Marilena - Transformed By God's Love
TRANSFORMED BY EXPERIENCING GOD'S AMAZING LOVE
- Marilena Fackerell
I was born in Bucharest, Romania. I had a normal childhood, until I was 7 and a half years old, when my mother got sick with cancer. I have been told that she did an abortion and that's how she got sick. It was illegal to have an abortion under the communist regime, which I think it was good. I was struck with a hard reality of life, seeing my mother suffer in the home, wailing with pain, eliminating blood and suffering.
She did get better with some treatment that she was getting and there were hopes of getting totally healed. I actually read in the newspaper after years that the same treatment that my mother was getting, worked complete healing in a man, who was in his last phase of cancer, and my mother was in the second last or last at that time. But in her despair to get healed she went in the country to a witch doctor which told her to drink the mercury in three thermometers! And she did that. I studied nursing in my high school and I have learned that the intoxication with mercury is one of the worst, since mercury travels all over in the body.
After that I saw my mother coming home, getting worse, I saw her leaving the house and looking in the house, as if this was her last look. And sadly it was. I saw her then in the hospital in coma, on my birthday, making an effort to open her eyes and looking at me for a second because of her great love for me and then letting tears drop from her eyes and then I got the report, three days latter that she breathed her last.
I was socked when I heard that she died and I started to cry a little bit, but my grandmother, thinking she was protecting me from pain, she told me not to cry anymore and to just go to sleep, which I did, but now I know it would've been much healthier for me to cry when I needed it. I went through the whole three days almost not crying at all. But something in me deeply changed. Before this I was a normal child, rejoicing and being childish, which was normal for my age. After that I became an introvert with a very sober, serious look on life and I grew before my time in maturity.
My relatives told me how much my mother loved me - which seemed to be a lot - and they all looked with pity on me as well as many other people. They looked at as if to say: "Poor you!". I am not at all convinced that helped actually, because it probably built inferiority and insecurity in me, making me think of myself that I am not a normal child. I put a lot of effort in being very good at school, since God gave me a good brain and people congratulated me for my school results, which made me proud.
My father couldn't cope with the pain of loosing my mother which was only 36 years old when she died. He liked drinking before she died and he was sometimes getting drunk, but after my mother died, he just drank uncontrollably, I think to try to get out of reality, since reality was too painful for him to live in. Therefore, he would fall on streets and sometimes wound himself, or at least he would get drunk enough to not walk straight and that often. Every day if he wasn't coming home before 4 a clock, I would start worrying and be fearful, imagining all kinds of bad things that could've happened to him.
My grandparents didn't know how to react to him and they didn't understand him - neither me - so we would judge and condemn him, which did damage to his confidence and manhood, especially that I, a child, was advising him and judging him about how he should live his life.
My grandmother was telling me from time to time, showing me the icon on the wall, that that was God and told me how to pray. I think there always was some kind of attraction in me for God from the time I was little. Even though it was communism, they allowed the general population to go from time to time to the Orthodox church, which is the main one in Romania, as long as you didn't go too often, or as long as you weren't higher in the communist party or in the army or police and as long as you said nothing at all against them. Many of the orthodox priests were secret informers for the party. But any time I would go to the Romanian Orthodox church with my relatives - they took me from time to time - I had a feeling of awe within my heart for the things of God and I was serious about the whole thing, with few exceptions when others made jokes and made me be joking about some holy things.
All the times from the time my mother died I had a strength and a wisdom to just thing that: Yes, these things happened to me, but I must keep leaving my life and help my father. If he is not able to sustain me, I HAVE to sustain myself and him." So, I put unconsciously some walls of protections all around me and I moved on. But in fact, God did carry me and was strengthening me all this time, even though I did not know Him. He is full of love, and he saw that the enemy was trying to
destroy me as a child, when I mostly vulnerable. But God knew how much I needed Him and He came to my help, without me knowing it.
Finally, my father tried to find a wife, mainly a mother for me. And he found in less than a year a nice looking woman who was nice to me, too. Life became nice again for around 5 years until my parents starting arguing and fighting. My step mother had her bad faults and my father started drinking more again. They divorced and tried twice to live together again, but it didn't work.
I became very bitter and angry on her, thinking that she should've stayed and take care of me, since I was in a difficult age - I think around 16. I didn't understand her side of complaints then, but I do now. My father also had his side of complaints. I was also very rebellious towards her, since sometimes she was strict on me and I felt imprisoned. My relatives all told me how much love my mother, who died, had for me. So, sometimes when I didn't like how my step mother behaved towards me - I would go and stay alone and compare her with what I heard and vaguely remembered about my mother, how much she loved me.
After she left, I was faced with having to care for my father in cooking, washing and all other things, that I knew very little off. So, I started to learn, but I wasn't very good at it. My father got worse into drinking. I think he was a very hurt man deep inside. Before marrying my mother, he was also hurt from the previous marriage, where he found his wife one day in bed with another man and after a while, she left him and took everything, including their son. So, this was the third marriage that went down the drain and he also had an addiction to alcohol. That addiction lead to him missing days at work and sometimes not having a job at all. We lived on the pension that the state gave me for loosing my mother, which wasn't a lot and some of the money that my father earned when he was working. Everyone condemn him, including me, sometimes with very hush and exaggerated hurtful words. This only made his confidence of getting out of the drinking problem almost non-existent. I didn't understand that under all of this there was a lot of pain and distress and only true love and friendship will help, not reproach and condemnation.
Please, if you meet or know anyone addicted to alcohol, please try to help, not condemn and judge harshly. See why is the person so - yes, help him/her see it is wrong what he/she is doing, but don't dwell on it, offer a solution, get involved to help and dwell on loving the person. I agree, sometimes, it's just bad will that makes people drink and do damage, but I am almost 100% sure that in most cases that's not the situation.
To come back to my story, I went through a lot of pain and fear in that time. I was craving for love. I even thought of throwing myself from the balcony or cut my veins if a boyfriend left me. I once took a knife and brought it to my wrist, but I could not kill myself. God was keeping me alive for better things.
I enjoyed the times with friends and at school, but deep inside I was depressed, yet I thought I was very melancholic. I would sit for hours sometimes on my balcony at the eight floor, where I could view the sky, either the clouds or the stars in the night. That gave me a feeling of peace, it drove me to meditation and gave me an atmosphere of freedom where I could pour out my inner pain and depression by writing poems, dreaming and fantasizing love stories of finding the man that would really love me. In this period of time, I also had friends that left me and these just added to the pain. But God's sky was helping me to pour out my heart and release some of the pain. There was something in me that was drawn towards the sky. Sometimes, I would sit and look at the formation of the big white clouds, as they moved along, trying to find something that would look like God's face or an angel.
It was at this time in my life that a friend of mine, to whom I started to get closer by God's grace not too long ago, told me a bit about God and gave the Gospel of John, a portion of the Bible to read. Many of you maybe know that that's the Gospel with the most words about love in it. I was so hungry for God in my heart, but I didn't know it. Before she gave me that, I still kept praying in front of the icon, or I was reading some books about prayer or of the life of a saint. And I really enjoyed them, but not as much as reading the Gospel of John. As I read through it, there was something coming out of the pages at me. I normally read by getting involved in the story and living the story myself. So, I read the Bible the same way. What seem to touch my heart as I was reading was that Jesus healed, Jesus cared, Jesus fed others, Jesus had compassion and so on. I felt touched in my heart by this Jesus who was so good and loving. I would read and cry while reading and I would underline all the parts I really liked. I was really taking it in.
Then after sometime, she bought me a Bible, which I read bits and pieces every day and I was praying with her in a very simple way about my situations. She wasn't going to church and neither was I, since we didn't know we had to. We just met very often and pray for 15 minutes or less and we were asking God to speak to us from the Bible and then we would open it at random and many, many times, even when I was by myself God used that method to REALLY encourage me and strengthen me, by pointing scriptures to me that were his promises. I one day very soon prayed a prayer to ask God to forgive my sins, to give me eternal life and to come into my life. A very simple one and I believe God heard it.
In the mean time, things at home continued to be bad and also I had friends that left me. Sometimes when life was hard for me, I would go to God and simply pray and tell him what was in my heart or if I was hurting too much, I would just sit there, knowing that God saw me and my state and I was just somehow waiting and He would come and surround me all around with a great amazing love that I have never ever experienced before in my whole life and I just felt like being embraced by love... That gave me peace and strength to go on. Most of the times the problems I had didn't go away, but would come up from prayer with a strength to go through them.
After that I became a bit involved with a group of people that believed in God, but in the depth of their organization, the foundation was pretty crooked and not of God. But most of these people were young, full of love and joy and I believe many of them were Christians, but didn't know the Scriptures very well, or the foundation of the group from which they were part off. But these people were very active in sharing the message of God's love and forgiveness with the people on the streets and in parks. Being encouraged and pushed by them, I gained courage and talked to people as well. We went in teams of two and sometimes had from 3 to probably 9 people pray the prayer to receive Christ with us. We would start around 9-10 in the morning and not finish sometimes until 4 in the afternoon. The joy that we had at the end of the day was amazing, we were like jumping from one foot to the other. We sometimes go home and keep talking to our friends from our area where we lived. We loved it. It is so wonderful to speak a message of love to people and to see them pray to receive the same God that blessed you with love and peace!!!
But the devil wasn't sleeping and he saw my desire for God, but also that I didn't know the Bible very well. So, he sent to me through a friend who believed in God, the mormon missionaries. Lovely girls, but deceived girls. I got involved in their church for about a year, in this time, I was still meeting my friend, reading the Bible and praying with her quite often, but I drifted from God for a while. God used a scary situation though to make say to Him that if He would save me from that I would serve Him. And he did save me.
In the meantime, as I was getting deeper in the mormon system, they gave me a book called " Doctrines and Covenants" in which they stating very bad doctrines (e.g.. Jesus was brother with Satan before Satan rebelled and other bad things). My friend, who by this time, knew more about God, visited the mormon church once with me and warned me of some of its unbiblical practices and doctrines, but I wasn't very convinced.
Yet, God used one man from the Mormon church, who was convinced that they were wrong and I became more and more convinced of the reality. One day, this man told me about a meeting in town with some evangelist. When I heard, I had a strong desire in my heart to go there and I almost had to beg my friend to come, because she didn't want to come. We went there and we heard beautiful songs and the message of the Gospel preached. Don't asked me what was said, because I don't remember, but after the message, they sang a song that was describing the cry of my heart in a way, so it really touched me:
More love,
More power,
More of You in my life.
And I will worship you with all of my heart
And I will worship you with all of my soul
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