It’s
going to be the 20th anniversary of our wedding this year! Add to it four more
years we had known one another for before marriage. It’s hard to imagine…
I
remember how I was impressed by a fairy tale I read when I was a child. It was
titled “Old and Happy.” The main character of that story caught a miraculous
bird who bought its freedom by promising to make him happy either when he was young
or old. His wife advised him to choose to be happy during their old age. The
reason she gave was that while they were young they were capable of standing up
against all hardships on their own. He followed his wife’s advice. As soon as
he did so, their family was beset by all kinds of troubles: war, poverty, and
captivity. They were scattered and left all hope to reunite and to lead a happy
life ever again. In the end they met each other, got rich, and lived happily
together ever after. When I was a child, I was thinking that I would also like
my life to be like that.
On the
following day after the future Father Sergius and I met in the arts college and
took a stroll down the city streets, he had the unusual courage to hand me a
note with a self-composed poem. The poem ended with the following words: “Let’s
stay together and see how this story ends.” I liked to look out of a certain
window in the arts college. I wrote a small note on its jamb. It was a line
taken from my favourite song, “A story with unhappy end…” He noticed my answer
and wrote back something only we could understand. Over time, we scribbled over
the entire jamb (strange though it may sound in this era of mobile phones).
They did not erase those inscriptions… Recently, I saw that the old building of
the college has been demolished.
During
our first 10 years of living together, we quarrelled almost daily and were
going to get divorced. It was thanks to Father Sergius’ humility and the
prayers of Father Andrew that our family has survived until now. The enemy
attacked us from all sides. He tried to destroy our marriage with sinful
thoughts and plausible pretexts. Naturally, I was to blame for it. My
mother-in-law told me, “I’ve noticed a pattern: the better the husband is, the
worse the wife turns out to be!” (I wish I could change over time. Time goes by
and I don’t change, and my character is getting worse…) Our relationships
changed dramatically when I broke my back and stayed in bed for a month and a
half. Father Sergius looked after me and the house. It brought us closer
together and helped me to recognise and appreciate my husband’s love. I
stumbled upon a book titled Five Languages of Love, which stated that people
had various ways of showing love, and if spouses don’t coincide in these ways,
they will have a hard time dealing with one another. There was a remarkably
straightforward advice on how to find out the language of love that your loved
one speaks: Pay attention to what he asks most often, and what he finds most
valuable. Father Andrew often says that people can live together for years and
still don’t hear each other.
I have
often been pestered by thoughts about God’s will and how to recognise it in my
own life. I was always dreaming of meeting a holy elder who would predict everything
and lay out a plan for my future life, easily propelling me towards the bright
future and the perpetual salvation. Real life was different. Even if a holy man
would tell me the obvious God’s will, I did not want to follow it. If I
encountered any obstacles on that road, I would blame the holy man and not
myself. I heard that God’s will can be unmistakably deduced from the
circumstances of one’s life. It seems to me (I might be wrong, of course) that
one’s own inclinations are also part of such circumstances. I mean, if one does
not stick to them obstinately but adds, “Thy will be done.” I remember a guy
who graduated from a seminary and went to an elder to ask him which path to
choose in life: that of a monk or of a family man? The priest asked him, “What
do you want? Don’t you know? You’ve got to make up your own mind first.”
Rather
unexpectedly, in 2011 I had a growing certainty that we had to adopt a child,
preferably two kids. It took us a couple of years to get ready for it. Finally,
this dream came true in 2013. Father Sergius became a priest around the same
time. His life became even holier than it had been. When he was a deacon, he
would attend one Liturgy every Sunday or a holiday. After his consecration, he
started attending three Liturgies every Sunday. If there was a nocturnal
Liturgy, he wouldn’t miss it, either. I remember how he told me about an old
lady who complained that she couldn’t bring her grandson in for communion
because she wanted to be able to pray comfortably. Father Sergius replied:
- You can
attend the nocturnal Liturgy, and then bring your grandson to the morning
Liturgy for communion.
The
parishioner gasped:
- I
can’t. It’s beyond my strength.
Father
Sergius laughed:
- Why is
it possible for me, then?
- You are
an extraordinary person.
- No, I
am not: I get tired, too.
When
Father Sergius comes home after a service, it’s out of the frying-pan right
into the fire! The kids and I don’t let him relax.
When
Father Sergius became a priest and was required to hear confessions, he
discovered the true thoughts of many people. Of course, it is much harder to
listen to confessions than to intone “Again and again…” from the ambo. Still,
there is something authentic in it. Father Sergius told me that if he were a
film director, he would make a film about confession, with voices of the
penitents set against the background of amazing liturgical chants. A child, a
young girl, a middle-aged man, a senile old man—talking about one and the same
thing: their separation from God and how they suffer in exile. It’s tragic and
bright at the same time.
Aside
from his priestly ministry, Father Sergius has painted up several churches,
several iconostases, and continues to be the head of the Icon Painting Studio
of St Elisabeth Convent. As far as I’m concerned, services, singing in the
choir, working in the Icon Painting Studio, and my ministry as a sister of
mercy remains merely nostalgic memories about a long-gone bright period of my
life. I have a boarding home right at home and I have to be there round the
clock. We adopted our third child, a one-year-old girl, in the summer of 2017.
I have written a lot about adoption. I’ve tried to be as candid and honest as
possible. On the one hand, adoption is great but on the other hand, there are
lots of difficulties that we’ve had to deal with.
I recall
how I met a friend who is also an icon painter. She had just given birth to her
fourth child. They lived in a small flat. I was sympathetic with her and asked,
“Do you find it hard to live like that?” Pushing the pram, she replied plainly
but with dignity, “I believe that if a Christian tries to live bona fide, she
cannot have it easy.”
I look
back and see that some of my friends and acquaintances pass away, some leave
the Convent, and some come to the Convent. Some people live their lives
happily, their hopes come true, while others have a never-ending trail of
misfortunes.
What will
happen next?
Somehow,
it seems to me that in any case a human life is a “story without a happy end.”
When I
recall the fairy tale about happiness in the final years of one’s life, I think
whether a happy end might foreshadow the eternity?
By Matushka Larisa Nezhbort
March 12, 2018
March 12, 2018
St.
Elisabeth Convent
CONVERSATION