This story was told to me by our accountant, and it happened with her friend - Valentina.
Valentina’s life was not much different from other people. She grew up in a happy family, graduated from university, worked as an accountant at a factory, got married, and a few years later had a daughter Anastasia. Seemed like a normal life, nothing to complain about…
When she was 2 years old, her daughter Nastya was diagnosed with a serious illness. I do not remember the exact diagnosis, but it had something to do with cancer. And the diagnosis was not very promising. Her dad did not show his best side – he said, that he didn’t need a sick child, packed up his things and left and never again appeared in their lives. Valentina was left alone with her problems, though, her parents and friends all helped as much as they could. But Nastya was quietly getting worse. Two years in hospitals, surgeries , various medications , trips to the consultations with the best and the brightest doctors, and no improvement. Nothing... No results. The daughter was slowly dying in front of her eyes. And, of course, she kept going to church to pray. Valentina prayed to God with all her heart and asked all the saints for the salvation of her child. She wept in front of the icon of the Mother of God, pleading to help heal her daughter.
Then came the most critical moment: Nastya was in the hospital, covered with tubes and droppers, she could not get up anymore, and the doctors have said firmly - this is the end, her last weeks, no chance of survival. There was an option to do one more surgery, but it would give her one chance in a million that it would help instead of simply delaying the inevitable for a couple of weeks or that Nastya would not die in the operating room. It made no sense to make the child suffer in the end, but Valentina still cherished the hope that the surgery could help and kept begging doctors to operate. All night before the operation she sat beside her daughter’s bed, again and again appealing to the Blessed Virgin Mary, asking for help, so she would give Nastya strength to survive the surgery. Completely exhausted and devastated, she dozed off sitting in a chair, right before dawn. And she had a dream that the Virgin Mary came to her, looked at her with a serious expression on her face and almost angrily said: “I can help your daughter. She will recover. But you should NEVER ask me about ANYTHING again.”
The surgery was successful. Nastya slowly but surely started to recover. All medical staff of the hospital was glowing with joy together with her mother – it was a miracle... Of course, it was not a miraculous recovery by a wave of a wand, but it was still a miracle, because before there was no hope. It took another six months of treatment and rehabilitation to completely beat the disease.
Nastya started school with her peers. Imagine how happy her mother was. Nastya was growing up a pretty , intelligent , active girl. She was a true sunshine for her mother who gave all she had to raise her daughter well. Valentina completely forgot about herself, she didn’t try to create a new family; there was only one meaning in her life – Nastya.
Nastya grew up, graduated from high school, enrolled in the university; she wanted to become an interpreter. Over time, Valentina began noticing that her daughter was behaving strangely: she neglected her classes, became irritable, yelled all the time, was hysterical, and had wandering eyes. She did not realize right away what was happening. Or maybe she did not want to realize that after everything they had been through before, they would have to deal with this horror – drugs.
