A Skeptic's Transformation: The Miracle of Love

By Nataly Galichansky and Dr. Kim Maas

If someone told me that I would be the one to lovingly care for a woman who had despised me, I would have said, "No Way." Our relationship didn't start out well but that didn't define how it would end. Because love is a miracle.

Love heals and restores; it has the capacity to rebuild everything. By the time M

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nataly Galichansky
• Release date: Nov 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9798985183016

Book preview

Love joyfully celebrates honesty and finds no delight in what is wrong. Love is a safe place of shelter, for it never stops believing the best for others. Love never takes failure as defeat, for it never gives up.

1 Corinthians 13: 6–7 TPT

Love is a miracle. It really is. Love can heal, restore, believe, celebrate, forgive, and cheer you on. Love gives you many chances and never gives up on you. You may read this and think, Oh, it’s not true. Well, then I guess you never met real love. That was my case many years ago; I would argue with you about love. When I was growing up, I assumed what the movies depicted—that love was a feeling and was true. However, what I learned is that love is not a feeling; love is a Person. Love is an action. Keep reading and I promise you that I will introduce you to that Person, and you will have an experience with true love for yourself, an encounter that no one can ever take away from you.

Have you ever thought about what love truly is? The definition of agape love as found at Christianity.com is charity. However, nowadays we often think of charity as giving away money or things, which does not encompass all that agape is about. Agape love is not concerned with the self but is concerned with the greatest good of another. Agape is not born just out of emotions, feelings, familiarity, or attraction, but from the will. Agape love is a choice. Agape requires faithfulness, commitment, and sacrifice without expecting anything in return.¹

Agape seeks the highest good of the person you love and often includes a measure of self-sacrifice. Agape is the capacity, given by God, to love the unlovable, and to love people who do not deserve it, or who are difficult to love. I find sometimes the most difficult person to love is yourself. If you cannot or do not know how to love yourself, this will make loving others very difficult.²

Allow me to share with you my story of discovering what love is. I was born in the Soviet Union in the beautiful republic of Moldova. I grew up in a big, loud, fun family of eight. I am the oldest daughter of six siblings. Our home was full of friends and family, hospitality is a big part of our identity. Growing up, I assumed that every family loved to host big and loud gatherings where the table was overflowing with homemade food, and everyone was squished around a dining table that was too small to accommodate them. When I met my husband, I discovered that this was not the case for every family. If we were fruits, Igor was an apple, and I was an orange; that’s how different we were.

Let me introduce you to Igor’s family. Unlike the cacophony of my family’s home, when you walked into Igor’s family home, the quiet was absolute. Sometimes that silence was uncomfortable. His two siblings and his parents would have nothing to say to one another. Do not get me wrong; no one was offended. It was just in their personalities to stay calm and quiet. Everything in their home was pure, clean, in order; a speck of dust could not be found. It was quite a difference from my loud, fun, and full home.

When Igor and I got married, we had an apartment just one block away from his parents’ home. They would pop in on us from time to time to visit. Igor’s mom disapproved of a lot of things about me. I was outgoing, loud, fun, loved to host people, and loved to travel. She was not afraid to share her opinions and dislike of me with my new husband. She did not share those things with evil intent, but it did not help our marriage. He loved his mother so very much, and her opinion of me mattered to him greatly. He began to notice things about me that bothered him as well, and it created a rift between us. We were young and impressionable and most definitely needed to grow up in many areas of our lives and marriage.

Those first few years as a couple were incredibly challenging and my love was tested in every area. We could not rely on what we learned from our families for example: communication style, how to deal with conflict, whether to host or not to host people. The list can go on and on. Can I cover it all with love? Did I have enough love to forgive, to let go, and to joyfully celebrate our differences? We had to learn how to honor our parents while still creating safe boundaries. It was not easy, but love helped us stay together through the storms of life.

The first ten years of our marriage, we lived in our homeland of Moldova and birthed our two girls there. We then had an opportunity to move across the ocean to a different continent and experience life in the United States, so we did. In 2003, we moved to the United States to seek out our destiny on this earth. It was a dream come true. I had no idea what was ahead of me, but I was not afraid. I was committed to learning everything I could about our new culture, and boy, was there a lot to learn. I had learned some British English while living in Moldova, but American English is quite different, so the language barrier was a challenge. I was very surprised when I found out that I could not pay my rent with actual money. I could not understand why they wanted a check or a money order. I was clueless about the banking system.

The school system was a challenge as well. I could not fathom why my girls were bringing so many papers to be signed nor did I understand what I was even signing. I also could not comprehend why they did not have notebooks but did their homework and schoolwork on a piece of paper. It took me a couple of years to finally take hold of what was taking place in school. God bless my two sweet girls who were in kindergarten and second grade at the time. They knew no English but learned at a quick pace and taught me everything they knew. To make things more challenging, I was pregnant with our third child when I moved to the United States. I had to go to doctors’ appointments and was pushed completely out of my comfort zone because of the language barrier. That certainly encouraged me to learn English much faster.

Another challenge for me was moving to a rural area of New Jersey, the Garden State, far away from other people. I missed being surrounded by others, so I got my driver’s license and overcame any fear that would get in the way of my independence. I started driving on the busy highways and went to New York City as a place to escape. I love the city. When my girls had gone to school, I would take my baby boy with me, and we would go get lost in the Big Apple. I loved watching people during the day, and at night I would drive back into the woods. It was a very challenging time.

Because we moved away from our family and friends, I was alone most of the time. This move was a perfect set-up by God to teach me why He loves me and how to love myself. Even though I was strong and was not afraid of change, deep inside of my heart, I believed a lie about myself. I believed that I was not smart enough, not beautiful, and that I would never accomplish anything. The list went on and on. In Moldova, I was always busy and surrounded by so many people that I didn’t have time and didn’t make an effort to check on my heart. I didn’t know how to deal with the pain nor how to heal those wounded parts of my heart, so I avoided it. God took me out of my familiar motherland to bring me to a place where I could receive healing and peace. This was a perfect set up for my new journey. Remember, every change in our life is an invitation to go deeper and discover the potential that is hidden in