I was born on January 25, 1982. But the story of my life began a little earlier. Two months after my older brother was born on January, 31,1981, my mother, without knowing it, became pregnant with me. My father, who was not ready for another a new baby in the family, gave my mother an ultimatum: she had to get rid of me. My mother chose not to do it and went to my grandmother’s house before the childbirth. After I was born, my mother returned to my brother and father, but I stayed with my grandmother until I was seven.

All those years I saw that my grandmother, who was a faithful Orthodox, tried to please God: she regularly read the same prayer before going to bed and made the sign of a cross over her pillow, faithfully honored all Orthodox holidays and took communion with me.

I think it was then, that in my young heart there grew an awe and the beginnings of a weak faith in the One I knew nothing about, but I believed that He existed. There is One to be worshiped and revered.

My family has never been happy, and when I returned to my parents’ home at the age of 8, a new phase began in my life: living seeing the drunkenness of a cruel father who regularly beat first only my mother and then me and my brother; insults and humiliation, night scandals and continuous involvement of the police. All this environment “brought me up” to be a cruel, aggressive, angry and vindictive teenager with the only desire to leave home as soon as possible and never see my father again, or return when my father grows old to take revenge on him in full.

And such opportunity soon appeared. When I was getting ready to graduate my teacher started talking to me seriously about my plans after leaving school and what I wanted to connect my future with. I replied that I would most likely go to the Teachers Training Institute to the Faculty of Psychology. But he told me, “You and children are incompatible things.” I was involved in athletics (and throwing a grenade?), I went to athletics competitions. Since I had come from a troubled family, I had aggressive behavior and was listed in the juvenile delinquents’ room and took light drugs, drank and smoked since childhood. I led a riotous life with boys, went to various parties.

Very soon, on the advice of this teacher and thanks to my merits in sports and a strong character, I was interviewed by a lieutenant colonel of the Internal Troops, who could help with my entry into the women’s detachment of special forces. I met the requirement. It was the end of April – the beginning of May. I was seventeen years old. When I started thinking about this proposal, I was very happy. Immediately, two of my dreams came true: first, I could leave home for a long time – for six months, and then a military leave, and secondly, I could gain self-defense skills.

I dreamed of coming back and breaking my father’s arms and legs, at his first intention to do what he always did. A week passed. This lieutenant colonel studied the situation, but it so happened that we had submitted the documents too late and they did not accept them. Such institutions accept documents in late February, or early March at the latest, because they have to check the physical condition of applicants, family diseases, genetic disorders, sanity, and so on. I was already hoping for it, so I was very upset, I was nervous and crying. All my dreams of leaving home and taking revenge came and went at the same time. Now I understand that it was God’s will.

I lived then with the thoughts that came to me through life with my father: a terrible dream to hurt my father as he hurt us, to use his helplessness and leave him alone, helpless, to offend him – to do everything he did with us. This is what I dreamed of, although girls at this age dream of something else.

I never dreamed of getting married. I could not imagine a man in my life, moreover, I did not want them. They were all weak, useless to me, and they were all a threat. What could I take from them? I wanted to finally them and not depend on any of them in any way: neither financially, nor morally. That was my plan for life. I thought about children. I thought I would spend time with men when I wanted, where I wanted and with whom I wanted. Then I will decide from whom to give birth to a child. But none of them will enter my life. I will decide myself when they will be in my life and when not. But God had other plans for my life.

My documents were not accepted that year, but they promised to consider them the following year. It comforted me a little. I thought I could wait another year to make my dreams come true. But it so happened that that year I hung out with my friends around the neigborhood. We no longer knew what to do, what harm to do to people. No one touched us, and even when we wanted to run into adventures, everyone wanted harmony and peace and avoided conflicts with us. So we went to another area of town; the Northern area of Tavricheski. On our way, I saw a beautiful poster on the fence: a group is coming, believers, a tent was put up, something like that. Just an invitation to a meeting. I said to the guys: “The circus has come to the city. Let’s have fun!” We went into that tent, the guys took their seats in different places, and I moved on straight in to sit down and look around that place and wanted to gain an understanding as to how to behave. It was a very large tent, inside there were benches where you could sit. It was daytime, summer – June, so it was hot. There was a big screen up front, there were almost no people, probably because it was the hotest part of the day, and more people came only in the evening.

An old movie was shown on the screen, as I later realized, it was “Jesus”. As I walked along the san-covered aisle between the rows of the benches, I looked for a place to sit, some words began to reach me. I looked up to see what it was and couldn’t take my eyes away. This was the moment when Christ was killed. I sat down and just watched for fifteen minutes. Then one of the men in front began to speak. I did not understand what he was talking about. But he said that if someone wanted to change their life, they could come forward now. At that moment I had other dreams, other goals, I was deeply wounded and upset, I had no good intentions. I didn’t think I needed to change anything because it was normal for me. I do not understand how I got there. I don’t remember how it happened, but I stood in front and cried. He was praying and I was just crying. It was a transforming time of change.

After that I started going to that church. But my behavior did not change immediately. Everything was unusual for me. I remember coming on March 8 when all the women and girls in the room were given snowdrops. Small bouquets of snowdrops. Now this is quite normal for me, but on that day, when on my way to a party with my friends where we were going to get drunk, I came to the church, sat down and was given that bouquet and a small card, and heard kind words, it was a different world for me. I had never seen such a relationship. I could not understand why and for what reasons all this was shown to me.

I then went to the party of friends under this impression. I ran to them to say: you will not believe where I have been! You all have to see it to understand that this is a different world. I came and started telling them about it. They listened to me, but it didn’t seem to matter to them at all, although two of them came to church with me: a girl and a boy.

So God led me on His way. It affected me, but the changes were gradual. Something changed only after ten years of my going to church because I had come with great problems. I had my attitudes in my head, and God gradually changed them: in the way I dressed, in my relationships with others, in my openness – I used to be very closed and aggressive. People were my enemies, but I couldn’t help but go to church. God was working on my thinking.

The changes took place in my appearance, then I felt worried about my responses to others or my behavior, for example, at home. I developed more patience and understanding for my mother and my father’s behavior. I remember one day my father going to beat me with an iron before going to church. The window in my room normally opened with effort. At the moment when my father was going to hit me, the window opened by itself, and the draft closed the door to my room so that my father could not open it. It was a real miracle! It was at that moment that I decided to follow the Lord in any way, even if my father killed me for it. I was very scared to stand against my father. If I was afraid of losing my life because of a man, it was that man. I was not afraid that someone would beat me, because my father did it all the time. He had beat us badly, insulted us, humiliated us, driven us out of the house, that we ran barefoot in the snow, we had to hide from him behind the trash cans. All this became the norm for me. God has worked hard on me and continues to do so.

I went to the same church for over 14 years, but through my divorce and condemnation of people brought on more public repentance and forced me to move to another small, local church, where there were 20-25 people. I began to attend that church, serve there, and recover gradually.

One day one of the sisters attending this church, Alys, invited me to talk and said that she was praying to find a person with certain character features, and God told her that it could be me. I replied that I needed to pray for two weeks, and then we would meet and I would tell her my decision. When she offered me a job, I imagined that it could be connected with children. If I were without God, I would have never agreed. I understood that children develop attachment, and they cannot be left alone, how then could I see the suffering of children? From a human point of view, I would have refused. But we do not always know ourselves the way God knows us – what we are able to embrace and bear. I gave God the opportunity to answer: He gave me the peace of heart. I decided to give it a try for a month so that Alys and I could see if it was my place. It wasn’t easy, but I realized it was mine. All the things I had thought about, disgust because of the smells that could be there, it all went away because there was a personal relationship that gradually formed with each child.

I can’t imagine my life without the orphans now. This is my second family, and sometimes it even outweighs the interests of my own family. I am used to communicating with these girls and boys, I understand what I have to do for them, those things I would do for my own child. I always ask myself, “What if it were my child, what would I do?” It makes me go further.

I thank God for the few good things I had in my life, and for the bad things, too; I have learned to forgive, and now I do not take offense at my father. Without him, many of the character traits I have now would not have been formed. It allows me to better understand children who also have difficulties in life, to understand what it is like to live without parents – over eight years I felt it. And then when I returned to my own parents, another eight years was like hell. So when children talk about their pain now, I understand them.