealing food. She replied, “I am aware many students steal, but you are the only one who came and pled guilty.”

While analyzing the Bible Hargreaves used a comprehensive approach, i.e. he considered all Bible verses on the same issue. It allowed me to obtain an integrated impression about the Word of God, not a fragmentary one, as before, and I started understanding the Bible.

I used to have doubts about the trustworthiness of the biblical texts. They were written down who knows where and when! The facts of who, when and how the Scriptures were written, attracted my interest and served as a weighty proof in the favor of its reliability. It turned out that the Word of God had been written during fifteen centuries by about forty authors from different strata of society: kings, commanders, statesmen, priests, doctors, shepherds, farmers, fishermen, scientists, who lived on three continents. It is very easy to be confident that it is impossible for forty, or even just for a dozen of different people to find consensus on a simple issue, for example, about water. We expect discrepancies between them. The Bible speaks about much more complex issues than water; about salvation, forgiveness and justification of a sinner, about the state of a soul after death, about laws of human communication, about conditions of a happy marriage and raising children, rules of financial prosperity, about healthy lifestyle etc.

The exact historical fulfillment of a prophecy from Daniel 2 amazed me. The prophet recorded it in captivity six hundred years before Christ. It forecast the development of civilization more than two thousand years into the future, indicating what kinds of empires will come to replace the Babylonian empire right up to nowadays. There was an interesting detail, the prophecy predicted, that after the collapse of the Roman empire there will be no more world empires, but just a “divided kingdom” (Daniel 2:14). For me it became obvious that the Bible is not an invention or a fairy tale. A human being could not think all that up.

When I looked at the starry sky and saw the greatness and wisdom of the Creator in this picture, I gave deep consideration to the words of the evangelist, “If God can operate the universe, the movements of each star and planet, which are moving in space with mathematical accuracy, isn’t He really able to direct your life?” “^{KJV 26} Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth. ²⁷ Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the LORD, and my judgment is passed over from my God? ²⁸ Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding. ²⁹ He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. ³⁰ Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: ³¹ But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” (Isaiah 40:26-31).

Before that, I already tasted personal growth. The idea to become better, to grow in Christ attracted me like a powerful magnet.

Most importantly, I found out how much God loves me. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever [and this means you and me] believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). He loves us more than His life. He did not just leave a record about His love in the Bible, but He proved it in word and in deed; Christ voluntary had given His life for the sake of men’s rescue and happiness.

Faith and repentance for the evil that I did to others came in my heart. I secretly dreamed of such love. I had found something real, an invaluable treasure. I had a sensation as if I had left a stuffy room with stale air for a cool evening garden inhaling the pure crisp air filled with aromas of freshly cut grass.

During the sermon “Freedom from Fear and Guilt”, I experience deep repentance. All my life I had a very difficult relationship with the same family member, Anna. During a group Gestalt therapy training session a psychologist worked with the same problem and said to his client, “Your aunt is dragging you down to a grave behind her.” I was terrified, applying his words to my situation. I did not want to believe it. I was trying to persuade myself that it was his subjective opinion. When my views became more sober and my emotional control increased, I admitted to myself that he was right.

Her influence on me was so destructive, that I could not resist it. I suffered with pain blaming her for turning all my life into a nightmare. She later confessed that after I left her apartment she used to wish me death. I was angry and afraid of her. That day for the first time I realized the evil I had caused her, and acknowledged myself to be a sinner. Before that I considered, that I was simply defending myself as her victim. I wept, felt sorry for what I had done and understood I needed to take the next step - to ask for Anna’s forgiveness. It was so hard though. My pride would not allow me to apologize. For several days I could not make a decision, conflicting feelings and thoughts tortured me.

She emphasized during all my life, how much she had sacrificed for me. She abused me by name-calling, repeating what an ungrateful person I was, and accused me falsely of malicious intentions. All my attempts to earn her friendship and trust yielded nothing. She still rejected me and treated me like an enemy. I felt trapped. I did not know what to trust or where the truth was. I had nobody whom I could trust; there was nobody to address in a difficult moment. Surely, her acts and words were destructive. My reaction - rage - was natural, yet non-constructive: it did not help. “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer” (1 John 3:15).

Without my consent, she would not be able to do anything to me. I could choose not to yield to anger or to suffering. There is always a choice to not give in and agree to be tormented. We can choose peace, compassion to the one who provokes us or “makes us” do something. We bear the full responsibility for what is going on in our mind. We are the real owners of our lives. Nevertheless, back then I did not know that. I lacked my own strength to resist destructive influences.

New Bible truths caused the most severe struggle in me. I did not see anybody else experiencing such a hard way to God. What were the reasons? I know some of them. The first one - by my nature I am a very suspicious and a distrusting person. More than once in my life, I was burned, deceived and hurt. Layers upon layers of past failures obstructed my trust in existence of such a Friend, who will never deceive, will not abandon and will always come to help. It seemed to me that one should first deserve such a great love, and if I would stumble or fail at some point, then I would lose my right for such unselfish friendship.

Back then I did not understand the second reason. My unbelief was caused by my many sins, by my strong dependence on destructive devilish forces. I considered myself better than others. Pride and desire to exalt self is the very first sin, which Lucifer cherished in his heart (Ezekiel 28). Pride also was a cause of my broken relationships with Anna. “^KJV Only by pride cometh contention” (Proverbs 13:10 )

How wonderful that God loves all the sinners, even as deep-rooted as I was. It does not matter how sinful we are. The Lord is capable of performing a miracle, to save and to cleanse any human being. Such unfathomable love depends only on the love-abounding essence of our Redeemer Himself and does not depend on things that we have done. I was being bogged down in sins, hating, envying, gloating, lying, harassing others and myself. Nevertheless, God still loved me anyway, because He is love by His essence. This love is selfless, faithful and sacrificial. “^KJV Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee” (Isaiah 49:15).

While attending the Biblical program for one and a half months, I had a hard battle with my conflicting feelings. On one hand, the beauty and fullness of the Lord attracted me. The splendor of God’s design and perspective of life in a world without evil, where only good exists was breathtaking. On the other hand, a necessity arose to make a crucial decision and change all my life. I realized that it was necessary to believe not just inwardly, but to act upon my faith, to do what God wanted me to do, to follow Christ. This obedience involved a number of future problems.

First, most Soviets, being atheists, considered Protestants to be sectants, third rate people, something like members of a cult. I clearly remember how a sister of my classmate joined a Protestant church. After I found out about it, I sincerely was looking for signs of insanity in her. That is why the idea of looking stupid or insane and being rejected by most people was holding me back. I did not want to join “a sect” (something like a cult) and become an outcast. Through this, I found out that I depended on human opinions a lot. My former line of behavior “I don’t give a rip”, which brought an illusion of independence was just concealing my fear of rejection under a layer of scorn and disdain.

Secondly, I wanted to be faithful to God and to please Him in everything. This meant keeping all the Ten Commandments, including the fourth one about Sabbath rest. Refusal to work on Saturday meant possible conflicts with my bosses and even loss of my beloved work, and I could not imagine my life without my work.

Thirdly, I realized that I had to be baptized for real; the way Christ did it, by immersion. However, water baptism involved joining an obscure group of unfamiliar people even though it was teaching the truth. I desired to be baptized into Christ, but the thought about becoming a part of a bunch of strangers, which are far from perfection, gave me chills. I was afraid that they might start forcing on me their way of doing things, presenting Bible verses in their own way. I did not know the Bible well enough to find a decent answer under those circumstances. I was counting only on myself, not knowing that God would continue leading me and revealing to me everything that I needed for a successful Christian life.

I stood on the threshold of a decision: to believe that the Bible is right and radically change my life; or to decide that all this was nonsense and to keep living the way I did before. I just was not ready to decide. I still have a scientific mindset and I wanted incontestable scientific proofs of God’s real existence.

I also began to discover conflicts in my outlook. To believe in God, who created people in His own image and on the other hand, in evolution, which declared humanity originated from monkeys (or in a bigger scale from an amoeba), was absurdity. I remember wondering about a disturbing question, “How about the biogenetic law of evolution by Heckel (recapitulation theory) which I was teaching to students?” This law stated, that a human fetus during intra-uterine development repeats the stages of evolution. At the time of my struggle, I had not found the answer to this issue. The problem was not in scientific proofs, but in a change of heart. Later God opened to me this truth also. Having become acquainted with creationism in the USA, with scientific proofs of the origins of life, which were not known in the former Soviet Union, I found out, that Heckel had falsified his drawings of fetuses. Ten years after publishing his book, he was convicted of this lie at his own university¹.

For a number of days I was being worn out and pulled by opposite spiritual forces in different directions. The Holy Spirit urged me to ask for forgiveness for the evil I caused Anna, but the spirit of pride and disobedience was trying to persuade me, “It will be so shameful to you, don’t disgrace yourself, don’t injure your dignity!” Stephen, a deacon of the Apostolic church said correctly about this kind of attitude, “Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye.” (Acts 7:51).

My vitality was leaking out of me in a thin trickle like from a cracked jar. I was becoming flabby like a collapsing balloon. One day in my class, I could not keep my thoughts organized any more. I apologized to my students, that I felt bad. My faltering was a sign for me, “No more procrastination!” That day I wrote an apology letter, delivered it to Anna and felt enormous relief as a huge weight lifted from my conscience. Though she did not change that very day, I sensed that my conscience was clear. For a long time after that, she still maintained a scornful attitude to my values and kept her harsh sarcastic line of behaving with me; she mocked my faith. She even blasphemed God in her rage.

Changes in our relationship took place after four years. Here are lines from her recent letter,

“I am won by your husband’s and your loving, caring relationships to each other. It is worth living for that… I am thankful to your friend for bringing me to your church. She introduced me to her “brothers and sisters”. They were greeting me politely. We came early so I managed to walk around, to look, and to see the people. I quickly recognized that what they were involved in was not frivolous (as I had imagined earlier), but they were solid, worthy people with self-respect and dignity, with fair and open faces and eyes. Soviets lack all these characteristics on average. I was struck by their serious attitude toward the Bible and active analysis of Scriptures’ meaning. The enthusiasm of those present has astonished me. The worship service in church was an enlightening to me. The teaching turned out to be true or close to the truth, which I had not been able to comprehend before and its studying I had previously questioned. I had a bad opinion about its promoters. Now I feel very sorry for my skepticism, irony and disrespect. Your friend has given me a book about Christ. I read it daily and I am growing. I am thankful to my destiny, to you and to your friend for teaching me.”
To admit that she had been wrong considering Anna’s pride was a miracle. Especially for her to ask for my forgiveness was a real miracle.

Another pretext for being disturbed were Christ’ words, “Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery” (Matthew 19:9). A thought startled me, “Could it be that God is against me being married? Could He, Who forgives treachery and murder and gives a chance to start all over, from a blank page, will not forgive a mistake in choosing a former spouse?” The article “Divorced one, single forever?” helped me to understand, that God is not merciless².

5. Democratic Union and Vanya’s prayers

What helped me to decide in favor of Christ? I asked myself, whether I wanted God to exist and everything He commanded to be the truth. I answered in the affirmative. These ideas were from God because they corresponded with His Word. “Jesus answered them, and said, My doctrine is not mine, but His that sent me. If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself” (John 7:16-17). Prayer also helped, God did not leave me. It was the most serious battle in my life.

I went through a similar struggle in 1989 in Moscow, while spending three months at the Continuing Education Department in Moscow University. I became acquainted with an opposition political party, the “Democratic Union”, and attended its assemblies.

Once, coming out of a subway station, I noticed a young man quickly walking in front of me and sticking homemade advertisements on walls and columns. A station attendant who saw him doing it immediately tore one of them down. I got curious and when the guy stuck up the next ad, I came over, and read it. It said something like, “An opposition party, the “Democratic Union”, holds its meetings at such and such an address.” In the 72-year era, only one party, the Communist party, was in power. It was everywhere. Thus, hearing about an “opposition party” was very unusual and a bit scary. “It is probably illegal,” I guessed.

I tore off a tab with the address and telephone number. I called the number and asked how to get to the place they met and what their visitation requirements were. I imagined they might want to check IDs or something. There were no requirements though.

To go there was a risky step, and I am not a daredevil. I just realized the necessity for changes in our society, and had a premonition, that the program of this party might contain some important truths. I imagined, that my son would ask me some time later, “Mom, where were you when the destiny of our country and our future was at stake?” I also felt that I should be acquainted with this party and to make a decision about it.

The program of the Democratic Union looked very attractive on paper, harmonious, unequivocal and fair. Nevertheless, on paper, the program of the Communist Party looked not too bad either. A westerner might be surprised to find out how many biblical principles Communist Party Program had, for example, unselfish help, caring about parents, chastity, modesty, hard work, etc.

In the rank-and-file members of the Democratic Union and its leaders, I saw love for their nation and readiness for self-sacrifice, which earned my respect. For example, the leader of the Democratic Union, Valeria Novodvorskaya, from early youth, had chosen to protect our civil rights and paid for her beliefs with imprisonments and hunger strikes. This injured her health; she looked twenty years older than her age. Westerners did not know about persecutions of dissidents during Gorbachev’s rule either.

One time someone among those present in a meeting tried to keep her from participating in the next public meeting. The authorities did not give the official sanction for this meeting, and it threatened to end up with her next imprisonment.

“Valeria Il’inichna, perhaps it is not necessary. Couldn’t you just wait a little bit and gain strength?”

Novodvorskaya confidently answered him, “By sitting behind the stove no-one can gain strength.”

Her self-denial and patriotism instilled great respect. Seeing such courage and ardent dedication to a high cause stretched me to full height. At the same time, I noticed among many members and leaders a burning hatred of communists, not just to their ideology, but also to the people. Their passionate intolerance pushed me away from the Democratic Union. I was sure that nobody could build anything good by hatred, intolerance and destructive means.

At the evangelical program it seemed like I heard the voice of my son again, “Mom, where were you?…” Revealing and compelling Biblical truths appealed directly to my conscience: with whom to be? On whose side should I be, on the side of good or evil? Whom do I have to serve?

Later I realized that to decide for God, someone’s prayer had to help me. Who could have prayed for me? Around me, there were unbroken atheists, starting with my family: four generations of communists. Recently, when God sent me a girlfriend, Antonina, in my congregation, I discovered who could pray for me.

At first, I did not have friends in my church, and then I found them in another congregation. I did not ask God for a friend in my own congregation, I simply waited. More than once I noticed that while I was trying to accomplish something by myself I exerted extreme energy. Frequently all was for nothing, but when I prayed, there was an answer.

I told Antonina, how once in one of my psychological training classes, I had a Christian student named Vanya (Ivan). It happened before I met Tolik and Irena. He differed from the others a lot by his behavior and his attitude to people. In our class, he shared his testimony about how once he was standing in line at a store and a woman behind him was rude to him. He prayed for her. To pray for an offender was very unusual for our Soviet environment. When somebody is rude, all the people I met felt justified to be rude back because the other party deserved it. During a training exercise, “Ship-wreck”³, which usually causes heated arguments and requires making a decision about what vital things to take on a life raft, in the majority of groups quarrels, irritations and threats reign, like, “We’ll feed you to the sharks”. Vanya appeared to be a leader in that particular group, and under his leadership, there was an atmosphere of warm cooperation and mutual respect. It was a rare situation.

Only it did not please me when he read from the Bible. Prior to that my rare encounters with other believers boiled down to them preaching at me and quoting the Scripture presenting Christianity as a bunch of rules. Those rules seemed to me just prohibitions and suppression of human will; you cannot do this or that. (Several years later, the Lord revealed to me, that prohibitions are foreign to Christianity, they are just opposite to it. ^NIV Colossians 2:18-23: “Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules: “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.”) I am a freedom-loving individual and I cannot stomach compulsion and suppression. Because of their perverted interpretation of the Scripture, I had a distorted idea about it. Their preached Bible verses reeked of something dusty and musty to me. In spite of my prejudice through Vanya’s personality, a fresh wind of nobility and magnanimity blew in the air and the quivering beams of God’s love for people and respect to human freedom shone on me.

Vanya spoke about our classes, that in them we learn how to love each other. When I was telling Antonina about all that she “figured him out”. She said that it had to be he, who prayed for me. I was so delighted! How I would like to meet him one more time and thank him for what he did for me.

When my faith increased to the degree that I grew fond of God, I realized one more obstacle on my way to marital happiness. A wild thirst for love, bordering on derangement, was tormenting me. It was an evidence of idolatry. God warns us, “You shall not make for yourself an idol, thou shall not worship them or serve them” (Exodus 20: 4,5).

I was attracted to vulnerable and soft men. As soon as I noticed mental anguish, a trauma, I felt such a burning compassion or pity that I lost control. My insides would become tense and quivering, compassion and sympathy to them would fill me, gradually I would fall in love, and finally, fall in passionate obsession. I was too dependent on a man, on his opinion. When I was infatuated with someone, I adored him so much, that I borrowed his tastes, inclinations and started to profess his views. My individuality and will were enmeshed in his. Fortunately, I did not find any response to my feelings.

A girlfriend of mine once told me, “You will be a copy of your husband.” So as something similar to reciprocity once occurred in my relationship with a male, my worship for him reached such a catastrophic degree that I agreed to commit a crime. I considered it a necessary sacrifice on the altar of love. I already was internally ready to do it, but by objective circumstances, I did not have to. He broke off before that happened - thank God! Later I realized that in life a love and worship of God should go first. It is dangerous to worship a human being. Therefore, I put the Lord in first place and decided, “That’s it, I am ready now, and nothing will prevent me from my marital happiness.” God, however, continued to work on me to reveal and remove other obstacles.

Holy Spirit revealed to me, what kind of garbage was filling my thoughts - sexually painted dreams of an imaginary lover. I was not able to separate lust from the need for warmth of heart. Before my conversion, I did not see anything shameful in it. Christ taught though, “I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). Our lustful thoughts are equal to committing the real fornication. Science states that our nervous system does not distinguish reality from fantasy and reacts to both in the same way⁴. (By the way, true science always confirms the Bible, because both are the truth.) That is why purity should start from our thoughts. I did not even realize how I was defiling myself with lust. I could not control my thoughts, desires and dreams at that point.

Somebody might ask, “But if a person just mentally imagines something, what difference does it make? He did not seduce anybody, did not steal anybody’s spouse away. It is his personal business! Is it so important what are his thoughts are occupied with?” Certainly, for other people there is a difference between a person just desiring to commit sin and actually committing it. If he was just thinking of doing it, nobody knew about it, he did not do any physical harm to others, then only the sinner’s soul suffered. Nevertheless, God is concerned with what is happening with our souls even when physically we did not cause any damage to others but harmed ourselves, because we allowed evil to nest in our hearts and to corrode our integrity. “^KJV For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7).

If we cherish envious thoughts, imagine scenes of how great it is to take an object of our envy from someone, then we develop covetousness. If by our will power we grudgingly make a “generous gift” to somebody, we do not become generous because of it; we just become a more hypocritical covetous people. On the contrary, if in our minds we cultivate an attitude of friendliness, readiness to help, and imagine how we can share what we have, what kind of deeds will follow as someone presents a request to us? It is not hard to figure it out. The Lord desires us to be completely free from evil and live in absolute safety; therefore, He calls us to pay attention to with what things we fill our thoughts. He is powerful enough to deliver us from any evil, if we will cooperate with Him.

After my Baptism, the Lord presented me with a wonderful gift of mercy: He turned off my uncontrollable sexuality, which had been tearing me apart and torturing me. Fleshly temptations ceased bothering me. I stopped paying attention to men and they stopped noticing me. At that time I thought, “Well now, probably, I am ready, and there are no more internal obstacles left.” I had a way to go though.

Chapter 6. Blessing and curse

A friend of mine presented me with a book by Derek Prince “Blessing and Curse”. It is written mostly in agreement with the Bible. It defines a curse as the absence of success: “And thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways: and thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled evermore, and no man shall save thee.” (Deuteronomy 28:29). This happens when a person breaks God’s statutes and laws.

The day I read it, a miracle took place. There was a frosty cold December. For five days, the radiators of the central heating did not work. The apartment, which we rented at that time, was at the end of the heating system; therefore, it did not affect my neighbors. Neither the housing maintenance office, nor the heating system office could establish the cause of the failure. On Sunday morning, about 11AM, when I was reading Derek Prince’s book, I realized that I had to destroy my copy of the book Magic and Occult.

This impression was not new to me, and I wanted to get rid of that book before. At the same time, I wondered whether to bring it to a consignment store and to recover some money from it. I also doubted, if it was worth trying, because other people would read this devilry. Reading Prince’s book on that Sunday morning, I realized that it was better to burn it, but I felt sorry for my money. It was very expensive. Nevertheless, it dawned on me that the book on magic could serve as an obstacle to God’s help. He wanted to help me, but I prevented Him. The problem was not in the material object itself, but in the spiritual underlying reason: I knew that the book in magic was garbage, but my love of money stood in the way. “For the love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6:10). Notice, not money itself, but the love of money is dangerous.

Finally, I clearly realized that I had to destroy the book. Somewhere about noon, I burned it. During the next several days, other ungodly books suffered the same fate, Fortune-Telling of the Nations of the World, Opening of the Third Eye and other similar literature. At 2.30 PM I touched the radiator, and to my joy it was hot. I presumed that the housing maintenance office or the heating system people had found a malfunction and removed it.

On Monday morning, a plumber came to my place to find out how I was doing. I told him,

“Everything is OK. The radiator is already hot.”

He was surprised, “And why is it hot? We did not do anything yet!”

It could seem like a trifle, but it is the plain truth.

Through Prince’s book, I began rethinking my private life. To solve this problem took much more time. First, I realized one more reason of my pessimistic attitude to my marital happiness, coupled with deeply rooted unbelief. When I was a teenager a relative, Boris, repeated with contempt, “Who needs you, loser?” The worst part, I believed him. In fact, he cursed me. His curse stuck to me and brought forth its destructive fruit.

Manifestations of this curse I could see in many instances. When I was twenty years old, I went on my first foreign trip to Czechoslovakia. There I met a young man from Greece, Nickolay. He influenced my life a lot. Nobody understood me before, but he understood me immediately, from the very first minutes of our communication. I was admiring his superiority in many areas. Such a height of self-awareness and love for freedom I had never encountered yet. When a military Junta regime just started in Greece, Nickolay did not want to stay in a totalitarian country and asked for political asylum in Slovakia. He fluently spoke six languages. His Russian was completely free of any accent. His phrase (a proverb) etched in my soul, “A man is a man as many times as the languages he knows.” The day I met him I felt so overwhelmed, that I kept saying to myself, “It can not happen to me; a man like this just can not notice me.”

Another time when I was corresponding with an American, a very interesting person, I pined with feelings of my own inferiority, “Why is he so young and handsome?” In general, through all my life I used subconscious tactics to destroy everything good with my own hands in order to confirm my belief, that nobody needed me. A deep cynical disbelief in the possibility of mutuality tormented me. I was very smart intellectually, but very foolish spiritually. My lack of spiritual wisdom is obvious now. “^NAU Proverbs 14:1. The wise woman builds her house, but the foolish tears it down with her own hands.”

Feelings that I mistook for my unselfish love masked my desire to be loved. I was treating love as a consumer, not a giver. Is there anybody among us who is able to love unselfishly without knowing God? If I did not receive reciprocal feelings, I cruelly got rid of my attachments. The reason was my fear of rejection. Therefore, I preferred to hurt myself, finding a gloomy satisfaction in the illusion of being in charge of the situation. The devil, “a murderer from the beginning”, actually was manipulating me like a puppet. Because unselfish love is not afraid of rejection, it rejoices in the happiness of the loved one, even when he does not belong to you.

Secondly, I finally understood that I had been constantly damning myself. When a mess occurred, I called myself names, like “fool”, “stupid”, “now you have it” and so on. It was hard for me to forgive myself, and it was even harder to cease torturing myself. Without Divine support, I never was able to do it. All those hurts were intrigues of the enemy, who wants to torment and destroy people. On the one hand, long-term self-torturing habit and painful fear of rejection were sucking me into a bog. I was addicted to these painful sensations, like an alcoholic. On the other hand, I experienced Divine love and the gentle, firm hand of God, Who was pulling me out of the bog “into a wide open place”. Thus, overcoming was getting easier and easier.

Is not it strange that an irrational force pushes us to choose things harmful for us? Among those things are pride, hatred of ourselves or of others, gloating, dissipation, falsity and other garbage. Freud called it an instinct of death. He observed this self-destructive tendency in the behavior of a two-year-old boy, who found pleasure in making himself suffer. The propensity to sin is a condition of our soul, a congenital illness, a bent for immorality, for disobedience, when we do to ourselves harmful things. God introduced His moral law - Ten Commandments - as a protection, a fence separating us from dangerous territory, from falling in a precipice. Obedience to His commandments is not meant at all to rob us of our pleasures. When we obey Him, good happens to us.

Have you ever wondered, why it is necessary for humans to learn, to acquire constructive ways of behavior and thinking? We need to study for years and with great effort. A similar picture we can observe while working in the garden. Weeds grow easily, not requiring any care, but cultivated plants require constant tending and labor. Why is this so? Is not it strange that destructive ways are so familiar to us, they are incorporated in our nature, and they do not need to be learned? We are separated from them only with a voice of conscience. When we compromise we quickly slide into a pit. We are our own main enemy. That is right. The reason is we obey our own spiritual enemy. The word Satan in translation means “adversary” or “enemy”. Sin is incorporated in our flesh, it is hereditary. Yet the victory of good above evil is found because of conscious choices, when a person chooses Christ.

Thirdly, I was involved in occult practices, thus living on the enemy’s territory. In my youth, I was dabbling in spiritualism “for fun”. A couple of my girlfriends and I once gathered at midnight, when our parents were away from home. We called on “the spirit of Alexander Dumas”, our favourite French medieval writer, the author of the novel, Three Musketeers, which we admired. We asked the spirit questions about our future. The Word of God calls turning to the dead a sin (Exodus 34:15-16). At that time, we had no idea what we were dealing with. It was a demonic spirit, not our beloved novelist. Communication with other gods or spirits the Bible calls “whoring” or “prostituting” (Leviticus 20:6, Isaiah 8:19). It is the same as having sexual relations with a person, who is not your spouse “for fun”. Its consequences are real, but not fun at all. While communicating with the occult, we open doors to Satan; we give him permission to work in our lives. He has a honey sweet tongue, but a heart of gall.

I also called on a psychic for healing. Psychics deal not with Christ, but with other spiritual “cosmic” forces. They ignore God’s principle, laid out in the Bible. When they “take away” a curse, they rely on the principle of paying back and returning the curse to the one who “sent” it. But God says, “^KJV Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” (Romans 12:19).

A lady-psychic was treating my growing tumor. In a number of years the tumor grew so big, that conservative treatment could not help. It required surgery.

Just be careful not to fall into another extreme and to start shunning psychics or even worse, to start a witch-hunt. The problem is not in people themselves. That lady-psychic, for example, performed many good deeds; in general, she cared about others and tried to do good. I am talking about the spiritual battle between good and evil. “^KJV For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places“(Ephesians 6:12). We do not have to have any enemies among people. The Bible teaches us to love our neighbors.

Fourthly, God told Abraham, “^KJV And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee” (Genesis 12:3). Christians are heirs of Abraham (Galatians 3:29). If we judge or condemn His children, we inflict a curse on ourselves.

Quite often, I blamed believers because they were not ideal, not yet like Christ. I did not recognize the fact that I was the same sinner, only in different spheres. Ironically, I considered myself much better, then they. Nevertheless, God loves all of us the way we are. He believes in us no matter how guilty we are. He also teaches us the same, “^NIV Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God” (Romans 15:7). “Accept” means not to condemn, but to accept these people, as they are, sinful. The Holy Spirit has convicted them of certain sins, but some sins are still unknown to them, as well as ours to us. Whom did I make worse, when in my heart I condemned Christians for their sins and was frustrated because of it? Only myself! They probably did not even know what was going on within me. I drew an additional damnation on myself.

Fifthly, I was praying to images, to icons. The second commandment warns us against it, “^{KJV 4} Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: ⁵ Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; ⁶ And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.” (Exodus 20:4-6).

Heredity matters. Hereditary curses and blessings are transmitted from ancestors to descendants. The sin of idolatry is so serious that the curse for breaking the second commandment is transferred to future descendants for several generations. I remember how my great grandmother was breaking the second commandment by kneeling before an icon. I am sure she sincerely believed that she was doing a godly act. I also believe that many modern Christians sincerely believe the same when they bow down to or kiss either an icon or a statue. It does not matter how sincere we are when we sin. We are still sincerely wrong.

I also assume based on our folk traditions that many of my ancestors were falling down before icons. Thus, I believe I had hereditary curses, and no psychotherapy can neither diagnose them nor remove them. On the contrary, keeping this commandment is so beneficial for a person that a blessing is transferred for thousands of generations. Three thousand years and about 100-150 generations of ancestors separated Valeriy from his ancestor, David, the man whom God abundantly blessed and called, “a man after mine own heart” (Acts 13:22). The personality of Valeriy, who was warming people around him with his magnanimity, became for me an object illustration of the truthfulness of God’s words about transferring of blessings to dozens of generations.

In the Bible, I saw an opportunity to be delivered from curses and God has already removed them from me. Our God is powerful to convert any curse into a blessing (Nehemiah 13:2), if we ask Him and obey His will.

Now those destructive feelings no longer control me. This does not mean that I am under a spell. “ ^NIV Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17). God deprives nobody of the freedom of choice. If I start tormenting myself with painful ideas again or sin in any other way, everything can come back. I just rely on Him protection. He is able and willing to deliver us from any trouble or curse if we only comply with His Word. We just need to ask Him to deliver us from a curse based on what Jesus has done for us. ^KJV Galatians 3:13: “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.”

Another condition on the way to deliverance from curses is to forgive the person who has cursed you. “^KJV For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14-15).

It was rather easy for me, because I always loved Boris. Why his curse had worked, I only recently understood, as I was telling my husband about my childhood. “^NIV An undeserved curse does not come to rest” (Proverbs 26:2). The Holy Spirit reached those depths of my heart, where the root of the problem was sitting. It is common for humans to deny information unpleasant for their pride. We easily forget the evil, which we have brought on others. A psychological defense mechanism is at work. This mechanism distorts incoming information to make it match our self-image. We want to look “good” in our own eyes and in the eyes of others. That is why it is so hard for us to acknowledge that we are sinful. Christ offers us an opportunity not just to “look good” and to have a reputation of being “nice”, but to be nice and good in reality. In order to reach that point we first must acknowledge and confess the evil we have inside of us.

We can parallel is with physical sickness and healing. To be healed from a disease first, one has to admit that he is sick. As long as you keep telling yourself that you are OK, disease will keep eating you up. When you realize that you are ill, you can turn to a physician for healing.

How can we discover things, which we are not aware of? The Word of God possesses extraordinary power, it is “^KJV quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).

At some point I recollected, the kind of meanness I did to Boris many years ago. Being a teenager, feeling shy and not knowing how to express my affection to him, I preferred to sneer at him. I did it out of mischief, just to goof around. Only after many years I realized, how offensive and humiliating all that was for Boris. No wonder he hated me and wanted revenge. It is hard for me to believe now that I had done all that. For example, when I found out that he had a crush on his classmate, by trickery I made him write a note, which said, “Katya, I love you. Boris”. After that, I took the note away and started teasing him that I would give his note to Katya. It was just cruel.

My relationship with Boris is one more amazing gift. I wanted us to be friends. However, for long decades I saw only neglect and contempt from him. His typical statements, not considering name-calling were, “Don’t waste my time, what do you want?” “Don’t you have work to do at home?” Alternatively, when two of us were invited to the same group he would declare to the hosts with indignation, “Why have you brought her here? To spoil my party?”

About ten years ago, it occurred to me that I had been too frequently asking Boris for help, and it was wrong. I stopped asking him and disturbing him at all. I tried to help him when he asked. Such opportunities occurred very rarely. I even asked a psychologist for counseling. He told me, that I did everything right, I should just wait and “who could know what kind of problems Boris is troubled with.”

When I found the Lord (in fact when the Lord found me), I began to pray for Boris. Some changes in our relationship took place immediately. After my Baptism, he stopped picking on me and scoffing me, he just began ignoring me completely. Moreover, after a number of years for the first time he became open with me being drunk and shared his intimate feelings and experiences. He also told me that he was reading the Bible. On top of that, he even offered some help himself when I did not ask. I was so happy and grateful to God. A warm cloud of gratitude to God filled my heart.

I guess some of you who are reading these lines could hardly believe it. Whether you believe it or not it is still true. There is a huge difference between a fact (reality) and an opinion. Objective reality does not depend on our opinion, on our attitudes, prejudices, doubts, unbelief etc. Fact (or truth) is real anyway; human opinions may or may not be true. One of my favorite Bible verses is, “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). I believe in it with all my heart.

What is truth? According to Webster’s dictionary it is “the state of being the case: FACT”. According to Dahl’s dictionary “truth is everything that is correct, real, accurate, just; thing, that exists (everything, that exists, is truth).” Truth is not what we think about something, but reality that exists objectively, independent of our thoughts, desires, will and emotions. Reality does not depend on whether we believe it or not.

For example, please, answer this question: “If we consider a bird’s wings to be her legs, how many legs does a bird have?” Write your answer down or pronounce it aloud, please. I guess that many of you answered “four”. Just because we called wings legs they did not stop being wings in reality. The correct answer is “two”. Because we consider A to be B or C reality does not change, A does not stop being A and does not transform into B or C.

What changes, when we have an erroneous idea? We become deceived; we act inadequately, we make mistakes. We buy a lie and false information guides us. Thus, we use inadequate measures and experience failures. It is like trying to arrive at a destination point by using a false map. We hurt ourselves. If we do not believe the truth, we cause damage to ourselves.

I am emphasizing one more time: Whether we believe the truth or not, reality does not change because of us. The truth is that God exists. His existence is not verifiable directly, through our senses; in other words, we cannot see Him or touch Him. However, we can learn about Him indirectly (in a mediatory way) through the creation of His hands around us, through the effectiveness and truthfulness of His Word, through what He does in our lives and in our hearts. By the way, the most significant difference between a human and an animal is that the activity of animals is direct and spontaneous while the deeds of humans are indirect (mediatory). They are mediated by use of words and symbols (L. S. Vygotsky) (see more at How Many Truths Are There?).

We have a genuine map for our life journey, the Bible. It is 100% true. Nobody has ever managed to find falsehood in the Bible. The most adamant atheists and most intolerant critics have failed. A truthful reliable source is of the greatest value. Just for this purpose, I supplied my text with footnotes and references to sources, so you can check the reliability of the results of scientific research and the facts provided. You do not have to take me in my word. Check it out, make sure it is true!

So let us value the Bible, as it deserves.

If you want to be a good navigator on your ship, search this map and use it properly. You will see your life transformed.

Chapter 7. Field test

For long years without faith in God, I did not allow Him to help me. I remember how once a student of mine, a so-called atheist, was complaining that God was insensitive and did not want to help. “Did you ask Him to help you?” I asked the young man. He did not say a word, but his stunned facial expression showed me he did not. This is a common human mistake. I once was among those messed up people. When I started asking God to help, He began pointing to obstacles in my way and assisting in overcoming them one by one.

I also realized, that meanwhile my deliverance from the fear of rejection took place only in my mind, outside of real relationship with a man. I guessed that “field tests” were necessary. So God arranged them for me.

In the summer of the year of 2000, I had to go through unknown suffering; for the first time I faced death. The tumor that the lady-psychic tried to heal grew large. Its rapid growth required speedy surgery. The conditions of treatment in post-Soviet hospitals are very different from American hospitals. There were a number of damaging factors, which led me to the verge of death. Because of that extraordinary experience, I obtained a different outlook on lots of things; many feelings and urges became obvious to me. One of those revelations referred to a young man, Sasha (Alexandr), with whom I became acquainted five years before in the south at a sea resort area. I had seriously fallen in love with him then.

When I first saw Sasha, I was stunned with admiration. He exuded some kind of a glow, pure, but a bit cool. I felt in him something elevated and at the same time distant. I could not define what caused this impression, either his seemingly unusually handsome appearance, or his charming voice or something almost imperceptible. The Lord revealed the cause of it in summer of 2000. I will tell about it a little bit later.

His gentle warm intonations, clear correct speech reminded me the transparency of a brook. His loftiness of phrases were worthy of the language of literature masters and reached hidden depths of my heart. We had been frankly communicating in a friendly and honest manner. He shared with me his personal failures. In his early twenties, he suffered because of an unhappy love and since then all his relationships with women did not have any affection because he avoided attachment.

Before that, I never presented flowers to men except on their birthday, to doctors and teachers. I felt a desire to give him a rose as a gift, because he reminded me of a white rose. Unfortunately, there were only red ones in the market. In addition, the salespeople did not sell single roses, just a bouquet. I picked the most beautiful ones. I came to his office, handed him a bouquet and said, “This is for you.”

Tears came out in his eyes. “Oh! Thank you. Nobody ever presented me with flowers before…”

I was in ecstasy.

The next day he told me, “I feast my eyes on those roses. When I was walking to my job this morning, I was imagining how they were waiting for me here. How beautiful they are, each one in its own way! This one reminds me of a young gentle girl. That one reminds me of a mature woman. And another one looks like a funny old lady.”

It was such a delight for me to please him so much! So I thought how much those women lose, whose conventions and fears prevents them from presenting their loved ones with flowers. Dear ladies, I appeal to you: do not deprive yourselves and your beloved ones of this amazing joy! Give them flowers!

I wrote a letter to Sasha confessing my feelings, and handed it to him. After he read it, I noticed the expression of pleasure on his face. He answered, “I have a girlfriend (I knew about that as well as about the fact that he did not love her). That’s why I can’t allow myself anything else.”

I promised him, “I will wait for you.”

I knew that relationships where love is absent are short-lived. Experiments have demonstrated that their maximal duration is no more than five years⁵. There is a practical value to scientific research anyway! I am joking. So, I thought in comparison with long decades of indefinite waiting it would not be hard for me at all to wait five more years, when I knew exactly whom I was waiting for. Several years’ delay was not a sacrifice to me. One Bible character, Jacob, had been waiting for his beloved for seven years. “^KJV And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her” (Genesis 29:20).

Sasha tried to argue that it could take lots of time. I perceived his objection as a polite desire to smooth sharp edges and not to wound me with the truth that he was not interested in me.

“Sasha, if I am not your type, just tell me straightforward. I need the truth, not politeness,” I said.

“It is not about being polite. Just when I date a girl I cannot allow myself to have any other relationships,” he replied.

Sasha’s fidelity caused deep respect and a pleasant amazement in me. He became even dearer to me. To my great regret, I had previously confronted men’s unscrupulousness and double morality. Dear men, I do not want to offend you at all. But in my life I had been meeting mostly those representatives of the strong sex, which did not consider faithfulness something worthy and were ready for affairs elsewhere and even bragged about their cheating on their party. That was one of the reasons why I lost faith in the existence of a man with integrity, whom I could love and who would love me.

Critical thinking can motivate a person to ask a question: how did I know that those men were cheating on their wives? I was not present at that time. Even if they bragged about their immorality, it is quite possible for them to concoct many stories!

That is right, not everything people say about themselves is true. I had numerous opportunities to verify this sad conclusion in several ways. First, I had a lot of male acquaintances and friends who were open with me. Generally, many people were telling me things they would not dare to tell others. Their openness with me was one of the reasons that motivated me to choose the profession of Psychologist.

What was the secret? Why did people trust me? I did not scold them or put them to shame when they shared something negative about themselves. In addition, I kept their confessions secret. Confidence that their secret will not be disclosed creates a sensation of safety, and allows people the luxury to be sincere, honest and open. My friends would say to me, “When you tell about personal details of other people’s lives you never mention names, you just say, “A friend of mine did that” or “my acquaintance said that”, that’s why I can trust you.”

Secondly, sometimes husbands or boyfriends of my girlfriends or of other women respected by me in situations when their mate was not around would start trying to touch me. A burning resentment seized me for my deceived girlfriends. It seemed like those traitors splashed slop in my face. That is why I felt the deepest disappointment in men. Their behavior seemed the height of betrayal. Increasingly I believed that faithfulness and men were incompatible notions.

By meeting Sasha, I came to believe that a man’s fidelity was possible.

The encounter with Sasha had left a deep trace in my soul. In general, his influence on my life appeared unique. Actually, after meeting him, a turning point occurred in my personal life and I began to change for the better, as if after a dark night the first rays of a rising sun dawned. In communication with him, I certainly suffered of persistent fear of rejection. Therefore, I tried very hard to drive Sasha to a point where he would turn me down, in order not to feed myself with unreal expectations and not to tease myself with vain passionate dreams. Underneath that, there was a layer of impatience and unbelief.

After my departure for home, I occasionally called him on the phone and in six or seven months, I ceased calling. I felt offended. It happened like this. In our last conversation he asked me, “Are you going on vacation in our city by any chance?”

“The only thing that attracts me there is fellowship with you”, I frankly admitted. He was silent. I interpreted the absence of his positive reaction as: he is not interested in communicating with me, which is “as was needed to prove it”. I blurted, “I won’t call you any more” and hung up. An unconscious insult was seething in me at that moment, and I thought, “Why did not he tell me from the start and had to procrastinate for such a long time? I surely asked him to be honest with me!” Being offended is a transformed anger. “^KJV The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God” (James 1:20).

When five years later I started thinking about Sasha again, I looked at the situation differently. I was flooded with memories of our conversations and began to see his influence on my life in a new light. When my wounded pride lapsed into silence, I realized that the absence of his answer five years ago was not just politeness.

I understood something entirely new to me. I recalled Sasha’s reaction when he read my first letter of confession. He was sincerely rejoicing. I could not credit this joy to myself until now. I was explaining his reaction in that way, “He is just pleased that someone is interested in him. It probably raises his self-worth and confidence.” The reason for my interpretation of his feeling was my ruling principle of “either-or”, “everything or nothing”. This principle works fine only concerning choosing God over sin. In other words, it is good for us to be wholeheartedly committed to God and always resist any sins in our lives, and act in integrity always. However, in most of other situations, this principle is either not productive or even faulty. In particular, it was faulty regarding my desire to be loved. It did not allow me to value small progress. It killed my perspective.

The Bible teaches us “in whatsoever state… therewith to be content” (Philippians 4:11). This counsel contains great wisdom. If spontaneous emotions move us and we react “naturally”, we do not appreciate what we have. Grass always seems greener on the other side of the fence. We envy someone else’s success and prosperity. It seems to us that if we had what they had we would be happier. When we receive what we desired and still keep reacting “naturally” we quickly cool down though. Annoyance gnaws us and happiness escapes us. Who among us is still excited with last year’s birthday gift? Why is this so?

We use a faulty comparison scheme. We compare ourselves with others so that we are looking for an area in which we are deprived. When we see others possess something we focus on how they are better off and we are worse off. For example, many people compare themselves economically with their wealthier neighbors, CEOs or movie stars. Notice, based on our false initial premise we consider our situation more joyless, than the others, and sometimes even the worst.

How often do you hear people comparing themselves with residents of India, where people live in carton boxes or Africa, where children swell because of hunger and rejoicing for having a roof over the head and a crust of bread? On the other hand, when we lose something we recall the past when we still had it and feel sorry for the loss.

Is it right to use such comparisons? You, probably, already guessed, the Bible has the answer to this question also. “^KJV For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise” (2 Corinthians 10:12).

When I was comparing myself with other people, it did not give me any peace of mind. I was asking myself, “Why are criminals thriving, but I was not doing anything like that and yet I am suffering? Why do homely women with cantankerous characters have husbands, while I am better looking and friendlier, yet pine with loneliness? Why do my peers have comfortable apartments, but I am renting an apartment with a stinky and half collapsed outhouse?

All the comparisons of this type are destructive. Nevertheless, there are other categories for comparison. Faulty viewpoints we can change when we notice our benefits, i.e. the areas we are better off than others are. It does not mean, “I am better than others” though. What will happen to our emotions if we start seeking for benefits and positive aspects, not losses in our circumstances? It is not so hard to figure it out. For example, I started comparing my life with how Christ lived on earth. The Lord did not commit any sin, but I did. He had not where to lay His head (Luke 9:58), but I have. Then I experienced the thing spoken by John the Baptist, “^KJV He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). It gave me relief.

Try to answer this question, “How am I better off than others? For what can I thank God?” Scientists studied about one hundred disabled people with spinal trauma and found that two thirds of them found a positive side effects in their injury, like these: becoming a better person; perceive others as more important; value the soul more than the body; self-conscience level increases etc.⁶ Try to expand this list.

When I felt bad, I put this rule into practice; I was searching and finding the meaning in a negative situation. As a result, I experienced joy. Psychotherapists sometimes advise unhappy people, “List you blessings.” I am pleased to meet people who are suffering from agonizing diseases and saying, “I am blessed”. They do not focus on their losses but rejoice with what they have. The apostle Paul’s words give the key to happiness. We do not have to get upset over things that we do not have, but be thankful for what we have already received: “⁶ But godliness with contentment is great gain” (1 Timothy 6:6).

Please, understand me correctly. To be content is not the same as rejecting a desire to have or to achieve more. We are not only allowed, but we should pursue a better life. However, while doing this do not depreciate the things we already possess, but experience contentment with what we have already achieved. It is similar to a well-known example about a glass filled halfway with water. A pessimist views it as half-empty, and an optimist as half-full.

In the light of that summer’s events, I came to realize how important it is to value the little good things, which I was noticing in Sasha toward me. I reconsidered my perception of other significant situations. One of them was when he was describing with joy how he was admiring the flowers that I presented to him. It deeply moved me back then. Nevertheless, a notorious blockage “everything or nothing” was lying heavy on me choking my ability to accept valuable things. Later I realized that those little details were testifying about Sasha’s warm feelings to me. I meant something to him. It became so good in my soul because of this discovery! In the past, it just did not occur to me because the curse was so ingrained, so I believed the one whom I needed could not be interested in me. In this way, God was working on me, changing my way of thinking, transforming me by the renewing of my mind. “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Romans 12:2).

In Sasha’s eyes, when he first looked at me, there was no special interest. His glance was absent, plunged into himself. His gaze was telling me clearly that Sasha did not see me and did not understand. I was unspeakably upset because of it and it was pressing me like heavy weights. The picture changed only at the very end of our communication, when he came to our room to visit us, where my son and I were lodging. His glance became alive and direct, he finally saw me. I am so thankful to him for those minutes of sincere communication. I treasured them as the most precious to me in all my personal life. His touching chaste farewell kiss vitalized a fragrant bud in my soul. I am persuaded, that all this happened only because I had been praying and believing in changes for the better.

Do not think that everything is under God’s control or He manipulates us like puppets and nothing depends on us. He gives us choice! The Bible does not leave room for fatalism. “¹⁹ I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19). God provides opportunities, calling upon us to choose the best. We have the final word. God does not force anybody. Just being All-knowing He knows the finale from the commencement (Isaiah 46:10). He is aware of where our half lives, the person, with whom we could be most of all happy.

At the same time, I do not believe that there is one “inevitable” person prepared for us. God just has the best plan for us. We can either accept it, or warp it, or even reject it. It is obvious in the life of Samson (Judges, chapters 13-17). God entrusted him with a mission to deliver Israel. Samson, nevertheless, walked in his own crooked way; he slept with a prostitute, plunged into other sins and ended up captive by enemies who put his eyes out. At the end of his life, he repented and turned to God by serving Him with his death. If he had been obedient from the very beginning, he would have experienced and brought forth in his life good, not evil both for himself and for others.

The Bible provides sad examples of mass rejection of God’s will. “²⁹ And all the people that heard him, and the publicans, justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John. ³⁰ But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God against themselves, being not baptized of him.” (Luke 7:29-30). Consequently Christ mourned over His people, “³⁷ O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!” (Matthew 23:37).

Alternatively, if we take my case, as you will see further, I always had a choice. I could choose which way to go, God’s way or a crooked way. I found my own “half” only because I was choosing God and walking in His path. It happened to me not because I was better, than other people, but because I submitted to the Lord and was listening to His voice, which urged me to walk in God’s way. On this path I sometimes stumbled, but got up and kept going. That is why choosing a life companion as well as choosing everything else is our responsibility.

I started feeling an urgent need to talk to Sasha. God revealed to me the cause of his failures. I saw similarities between us. In both of us, the acute paralyzing fear of rejection was inherent. Behind his anguish, I saw the same thing that hindered me and I had been delivered from it. He avoided cordial affection in order to feel safe from rejection. Even if he was already married and did not overcome those feelings, it is the same as living on a barrel full of gunpowder. Explosives should be rendered harmless. Stable relationships can be built only where a person is liberated from fear and can love another person regardless of how he/she relates to you. It means acquiring a love-abundant essence.

Fear of rejection is rooted in the problem of low self-worth, when a person loves himself too little. Not even too little, but does not really love himself at all. Besides, for us to be able to love we have to experience somebody loving us first.

I was sensing how the Holy Spirit urged me to write Sasha a letter to help him. Since this urge was strong and did not leave me for a long time, it was clear that this matter was of great significance for Sasha too. I was aware that I ought to let him know about my discoveries. However, I felt ashamed. I had promised not to call him any more. After accepting Christ, I related to keeping my promises even more seriously. “Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay” (Ecclesiastes 5:5).

An inner struggle was battling in me for two months. I was searching for a way out. Finally I asked my pastor for an advice. He resolved my doubts and encouraged me, “You are not looking for your selfish interest; you want to serve God and to help a person.” So I wrote. I asked Sasha to forgive me for breaking my promise because the reason was worthy. Even if he did not feel a need of help, I believed God and tried to obey Him in everything. Besides, obedience is always for our good because God takes into consideration everyone’s interests.

Approximately at the same time, the Heavenly Father accomplished one more transformation in me. As suddenly, as He turned off my sexuality after my Baptism, in the summer of 2000 He turned it back on again. I just changed my posture and felt a warm wave of reanimated voluptuous sensations spreading all over my body. Those sensations were familiar and at the same time new. Something light and beautiful appeared in them and the tormenting pain disappeared. Annoyance was my first reaction (what a hard to please nature I had!). “Lord, why have you done this to me? It was so good, so calm before! What shall I do with this? I do not even have a husband!” I heard His reply with my heart, “Just accept it.” I realized that God wanted me to meet my husband and that this meeting would happen soon.

Why did it not happen earlier? I was not ready for that. I was staying in the bondage of sinful passions, for example, I was easily offended, and I could not overcome it myself. I experienced first hand that we can overcome sin. We can stay not offended, when somebody insults and humiliates us, we can forgive our offenders. We can learn how to live the way Christ did on earth.

It is possible gradually, not immediately. Anyway, I am learning and succeeding in what I had not been previously able to do at all. How many soul wounds were healed! I asked for forgiveness of so many people for injuries I caused to them. We can overcome the most unconquerable dependencies and addictions. There is a term in Psychotherapy, a chocoholic⁷, who is a person, addicted to chocolate. All my life I had been craving chocolate, devouring it in immeasurable quantities, and wasting so much money on it. When I started a box of chocolates, I could not put it down until I finished the entire box. That is why I understand alcoholics very well and sympathize with them.

I used to be a “sweetoholic” and coffee addict too. I was overeating cookies and candies; I was taking caffeine (caffeine is a drug) inside and just could not live without it. During my years of fellowship with the Lord, I developed self-control; I obtained the ability to rule my desires. When I was praying and asking God for help, I noticed how I received strength from Him to overcome and with every attempt, overcoming became easier and easier. It seemed subjectively as if an impulse grew weaker, as if the drive decreased. The passion did not control me any more. I saw a different possibility - not to give in to it. I became aware that I could resist it. I really had a choice. I could chose not to go with the flow, but to refuse to do it. Now I do not eat chocolate and do not drink coffee at all. Most importantly, I do not feel a desire to do it.

Have you ever experienced this: you managed to accomplish something good, something, that you could not do at all before and you finally made it? Do you remember what you felt at that time? I had an impression as if my wings grew out. I sensed what real freedom is about. The thing, which was holding me with a dead grip, had gone. What an entrancing sensation of having power over myself! “He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city” (Proverbs 16:32).

I was trying to predict when my encounter with my future husband would happen. Knowing God’s mercy I guessed that it had to happen in quite a short time. Who is he? I was figuring, could it be that the Lord had Sasha in mind? I was asking the Heavenly Father about that but He did not answer me, prompting me by His silence to find it out directly from Sasha.

The fact that five years ago Sasha was an unbeliever puzzled me. In my endeavors to witness to him about God, he would argue that he believed in a human being. Christ in the Bible warned His followers, “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers” (2 Corinthians 6:14). I knew that God could not contradict Himself. Thus, only two conclusions can follow from this: either Sasha is not a match for me, and my mission is only to help him; or the Lord will convert him soon and make a Christian out of Him.

Several days after mailing the letter, I called Sasha. I heard a child’s voice answering the telephone. My heart sunk. A killing thought, “It has to be his child. It means he is married,” rushed through my head. When Sasha picked up the phone, I asked as calmly as I could, “Is it your child?” “No, it is my niece.” My heart started jumping with joy. I had a hope! I asked him if he received my letter. Sasha answered, “Yes, I read it entirely.”

To me that phrase had a special meaning. At the end of my letter I wrote an attachment and asked him not to read it if he was already married. His words instilled a confidence in me that he was still a bachelor.

By his voice, I sensed how deeply my letter moved Sasha. He even expressed a desire to come to me for psychotherapy. I was touched with his trust. A hope for mutuality glimmered in me.

When I wrote letters to Sasha and spoke with him on the phone, I was still overcome with pangs of awkwardness and a fear of rejection, but it was already much easier to cope with them. He promised to write back to me, but I did not receive anything from him.

I was waiting for the Sasha’s promised answer, pining in impatience and uncertainty. At this time, a unique incident occurred of seemingly low significance. Through it, the Lord revealed to me what attracted me to Sasha. In chapter 8, I promised to tell you about it.

Once I came to our church for a Christian International College class. Brothers and sisters from the whole region came there. I sat behind the very last visiting brother at an angle from him. While passing in front of him, seeing his full face, I did not notice anything remarkable. However, when I was sitting at an angle behind him and seeing a part of his profile, I noticed a striking resemblance to Sasha. He had the same build, height, haircut, hair color and facial features. Fantastic! For the first time in my life, I saw what seemed like a twin. This resemblance only depended on the location of our seats. I recognized the hand of God. In all that, He obviously was trying to tell me something. I pointed out this visiting brother to my girlfriend, Antonina, who heard a lot about Sasha from me. Her face twisted with disappointment. “I could not imagine that he is so ordinary.” Since the similar appearance seemed entirely inexpressive to me also, I understood that his physical features were not what attracted me to Sasha, but his internal qualities were revealed to me in a mystical way.

I waited and waited for the promised letter from Sasha. I was worrying, that it might get lost on its way. A month after my first telephone call, I wrote to Sasha a second time. I let him know that soon I was leaving on a lengthy trip abroad. For the very last time I called him from Borispil international airport while waiting for my flight. It was important to me to receive at least an answer, not necessarily positive, but definite. His mother told me, “He is around. He just stepped outside of the apartment building into the yard.” My next attempts to call him back failed. It hurt a lot, as if somebody was cutting my flesh. Nevertheless, I believed that I had to get over my expectation, and God knew where He was leading me. These “field tests” tempered me even more and prepared me for the upcoming amazing events. However, I had no clue what kind of events they would be.

Chapter 8. Coming to America

In the fall of 2000, I won a tough competition, received a Fulbright research grant, and went on a business trip to the USA. It was hard for me to be in a different country, in a completely strange environment. I had no friend or even an acquaintance in the States and felt very lonely. Everything around was unusual and different: houses, plants, food, smells, language and the behavior of the people.

Instead of the Soviet style five-story or nine-story apartment complexes, American buildings are mostly one-story ones, sometimes two or three-story houses and apartment buildings. Churches are almost at every corner. There are virtually no sidewalks. Why would people need them in a country, which moves on wheels? Everything is drowning in greenery and flowers. In Ukraine, there are almost no lawns, except in front of the Communist party committee and city authority buildings. There was even a joke, “How can we find out where the Communist party committee building is? By the lawn.”

In America in front of the houses there are neatly trimmed lawns, where juniper bushes, holly bushes, corianders, cypresses, cedars, magnolias are towering; garlands of flowers are hanging out of pots; plants are decorating porches, peeking out of planters.

Not only did I see well-groomed lawns and intricately composed flowerbeds, but new elements surprised me. There were amusing statues of different pets and life-sized or smaller animals; white tailed rabbits, spotted deer, mallard ducks, and imposing geese. Along the streets and in front of buildings stretched redbuds, azaleas, Oriental cherries, forsythias and dogwoods, celebratory autumn paints foliage of purple-lilac decorative plum and a bright-red sugar maple.

Unexpected things were waiting for me at every corner. Even in the city, wild blackberries and wild strawberries grow. Robins, finches, and certainly sparrows chirping and flitting; songbirds, as mocking birds and cardinals were singing exuberantly with different songs. One barely hears bird singing in the cities of Ukraine. The city in America was filled with squirrels and rabbits. You can see squirrels occasionally in some parks in Ukraine and rabbits only in the woods.

The local food presented a challenge to me. My greatest gastronomic disappointment was bread. I could hardly find “normal” bread according to Ukrainian standards; I mean dense, elastic, nutritious with the hint of a sour taste. Store shelves are piled up with fluffy, foam-like sweet loaves, cut in weightless slices, generously flavored by sugar or honey and other excesses in the form of cinnamon and nuts. I had difficulty calling this bread. I viewed it as a bun. It is something, which literally melts in your mouth, does not leave a sensation of satiety, you feel like you ate nothing at all. If you press a slice with your fingers, it instantly transforms into a paper-thin layer. Some local people generously nicknamed this product. They call it fog and wonder bread - you wonder where the bread is, you have eaten it and wonder - where has it gone? I had been missing Ukrainian bread for several months. It was so hard on me, that I even asked my family members to send it to me. Nevertheless, it did not happen. Either shipping was too expensive; or the post office did not accept it. Imagine my delight at finding Ukrainian bread at a Russian store. I am very thankful to the person who showed me «Русский магазин».

I expected a shift in the smell range. I noticed quite a long time ago that different places, cities and especially other countries, differ in smells. Thus, one can distinctly smell the stench of exhaust in Prague’s streets while inside the buildings aromas of pistachio ice cream and soy sauce dominate. American streets, in spite of lots of traffic, are surprisingly void of automobile exhaust. On the other hand, inside residences, bathrooms and cars are artificial deodorants, air-fresheners and aromatizers. Who could imagine what people invent? They have aromatizers, which are candles with diverse kinds of fillings (vanilla, my favorite, cherry, cinnamon, blueberry), fragrances of various flowers and special incense in form of collections of petals, pieces of wood and herbs (potpourri). Americans warm them up, steam them out and in other ways disperse them in the air and use special pendants, saturated with various sweet-scented substances.

The conduct of regular Americans is strikingly different from Ukrainians. Passers-by, even some drivers in the street smile, wave hands and greet me. Strangers offer help. I heard from very many people, “How may I help you?” I never heard this phrase in Ukraine at all. I was baffled, not knowing how to make sense of it. Was it simply a politeness, a habit, or a sincere desire to assist?

All this enchanting diversity of new sensations, impressions and differences, despite their primary positive tone, was devastating. I felt like an uprooted tree. There is nothing weird about this reaction. Cross-cultural shock is common.

I desired something familiar, which could serve as a baseline. The sky became this kind of support to me. Azure of the firmament was the same. I frequently looked up, recalling the lines from Psalm 19, which I had learned just a few months before and it brought relief to my soul:

“¹ The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. ² Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. ³ There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. ⁴ Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun, ⁵ Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. ⁶ His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof” (Psalm 19:1-6).

I wished I could find some support and close fellowship among people. I was hoping to find friends at the church.

On the first Sabbath morning, immediately after I arrived in the city I came to the church. I was trying to get to a worship service on Friday night, but the church was locked and dark. In Ukraine our church had lots of services during the week: two on Saturday (morning and evening), worship service on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday nights, Bible institute on Monday, gathering of Sabbath school teachers on Tuesday, home church in small groups at people’s homes on Thursday. However, here in America, they have only Sabbath morning service and prayer meeting on Wednesday night.

At the beginning of the service that Sabbath, as usual, was a Bible study. The Sabbath school teacher, Richard, in his discourse mentioned verse 15 of chapter 12 from the book of Hebrews: “See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many” (Hebrews 12:15).

These words cut like a scalpel right to my core. It pointed to a bitter root sitting and poisoning my soul because of my resentment with Sasha. He did not answer my letter, though he had promised to, and I harbored a heavy angry feeling against him. Richard’s words helped me to get rid of that root. I humbled myself and forgave Sasha. It is good to humble ourselves. «^KJV God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble» (James 4:6). In addition, we do not know where we will end up. The Creator knows the end of the matter from the beginning: “I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please” (Isaiah 46:10). That is why it is better to confide in the Lord.

I felt gratitude to Richard and desired to express it to him. However, I did not feel comfortable with it. Other brothers and sisters came up to me, introduced themselves and greeted me as a guest of the congregation, but he did not. That is why I experienced some unpleasant feelings toward him, but did not brood much about them. They were something alike, “Stay away from him, he could hurt you.” Nevertheless, I did not dwell on those feelings.

Every one was invited to a fellowship lunch after the service. At this lunch, I found myself seated opposite Richard and beside David who preached that day. David and I found plenty to discuss. He was examining my Bible and addressed Richard, “Have you ever seen a Russian Bible?” and suggested he looks at it. Richard did not respond to David’s suggestion. I did not like that. I was sure Richard had never seen a Russian Bibles before. It would seem natural to look at something unknown.

Richard entered the conversation only once and put in a remark, “I met people from former Soviet Union, from Georgia. They were astonished with how wealthy America was.”

I asked, “Were they unbelievers?”

“No.”

“Then why were they so concerned with material things?”

“They had been in Christ only for a short period of time.”

I added to my impression that he probably disliked Soviets and considered them keenly jealous of a stranger’s money. I did not even notice how I broke the principle of communication “do not evaluate”, primciple of not using assessment, which the Bible calls “Do not judge, or you too will be judged” (Matthew 7:17). My thoughts about his attitude were not objective reality. I could not read his mind; I only built conjectures. “For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him?” (1 Corinthians 2:11). The right approach is to limit myself to acknowledging my own feelings; when he did not manifest any interest or initiative to fellowship with me, I felt uncomfortable, apprehensive and constrained.

During the next Sabbath school lessons, I noticed I liked his way of thinking and attitude to life and people in many respects. Many of his ideas seemed to be very original, full of care for people, justice and responsibility. He had views on the Bible, life and human relationships appealing to me. For example, he expressed his opinion about conflicts and observed that it is difficult for him to forgive himself. It came very close to me. He manifested independence, flexibility, gentleness and other things I craved for. Another time he noted, “People have a hard time when one human tries to control another one.” I value personal freedom, responsibility and self-direction.

Chapter 9. Teeth failure

I had been having a pen pal in America and had been corresponding with her for a number of years. She once described in her letter how she attended a dental hygienist and had a total exam including cleaning. In Ukraine, nobody ever heard of dental hygienists. I linked these procedures with the wonderful quality of Americans’ teeth and decided long ago: if I ever got in the USA, I would have that done to me too. I have to observe in all fairness that not all the Americans have excellent teeth. I based my judgment only on those who traveled overseas.

I inquired at the church whether they had dentists among its members in order to keep the tithe in the church. It turned out that they had two of them - John and Dick. Unbelievable! They had only about one hundred members and two dentists, and in my Ukrainian church amongst eighty members of the first congregation and four hundred members of the second congregation there was none. I called both offices and found out their fees. At John’s office total exam + cleaning was $75, and at Dick’s office total exam was $100 and cleaning $60. Ukrainians are very thrifty. So I chose John.

I did not manage to see the man at the church though. The day before the visit one of my fillings came out, and during the hygiene procedure another one fell out. I heard fillings were very expensive here. At John’s office they estimated that two fillings would cost $130. I was upset. The Word of God says however, “give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thessalonians 5:18). It seemed like, “What should I be thankful for?” Christians nevertheless have to walk by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7) and to believe “that in all things God works for the good of those who love him” (Romans 8:28).

I did not know why the Lord allowed that to happen. I prayed and asked for help. I thought He might test my greediness. I heard rumors at the church that John started attending a different church. It meant to me he had drifted away from the fullness of the Biblical truth. I believed that the teaching of no other church was as close to the Bible as Adventists’ beliefs. If you do not believe it, examine and verify it yourself. It is important to have our beliefs based on the Word of God, which is the source of absolute truth.

I asked people at the church whether John returns his tithe to the church. They did not know. I got upset.

On the eve of my dental appointment, brothers and sisters showed me another dentist, Dick. He turned out to be that same Richard, the Sabbath schoolteacher. Interestingly enough on the very first Sabbath, when I met him, it was not his turn to teach. He had to substitute for another Sabbath school teacher. I did not want to see Dick at all. I thought he was mocking me. Occasionally he talked about me to others in my presence saying something like, “Now we will have a gift of tongues here.” I felt like an inanimate object, about which one can speak about, not being interested with its reaction. When the president and the treasurer of the local Conference of SDA church came to our church on appointing a new pastor to our congregation, Richard suggested to him, “Bring her to Washington.”

I was indignant, “If you want me to visit Washington, why do not you bring me there yourself?” I did not say a word aloud though, just mentally disagreed. All that stirred up the feeling of discomfort and estranged me from him.

Nevertheless, I decided that I ought to inquire of him about his charges for fillings. Perhaps he could give some discount because of knowing me.

I saw him only on Sabbaths at the church. He did not attend prayer meetings on Wednesday nights at that time. Next Sabbath after the service I came up to him and told him, “I have a non-Sabbath matter. How may I contact you?” I read lively interest in his eyes. It stirred up perplexity in me. “What is it all about?” I wondered. He wrote his number on a small sticker. This scrap of paper I did not put with other papers, but by some incomprehensible reason stuck it in the kitchen under the tabletop.

That same Sabbath morning another interesting meeting happened. Its background goes like this. I brought from Ukraine audio cassettes with soundtracks of Christian songs in Ukrainian and Russian languages, which I wished to sing at the church. I took a player along with me from home hoping to find a power-adapter or converter (voltage in Ukraine is 220 v). I came up to brother Tim who was in charge of scheduling programs and said, “I temporarily need a tape-recorder for practicing in singing.”

He promised to arrange it. This very Sabbath morning, after the first part of the service, Dick came up to me, stuck a brand new tape recorder in a sealed box into my hands, uttered, “Enjoy” and started swiftly retreating. Then he stopped, turned back, briefly explained how to use the microphone, and withdrew again. I had the impression that he felt squeamish to communicate with me and felt unpleasant. I made an assumption about his motives and attitudes again; though I could not read his mind and know them for sure and the Bible says, “Do not judge”.

After the sunset, I was making up my mind to call him. I had not the slightest wish to do it. A strong inner resistance hindered me. I did not understand my feelings; they were something like fear or embarrassment. I zealously prayed before the call. I confided myself to the Lord, “Let your will be done” and dialed the number. From the first words of our conversation, I felt an amazing easiness and rare contact in dealing with Richard. Usually when Americans mumbled something that I could not understand I felt uncomfortable to ask them to repeat.

When he started talking too quickly, it was easy for me to ask him to speak slower. I let him know I had lost two fillings and asked how much he charged for one. He told me, “I met people from the former USSR before and know that charges in our countries are incomparable. Let me be a missionary.”

He told me where his office was and asked if I had transportation to get there. I explained, “There are University buses available.”

Then he suggested coming up to my place next day, on Sunday, and taking a look at my teeth to see what was wrong with them. I agreed.

Next morning he called from the lobby of my dorm. I came out and he brought me to his office, made a panoramic x-ray and a computer chart (it was a total exam, as far as I understood). In the display, I could see the picture of my teeth: intact parts were white, damaged ones were red and green. It was a complete surprise for me. Before the trip to America, I spent a long time in a dental office. The doctor, the best one I ever met in Ukraine, made everything in the best way according to the Ukrainian standards. Now I found myself with my mouth full of rot. Dick explained, “Soviet style gold crowns are considered in the US temporary. They do not seal completely, food crowds under them and teeth decay. You need porcelain crowns with a long guarantee. I can change the old ones for new ones for you with no charge.”

That day he filled one tooth, which hurt. He explained, “I work with an assistant. After Christmas, my staff will call you and schedule your next appointment. You will have enough time to complete the whole treatment before your departure.”

I do not remember everything we talked about that time. All of a sudden, I felt a confidence that he could like me. I was sure this type of man should have some sexual interest in me. I also sensed a wild physical attraction to him. I was frightened with it, angry with him and with myself. Immediately I started praying and sensed significant relief. When I met unbelievers before I guessed they saw me only as a sexual object. I was mad because of that. Nevertheless, I was confident about him: since he was a Christian he should not think that way. It was a puzzle for me, a cognitive dissonance. I prayed earnestly.

Something that happened three months previously in Crimea helped me to solve this puzzle.

Chapter 10. Where did you get such an exquisite body?

It was October. Meager rays of sun vainly tried to warm up a cool earth and sea. I was catching thirstily the leftovers of warmth and desired glimpses of sunshine. I was sunbathing at a beach. At that time, I was still hard hearted in area of exposing personal nakedness and did not realized that wearing a bikini is not godly.

My eyes met with a guy’s eyes. He was about thirty years old. His gaze was one of “those very” looks. It signaled me that now he was going to pester me. I became tense all over. He came up to me and asked, “Where did you get such an exquisite body?”

I literally boiled up with anger. The words “It’s none of your cotton picking business” were already on the tip of my tongue, but I was looking for politer words to rebuff him as soon as possible. That moment the Holy Spirit rebuked me, “Where is your love to your neighbor? Where is your Christian humility?” I felt ashamed of my thoughts and repented. I started relenting gradually. I answered almost calmly, “From God.”

“So you do not do anything yourself?”

His respond reveals a common misunderstanding about God. Many people believe that God’s will fulfills automatically; He accomplishes what He wants to independent of people. In fact, God needs our cooperation to do His will. “^KJV Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us” (Ephesians 3:20). I was already looking at him with different eyes and seeing not just lust, but sincere interest in finding out the cause.

“Why? I do exercises.”

“Which exercises do you mean? Freely standing?”

“No, just morning exercises.”

“Is it all there is?”

“Are you a medical man?”

“I’m worse than that.”

I wondered what could be worse. Later I guessed he might be an artist.

I said, “I eat according to the Bible and the Montignac Method, don’t eat harmful things.” (Frenchman M. Montignac is the author of the book Eat Yourself Slim , which helps to loose weight without reducing your food intake).

“This is already closer to the truth.”

His glance fell on the front cover of the book I was reading, where the title said The Holy Spirit and he hastened to terminate the conversation, “Have a good time.”

“The same to you.”

He left. A light came on. I realized the problem was not in those men, but in me, in my suspicions. I thought bad and unjustly about all of them. I was messing up my own life. The way I treated them, I called “cutting down the haughty ones”, and thus I did not understand my feelings at all. I avoided taking responsibility, avoided statements with the word “I”, which contained information about me, for example, “I want to humiliate them”, “I hate them.” Instead, I used accusing formulas with the word “they”: “They are such and such; they require a lesson; they need somebody to put them in their proper place.”

All this God started revealing to me only at that moment on the beach, and continued after that meeting. By treating those guys severely, I believed I was acting fairly, by simply giving them what they deserved. Later I repented of it. I did not even give them a chance to talk. My abruptness simply dismissed any possibility for communication. I am sure many of my suspicions were right. However, that is not the point.

I did not understand or accept my own feelings. My anger about their possible sexual intentions poisoned my soul. Cruelty was overtaking me, a hot burning thirst to punish them, of which I was unaware. After I stuck their face in the mud, I felt a gloating delight. A force that was not clear to me led me to scoff and ridicule them. Much later, I identified this force as well as the fact that I was its slave. Under the influence of the Holy Spirit, I acknowledged that I liked many of those guys, but I felt offended and that is why I was blocking any communication from continuing. I confronted the same feelings toward Richard and realized why God arranged that meeting in Crimea: to cleanse me and to prepare me for the future.

Where did I get such a stinging reaction? The root of it was in my past, in meeting that young man from Greece in 1975, Nickolay, who influenced my life a lot. However, before the episode on the beach, I admitted only his positive influence: he made me think critically about the Soviet way of life and communist ideology, whose apologist I had been. However, I was not aware of my insult when he suggested having sex. That is why when I met a similar behavior and the way of looking at me, I believed that all those guys were the same; they needed only sex and nothing else. Therefore, I did not need them either. I even accused them mentally that Nickolay was sincere enough to speak about his intentions directly. However, they were much worse because they hid their intentions. However, the fault was mine, because I judged them. “^KJV And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?” (Matthew 7:3-4)

I attributed to them unknown motives. I could not know their mind for sure. I should have paid more attention to my own feelings and actions. Nevertheless, I did not do this. What a poor psychologist! I am so glad, that our Lord is a perfect Counselor, Who shed His holy light into my sinful heart, brought me to repentance, that I felt sorry about my stinking thinking, and that He made me free of the evil thoughts. What a privilege to be His child!

The Lord helped me in many respects that summer. For example, on my way to Crimea on the train, I met a man, a former front-line officer from the war in Afghanistan, Viktor. He would be a desirable match for many women: courageous, reliable, modest, attentive and generous. There were some “buts”: married, aloof from God and not too sensitive (according to my standards). We spent many hours talking.

Viktor complained about his second wife, “She did not love my daughter from my first marriage. Look, I cannot take it in stride. I will divorce her.”

“Does she have a right not to love your daughter?” I asked.

“I do not demand nothing extra complicated from her”, Viktor started arguing. Then he sunk into his thoughts.

I tried to persuade him not to annul his marriage, “Solving problems by means of divorce is a destructive tactic. You have already used divorce once as a measure to solve a marriage problem. If you act the same way again, you will strengthen a destructive strategy. Do not ruin your marriage, try to find constructive measures to solve the problem.”

“What are they?”

“Do you believe in God?”

“Yes. Once in Afghanistan, we got into encirclement. Out of seventeen people only four of us survived. I was praying and they sent a helicopter to rescue us.”

“God can help you to solve your family problems, when you turn to Him. If He was able to save your life, is He not powerful enough to save your marriage?”

It seemed like my persuasion worked.

Then it happened that he asked me to autograph my book for him. When Viktor left the compartment, I was thinking which Bible verse to mention in the inscription. I thought by myself about one of my favorite passages from Jeremiah 29:11-13: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”

Nevertheless, I was aware that God knew better about who needed what, and I decided to appeal to Him. Immediately the thirteenth chapter of the First Letter to Corinthians crossed my mind. I was surprised: why would such a tough guy need words about love? Anyway, I obeyed God and wrote this. Viktor came back and in a minute or two asked me, “Tell me about love.”

I let him know what had happened recently. I read the chapter from my Bible to him. It turned out he was not familiar with the Bible at all and had never read it. He asked me to write these verses on the title page for him.

“^{NIV 4} Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. ⁸ Love never fails.”

I saw he was charmed by me. A number of times Viktor repeated, as trying to talk himself out of it, “There are no wonders in this life.” I remember his suspicious question, “But you are a normal woman, aren’t you?

I explained, “Before the Lord changed me I was an unbearable person: intolerant, caustic, stubborn, rancorous etc.” Is not that strange that in our culture, “normal” means subjected to evil, but integrity seems something abnormal?

Viktor naturally asked, “Why God did not give you a husband?”

I said, “I have been praying about that for a number of years. I believe He will answer my request in a while, because He promised. Sometimes it seems to me like I am ready. However, later on, something bad comes out of me that would be capable to ruin both of our lives. Why should I spoil somebody’s life? Now I feel there is not a long time left to wait.”

“How long?” Viktor asked.

“Maybe a half of a year, a year, something like that.”

I found meaning in that train meeting. Besides witnessing to Viktor about the Lord, it had a beneficial influence on me. I realized that a decent man could really value me as a human, not just as a female, and that such men exist in this world. The Lord can give the one to me I dreamed of.

That encounter on the train helped me to overcome the pain caused by Sasha’s silence, which I confronted soon after.

Chapter 11. In a trap

Now let us go back to my conversation with Dick. I remember I was amazed with his incredible gentleness. I even felt he might love me. I have never experience anything like that before. What signs made me think so, is a mystery to me till this day. Immediately a puzzling thought appeared, “This is too easy.” The answer to this puzzle came like this: relationships with opposite sex, that are easily attainable, I devalued and unconsciously had been seeking those hard to achieve.

At the same time, I believed Dick had to be married. He conducted himself as if he did not need anybody. That is why I felt and behaved quite naturally with him. During the Sabbath school lessons at the church, he sometimes mentioned the difficulties in communication with his wife. However, many people have marriage problems. That is why I talked to him in a relaxed manner.

While chatting with Dick at his office, I told him about an American Psychologist who was teaching in Ukraine. He tried to acquaint a local audience with American humor. As an introduction to his lecture he declared, “I was warned, that Ukrainian audiences do not understand an American humor. But nevertheless I want to try.”

With the help of a projector, he showed us a caricature with text. An interpreter translated carefully. In the audience, a dead silence reigned. There was no reaction at all. The lecturer did not surrender, “Well, never mind. Let’s try again.”

He showed us another cartoon with the text. The reaction was the same, that is, complete absence of any reaction. In a while he made the third attempt. Silence again.

“Language and cultural differences prevent understanding”, suggested Dick. I liked very much that he had related to the Ukrainian mentality respectfully. You see, many people in his place could have explained a foreigner’s misunderstanding their native humor by the ignorance of the listeners.

On the way back to my dorm, in his car we were discussing church life in the USA and in ex-USSR. When I asked what kind of devotional book they had for the current year he said they could be different. It meant to me that he did not read devotionals, so he was lukewarm in a spiritual sense, not so devoted to Christ. I did not like that. Jumping to conclusions on my part again. At that time, I did not understand that the main thing for a Christian is reading the Bible, not even Christian books. A Christian is not obliged to spend time reading devotional books in order to be faithful to God and devout.

During the next week, I mentally would come back to our meeting. Gratitude for his magnanimity and generosity was growing in me. I decided to present him with a cartoon book on Christmas. I brought this book to put it on sale to a consignment store and expected to get good money for it. I was sure he was going to like that book. I first picked a very ordinary greeting card for him, with his last name Noel (Christmas in French) on it. Later on, my thoughts about Dick became deeper. First, I could hardly figure out what kind of a person he was. He did not fit in any category and it puzzled me. Gradually I was inspired with gratitude, for his magnanimity. I discovered intellectual, mental and spiritual depths in him. Besides, my feelings were changing in the direction of love.

I realized also why all the past burdens and failures in my private life were for the good. If all the circumstances were favorable and easy, I could have abused my power over him, which I sensed, especially considering his softness and vulnerability. I thanked the Lord for the lessons of my past, for His wisdom, foresight and care.

I started having serious doubts that he was married. I did not want to ask anybody at the church out of unwillingness to reveal my feelings. In a few daus, I was completely in love with him. I realized that the greeting card did not fit him a bit; it was too commonplace. I picked up another one. There were the Three Wise men pictured on it. It was quite a coincidence! That day he preached about them (he has a degree in theology) and mentioned that this topic emerged not without a purpose.

When he was preaching, he was worrying. I selfishly attributed this agitation as relating to myself. For me it was a sign of his mutual personal interest in me. At the break, he came up to me and told me that evening would be a Christmas party at our brother’s house and suggested giving me a ride there. I accepted with delight.

After the sermon, a nuisance happened. He was standing, as usually preachers do by the exit door, greeting people who were leaving the sanctuary. I lingered too long coming up and talking to different people. The last one with whom I was talking to was Frank, a former marine, full of ardent feelings for the Lord. We had agreed to have fasting and prayers for our friends. At that moment, we were discussing when to begin fasting. Frank suggested, “Let’s do it tomorrow.” That same moment Dick had come to us and heard these words. I was pleased he came up to me. I saw in his face something that touched me. At the same time, I wished to start fasting as soon as we could. I answered, “Maybe today?” Certainly, I remembered about Dick’s invitation. Nevertheless, I completely forgot that parties in the US meant food intake. The Evil One intruded then and marred everything, “Oh, I forgot today is this Christmas dinner.” Dick’s face changed color. I felt sorry for saying that, but I did not know how to fix the situation. He let me know when he would come to pick me up. I planned to talk to him in his car on the way there and during the party. However, my expectation did not come true. In his car, there was another sister, Jennifer. She does not have a car.

During the Christmas service the host, Troy, was reading a story about Christ. He could not get beyond a difficult word. Dick helped him, prompting how to pronounce it correctly. I drew a conclusion about his wide erudition and highly estimated his knowledge. He did not come up to me the whole evening, remaining with brothers at the kitchen. Sisters, children and I were playing a game in the adjacent room. Sometimes I would catch snatches of his phrases. I inferred he liked to talk. I would have listened to him with pleasure.

I found plenty to talk about with Jennifer though. First in the USA, I felt at ease talking at length with American. Before that language anxiety impeded me.

I was also annoyed Dick did not pay any attention to me. Only once passing by us he observed, “You two are having a good time together.” “Yes,” I replied, “How about you?” “Me too.” That was the whole conversation.

In the car Dick and Jennifer were talking, I mostly was listening. Jennifer shared about the problems in her family life. He said four years ago he had experienced a shock, when once he returned from work and found out his wife and a half of the furniture disappeared. He laughed while telling about that. His laughter was tense and I guessed his wound was still fresh. I felt compassion and thought to myself, “How is it possible to survive after all that?” Then he said he dated a woman from Richmond. “She was a good lady, but I learned she had buried her husband recently and had to break with her.” Jennifer complained about her problems with men. Dick and Jennifer both agreed with each other that it was hard to figure out which individual fits you better. That moment I felt I needed to cut in, “You are talking in such a way like there is no God. Why do not we rely upon Him?” After some pause, they agreed with me.

Chapter 12. How to charm the right man

Certainly, I was glad to learn he had no wife. However, I did not know whether they were divorced or just separated. He called her “my wife” all the time, not “my ex-wife”. Before that, I felt almost at ease with him, because I did not need anything from him. Now I became interested in him a lot and it caused me to be constrained and tense. The old fear of rejection gripped me again. Many negative feelings started growing, overcoming and torturing me as he persistently ignored me. I wished to communicate with him so much! I felt pity [sorry], because I was running out time. I asked the Lord for help, asked Him to fulfill His promise to me.

I knew that when we ask the Lord for help, it is important to rely on the things He promises. It is very risky to be guided only by human reasoning. Much better to find out His will from the primary source - the Bible. I digested a lesson received from my own experience, how six years had passed in vain, when I believed that God Himself should know who needed what and He should give us all this without our request. I had received another, more serious lesson: when I knew the Lord very poorly, I asked Him for things that contradicted His Word. Back then I was in a hard stressful situation, literally at my limit. I asked Him to help me to hold on, and bargained in exchange to let Him send me any troubles and deprivations, only that it would not affect my family. In fact, I called trouble on myself, opened a door for the enemy. Soon after that, I got pneumonia. At that time, I had no idea what the essence and character of God are, that He is loving and merciful. We do not need to bargain for His help, especially to pay for it by our troubles and sufferings. He does not want us to be tormented. He is not willing to deprive us in good things. His help does not depend on our merits, but only on His favor. He does it for His own sake, because He is love (1 John 4:16).

Thus, I wanted to find promises in the Bible on which I could stand in my prayers for a soul mate. Promises of God have certain conditions. I already knew one: “Ask, and it will be given to you.” The condition is if we ask, God gives us what we asked for. It is important for the things asked for be in harmony with His will, “if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us” (1 John 5:14).

Without knowing God’s will it is easy to miss the target and be taken in. We can ask Him for things, which He just cannot give us. For example, people ask God to bless common-law marriage, i.e. cohabiting with somebody or fornication. But God cannot bless sin. “But fornication, and all uncleanness,… let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints” (^KJV Ephesians 5:3). People can fool themselves by reservations similar to the ones President Clinton made as if oral sex (or other forms of intimacy) is not sex. This is self-deception. It is clearly spelled out in the Bible, that sex is meant only for marriage. Out of marriage it is sin. A lady was abandoned by her lover. She was praying for him to return. This prayer is useless. God cannot contradict Himself. She has to make a decision to keep chastity until marriage, and then God will bless her.

So I continued to search the Bible. I was so delighted, when three or four years back had found such a Scripture: “Blessed is every one that feareth the LORD; that walketh in his ways. Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house” (Psalm 128:1,3). That means to me the one who reveres God and is obedient to Him has a spouse and a house. At that time I already walked in His way, that is, I satisfied the conditions dependent on me; therefore, I could be sure that God would fulfill His part that He promised.

Just at that time, while reading an English translation of the Bible I found one more promise: “God sets the lonely in families {in the Russian translation it says “in homes” and it was not clear to me before reading this verse in English}, He leads forth the prisoners with singing; but the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land.” (Psalm 68:6) The scorch of the desert sun I experienced well while being an unbeliever and estranged from God.

However, the devil did not fall asleep. His next attack was disguised as friendly help. We discussed marriage with Jennifer.

She asked me, “Do you want to get married?”

“Yes, I do”, I did not hide it from her.

She encouraged me, “If that is the case you have to date somebody.”

I replied, “I would agree to date only a Christian. I seriously took a warning from 2 Corinthians 6:14: “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers.”

She drew my attention to the fact there was the only single man, Dick in our church and asked, “Do you like him?”

“Yes, I do” I did not deny the truth.

She observed, “You are a good couple.”

Soon after that out of good intentions, she gave me a book about how to charm the right man. It contained a number of rules, “unfailing and tested by time”. Most of them were not to my liking. Those rules were based on concealing one’s true feelings and pretending to be indifferent. There were specific actions mentioned there, like these: do not give him your business card. I panicked because I gave him my business card. Other rules: do not call him; you should be the first who stops the conversation; do not accept a date invitation if it was given only three or four days ahead. These prohibitions sickened me and seemed to be manipulative, from one hand. On the other hand, I took into account that I was in a different culture. I knew that cultural differences could matter. Maybe such behavior was accepted here and a different behavior would be misunderstood. This book brought me only sufferings. It intensified my reluctance to open my feelings.

At the same time, I was praying and pondering the approach described in the book. Finally, one day I realized this approach is contrary to the Bible, as well as to all my worldview. A lie is a sin; it violates trust in a partner and destroys relationships. It is impossible to pretend for a whole life. To use another person is a sin. I want to be loved, as I am, not as I pretend to be. If we want our chosen one to be a friend, we should learn how to be open and to take risk. Later God sent me another book in Psychology Why I Am Afraid To Tell You Who I Am? ((Powell, J. (1969). Why I Am Afraid To Tell You Who I Am? Argus Communication, Niles.)). It says how conventions and fears prevent real communication and good fellowship. Thus, I managed to put all this garbage out of my head.

It matters, what kind of relationship you want to create. If it is simply an attachment, a passion, such relationships one can achieve by a game. If you aspire to real love, you can build it only on honesty and trust. If there is a lie and pretence between a man and a woman, it undermines trust in their partner and destroys their relationship.

To use another person for our own benefit is manipulation. In other words, manipulation is an attempt to control another person, to deal with this person as with a thing, to use him/her for your selfish gain. Manipulations are immoral. My advice is to apply them to nobody because it is a boomerang. When people notice, that they are used as a thing, it provokes them to pay back with the same coin. It is necessary to treat loved ones the way we would like them to treat us. It means to not use them and to treat them respectfully and faithfully, as an equal in rights and as an equivalent person, instead of as a thing. This principle is reflected in “the golden rule of Christianity”, written down in the words of Christ from the Gospel of Matthew 7:12: “Herefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.”

Chapter 13. Charm is deceptive, beauty is skin deep

Many things hampered me. I asked God for help. At the same time I knew He helps when we act and ask according to His will. “If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us” (1 John 5:14). There is no point in asking anything that contradicts His will written in the Bible. What is His will about the divorced ones? “^NIV I hate divorce,” says the LORD God of Israel” (Malachi 2:16). “Herefore what God has joined together, let man not separate” (Mark 10: 9).

For me it meant I should pray that Dick would unite with his former wife. Oh, how I did not want to do it! I resisted. Desperate inner strife went on. However, I knew I could not pray in pretence hoping He would not take my words seriously. After a while the moment came when I accepted His will (by the way, “to accept” also means “to humble”). I prayed this way, “Lord, You know my heart and how I want to have a real relationship with him. How poignantly I do not want to relinquish him. But I also believe You know better who needs what. Please, arrange everything as You want; it will be better for all of us. But if You want us to be together, then do it. Let Your will be done, not mine.”

The first time it was very difficult and painful. Afterwards it became a lot easier. Later on, I realized why this prayer was necessary. God needed to try my faith and to lead me a step further in sanctification. The matter is not in external actions, but in motives, desires and strivings. God does not need to deprive us of good things. He just wants us to be willing to renounce them for His sake. “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:33). When I indeed chose heavenly things as a priority the Lord added earthly.

The next hindrance, I was in rapture with Richard’s personality, but his appearance stirred up irritation in me. I always liked trim men with a thick head of hair. Even slight stoutness or a hint of baldness offended me. Such men just did not exist for me. Dick had a fair amount of fat and shaved his head. I never liked bald and fat men. His manner of sitting lounging in a pew crossing his legs exasperated me. It seemed arrogant to me. I realized intellectually that one’s appearance is not essential; it is superficial. The main thing is what a person is inside. Nevertheless, with my emotions I preferred nice looking people. Just before that one verse from Proverbs reached my heart, “Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised” (Proverbs 31:30). Applying this verse to men, we can read it, “a man who fears the LORD is to be praised.”

In this matter, God took care of me by changing my view and directing my eyes to the Truth. Enmity to your neighbor is a sin. I did not understand the reason for my hostility to Dick and I desired to get rid of it. As usual, I prayed. The Lord revealed to me two reasons.

The first reason: I had a spirit of pride, and his appearance was a rebuke for me. I projected my own feelings and attitudes on him. Let me explain what projection is. It is one of the defense mechanisms, which works like this. A person does not notice his certain qualities, feelings and desires. It seems to him that others possess them. It does not really matter whether others really have these characteristics or not. The sharpness [acuteness] of a reaction on certain manifestations points to the presence of projection. Another sign projection is avoiding “I-statements” and using “you”- “he”-, “she”-, “they”-statements, i.e. shift of responsibility occurs for his behavior to others. Projecting persons are prone to accuse and judge others. When somebody else points out their defects linked to their unconscious feelings and desires, they do not accept the critique; they take it as an affront, get offended and angry. F. Perls, the founder of Gestalt therapy described an individual who suffers from projection this way, “He himself does to others what he accuses them of doing”. I believe we use projection towards God also. It seems to us, that He has to feel, to think and to act, as we do. I heard with my own ears people saying, “if I was in the place of God, I would…” and “God will not forgive you for that”, because these people consider forgiveness to be humiliating, etc.

How can we overcome projection? How do we approach a person with such a position? A general approach can be summarized in a few words: to accept, to love this person, to be his friend, to desire sincerely to help him and gradually with small portions to convey objective information, facts, which you observe in his behavior. You will be amazed with the outcome, when you are patient and consistent.

Those feelings, which I did not accept in me, I projected or attributed to Dick. If he really has all this stuff - it is a dubious idea. However, my negative feelings existed in reality. Thank you Lord for pointing me to the answer.

The second reason of my hostility: his shaved head and his manner of sitting reminded me of Gestapo generals who tortured innocent people in Soviet movies. Certainly with this image, strong negative emotions were linked. I continued praying and the enmity left. I am so grateful to my Lord.

During all my afflictions, I asked a sister in Christ from Ukraine to pray for me because I needed a prayer support. “Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven” (Matthew 18:19). She told me she asked her congregation to pray about me too. I am sure her prayer and her church’s prayer played an important part.

Chapter 14. A person needs very-very much to be loved by someone

There was one more hindrance. Richard did not make any gesture in the direction of trying to get closer to me. Pride, shame, resentment and fear of rejection were binding me. For example, the evil one whispered, “Richard immediately believed in everything bad in you, he did not even want to check it out. Do you need such a man like this? No, you do not. So, stay away from him!” So, I listened, without even realizing whose voice it was. On the other hand, I even liked his restraint and reserve. When a man quickly manifests lively interest in me as a woman, I do not like that initiative. It seemed to me since he does not know me as a person, it means he is attracted only by my appearance. Thus, my personality traits are not so important to him. They are very important to me in a man though. That is why under Dick’s restraint and reserve I guessed about his selectiveness. I decided to leave a letter for him at the eve of my departure from the USA, where I would tell him about my feelings. Then I did not realize that it was an unconscious petty desire to take vengeance, to hurt him (classical Freudian neurosis), when he would not be able to reach me and would feel sorry about not doing anything, like “See, what you have lost!”

Nevertheless, the Lord pulled me out of that ditch again. How? I attended a course on “Death and Dying” at the university by Professor Evans, who was a pastor of the United Methodist Church. I wished so much to take his class. But I missed the first by being too carried away with reading a book, Anti-Carnegie by E. Shostrom. Obviously, the evil one did not want me to get there. At the next class I arrived just on time.

At that class, we attended a cemetery first and later answered a questionnaire. I got burned over a question, “If you knew today was the last day of your life what would you be sorry for most of all?” Ice in my heart melted; I burst into tears because I realized that I felt sorry most of all that I did not tell Dick about my love for him. How petty is all pride and fear, that keeps me in bondage, in view of eternity! I experienced a desire to find a way towards him and ask for his forgiveness that I had hurt him. I was not aware back then, that the fact that he was hurt was an evidence of his care about me. I did not notice this encouraging factor; being concerned too much with his apparent indifference.

I was reflecting how to convert into a fact my decision. I prayed. I made the first modest step related to singing songs at the church.

The fact that I can sing for an audience is God’s miracle too. Christ fulfilled this cherished desire of mine too. In my teens, my unfulfilled dream was to become a singer. But I had a panicky fear of the stage. As soon as it turned out that I had to appear singing before the public, I would get sick, either a cold, or pharyngitis, or laryngitis. My father was the director of the local philharmonic society, but this circumstance did not help me a bit. I did not dare even to hint to him about it. Nevertheless, the Lord arranged things in such a way, that gradually I had to get used to the stage and step by step, to overcome my fear.

I was elected as an assistant to the church choir director. Soon after that the choir director moved. I had to engage the choir in practice and conduct it during the worship service. First, we were singing on the balcony. My fear of the public was at work, I wanted to stay out of audience’s sight. However, the pastor was pressing me to bring the choir on the stage. I did not want to and begged him to allow us to stay on the balcony. Nevertheless, the pastor was adamant. I had to come out and conduct in front of everybody. It turned out that I did not die out of “concert anxiety”. This intermediary step helped me to overcome a part of my fear. After that, I sensed an ability to sing before the people. For my debut, I chose the evening worship service on Friday, when there are not so many people present. Anyway, when I was singing, my knees were shaking. The second time I was much calmer. At last, the moment came when I was able to sing on Sabbath with the sanctuary full of people. Praise God!

Some people explain failures by a lack of desire to do something, and success by passionate eagerness. I used to read and to hear these ideas, that if a person wants something strongly enough then he will achieve it anyway. In a brochure about the methods of succeeding in business it said, that one should burn with an all-consuming desire to get rich to such an extent, to be ready for the sake of enrichment to do anything. In this case, the wealth certainly will come upon you like a bolt from the blue. I cannot agree with it. If I were to follow this logic, then the cause of my failures was the fact that I did not have a strong enough desire to achieve my goals, and that would be why I was experiencing failures. But my desire to sing, as well as desire to find a mutual love was so passionate, to the point distraction. However, I did not have faith and wisdom. God gave them to me and fulfilled my dreams. He gives people everything that corresponds to His will, if they ask Him and believe Him.

I wanted people at the American church to understand what I was singing about.

While preparing for singing my songs, I was making translations from Ukrainian and Russian languages into English. I needed editorial correcting. Taking into account Dick’s erudition, I decided to ask him for help. I was secretly hoping it could bring us together. I asked him to correct a number of translations. He responded readily and edited the texts very skillfully. Nevertheless, on the surface the desired intimacy did not happen.

However later on, he admitted that my question played a positive role and motivated him to think about me and gave him a chance to get to know me better.

The next hindrance appeared unexpectedly. While working on the next song’s translation, I did not see any difficulties at first. Its words in Russian sounded quite harmless to me. When I translated it into English, I was horrified. It sounded completely different. Now it was I, not an abstract person who needed love. Besides, I needed his love. I was writhing with pain and pride. I earnestly did not want him to know about the depth of my feelings. I was afraid to get a blow again in my sore spot.

I was fasting and praying for two days. The writhing had gone and a great relief had come. I stopped being ashamed of my feelings. I sensed that I had a right to feel and to manifest them. Even if somebody guessed about them, nothing terrible would happen. I even started thinking he might decide that I meant not mine but his need for love, and then shut himself off. However, I could not be responsible for his reaction. I calmly gave him a floppy disk with a request to make the next editorial. After he made it, there was no obvious reaction. I should mention I am describing not all the hindrances, which were standing in my way. There were other ones in my heart, that I do not want to tell about to anybody, but the Lord cleansed me of this garbage also. Without Him, I would have stayed in Satan’s bondage.

The destiny of this ill-starred, ill-fated song is remarkable. I was planning to sing it at the church several different times, but circumstances interfered. Finally, after I sang it at the church, a stranger came up to me, handed me a note and said, that the Lord urged him to write it for me. I quote,

“Hello, The Lord impressed me to write this note to you! I am a visitor to this church, and I know that God wanted me to be here today. Before the service started, I was reading the words to your song. These words described what I am feeling in my life at this time. And as I read the words of your song, the tears begin to flow, and when you sang this song in front, the feeling of that song was so strong, that this song sounds like my life at this time. Thank you so much for your song. May God be with you through your life. Mitch”

I shivered because his words touched me to the depth of my soul. I became acutely aware, that my ministry in songs and my life are not in vain, that I bear good fruit for the Lord and for people. The fact that I was singing this particular song that very day was a powerful witness for me also. You may hear the recording of the song here:

Audio. MP3.

You are probably curious what kind of words this song has. Here they are.

My heart is sad for some reason,

I wish someone was here beside me.

A human being needs very-very much

To be loved by someone.

It is impossible to live without love,

Then life is empty and the world does not look nice at all.

A human being needs very-very much

To be loved by someone,

If your life happens to be very-very hard

And you lack strength for something,

The recall, that somebody needs to be loved

Not by anybody but by you.

Chapter 16. If your brother has something against you

I presented Dick with a cartoon book on Christmas, avoiding direct contact with him. I simply left a signed envelope with the book, in a slot in front of his pew at the church. He did not notice it that day though. On the eve of next Sabbath I put it in the lobby in plain sight. After that, he came up to me and with a tremor in his voice asked if I wished to share this book with anybody else. I answered that I had given it to him as a gift and it was up to him to decide what to do with it. His childishly offended facial expression and trembling voice struck me. It reminded me of other people’s similar reactions. They behaved in a similar way when they had doubts about my good intentions, did not believe in my sincerity and suspected some threat in me. I felt I had offended him and I needed to apologize. It was still too shameful for me though.

One of the brothers, Troy, mentioned in a Sabbath school lesson that “the Lord will never let you down.” I assumed it meant I did not have to apologize and I did not have to feel embarrassed. It was still too humiliating to ask for forgiveness. I imagine the Lord could create a situation in which I would have an opportunity to mention casually the past situation and to explain what I meant. However, everything happened differently. When I was praying and reading the Scripture and meditating on it, the verses were knocking in my consciousness. “Therefore, if you…remember that your brother has something against you, …go and be reconciled to your brother” (Matthew 5:23,24). “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective” (James 5:16). I felt the weight of guilt pressed me. I decide to be obedient and to get rid of that burden on my heart. No matter how stupid I could look, I must go to Richard and to tell him the truth. Then I considered that my ability to speak English was not so smooth. In addition, I was worried. That is why I decided it was better to write.

“First I wished to find an easier way and prayed, but God considered differently.

When I gave you that book and you came to me I was struck with your facial expression and trembling voice. Other people reacted this way when they did not believe my sincerity and suspected something bad. I was thinking: How could I hurt you? Maybe when we were talking with Frank deciding when start fasting and you came up, I said I forgot about Christmas dinner. I remembered about the party but did not think it included meals. My mind still didn’t operate well. This summer I had post-traumatic stress disorder. I had anxiety, insomnia; I could not concentrate and memorize last fresh data. Doctors said I wouldn’t be able to work for 1-2 years. God created miracle restoring me so quickly. Now almost all the symptoms have gone. I only still mix up words, days, etc.

It seems trifle. But I don’t know what else I could have done wrong that hurt you. I feel bad about it. Verses in Matthew 5:23,24 and James 5: 16 made me restless. I wish to be blameless before God and you. “If we walk in light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another” (1 John 1:7). Since there is avoidance and tension it means there is no light. Please forgive me. Humility is not my merit, but God’s. On my own I’m quite harsh and proud.

I want to clarify why I gave you that gift. I was very thankful not only for your magnanimous mission. You helped me before. When I came to this church first time you conducted Sabbath school and used Hebrews 12:15. It helped me admit that bitterness was poisoning me for several months. You helped me to get rid of that root. I was so grateful that wanted to thank you. But I felt awkward because you did not say Hi or greet me in your congregation. I hope it’ll help. If it doesn’t you should know better.
Look forward for your answer. God bless you.”

Next Sabbath I was waiting with trepidation and praying for a convenient moment to hand him my letter. I hoped it would be at the beginning of the service in order to have enough time to get an answer. It did not work out that way. During the break, he did not leave the sanctuary, chatting with brothers near the altar. That day I did not sing, thank God, so there was less pressure. After the service, there was a fellowship lunch. When we were leaving the sanctuary after the service before lunch, I intercepted Richard and told him, mixing up my words that I needed to apologize and I wrote about it. I handed him the letter, and left trembling with uncertainty, and escaped to the kitchen.

During the lunch, when I was sitting at the table, he sat beside me for the first time. I was worried and pleased at the same time. We were chatting casually about the food. Then I was trying to open a lid on a pot, which was quite stubborn. He came up and helped me to open it. This also happened for the first time. Later on, I was talking to our head elder. Dick came up to us and joined our conversation. This also happened for the first time. I felt immense gratitude to the Lord. All these actions meant that Richard had forgiven me. I was so overjoyed, though his actions did not correspond to my expectations.

I spent some time at the church hoping he would come up to me and would follow me home. He did not do that. It was for the better. I needed solitude, seclusion. At home I was praying, weeping, not knowing even why. Later on, I felt an urge to visit a nearby cemetery. I spent about an hour there, drowning in tears. Those tears were so sweet and brought great relief.

I should note that my first visit to the cemetery, which happened a couple of months before, was one of my strongest impressions about the USA. I usually hate cemeteries. They provoke anguish, hopelessness, gloom and despair in me. These feelings were instilled in my mind far back at the time I was an atheist and believed that death is an irretrievable, irrevocable loss, beyond which is only non-existence. When I believed in God my attitude toward death changed. Non-existence is only a temporary state. Beyond it, there will be the resurrection and meeting with the Lord, and for believers, it will be everlasting life. My attitude to funerals changed a couple of years ago after attending a Protestant funeral.

I was the choir director at that time and they needed the choir to sing there. The emotional state of the Christian family members experiencing the loss drastically differed from the inconsolable grief, weeping and morning I observed in communists, unbelievers and Orthodox Christians. At the Protestant funeral even though there was the sorrow of separation, a distinct hope to meet again was obvious.

In spite of all those optimistic alterations, my attitude to cemeteries remained inimical and unfriendly. Here in the USA, when I looked at the local cemetery from a distance, something attracted me there. Thus, once on Sabbath, I decided to take a stroll there. The graves differ a lot from Ukrainian or Soviet ones.

There are no fences around them, no knolls, no photos and no splendid monuments. All the gravestones are modest, light gray in color. At many of them, there were Bible verses, like from Job, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end He will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God,” (Job 19:25-26) or related to Christ. I made pictures of some of them. There were a lot of old graves from the nineteenth century. An epitaph deeply touched me, “Nothing in my hands I bring; simply to the cross I cling.”

The general attitude at this cemetery is a sensation of peace, light, hope for the resurrection. There was a striking contrast between this cemetery and Soviet ones, a great difference. When my supervisor from the University took an interest about what impressed me the most in the USA, I shared my impressions from the cemetery with her. Then she suggested that I attend a course on “Death and Dying.” In this case, I saw the hand of God too, how He led me little by little in the right direction.

I saw His hand in other providential circumstances. For a number of years I was trying to win a contest for a Fulbright grant and to go on a trip to the USA. I asked the Almighty to do everything according to His will and direct me to the city and to the University to which He wanted me to go to. Three years previously, I was very close to winning. There were eighteen finalists, and I was number twenty one. Though I was upset, I was sure that it was for the better. I found out why only later. The matter was that my supervisor, who picked me, worked in a different area. In that case, if I had come three years before, I would not have met my future husband. He did not plan to move to this area either, but it happened.

After all those emotional experiences of that remarkable Sabbath morning, I spent an amazing night. I did not get a wink of sleep and I was groaning all the time. I felt such an inexpressible unique sweet pain, close to pleasure, piercing me to the deepest parts. In my letter, I had uncovered the most vulnerable spots of my soul, confessing my affection for him. In the past, I covered my affection, protecting myself. In my youth the perspective to “humiliate myself” by letting a man know about my interest in him seemed so unbearable that it seemed easier to be executed then to confess. In fact, in my teens and twenties my pride was worth more to me then love. Nevertheless, at that time I did not want to honestly admit it.

In my early thirties, I met a guy with whom I felt safe for the first time in my life. I did not doubt that he would not hurt my pride, nor would he mock my feelings. To lose him was for me bigger loss then risk to reveal my feelings. So I confessed my love to him. I still received a blow, but it was not aimed at my pride, but my heart. He just did not need me. Year after year, I had to lick my wounds when I revealed my vulnerability. That is why in a similar situation with Dick I was expecting the next blow in my painful spot, but that did not happen. And - Oh, wonder! - my wounds remained untouched. Moreover, they were treated with balm. I felt peace and acceptance. I even sensed his pain, as it was mine. All that was for the first time in my life.

There was an amazing real hope that together with him we could make it! Due to God. All my previous life, in this sphere of relationships with men, it was hopeless, full of despair, self-rejection and self-punishment. I realized why God let me go through all those past pangs of unreciprocated, unrequited feelings and later fruitless confessions, which brought only chagrins and disappointments (in all my previous trials any mutual feelings did not follow in return from those guys). God wished to deliver me from my hurts, but I did not listen to Him at all first, and later listen too little. Therefore, He allowed it to happen. They taught me to overcome obstacles in self-disclosure. God is good. I realized and I am aware now I could not have done all that without His direction, His Word and His Spirit. “^KJV Unless thy law had been my delights, I should then have perished in mine affliction” (Psalm 119:92).

Chapter 17. Letter

In a week, the next Sabbath, when it was a musical interlude in the service and I was listening to the music, keeping my eyes closed, when Dick came up to me and handed me a folded sheet of paper. I jolted out of surprise and at first was frightened that he was giving me back my previous letter. Nevertheless, reality turned out to be more wonderful than my imagination. He had written me an answer.

“Dear Tanya,

Thank you for your letter. I apologize for not understanding and being more gracious toward you.

God has blessed you with a tenderness of heart and sensitivity to others that helps you in helping them. At the same time, you are more alert to possible problems than I am.

When you gave me the cartoon book, I thought that you were just loaning it to me. I don’t know why I thought that. I do know that I am recovering from my divorce about two years ago. Prior to the divorce, I was married thirty years and am still learning how to make new relationships in a good way. You did not hurt me by giving the book to me. I enjoy it. I believe you did nothing wrong. We just had a misunderstanding.

If you have time to take an entire day on a Friday, I will be happy to take you to visit our church world Headquarters. The General Conference is located just North of Washington, D.C. there may be other fun things to see while we are in the area. It would be good to plan ahead a week or two for this trip. I would make every effort to be back home for Sabbath.

Sincerely in Christ,

Dick”

My heart was singing with joy when I read all those good words. He wrote that nobody was guilty and God had given me a tender heart. He suggested on a Friday to go to the General Conference of the world Adventist church. I was especially happy with that perspective of further fellowship. I replied that I agreed and any Friday would do.

At the break, he spoke about a supposed trip to the General Conference. His voice was noticeably trembling at that time, i.e. he was worrying. He mentioned those people from the USSR, who attended the US and the General Conference. One of them was a government official and on their way back the Soviet customs did not check their luggage. This information seemed to me out of place and in combination with his nervousness showed me, he was very much interested in me. In addition, that he was vulnerable and inexperienced in dealing with women.

I felt compassion for him and gratitude to the Lord that He had been keeping him away from evil and from female predators, whom he could have met on his life path. I am sure such responsiveness and purity of the heart could be only through unity with God. Without the Lord’s protection, his heart, confronting the evil and cruelty of this world, had to be broken out of pain or would become calloused in self-defense.

I understood why God had put through those past trials, why all my past burdens and failures in my private life served for the good anyway: “for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin (1 Peter 4:1). Since I had to suffer, I now learned to treat people with care. And without this severe life schooling, I easily could be negligent and even harsh. My husband had to pass through difficult times, in particular, the period, when he did not see any sense in continuing of his life. Because of it I felt a desire to display much kindness to him with my love that he would get warmed from those years when he had endured a great deal of coldness and cruelty. If all the circumstances were favorable and easy for me, I could abuse the power over him, which I sensed, especially considering his softness and vulnerability. It is so great that God, in His wisdom and care, turns even our troubles and grieves over for good, when we cooperate with Him.

This tendency to abuse possible power over a man has shown me some unflattering things about myself, related to my passionate desire “to break off self-confident guys”, and my readiness literally to tear them to pieces and to destroy such men. Admitting such things for no particular reason is impossible for us. We focus on protecting our “image” and “pride”, to put up a good show.

Sigmund Freud explained it this way. People suppress unbearable and extremely painful feelings to the sphere of the unconscious and block them from our awareness with defense mechanisms like: denial, projection, rationalization etc. The goal of psychotherapy is to help a person to become aware of what was hiding in his unconscious and in this way to render harmless the center of mental pain, problems, trauma or neurosis. Psychoanalysis is trying to remove psychological defenses and Gestalt therapy to dissolve them. But the point is the same - to create a safe environment for the person (client), where he will not need defense and can honestly peek into the “cellar’ of his unconscious realm. When a person becomes aware of his painful feelings, they lose their strength and disappear. Freud believed that if a therapist led a client to an awareness of the cause of his trauma, he could consider his goal achieved. At the same time, he admitted that to heal completely and to deliver a person from neurosis is impossible. In my opinion the “impossibility” comes from Freudian psychotherapy’s “rule of neutrality”, which requires from a therapist to be withdrawn (aloof) from his client and emotionally cold.

For healing, it is essential for a person who suffers to feel warmth and acceptance from the therapist who he really cares about him. The honor of discovering this important condition of psychotherapeutic success belongs to Carl Rogers. The founder of person-centered therapy believed that the main condition of successful psychological help is the relationship of a facilitator and a client. Facilitator is any person, not necessarily a licensed therapist, who treats the one who suffers with love, respect and acceptance and in this way is able to alleviate his pain. Interestingly enough, without being aware of that Rogers pronounced the biblical principle of deliverance from mental anguish.

The Love, in the beams of which we feel entirely secure, which accepts us without any conditions, no matter what monstrous deeds we committed, what vile thoughts and feeling we bear inside, it is able to heal us and liberate us from all torments. These torments and mental anguish were caused by sin in first place. God’s king of love, agape-love is the cure for it.

The fever pitch of negative feelings as I had for impudent guys, is explained by the presence of my own problems as the owner of similar attitudes and character traits. More often in such cases the mechanism of projection works - that is, we accuse others of what we are guilty of.

God’s great Love, His wisdom and our trust in Him are required to dare to look in these dark depths of our hearts. He pointed to me the next problem, one more of my projections: if circumstances would allow me, I would have treated men exactly as they treated women. I mean inconsiderately, indifferently, coldly and harshly.

It was very hard for me to admit it. You see I considered myself very sensitive and compassionate person. Those facts contradicted this image, and I suppressed them in my unconscious. But while we lie and hide our sins, we cannot be delivered from them.” He who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy” (Proverbs 28:13). We must admit to ourselves and confess our sins before God, and then He can purify us of them.” If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

I was nervous also and felt like a novice. That is why in my next message to him I suggested simply to make friends in order to decrease nervousness.

I copied some materials for him from the course on death and dying, which, I was sure, would be to his liking. I suggested taking a walk in a park near the church. He agreed, but the weather did not allow us to do it. He invited me to Washington to museums, to the Religious liberty forum at the University, to a classical musical concert at a nearby church in Waynesboro. Our trips happened once a week, on weekends. It was pleasant for me to spent time with him. I had been dreaming about such a wonderful, platonic relationships all my life, where there is no sex in mind and nobody bothers me with indecent suggestions. I felt like a teenager then and now. Dick later told me he felt the same way. I presented daffodils to him. He presented me with two dozen roses. I made a picture out of them. The pastor said he had never seen so many flowers at a wedding before. I only felt sorry that we saw each other so rarely.

Later Dick told me that when his friend asked him whether he was going to marry me he sincerely answered, “No. Nothing like that. We are just friends.” He kept in mind all the time that I had to leave soon.

On the one hand, I was ready to see him daily, but on the other hand, I was getting quite tired because of these intensive contacts. Before that, I actually did not normally date anybody. All that was a novelty to me, and any changes relate to stress. My feelings for him were rather strong. I remember, at a museum in Washington when he had come right up to me and we were examining minerals and gems, I felt, that I was literally thrilled with delight that he was so close beside me. For me our dates required great exhausting pressure. From time to time, I also felt negative emotions. It was not his guilt, the problem was in my perception, because those trifles were neutral in essence, I just did not like some details. However, I prayed, asked for deliverance from them, and God gradually was removing them. Now I even think, that they served as a good safety lock, which kept me away from unrestrained passion. It would have been in the way.

Chapter 17. Joint activity

An observable shift towards warming occurred after he had invited me to go to a grocery store to get some food for our trip to the General Conference. At the store, we had been talking for a rather long time, for about two hours. Richard told me about his life and divorce. His attitude to life attracted me even more. I also found out that his divorce was not for him like a bolt of the blue, and that he did not grieve for his former wife any more. After that, he became even closer to me. My next revelation was at Potomac Adventist Health and Book Center, where we stopped by on our way back from the General Conference. In the department of painting, Dick considered a landscape, and could not constrain his tears. His sensitivity to fine art, tenderness and vulnerability touched me. Earlier I noticed this keenness and vulnerability in relationships with people, and now - in respect to nature and art. These are qualities, which I highly value in men. “Tough guys” with nerves of steel are alien to me.

A new level in the development of our relationship came when Dick suggested us learning a duet to sing at the church. I remember his phone call with the invitation. I saved it on my voicemail, was listening to it daily, enjoyed and finally memorized it. I learned the song rather quickly, eager to start rehearsing it sooner and seeing him more often.

To practice singing we started meeting each other at our church two or three times a week. Our joint activity was invaluable. We were not just talking about abstract subjects (about other people, about our past), but were doing something real together here and now. “Here and now” is an important psychological principle of successful communication. This principle means that the most valuable things for effective communication and mutual understanding is direct and undelayed feedback about the most recent and fresh information about what is happening between people right now, not vague history of a distant past. Even if one party remembers well an event a week or so old, another party may completely forget them and by reminding of then scarcely will help him to notice something he was not aware of before. It will rather harm relationships because it may be a sign of harboring resentment by the first party.

When we were singing and recording on audiotape, I observed that he sang off key. He objected that it was I. When we listened to the recording as an independent witness, he became persuaded that it had been his mistake and remarked, “Humbling experience.” His openness to the truth touched me, especially under such circumstances, readiness to admit reality, even when it is unpleasant.

He became more frank with me. He shared that my occupation, Psychologist, some years back would have served as a barrier to our friendship. In the past, he had biases against Psychologists and Psychotherapists. He happened to hear from some significant people that “all of them are just a bunch of nuts”, and he trusted the opinions of those people. His college Psychology teacher made a terrible impression on him. However, some years back he had a nervous breakdown and he had to go through a course of Psychotherapy. It helped him to realize, that all his life, he was not able to separate the opinions and emotions of other people from his feelings. Therefore, when somebody blamed him and was angry with him, he always suffered and felt guilty. Due to the psychological help, he learned to separate, where reality is and where subjective impressions are, and he ceased to react in a defensive way in such situations. He realized that he is not responsible for the feelings of other people; they are responsible for them themselves. He should control only his own actions. Other people cannot force him to experience something either. Due to Psychotherapy his reaction became much more healthy and mature. His opinion about Psychotherapists changed. His biases disappeared. In addition, I doubt very much, that if he remained dependent on the opinion of other people I could have become interested in him. In this area, God had worked also, having prepared our encounter.

Chapter 18. In the world of dentistry

I want to dwell on what was happening in “the world of dentistry.” I was waiting for the invitation to his office. Nevertheless, time was going by, and nobody called me. It was March already, and in April, I would have to leave for home. I felt uncomfortable to remind Richard about his promise. I started worrying. Most of all I was disturbed by the fact that in December, in my joy I hurried to notify my mom and my son on the forthcoming free treatment of my teeth. Now I imagined the reaction of my mother in case he would do nothing for me. Taking into account her contempt for Protestants, she would become even more rooted in her prejudices against God’s people. I imagined, how she would say, “They do not deserve any respect, they are not reputable, only talk, and one should not count on mercy from them.” I struggled with a solution for this problem and asked the Lord for help. An idea came to my mind. I should tell mom, that I myself had refused the generous offer because the situation was delicate.

Something happened to me four years ago that helped me to come to this decision. It seemed at that time just a nuisance. Sometimes events, which happened to us, and obstacles, which we have to overcome, seem annoying and meaningless. But meaning will come at the right time. If we pass through them properly, act according to God’s standards, not men’s, then at the right time we will see good fruit and will find out why these circumstances were sent to us. God’s delay one can explain by the fact that He was preparing us for the future and was working in a different area, working not with us at that moment. For example, in the book of prophet Daniel 10:12-13 an angel told the prophet, “^NAU Then he said to me, “Do not be afraid, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart on understanding this and on humbling yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to your words. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia was withstanding me for twenty-one days; then behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I had been left there with the kings of Persia” (Daniel 10:12-13).

Daniel’s prayer was heard, God was working in spiritual realm, but Daniel did not know anything about it. Here faith, patience and obedience to God are necessary to succeed.

Four years ago Leonid, a person who meant a lot to me and to whom it was hard for me to say “no”, was pressing me, demanding to grade a student exam A instead of B. This student was a daughter of his girlfriend’s boss. That girlfriend, Svetlana, was a dentist and some time earlier, she was treating my teeth. Leonid did not see anything bad in a lie and was trying to make me feel ashamed saying, “You are obliged to Svetlana because she had helped you.”

I felt very uncomfortable to turn Leonid down and impair my relationships with that lady-dentist. Leonid was forcing me to give that student an undeserved grade by reminding me that my teeth were worthless and I needed a good dentist. I clearly understood that God’s will is not to lie or cheat. I decided for myself that it was better for me to enter the Kingdom of heaven with rotten teeth than to end up in the lake of fire with beautiful teeth. “^KJV And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.” (Mark 9:47).

I had to survive not just Leonid’s rage, but also a very unpleasant encounter with Svetlana, who came to my workplace to ask about that student. She was trembling. It was obvious how afraid she was of her boss. I felt awkward and at the same time sorry for Svetlana and sad to observe how such a smart, beautiful and talented woman was overcome by fear, believed in her full dependence on a man and as a way out sees only lies and sin. I was hurt that she did not see Whom our life and happiness really depends on. Without beating around the bushes, I announced that a lie is a sin, and sin does not lead to anything good. She objected, “It is a holy lie.” I was trying to explain to her, that the devil is the father of any lie. I was aware of the attitude in atheistic society, that to hear words about sin and to base one’s choice on the Bible was quite strange. She was very upset with my persistence. I hated to upset her. Nevertheless, I knew Who was right, who was deceived, and Who we should listen to, if we want good.

Is very hard for me to say “no” to people and to turn them down. I react to suffering and troubles of others painfully, especially when they are hurt because of my actions. Without God, it seemed to me, that to make people upset under such circumstances was very bad. My conscience was telling me that cheating and falsifying grades is wrong and my feeling were telling me that I am guilty for hurting people by my refusal. Such situations traumatized me a lot.

Reliance on God’s Word started serving me as a guideline, helping to solve similar “unsolvable” problems. I took God’s position, not to deceive. God’s position is always for the good of everybody, even those who were upset. This step helped me to choose heavenly things and in this manner, God was preparing me for further events.

Reflecting further on this idea, I came to conclusion, that it would be even better, if I not only mentally refuse, but also tell Dick about it. He might have fair suspicions concerning my motives, why I have entered into relationships with him. Thus, in order for him to exclude mercenary motives, I should exclude my persona interest. Without this four-year-old experience, I am not sure at all that I would have been able to decline a new more attractive once in a life time perspective of high quality free treatment. Who knows, I could have just reminded Dick about his promise. In addition, he might have started suspecting me in using him for receiving free dental service.

I sent an Email card to him with a refusal and an explanation. Those cards are good because server sends notifications on their reception by an addressee.

My actions were not in vain. Later he told me, that he had dated a woman who asked him for significant sums of money for her various needs, in particular, on tuition for her children in a private school. He was nearly bankrupt because of her. Then he understood that she had used him and left her. One more time God led me in an amazing way, which would have not appeared on my own.

Chapter 19. Proposal

I was looking for a bigger bag on wheels to pack my big luggage. I have asked Dick to help me with my search. We had peaked in a couple of stores. In Wall-Mart, there was a quite good bag. However, I wanted a bigger one. Therefore, we have postponed buying it in hope that something better would turn up later. During these searches, he asked me to look at his duffle bag, which he had at his place. His house turned out to be in picturesque quiet neighborhood. He apologized for the mess in the house. I calmed him down by saying that I do not keep the best order either.

I liked his house his abode modest and simply furnished. Several times Dick mentioned as if he was complaining or apologizing that his house was too big, that when he was first renting it he was planning for the whole family to live in it. His house did not seem big to me. All bedrooms were very small, to tell the truth, the living rood was spacious, but it was a connecting room and to the taste of a Soviet resident it was perceived as a hallway. In addition, from the entrance door you go immediately into the living room. The kitchen was separated from it only with a counter, not with a door. Soviet kitchens were completely separate with doors.

However, the bag turned out to be small. Soon after this, when I was waiting for Dick at home for the next rehearsal at the church, he showed up with a huge bag, it was much more than what we put our eye on.

He presented me it as a gift. When he delivered it, he said, “You are special” and embraced me. I was frightened, felt awkwardn and avoided his embrace. I did not understand, why: whether from unexpectedness, whether from not being prepared, or because of his words. Later I kept thinking about it and came to a conclusion. His praise sounded to me as an evaluation, though positive, based on what he knew about me. However, he does not know everything. When somebody estimates me, I feel as if I am on trial. Moreover, an internal voice whispered, “If he knew about you everything he would have had a different opinion.” Thus, I felt like a deceiver. I could not distinguish whose voice it was. In due course, I realized that it was not God’s, but the enemy’s, who sows divisions, instilling groundless feeling of guilt. After all, I had deceived nobody. Moreover, to know everything about a person is impossible.

The next day in conversation, we touched yesterday’s episode, and I explained the reason for my fright. We stood beside a window of my room, opposite to one another. He said, “I care about you.” For me these words sounded, as a confession. I wanted to say about my own feeling though it was very difficult to utter, ” I care about you too.” He answered, “I know.” He started talking that he had been thinking that he might want to marry me. “But she is from a distant country, and I do not even know her language. I would not be able to live there.” “How do you know?” (I thought, “You did not even try”). He was pondering for a while. He reasoned that when I would return home, some significant events would wait there for me.

He observed, that once in a church two young people, who spent several years overseas, became its leaders. Also that it was necessary to make one step at a time.

All these reasons I considered fair and wise. I was sure, that in an issue of a choosing a life partner it is wrong to be hasty. One should thoroughly weigh and prove as much as possible. Then he added, “You, probably, will find someone in Ukraine.” To me it has sounded like, “I do not need you this much, you are not that important to me.” I became sad. I agreed reluctantly and thought, “Maybe, God has brought us together only for a while in order to prepare for something different in the future.”

I felt increasingly freer with him. The confidence in his feelings grew, and I was opening more and more. When he next embraced me, I did not resist and expressed in the embraces and kisses that warmth, which I felt to him. After that he became more active and began to show considerably greater initiative. He asked me, “Will you marry me?” I answered, that I would like to, but we had to learn each other better. Actually, he proposed to me, but I at that moment I did not understand it. When it happened and under what circumstances, I do not remember.

I remember another significant day, April 8. We were at his place. He showed me a stack of different photos: family, from his childhood, pictures of a nature, which he had made. These photos impressed me strongly. The photos of nature depicted field flowers, branches of trees, fragments of bushes, flowerbeds, views of fields, mountains, were fine, professional, expressive, everything was so subtly noticed, in them such love to the Divine creation and a subtlety of Dick’s soul was seen.

Dick’s childhood photos embodied the fragile and vulnerable child. I thought, that really it would be very hard for such person to live in our severe post Soviet conditions. In one photo I was touched to depth of my soul by his glance, it was gentile, pensive and kind. I was admiring his beauty. At last my last doubts melted. When that day he repeated his question about marriage, I answered, “Yes”.

Chapter 20. When and where to marry

We planned to get married in the uncertain future. We agreed that he would come to Ukraine to visit next summer. I was getting ready for my departure. On Wednesday, I sent the report about my research project. I showed him items in my documents concerning my J1 visa, which required two-year of stay in Ukraine without the right to enter US. On Thursday, I was packing my things. In the afternoon on Thursday, Dick called the University, found me there, though he did not know either my number, or my exact location.

He told me, that had talked with immigration lawyers and he needed to meet me urgently. Later I learned how God paved the way for this. Dick recalled what happened to his younger brother, who married a Filipina in her home country, not consulting with lawyers and had to wait 16 months before his wife was allowed to enter the USA. Therefore, Dick decided to consult with lawyers first. They advised him to get married in the United States. That evening we visited his friend, a lawyer who asked me different questions regarding possible variants of future turns of events - where my things were, whether somebody can send me them, how to be with my son, etc. I remember, I was surprised with his remark concerning that many of my friends and acquaintances perhaps would want to be present at my wedding and I should not need to upset them. I asked him, whether I should plan my life so that I can please people. Then I decided that this was a projection of his own expectations and feelings.

I was far from sure that we should hurry up with our wedding. I made up my mind on returning home because I considered my teaching activity to be my main service to the Lord. I was not ready to teach in the USA because of my language and cultural barriers. I also was burning with desire I earlier wanted to get into very much. This country means a lot to me. Due to the USA, I have a chance to devote myself to my favorite job. The founder of Humanistic Psychology Carl Rogers visited USSR in 1986 and taught at Moscow University. I was fortunate to attend classes by several of his disciples. Humanistic Psychology brings great creative satisfaction to me because it is able to bring real effective help to people.

Through the preaching of an American evangelist, I came to the depth of knowing God and a living faith in Him. That is why I was dreaming to be acquainted with Protestant culture and the best Psychology in the world.

I spent many years, undertaking numerous independent (I mean without the Divine help), very persevering and vigorous attempts to leave Ukraine. Nevertheless, they all failed. When I believed in God my attitude to my own country and to foreign countries completely changed. I concluded that God knew better where I needed to be. I mean, I wanted everything to be the way He wanted. I entrusted all in His hands. He let me know, that there were many specialists like me in the USA, and in Ukraine there were few. In my home country, I could serve people with the greater benefit. If I had burned with the same desire to leave, it would have pushed him away from me. I remembered, how he had reacted to my request to give a piece of advise, how it was possible to help my nephew to arrive to the US in order to find a temporary job. “A-ha-a! So he wants to emigrate!”, Dick reacted emotionally. In his tone I heard, “Almost all your citizens want to leave for our country. I do not like, when people try to run away from difficulties in their native country in a pursuit of easy life on foreign land.” After our marriage I asked him, whether I was right in my guesses. All of them he proved to be true. He also was sure that I did not have a desire to emigrate.

When I asked him about what had attracted him in me, he answered, “You are bright.” Again, I recognized the Lord’s hand. Men normally had reacted negatively to my intellect. Within years, which I had to spend waiting for an answer to my prayers, I was not sitting idly. God helped me to achieve significant professional success, to become a good specialist, an expert in my job. Even one year prior to my departure through some miraculous events He made certain arrangements, that I, being an unknown provincial author, managed to publish a manual at a prestigious publishing house in our capital city, and even to receive the permit of the Ministry of Education though I did not have any acquaintances among the authorities.

A colleague of mine, a famous author, submitted a textbook to the same Ministry. A deputy minister was his acquaintance; he had already published many books, his program international bachelor board accepted. However, this colleague complained for his book lying there for many months, and they did not approve it yet. And all this also mattered for Dick and I to unite, because while trying to win a Fulbright grant I discovered that they value significant publications of candidates to grantees, and during the very last “winning” interview, when I mentioned my book being in press at this publishing house, I noticed approving nods and glances of members of the panel.

I considered myself unworthy of such a man because of my past sins. Dick had been keeping commandments from childhood, but I was wallowing in the mud. I was planning immediately after coming back to Ukraine to write him a letter with a confession. Besides, I knew that my return was fraught with multiple difficulties on the way to our union. One of them was required two-year stay in my home country. I also foresaw quite a possibility of repetition of the old sad scenario; several years ago, in pre-Internet and Email era I was corresponding with an American. When our relationships went beyond the frame of friendship our letters, telegrams, phone calls (all accessible measures pf communication at that time) were blocked. Our relationships stopped eventually. I let Dick know about that. I believe all that did not happened for no reason and affected our decision. I was afraid to lose Dick. However, the main obstacle was this: I did not know what God wanted. That is why Dick and I agreed to fast and pray on Friday in order to seek God’s guidance and to make the right decision. I am sure that fasting and prayer played a crucial part, because God removed all the obstacles, old and new ones.

Chapter 21. What a happy woman!

I warned Dick, that I needed to write to him about a serious matter. So on Friday morning, I went to my office and poured out my soul, describing what had been disturbing me and was standing in my way. I received a marvelous answer from him: that God had forgiven me and he did not hold against me anything that God had forgiven. He asked me to forgive myself. I wept from relief and joy that I found such a precious soul, which I had been searching for all my life.

I remembered his sermon on winners. In it, he mentioned an episode as Pharisees brought to Jesus a woman taken in adultery.

^NIV John 8:3-11: “³ The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group ⁴ and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. ⁵ In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” ⁶ They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. ⁷ When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” ⁸ Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. ⁹ At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. ¹⁰ Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” ¹¹ “No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

When He has said the woman, “Go and leave your life of sin,” He actually gave her a permission to begin a new life. I needed this permission since forgiving myself was very difficult, often impossible. How sad it is that many people suffer because they do not allow themselves to live in a new way, and do not believe that Christ permitted people to live that way.

Dick tried to find a pastor to performing the wedding ceremony. His best friend, a pastor, on whom we counted, suddenly got seriously sick. Our own pastor, that he had a rule not to marry anybody without first having a long series of pre-marital counseling, and we just did not have time for that, so he refused. We continued to pray. The pastor of the church, where we had been at the concert, agreed to marry us.

When we came into a jewelry store to try a wedding ring, I paid attention to a woman behind a counter and thought, “What a happy woman!” At that moment, I did not immediately recognize my own reflection in a mirror wall.

The wedding ceremony took place on Saturday night in Waynesboro in a small chapel of the church. That morning in our church, we sang a duet.

“Resting In His Love”. Duet. Audui. MP3.

We had invited several close friends to come to the wedding that afternoon. Dick brought four dozen roses. The pastor was surprised that he had never seen so many flowers at any wedding before. By the way, on our first year anniversary he presented me with six dozen roses. Our happy and amazing life together began. My doubts, worries and tension left. Our beautiful love began. God had fulfilled my most daring dreams. I feel like Cinderella who found her prince. My husband keeps repeating that he had never imagined that life could be so wonderful. He thanks me that I help him to become a better person.

I had been always considering marriage to be a very serious matter. It never occurred to me that there could be so much fun in marriage. Fun does not exclude either seriousness or problems though. Not everything is always smooth. The devil did not go anywhere, and he continues to find cracks, tossing destructive ideas and feelings. It could be unintentional or deliberate focus on a spouse’s flaws, which breeds nit picking, or a desire to be in charge of the money and other family valuables; it could be eagerness to force your will on your spouse etc. But God says, “^KJV Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another.” When we know that He loves us, we become able to love each other selflessly in spite of what other person makes mistakes and hurts us. “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.” (Romans 8:37)

We do not have conflicts at all, though majority of Psychologists believe that it cannot happen in marriage, and if it can only at the expense of suppressing someone’s needs. It does not relate to us though. The reason is not that we are so good, but because everything is possible with God, even the impossible.

We encounter hardships. Because of factors not depending on us and for subjective reasons, we are going through economic and social trials. My husband lost his practice, went through bankruptcy, for long months could not find any job. That kind of difficulty I could not imagine while living in the Ukraine. Some call it a tragedy. I consider it a trial. When I first faced them, I could not sleep for a whole week. However, the Lord still sustains us, teaches to value spiritual things higher than material. The situation became more complicated since then, but faith in Christ and closeness to Him help us not to lose heart. I am sure that out of injustice God will make something beautiful.

It is important to remember that God always has an answer on any question and a way out of any dead-end situation. We have to focus not on our problems, but on the Source of the solution, on Christ, “^KJV Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2). When we turn to Him, He sends us help.

This help can come through instruction in the wisdom of the Holy Scripture, or through other people, their support, care and advice, or through direct influence of the Holy Spirit on our heart, when kind feelings and mature wise thoughts appear in it. God’s Word teaches us on what we should focus our thoughts. By our nature, we are prone to dwell on hardships, on negative things. In the fourth chapter of Philippians we find a prescription for spiritual health, pointing us with what we should entertain our thoughts. “^KJV Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things” (Philippians 4:8).

Epilogue

God is faithful to His promises, in particular to the one from the book of Psalms. These words are engraved on a plate, which decorates our kitchen. I bought it during our joint trip to the General Conference at the Adventist bookstore: “Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD; trust in Him and He will do this” (Psalm 37:4-5).

He has done this for me. He will do the same for you. “He is no respecter of persons” (Acts 10:34), i.e. He does not have favorites. He is also Almighty. “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.” (Mark 10:27). “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all– how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32).

According to the philosophy of this world at my age, I did not have a chance for marriage happiness. In the prime of life, when people settle down to married life, I did not find mutuality. With aging, wrinkles and graying hair, my chances were steadily going down. According to statistical reports for two given women, there is only one man. After my Baptism, the circle of potential candidates narrowed down even more, because from that moment I needed only a Christian (and there were only 1% of Christians in post-Soviet society at that time), to say nothing of my own denomination. On top of that, in Protestant churches there are only 40% men. What did it mean according to the laws of this world? My goose is cooked. However, God, Who is love, does not grade on the curve. He is not bound by statistic likelihood and cannot be caught off guard. He foresees everything. Can you imagine God reacting like that, “Oh, I am so sorry… I just could not possibly guessed that this man would eventually turn to Me and start persistently asking for a wife. I know I said “it is not good for a man to be alone” and promised to settle the lonely in the family, but I just ran out of good wives for him!” Does it sound like Almighty God to you? Not in the world!

I am certain, that only God could arrange our successful meeting. I was not able to see farther than my nose. For example, Dick’s stoutness repelled me. Nevertheless, the Lord impressed Dick in such a way, that he agreed to keep a low glycemic method of nutrition by Michel Montignac and lost fifty pounds. Now we have a happy family. If I continued living according to my own understanding, it could not have happened at all.

It is not so hard to notice, that the source of the majority of my troubles was I.

I had to walk the road toward my life partner for thirty-nine years. I believe none of you will have to make such a long journey and to get rid of such an amount of inner garbage as I did. That is why I hope no one of you will have to wait for your “half” as long as I had to.

You may notice that the source of most of my troubles was I. Good news about personal responsibility is we can change ourselves with God’s help. Praise God for that! If others were solely responsible for our hardships it would have been hopeless. Our real enemy is inside us, it is our egoism, pride, and desire to lift ourselves above others, in other words, sin. From sin, there is only one unique escape, Christ. “ ^KJV For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). On the cross, God with the blood has paid the high price for our sin, to make us purified, alive according to the truth and happy.

In His plan, there is also the best partner for you. However, the devil blinds us. He says, that we are not seeing the real diamonds, calling them pieces of glass or he makes us think, that there is no reason to hurry.

We do not believe God because the god of this age (Satan) blinded our minds “⁴, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto” us. He offers ideas that seem sound, but in reality they lead to destruction, pain and finally, to death.

One of those is the “sampling” idea: supposedly we need to “sample” or “try” numerous partners by dating or sleeping with them before finding who is the best for us. Wrong! Relying on our senses is carnality, which leads to death. “For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” (Romans 8:6). We do not have to “try”; with God’s spiritual guidance you can hit bull’s eye right away!

Another facet of this deception is harmfulness and even impossibility of temperance or self-control, as is if you do not have sex, you are inferior. Wrong!

Sex does not have an independent value. It is an addition, an expression, or a result of a happy marriage. How wonderful it is to wait until the day of marriage and to receive intimacy as a gift. You realize that it is something unique, something meant only for the two of you. You feel confidence in another person, knowing that he belongs only to you. I want so much that all of us find our happiness, our real happiness. Everything, that God has, is real, no fakes.

When I came to God, a completely new life, a better life started for me. The last years of my life have been saturated with meaning, with the good and the usefulness so much and they last for so long! Before that my life was flying, like an express train. I had been just counting years like mileposts. Now I think, “How is that? I spent just few years with the Lord, and so much already happened!”

I can see and feel how through me the Lord is pouring streams of blessings on people around me. I can see how God gently rebukes me, instructs, stops, allows me to think things through, and to understand where I was wrong. When I ask Him for His Spirit, I receive Him, and different higher motives rule me. They are motives, which I could not imagine before, like from a fairy-tale, or in which I could not believe.

Because the world around us seeks average, mediocre (not better) standards it is gradually sinking. I used to descend along with it, while degrading morally and paying for that with unconscious pain and conscious cynicism. Now I notice how I am growing, transforming and thanking the Author of life for everything.

I invite you to this better life.

So, what the method of finding your soul mate? I will briefly summarize it. In order to find your life partner it is necessary, that God would point this person to you, prepare you for meeting him (or her) and bring two of you together. In order to experience this we must learn to distinguish God’s voice, to develop relationships of love and trust with Him. He is leading every one of us in a unique way.

If you are single and dreaming to have a family, the first necessary thing is this; you have to be sure that God’s will for you is to be a husband or a wife. You have to be confident that when you marry, you will fulfill and not break God’s will for your life. I was certain about it. God has the same family plans for many people. By creating Eve as a companion for Adam, “^KJV the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him” (Genesis 2:18).

However, marriage is not always for every individual. The Apostle Paul wrote, “^KJV For I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that. I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I». The Apostle Paul himself after his conversion did not have a wife (1 Corinthians 9:5).

Single people have their own benefits. “^{KJV 32} But I would have you without carefulness. He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: ³³ But he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife. ³⁴ There is difference also between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit: but she that is married careth for the things of the world, how she may please her husband. ³⁵ And this I speak for your own profit; not that I may cast a snare upon you, but for that which is comely, and that ye may attend upon the Lord without distraction” (1 Corinthians 7:32-35).

For single believers there is a great comfort in these words. Being unmarried, they are able to dedicate themselves completely to the God’s service. You might say, “I really desire to be married. That is why I started reading this book in first place. And now you are telling me that I might be better off staying single?” You see, simply desiring something is not a valid proof that it is better for you to have a family. I know women, whose main stimulus for desiring to establish a family is to remove what they consider the disgrace of singleness. They feel inferior in comparison to their married acquaintances. This motive for marriage is wrong and manipulative. “The fear of man bringeth a snare: but whoso putteth his trust in the LORD shall be safe” (Proverbs 29:25). If people want to marry just because they feel ashamed to differ from others and feel inferior because of the absence of a spouse, they allow others to manipulate them. However, you do not have to accept it and comply with the expectations of people around you. There can be other wrong motives for marriage. You want to be certain about God’s plan for you. That is why it is better to pray to God about revealing His will for your life in order for you to know beyond a shadow of a doubt, exactly what He wants for you.

When you become confident in the fact, that God desires matrimony for you, then pray for your soul mate. It is good to have a prayer partner, who will agree with you on this matter (Matthew 18:19). While praying rely on the Bible promises (1 John 5:14, Luke 11:9,10, Genesis 2:18, Proverbs 18:22, Psalm 84:11, Psalms 68:6, Psalm 128:1,3 etc.), abide in God’s Word.

Open up to God; allow Him to work on you and to prepare you for family life. Allow Him to make a worthy husband or wife out of you. “Success in marriage is more that finding the right person; it is becoming the right person.” (Lottie Krogh, “The home builder” in Best Thing I Ever Did for My Marriage by Nancy Cobb, Connie Grigsby, Dennis Rainey(2003). 50 real life stories. Multnomah publishers. Sisters, Oregon, p. 229).

You need to listen to what God tells you and obey Him. If He tells a lady to confess or to propose to a man, but she is bound by prejudices and fear of cultural disapproval, it will hinder her happy marriage she dreams about. I know many women who would never initiate relationships. The Bible is quite the opposite. The book of Ruth describes a fascinating story of Ruth proposing to Boas. Ruth’s mother-in-law instructed her (Ruth 3:1-4) and young widow follower her instructions. Bible commentators state, “there is no doubt that Ruth’s actions are symbolic and constitute a marriage proposal”⁸. Boas married Ruth and she became a great-great-great…grandmother of Jesus.

In order to succeed you need faith. I am not talking about a blind faith, taking somebody else’s word, especially a human word. It would not be prudent. Get acquainted with the Lord personally. This is the most important thing in life. All the rest of life depends on it; freedom, personal satisfaction, professional growth, financial stability, relationships in community, friendships, relationships with adversaries, raising children, health, life and death, meaning of life and finally, eternal destiny.

I will provide some data from scientific research. Marriage couples, which pray together, on 1026 marriages there is only one divorce (it is less then 0,1% in comparison with average 50% divorces, i.e. families, in which Christ lives are 500 stronger)⁹. The world was astonished with results of interviewing of 100,000 women, published in Redbook magazine. It showed that believing women are much better sexual partners. They are more active sexually and experience orgasm more frequently. Tim and Beverly LaHaye, authors of the book “The Act of Marriage“, confirmed this information by conducting a survey. Its results discovered that 11% of 20 year old Christian women experience orgasm often, and 81% most of the time. This is the highest result, ever discovered among questionnaires. Adventists, who keep healthy manner of nutrition and healthy lifestyle, longevity is from six to twelve years above average.¹⁰ The highest level of life, as well as protection of human rights and personal liberties is in the USA, Switzerland and Sweden, countries, where the leading religion is Protestantism.

My prayer is that you, my brother or sister, will discover, that the Lord is your true faithful Friend, enter in saving relationships of trust and love with Him (John 15:15) and if it is God’s will for you, will find your soul mate.

^NIV Psalm 34:1: I will extol the LORD at all times; his praise will always be on my lips.

² My soul will boast in the LORD; let the afflicted hear and rejoice.

³ Glorify the LORD with me; let us exalt his name together.

⁴ I sought the LORD, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears.

⁵ Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame.

⁶ This poor man called, and the LORD heard him; he saved him out of all his troubles. ⁷ The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them.

⁸ Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.

⁹ Fear the LORD, you his saints, for those who fear him lack nothing.

¹⁰ The lions may grow weak and hungry, but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing.

¹⁷ The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles.

¹⁸ The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

¹⁹ A righteous man may have many troubles, but the LORD delivers him from them all;

²¹ Evil will slay the wicked; the foes of the righteous will be condemned.

²² The LORD redeems his servants; no one will be condemned who takes refuge in him.

Harrisonburg, VA.

October 2003.

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This story is published in a book format: “Finding Your Soul Mate” by Tatyana Noel: http://www.findingyoursoulmatebook.com/

Radio interview of Tatyana Noel with Cynthia Brian about the book is available at the World Talk Radio site at http://www.voiceamerica.com/worldtalkradio/vshow.aspx?sid=764

To order a paper copy of the book “Finding Your Soul Mate“: https://www2.xlibris.com/bookstore/bookdisplay.aspx?bookid=69477

Оригинал на русском языке - Найти свою “половинку”

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Endnotes:

1. Glen W. Wolfrom. Perpetuation of the Recapitulation Myth. Creation Research Society Quarterly. March 1975 [-]
2. Robert Johnston. Divorced once - single forever? Signs of the Times. February 1994, pp. 24-27. Related materials: Kenneth Hagin. Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage. Faith Library Publications, 2006. Thurman Scrivner. Divorce and remarriage [-]
3. Kjell Erik Rudestam (1982). Experiential Groups In Theory And Practice. Monterey, Calif. : Brooks/Cole Publishing Co. [-]
4. Maltz, Maxwell (1989). New Psycho Cybernetics. Simon & Schuster. [-]
5. Nancy Van Pelt (1997). Smart Love. A Field Guide For Single Adults. Fleming H. Revell Company. [-]
6. Wade C., Tavris C. (1990). Psychology. - N.Y.: Harper and Row. [-]
7. Wade C., Tavris C. (1990). Psychology. - N.Y.: Harper and Row. [-]
8. NET Bible, First Beta Edition. p. 509, note 18. [-]
9. Nancy Van Pelt. Smart Love. Review and Herald. [-]
10. There are a number of research experiments conducted by different scholars at different times in different countries. That is why there is a discrepancy of data, from 6 to 12 years. Research done by Department of Preventive Medicine at Loma Linda University has documented, “Approximately 50,000 Seventh-day Adventists were studied, primarily in California, over 30 years. Results showed that Adventists men live 8.9 years longer, and women 7,5 years longer than the general population.” John Sharffenberg, M.D., M.P.H. Vibrant Life. May/June, 1992, p.18. [-]

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 25th, 2009 at 10:01 am and is filed under Audio, Dating, marriage & divorce, Effective Prayers, Holy Spirit Power, In English, Music, Overcoming, Practical Christianity, Real Life Stories, by Tatyana Noel-Tsygulska. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.